Ryan Paul Gibson

I help B2B businesses run customer interviews that don't suck / Founder @ content lift 🎈

We specialize in buyer research interviews for B2B.
We start booking 1:1 conversations with your ideal buyer 72 hours after launching your project.

You get first-party data to build go-to-market programs that influence buying decisions.

- Their roles and responsibilities 
- The business process buyers are responsible for
- How problems and challenges manifest in this process 
- How do they try to solve these problems
- How and why they prioritized various solutions 
- Buying triggers and catalysts of change
- Their perceptions of vendors/solutions in the market 
- How buyers select and evaluate vendors
- Buying committee members and what they care about 

I've logged 23+ years in Marketing, Sales, and Business Development.
I mentor and teach Customer Discovery & Market Research for early-stage startups.  
I worked three years as an investigative reporter.
I've interviewed over 2300 people in my career.
I've worked with over 200 businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Founder

We help B2B marketing teams run investigative customer interviews. 

We map out a customer's entire journey in their own words.
We find the hidden reasons people are buying your product.

The data helps you make smarter choices with marketing budgets. 
It helps uncover ideas for messaging, campaigns, content and copy.  

All the stuff we do: 

* Primary Customer Research 
* Brand Perception & Identity
* Subject Matter Expert Interviews

🎈  No one had proved this in 30 years.


It's 1990.
John Narver & Stanley Slater wanted to verify a core business theory.
That businesses with a deeper understanding of the market & buyers
were more profitable.

The idea had been written about since 1960.
Philip Kotler was big on it. 
But no empirical study had ever put this idea to the test.
So Narver and Stanley did.

In their 1990 study
They examined 140 business units within one large corporation.
Then in 2000, they replicated the study across 53 corporations.
All in-depth field research.
Across multiple departments.
Rigorously designed controls. 

In both studies, the hypothesis held true. 
There was a meaningful correlation between Market Orientation and profitability.
In other words, businesses that have a deeper understanding of markets & buyers,
significantly shift their odds of success. 

Why this matters:

When go-to-market programs struggle to produce profits,
The default reaction from B2B teams is to focus on execution.
To “do more things” and get “more leads in the pipeline”.

But most GTM programs struggle due to a lack of market and buyer understanding.
(Or “Market Orientation” & “Market Readiness” if we are talking foundational business terms.)
Which means they aren't winning deals,
And "more leads" just masks the real problem.  

I've heard every variation of "we know our buyers, we just need more of them".
And those are the businesses that keep wondering what's off with their go-to-market.

Ryan  Paul Gibson 

I help you get the truth from b2b buyers | Principal @ content lift 🎈

Nemanja Zivkovic

Volcano of creativity | I fix wasted marketing spend when the pipeline’s stuck | B2B systems where brand, sales & growth collide into one engine | Biblical (like Oasis)

You have a great product, but your message is messy. Your team is busy, but the pipeline is stuck. You’ve tried every "growth hack" in the book, yet you’re still the one doing the heavy lifting to close every deal.

I’m Nemanja, and I help you build a business that runs like a system.

I don’t just "do marketing." I did, as marketing goal = busines goals. But for the last few years I do much more. I help you align your brand, your sales, and your operations so they all pull in the same direction. I believe that in a world of AI-generated noise, being human is your only real competitive advantage.

Why work with me? 

I think like an owner. I’ve done this for 120+ companies and 80+ startups, helping them stop chasing clicks and start building equity.

If we're talking about real results, my own agency, Funky Marketing, closed 65 inbound B2B deals in 18 months in the very 1st year with zero ads (nothing against ads I just use them the right way - to scale what's already working without them).

I live in Serbia, but even my 1st job (ugh, a long time ago - check my work experience below) was for a Canadian company working on North American markets. Global perspective from the start. 

I’ve scaled systems for brands like Microsoft, Wix, Deloitte, and Generali across the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

In time, I learned that I love to have skin in the game, so I often partner with serious companies through revenue share or equity. If you don’t scale, I don’t win. And as an ex-basketball player, I hate losing.

Published the 1st book in the Serbian language talking about LinkedIn (soon in English, too!).

Pronounced as one of 10 Marketing Voices to follow on LinkedIn, by LinkedIn! Hey, that was huge!

Built a few communities, the biggest one with 600+ people online and 350 coming to offline events every two weeks. Proud of that and currently building a global one (pssst, more info soon).

When I’m off the clock, I’m probably listening to good music (search dilimanac on Spotify), wandering in the woods, traveling, or getting lost in a comic book or an epic fantasy world. 

I also spend my time mentoring founders at the Founder Institute and BioSense because I believe in giving back to the ecosystem that helped me grow.

