Pranav Piyush

The martech industry is broken, and I’m devoting the next 15 years of my life to fix it.

After a decade leading growth and marketing teams at places like Dropbox, Pilot, Magento and BILL, I realized there was no measurement tool on the market that was statistically valid, simple and holistic. 

So I went and talked to every CMO and VP of marketing in my network. Their number one complaint? Attribution. 

And this is why we built Paramark.

Because I believe that measuring your marketing efforts is not that hard. 

Through the power of MMM, experimentation and data science, we’ve created the holy grail of measurement tools. So marketers like you can confidently understand the impact of your marketing investments – and communicate them to your CFO and CEO.

Learn our method at Paramark.com.

Co-Founder & CEO

Before starting Paramark, I spent the last decade leading growth and marketing teams at fast-growing companies like Dropbox, Pilot, Magento, and BILL.

During that period, we evaluated hundreds of martech tools and, for the most part, were sorely disappointed. Here's why. We found few solutions that could handle the needs of fast-growing marketing teams. They were either incomplete, hard to use, or claiming things that were just flat-out wrong!

This trend is especially true for marketing analytics. Synthesizing and analyzing marketing data to understand effectiveness should be a solved problem. After speaking to hundreds of marketing leaders at some of the fastest growing companies, I was honestly surprised that the truth is far from it. Understanding and communicating the return on marketing investment continues to be one of the top challenges for marketers.

That's why we decided to build Paramark. Our goal is to help fast-growing marketing teams measure and forecast the impact of their investments, unlocking sustainable growth.

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands

Over the last 15+ years, I've worked for 4 VC backed SaaS companies, consulted with more than 100+, helped 1 get acquired, 1 reach unicorn status, and many more generate millions in net new revenue.

I've also seen a handful of those startups go out of business...including my own SaaS business so I know many of the mistakes. 

Over that time I've noticed that the buyer's journey has evolved. 

Today buyers have the power.

Yet, many SaaS businesses still continue to run the same programs that worked a decade ago. 

They continue to over-rely on lead gen and create friction in the buying process. 

This is pushing customer acquisition costs sky high and causing many to miss their targets. 

The way forward is to take a buyer-centric approach to creating and capturing demand. 

Buyer-centric demand gen is when your funnel aligns with how the buyer wants to learn about your company. 

It means you write in the language your buyer understands, you consider how they consume information, and when and how they want to buy. 

When you take a buyer-centric approach you generate more pipeline and revenue and an enduring brand. 

This is why we started Omni Lab.

------------------------------------------------------------

What we do for Series A to Series C SaaS startups:

→ Manage and optimize paid media across any digital channel
→ Distribute content/messaging via paid to grow pipeline and revenue
→ Build out engaging ad creative
→ Focus on optimizing the funnel based on pipeline and revenue. 

Results from SaaS companies we have worked with: 

→ Unicorn Status in 10 months
→ Grew pipeline 372% and lead > opp rate 266%
→ 1,300% increase in revenue Q3 > Q4
→ 20% increase in revenue Q over Q

If you are looking to create and capture demand via paid media, let's chat :) 

email: jonathan@omnilabconsulting.com or DM me

Jonathan Bland

Guess which channel is the 2nd-most referenced by LLMs like ChatGPT?

Reddit?

Google?

Nope, it was LinkedIn. 

Semrush analyzed 230,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity over a 13-week period and found a sharp shift in AI citation patterns.

In mid-September, ChatGPT dramatically reduced citations to Reddit and Wikipedia. But one domain moved in the opposite direction: LinkedIn.

LinkedIn showed a steady rise across all three platforms. Google’s AI Mode cited LinkedIn in nearly 15% of responses throughout the quarter, and both ChatGPT and Perplexity trended upward after the Reddit/Wikipedia drop. 

In some cases, LinkedIn appears to have absorbed the citation share that those domains lost.

What does that mean for you?

If LinkedIn is becoming a more trusted source across AI systems, that has strategic implications:

- Executive thought leadership may carry more distribution weight
- Expert-driven content could influence AI answers
- Authority on LinkedIn extends beyond the feed into AI-generated responses

The brands and individuals shaping conversations on LinkedIn may also be shaping how AI systems answer category-level questions.

So, for you, that means thinking about some of the big questions people ask LLMs as they relate to your product category, and creating content around them. 

Pretttyyyyy interestingggg. 

I'll drop the link below.

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Omni Lab 

Snapdata, in the business of waste and recycling analytics, was selected to participate in NUMA's Smart City Program in Paris to connect with corporate leaders like Cisco, Suez, and City of Paris Government to discuss innovative solutions for cities. Out of 200 startups, we were one of 4 selected to participate. 

Google Exchange Program Finalist - NUMA; Paris

Ogilvy partnered with IE Business School to invite IE based startups to pitch their ideas to Ogilvy to compete in getting the chance to have Ogilvy support their branding & marketing needs as well as partnering with some of their clients to bring about new innovation. 

Ogilvy Competition, Top 3 Startups

Achieving outstanding performance during the IE Business School Startup Lab. Voted best Startup to invest in. 

Investors' Award

Small team of marketing professionals at IE Business School were tasked to develop a new marketing strategy for a SMB company called DriveGum. DriveGum distributes and manufactures CPG goods like gum, granola bars, and others in Europe. We:

•	Repositioned the key value proposition.
•	Created three new strategies to grow brand recognition and improve sales.
•	Made improvements and updates to current marketing material. 




IE Business School - Marketing Case Competition, Finalists

James Madison University Austin Alumni Chapter

Managing Director

Snapdata designs and develops a range of sensors and data analytics platforms for the Internet of Things.

Primarily responsible for European operations developing a go to market strategy and doing business development in the waste and recycling sector.

Confirmed 3 letter of intents with governments and corporate size clients to test our product. 

Developed pricing matrixes for products and services, ROI for our clients, and detailed process for proof of concepts. 

Managed Google AdWords campaigns and analyzed Google Analytics to improve our messaging and positioning. 

Won four separate competitions for leading innovative technology and startup in Spain:

Venture Day Finalist, IE Business School
Investors Award, IE Business School
Google Exchange Program Finalist, NUMA 
Top 3 Startups, Ogilvy


Snapdata

Learn how Omni Lab helps 100+ B2B SaaS brands create and capture demand with paid ads.

Book a Call

Semrush

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands (HIRING)

7 Hard Truths for B2B Marketers

1.) PEOPLE DON'T BUY IN LINEAR PATHS
Gartner, Google, MTA tools and many others have already shown how many touches make up the buyers journey. People don’t experience your brand in channels.

2.) YOUR GOOGLE ADS DEPENDENCY IS HURTING YOUR BOTTOM-LINE
CTR is down, CPC is up, and people are short-listing brands before they go to Google. You need to build brand preference to capture demand more efficiently. 

3.) GATING CONTENT RESTRICTS CONSUMPTION 
People consume short-form content before they invest time in-long form content. 

4.) FOCUS ON PERSONAL PROFILES, NOT BUSINESS PROFILES
People want to make a connection with someone (Founder/SME) at the company, not build a relationship with the company. 

5.) ATTRIBUTION IS A GUIDE, NOT A DECISION MANUAL
If a UTM parameter has to be appended, you are very limited in the tactics/strategies you can use. 

6.) BETTER TO REACH 1,000 ACCOUNTS ONCE vs. 10 ACCOUNTS 10 TIMES
Data from EBB and LI B2B Institute show reach is more important than high frequency against narrow audiences. 

7.) BUYERS HAVE WAY MORE CONTROL AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR BRAND
They can find your pricing, see your product off your website, read reviews whether you want them to or not. Control the narrative and get that information in rented channels where they spend time.

Anything missing?

I thought this post from Sam Kuehnle was pretty spot on...

This is what stood out.

"Somewhere in this process, our intuitive understanding of how buyers (and ourselves) actually behave when making purchase decisions (AKA non-linear, messy, multiple people involved) got buried under the accumulated weight of common practice (AKA linear funnels, sequenced campaigns, decision-maker is also the end user)"

I'm sure most Heads of Marketing would nod and agree to what he said, but then find themselves in the same difficult conversations with their CEO or board, trying to help them understand the impact of their investment. 

Often, we want to show data, present a logical path, and share information to convince someone that our way is the best. 

However, as Sam points out, an additional path might be to ask some really good qualitative questions to get them thinking and to come to their own conclusions. 

For example:

"Tell me about the last purchase you made for the business. What brought it to your attention? How did you go about the path to purchase?"

Or I'd even add a few more: 

- "How long did it take our best customers to decide to buy?"
- "Do we expect finance, product, or hiring decisions to show clean cause-and-effect within 30-60 days?"
- "If we only invested in activities we could perfectly measure short-term, what would we stop doing?"
- "When a prospect converts, how confident are we that the last click was the real driver? 
- "If someone hears about us on a podcast, sees a LinkedIn post, then Googles us and converts, what deserves credit?"

You don't need to ask these questions in a defensive way to prove your point. 

It's more about getting a good conversation going so that both sides understand how to make the best decision.

👏 again on this post!

This may be hard to hear, but lots of B2B content could have been answered in less than 5 seconds with a simple chat with Claude. 

Whether you gate content or not, we still see the highest engagement and form fill rates when content:

- Partners with other SME influencers in the space 
- Has proprietary data and/or unique survey data
- Contains real examples with real stories
- Is practical/specific/& tactical with POV
- Uses a different approach to promote (not just a single image ad with a picture of a book)

A few brands that are top of mind that are doing exactly that: 

1.) Dreamdata's recent report on LinkedIn Ads

What did they do:

- Partnered with other SMEs
- Put up a billboard to promote it
- Put an ad in the newspaper
- Organic posts (exposing content)
- Pull real data from all their clients

2.) Ahrefs released a report detailing a decrease in traffic and CTR 

What did they do:

- Partnered with other SMEs
- Organic posts (exposing ALL content)
- Then later promoted via TL ads
- Additional posts that break it down in short-form
- Pulled real data from all their clients

3.) Omni Lab released a LinkedIn Ads guide

What did we do:

- Partnered with other SMEs
- Organic posts (scrolled through guide in a video)
- Then later promoted via TL ads
- Additional text-based posts that break it down in short-form
- Real examples from more than 10+ B2B SaaS brands

Next time you hit publish, you should ask yourself if your content has some of these elements. 

It takes more time, but the result is worth it.

Most B2B brands promote content on paid social in the same way.

- A clean 1200×1200 ad
- A headline.
- A link to download the guide.

Technically fine. Strategically limited.

I saw an example from Datadog promoting an AWS Lambda cheat sheet. 

Nothing wrong with the ad itself. But it highlights a much bigger missed opportunity.

Today, buyers rarely click ads the way they used to.

Feeds are where content is consumed.

So when a brand promotes a guide, a blog, or a cheat sheet purely as a link to click, they are asking the buyer to take on all the risk:

“Is this worth my time?”

A better approach is to bring the content into the feed itself.

Instead of just promoting the asset with a single-image ad, try: 

1.) Recording a short video via Loom, walking through it.
2.) Scroll through the guide on screen (no audio, just expose the content).
3.) Post the content organically, then promote via thought leader ads

Now the ad is the content.

The buyer can start consuming it immediately without leaving the platform.

This matters because most B2B buyers are not in-market at any given moment. Their job isn’t to download whitepapers all day. They’re skimming, learning, and forming impressions long before they ever raise their hand. 

When the content lives inside the feed:

• It reduces the friction of clicking
• It builds familiarity earlier in the buying journey
• It earns attention instead of demanding it

You can still run the traditional single-image ads.

But pair them with formats that expose the content directly in-channel.

In crowded B2B categories, the goal isn’t just to capture demand.

It’s to make sure buyers already recognize your POV by the time they start looking.

P.S. All ❤️ for the Datadog team, just some thoughts on other ways to promote this piece. :)

Marketing isn’t an expense.

And most teams don’t defund marketing because they think it’s useless.

They defund it because it isn’t producing an immediate return.

- Pipeline feels thin
- Cash feels tight
- Leadership wants efficiency

So budgets get pulled back to the only thing that feels safe:

Demand capture.

- Branded search
- High-intent keywords
- Retargeting
- 3rd party in-market signals
- Bottom-of-funnel offers

Which is absolutely necessary, but inefficient on its own. 

But here’s the structural issue I continue to see across all the SaaS brands we talk to and in our portfolio. 

Most of your buyers are not in-market (no news there), and by the time they are, preferences are already forming.

When you go quiet upstream (aka out-of-market audiences), you don’t just “save money.”

You shrink future efficiency.

A few realities worth confronting:

1.) Familiarity drives conversion efficiency:

Buyers rarely choose a vendor they’ve never seen before (TrustRadius data backs this up). If your paid program only activates at the moment of intent, you’re competing late and paying more to win.

2.)  Short-term efficiency can create long-term fragility: 

Optimizing only for CPL or demo volume often narrows reach and over-indexes on a small in-market audience pools. CAC rises not because platforms are broken, but because you’re fishing in the same shrinking pond as everyone else.

3.) Silence compounds negatively:

When competitors reduce spending, attention becomes more available. Brands that maintain presence build brand preference that pays off quarters later, often when no one ties it back to the earlier investment.

4.) Momentum improves capture channels:

Broad reach and distinctive creative make search, retargeting, and direct traffic perform better. Capture becomes cheaper when a preference already exists.

The answer isn’t “never cut budget.”

It’s this:

If performance isn’t working, redesign the system.

Paid media should do three things simultaneously:

✅ Build reach across your ICP, not just signal-based audiences 
✅ Earn attention with a creative that aligns with key buying triggers and distinctive brand assets
✅ Optimize against CRM progression and revenue quality, not just platform conversions (P.S. that doesn't mean everything needs a UTM parameter)

When structured this way, marketing stops behaving like a volatile expense line.

It becomes a coherent growth system.

And in today’s market, that distinction determines whether efficiency improves over time or continues to erode quarter after quarter.

Most B2B SaaS paid programs aren’t underperforming because the team is bad at execution.

They’re underperforming because they’re built on an outdated assumption.

For years, it was rational to optimize around leads, CPL, and short-term conversion volume. 

- Channels were cheaper. 
- Categories were less crowded. 
- Intent data actually created an edge.

That environment no longer exists.

Categories are saturated. Buyers are risk-averse. Most of them are not in market. And by the time someone fills out a demo form, they’ve often already formed a preference.

If your entire paid strategy is built around capturing declared intent, you are competing late and paying a premium for it.

The issue is not that we need more tools, more data, or better optimization. 

It’s a mismatch between how programs are designed and how modern B2B buyers behave.

The shift that needs to happen is that paid media can’t just activate demand; it has to build its brand preference. 

That means:

- REACH: Optimize for comprehensive audience reach, not narrowing down the audience more and more
- ATTENTION: Earning attention through diversity of content themes that can be consumed in-feed (like this post)
- EFFICIENCY: Optimizing against CRM outcomes, not just platform-reported conversions

And a measurement approach that doesn't just measure paid media based on a UTM parameter appended to a contact, but also considers the overall efficiency of your inbound motion holistically. 

When you do this, what we continue to see from the brand we work with is: 

- Your capture channels get more efficient
- Pipeline quality improves
- Sales cycles shorten

Not because you forced more people into a funnel,  but because more buyers already knew, trusted, and remembered you when the moment arrived.

This is the difference between running campaigns and designing a growth system.

And in this competitive and noisy market, the latter is no longer optional.

This B2B SaaS brand saw a spike in cost per SQL from June to August, followed by stabilization in September of 2025. Let's analyze what happened and why. 👇

The graph below shows that the cost per SQL spiked mid-year (May-Aug), which would set off alarm bells for anyone (even me).

Often, the immediate reaction most teams have in that moment is to start pulling levers, cutting budgets, restructuring campaigns, swapping targeting, and overhauling bidding.

Or worse, they have AI automations that pause keywords/campaigns based on arbitrary cost-per-SQL thresholds (seems smart, but can cause more damage than you think)

We instead took a more pragmatic and slow approach to figuring out what might be happening. 

"slow and incremental" are very important here. 

Here's the systematic approach our team took: 

- Reviewed if we are appearing for the right search terms
- Reviewed budget allocation across best/worst performing keywords in SQL
- Reviewed CTR and text ad copy to ensure benchmarks are met
- Reviewed landing pages to ensure strong alignment with ad group
- And a few other technical settings

After completing that analysis, we found literally no event change (channel-wise) that would've led to the spike. 

Zero. 

Then we reviewed historical data from the year prior (albeit campaign mix/budget was very different) and found that a similar spike occurred. 

We determined that it was a demand fluctuation, with the lull primarily driven by a lower conversion rate in the summer months. 

We spent time talking with the VP of Demand Gen, step by step, about what we were seeing, so we could communicate it to her CEO and set expectations.

Fast forward to August, and we started to see a huge decrease in cost per SQL. 

While regular maintenance was happening on the account during June-August, NO big changes were made. 

It wasn't until September that we started broadening targeting on phrase match (a match type in paid search) that we saw even more improvement in conversion rate (to SQL creation).

What's the lesson?

Demand isn't a straight line, and it isn't always a 'we need to optimize better' issue. 

It is correct for you to question results, evaluate your channel mix, and reconsider what you are doing. 

It would be irresponsible not to. 

But, if you can take away one thing from this post, it's 

- Be systematic in how you evaluate a problem
- Be slow and incremental
- Don't pull too many levers at once to avoid shocking performance

Cheers :)

Here's my experience working with Clay for the first time. 

1.) I build a table gathering data based on website visitors, then narrowed it by ICP

2.) Wow, this is freakin cool and easier than I thought

3.) I then discover "Chat with Sculptor."

4.) Wait, I can just type in what I want you to do, and you build it. Wow.

5.) Then, I want to integrate an email sequence tool that needs HTTP API access

6.) Clay says I need to upgrade, so I upgrade to Explorer

7.) Everything is working well, pushing data over, but then I realize I need to exclude leads and customers from my CRM, etc. 

8.) I went to integrate HubSpot with Clay, and it took two seconds

9.) Then I ask the Clay Sculptor to build it

10.) Then it says you need to upgrade again to Pro, $149 to $800.

There is no doubt that Clay is capable of way more than my small use case, but at this point, I was really just interested in doing this, and $800/month is a lot if you aren't using its full capability. 

It made me think about the future of pricing models being more use-case-specific or outcome-focused. 

For example, what if they simply charged you for credits used, so you only pay for what you use in the use cases you implement? 

I have no clue about the limitations of doing this, but my experience above was a bit of sticker shock for the use case. 

There was actually an interesting article about the future of SaaS pricing models that I'll comment on below. 

I'm still l learning, but maybe someone has some thoughts on the above.

If you are still running paid social like the left side of this graph, take 3 minutes and read this post. 👇

First off, I'd bet most marketers want to run paid social like the right side, but they run into internal problems justifying the budget. 

Paid media has been ingrained in every executive's mind as a "spend $1, get $3" for years. 

If it doesn't convert, doesn't show direct ROI, and doesn't append a UTM parameter to a contact, then it must not be working. 

It's the reason why you spend more of your budget on Google Ads. 

However, social channels operate very differently from search channels, as I'm sure you would agree. 

People come to search channels to:
- Compare products
- Expand the list of vendors for an evaluation
- Do research on new tools to solve x problem
- Learn something new or answer a question

People come to social channels to: 
- Look for a job
- Waste time between meetings
- Learn something new
- Network with peers

If you agree with that, then the question you should be asking your CEO/Exec team is: if those are the reasons people go to a social channel, shouldn't we align our strategy with that? 

Or ask them, "Why do you spend time on LinkedIn, Meta, Reddit, etc.?"

I'd be surprised if they say, "I come to click on ads for high-ticket SaaS products."

For years and still today, paid social continues to be run as a capture-only channel with:

- Narrow targeting
- In-market audiences
- One-off ads
- Platform-reported conversions
- Gated assets

It worked when categories were less crowded, and buyers were easier to convert.

That environment no longer exists.

Today’s buyers are risk-averse, spend most of their time out of market, and form preferences before they ever click a demo ad. 

....take a breath and think for 10 seconds about the last product you bought.....

And there is even more free/ungated content on the web, thanks to 3 big LLMs to do research before ever contacting sales. 

The shift is not about abandoning performance. It is about redesigning the system.

Many of the SaaS brands we are working with are changing the way they run paid social by: 

- Building brand preference across your ICP before the buying moment
- Broadening reach so your brand is familiar with when intent appears
- Developing distinct content themes, not random tests
- Blending CRM data with blended efficiency gains from organic, direct, and brand search traffic. 
- Optimizing for in-channel consumption to earn attention first

Paid social is your "brand megaphone," not just your click on my ad and book a demo channel. 

When paid social is structured around attention, reach, and efficiency, capture becomes cheaper because preference already exists.

You should start to see the share of search increase, brand traffic/conversion increase, and your overall funnel become more efficient. 

It doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't mean abandoning your entire strategy; it means slowly adapting it to how buyers consume and build trust.

If Google/Bing Ads shut down tomorrow, where would you reallocate that budget and why?

Events? 
Paid social?
Community?
New program you have never had budget for? 

I know it’s a big line item for any serious mid-market SaaS brand.

I thought this post from Peep Laja was really interesting and reminded me why we win as a TEAM, not as a department or channel. 

In this survey, the sales presentation and demo were the second-most important factors for CFOs evaluating new products. 

This is exactly why April Dunford wrote Sales Pitch, and why it’s so important that ALL teams work together to close a deal.

For example, teams often want to know the ROI of a specific channel:
“Is Google Ads profitable for us?”

That question is reasonable, but it often overstates the amount of control a channel actually has.

Google Ads is simply a mechanism for directing quality traffic to your website, either indirectly (view-through) or directly (click-through).

That's it, nothing more. 

It doesn’t position the product, run the demo, handle objections, or ultimately close the deal.

The success of your investment in Google (or any channel, paid or not) means all other teams need to work together to bring a deal to a close. 

Focus on what you can control at each stage of the buyer journey, make tweaks, and then evaluate performance holistically.

Short-termism is killing good marketing. 

But it doesn't change the reality of what execs want: 

- Fast results
- Predictable returns
- Easy to measure channels

It then forces all product category competitors to optimize for:

- The same in-market keywords
- The same intent/signal audiences
- The same platforms
- At the same moment

That means: 

- Higher CPCs & CPMs
- Rising CAC
- Declining marginal returns

Even with “best-in-class” execution, you'll see prices increase and volume decline as you narrow down audiences. 

Meanwhile, 71% of buyers reported purchasing their first-choice product according to TrustRadius. 

And 9 out of 10 consumers name trust as a primary purchasing criterion, driving buyers to rely on familiar, trusted brands.

Keyword = "famiilar"

If you aren't a familiar, and have established brand preference BEFORE someone comes in-market, it will make it even harder to compete. 

And let's not forget how competitive product categories have become. Here's what the call recording space looks like: 

1.) Fireflies.ai
2.) Otter.ai
3.) Grain
4.) Avoma
5.) MeetGeek
6.) Read.ai
7.) Fathom
8.) Krisp
9.) Sembly AI
10.) Jamie
11.) Tactiq
12.) Supernormal
13.) Notta
14.) Fellow
15.) Nyota
16.) Airgram
17.) Gong
18.) Chorus
19.) Clari Wingman
20.) ExecVision
21.) Jiminny
22.) Modjo
23.) Observe.AI
24.) Dialpad
25.) RingCentral
26.) Aircall

Now let's go after the most obvious target, high-intent keyword "call recording software" = 880 monthly searches at $51/click (top bid)

The top three vendors will likely capture most of the demand, leaving the rest to fight over the scraps. 

And that's just one category. 

- This isn’t a tooling problem.
- It’s not a tactic problem.

It’s a misunderstanding of how B2B buyers actually make decisions.

Short-term optimization is necessary, but insufficient on its own.

Real leverage comes from shaping preferences before buyers ever show in-market signals. 

That means adjusting channel mix, objectives, budget allocation, and CTAs to focus on your narrative, what you do, your POV, proof of work, etc., before they come in-market. 

That will make your capture channels more efficient.

Imagine if the first thing humans asked the aliens in Arrival was:

“Want a demo?”

It would feel absurd.

But that’s how a lot of B2B marketing behaves.

The moment someone discovers a company, the message is immediate:

Book a demo.
Talk to sales.
Start a trial.

The problem is that most buyers aren’t ready for that conversation yet.

- They’re still learning about the problem.
- Still trying to understand the different approaches.
- Still deciding which companies even deserve a spot on their shortlist.

or 

- They simply don't have a budget, yet
- They already want to work with you, but they are in a long-term contract
- There are other competing priorities, you're not top on the list

Yet many marketing programs treat every interaction like a buying moment.

So instead of building familiarity and trust, the experience jumps straight to a sales ask.

And when you skip that step, you’re asking buyers to commit before they’ve had a chance to form an opinion.

The companies that consistently win rarely rush the demo.

They focus first on becoming known, understood, and credible.

So that when a buying moment does arrive…

The conversation doesn’t start from zero.

And the best part is, sometimes the best content that doesn't explicitly ask someone for a demo is the content that converts best.

🚨 PSA: CEOs, stop hiding behind your brand logo. 

Your brand needs a face, and it isn't your beautiful brand logo. 

This was one of the topics that Val, VP of Marketing at Unbounce, and I discussed. 

She asked me, "What types of ad creatives do you think will continue to perform well in 2026?"

I told her....

"If we are talking LinkedIn Ads, then clearly thought leader ads will continue to dominate from an engagement perspective. 

They are still the number one ad format for us, not only as an agency, but for all the brands we work with. 

The engagement rates are 5-6x those of any other ad format. And often, the conversion rate is even higher than in other formats.

And so we have a strong pull for any brand we work with that needs at least a handful of thought-leader ad campaigns running. 

It's what people expect to see when they open the feed. And so when they start scrolling and looking through things, it's natural to engage with a person rather than a company.

That's why they get such great engagement: they put a face to the brand. And I think often brands want to hide behind the logo and not get someone out there into the world. 

That actually represents the brand. It doesn't have to be the founder. It could be an SME or someone external."

What I didn't say is....

Thought leader ads ONE format and are unique to LinkedIn Ads. 

The real takeaway is broader. 

The creative that performs best is the creative that matches how people already consume content in that environment.

That principle applies everywhere, not just LinkedIn. Because ads don’t fail when targeting or bidding is wrong. They fail when they interrupt rather than integrate.

And that ties back to the bigger point we see over and over again:

If brand preference is formed before it’s captured, paid media shouldn’t focus solely on converting buyers at the end of their buying journey. 

It should reinforce familiarity and trust. 

When your ads look and feel like native content, you’re not forcing attention.

You're aligning with what people are used to. 

And that’s when paid stops feeling fragile and starts working with how buyers actually behave. 

P.S Not sure why my audio got garbled a bit...

This is slightly dated, but LinkedIn late last year showed that 94% of marketers agreed that trust is even more key to success. 

Basically, everyone agrees..., but how we get there is a bit different for everyone. 

I asked Google to summarize what trust is, and it said....

"a willingness to accept vulnerability based on the expectation that another person, system, or outcome will behave reliably and not harm your interests."

And then it made me think more about how you operationalize that, what are the questions I would have when I'm about to work with someone? 

I ask myself: 

1.) Can they do what they claim?
2.) Will they do it consistently over time?
3.) Are they acting in my general interests?
4.) Am I already familiar with them?
5.) Who else trusts them that I trust?

A lot of those questions are answered before someone comes in-market and even considers a product. 

Dreamdata has also backed that up with its most recent report, which shows that buyers are waiting even longer to reach out to sales. 

So then, how does one earn trust, and how does one create a system for building trust?

The brands that are doing well in our portfolio are:

✅ Leveraging video (selfies, hard takes, narrative-based content), not stale product demos 

✅ Social proof in the form of quotes, case studies, real screenshots of results, or real takes from actual clients via organic posts on LinkedIn. 

✅ Consistent, always on campaigns that remind people who you are, what you do, and the problems you solve

✅ Partnerships with influencers to steal trust from their audience and build more authority with their own brand

✅ Taking a stance and expressing their POV on how they frame the problem and solve it. 

✅ Ensuring content expresses a strong POV, is practical, leverages proprietary data, and shares real examples and stories. 

Measuring trust in a dashboard isn't going to happen, but proxy metrics can help, such as:

- Engagement rate
- Views/dwell time
- Brand sentiment (e.g., call recordings)
- Gut feel from conversations with prospective customers
- And ultimately, people reaching out to you (demos/trials, etc.)

I really think more brands need to slow down their roll in scaling content with AI and ensure that what they put out there builds trust. 

I'll drop the link to this below if you haven't seen it.

I talked to Tim Salikhov, CFA, (previous 4x VP of Finance) about the biggest issues of alignment between marketing and finance...here are 5 takeaways: 

1.)  All finance cares about is CAC and runway. How much does it cost to acquire a new customer? How long until we run out of cash? Everything else is marketing's job to figure out.

My take: This means marketing has to speak the language of finance (know your audience)

2.)  Finance's role isn't to micromanage channels or tactics. It's to ensure marketing understands the financial constraints and milestones needed for the next fundraising round. Then trust them to execute.

My take: Again, speak the language of finance and show you have a plan to meet those goals (it's not about attribution...no one cares if you meet the goal)

3.)  Set expectations upfront on time AND dollars. The magic happens when marketing says, "In 6 months, we'll know if this works. Here's the cost." Now, finance can model it, explain it to the board, and avoid surprises.

My take: Planning can and should happen with finance (and sales)... when everyone is aligned from the get-go, reporting/interpretation becomes easier. 

4.)  Surprises are the enemy. The worst conversations? When a roadmap shifts three months in without explanation. "We pivoted" isn't a plan; it's a red flag that burn rate just increased, and nobody communicated it.

My take: Pivoting is sometimes necessary...however, it's better to set expectations early on how we will interpret performance from a given channel.

5.) Compensation structures drive behavior. So structure incentives accordingly, SDRs on volume, sales on closing, and marketing on "impact".

My take: Compensation structures should be shared between marketing and sales; we win together, not in silos.

TL;DR Know your audience, align and set expectations early, and make sure you speak finance.

I know I own an agency. 
I know I post about paid media for SaaS brands. 
But that doesn't mean I just want to see posts about paid media in my feed.

I'd like to hear about all sorts of things happening in marketing, as they relate, directly or indirectly, to the topic I write most about. 

An interest-based algorithm is great in theory (it shows you more of the stuff you like to engage with), but it can really narrow down your view. 

Does anyone else feel this way?

Maybe I need to force it to go broader by directly searching for topics outside of my primary focus area.

taplio

The Battle

Pranav Piyush

Jonathan Bland

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The Battle

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Jonathan Bland

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