So what do I actually do?

I clarify your message so buyers "get it" instantly.
I build systems that keep working even when you aren't. 
I turn your business into a revenue engine that compounds over time.

No interns, no buzzwords, no fluff. 
Senior operator who cares about your bottom line as much as you do.

Ready to simplify? Let's talk.

CEO & Founder

We create demand generation programs primarily for B2B tech-based companies in the growth phase and enable them to generate consistent revenue growth, increase their deal size and shorten their sales cycles using inbound and content strategies.

People think marketing is easy. Hint: it’s not.
People see marketing as black and white, like sales. Hint: it’s not.
Marketing is very very gray. And oftentimes counterintuitive, which is why so many people don’t get it.

We keep delivering on what we promise.

The most important lesson for social media success isn't in a marketing course... 🎬 ...it’s currently streaming on Paramount+.

Well, it’s on Paramount+, but since that’s not officially available in Serbia - you know how it goes. We use Torrent to download it. You do what you have to do to watch good TV series. 😅

I’ve been following the Instagram strategy for the series Landman, and it is phenomenal. We should all be taking notes.

Instead of just posting generic "coming up next" trailers, they do something different:

1. They give context - Actors go behind the scenes to share their own expectations for the story, building genuine hype, and then you have scene + behind the scenes in the same reel.

2. They leverage the "Soundtrack Play" - They tag the musicians (mostly country bands and musicians) featured in each episode.

3. They trigger a chain reaction - Those musicians then create their own Reels and Stories, inviting THEIR audience to watch Landman and listen to their music.

It creates a perfect ecosystem where everyone wins - the show, the musicians, and the audience. This is how you actually drive engagement.

The "Big Secret" is right in the name - Social Media. 🤝
It sounds obvious, but being "social" is the part most people skip. 

Success isn't about working in a vacuum or pushing content in one direction. It’s about doing the extra work to meet people halfway and co-creating with your audience and partners.

On LinkedIn, that means:

1. Building relationships with partners, clients, and colleagues before you need anything from them.

2. Stop extracting value - Don't just take. Contribute.

3. Stop "hard selling" - Don’t push products or drag people into meetings they never asked for.

4. Instead - Meet them halfway. Build real connections. Become the obvious choice by proving you know your craft through collaboration, not just a monologue.

Co-creation > Solo content Relationships > Transactions

Content is just the start of the conversation. The real magic happens when you stop trying to be the "only" voice in the room.

Any examples you'd like to share? Let's discuss below! 👇

P.S. Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating today! 🎄✨

The marketing playbook you used last year? It's dead. I'm not here to share my wins, name-drop clients, or make hollow New Year promises. I do that work daily. 

But there's something critical you need to understand right now about how marketing has fundamentally shifted and most people haven't caught on yet.

The "share everything" era is over.

For years, the playbook was simple: give away all your knowledge. 
Share the how-to guides. 
Break down your exact processes. 
Be generous with your expertise. 

And it worked beautifully!

But here's what changed 👇 

AI absorbed all of that content. 
Every tutorial. 
Every framework. 
Every step-by-step guide you published is now training data. 

And not just for scrappy startups trying to compete with you - for everyone. 
Your biggest competitors. 
Adjacent industries. 
Companies with 100x your resources.

The playing field became a mirror. Everyone can now build similar products, offer similar services, implement similar features. 

The how-to content that used to be your competitive advantage? 
It's now commoditized information.

So what actually works now?

You share your successes - the real ones, with context and nuance. 
You share your stories - the messy, human ones that AI can't replicate. 
You share your point of view - the perspective that only comes from your unique experience. 
You entertain in ways that make sense for your brand and audience.

And yes, you need to be authentic. I know, I know, it's become such a buzzword that it almost means nothing. 

But strip away the LinkedIn-speak and it's simple - just be you. 
Not some polished, corporate version. 
Not someone else's idea of what a founder or marketer should sound like.
You. Whatever that actually means.

Sure, if you're naturally a bit intense or awkward, maybe dial it back 5% for the internet, haha.. But the core? That still needs to be authentically yours. 

People who hire you for services want to work with you. 
People who buy your product want to work with the humans behind the product.

The old strategy was "teach them everything and they'll trust you." 
The new strategy is "show them who you are and they'll choose you." 

In an age where everyone has access to the same information and AI can generate the same solutions, your personality, perspective, and story become your moat (after you prove that you can do the job, obviously!),

And I'm not talking about gatekeeping knowledge, but about understanding that tactical information alone no longer differentiates you. 

What differentiates you is how you think, what you've learned from your failures, why you see things differently, and who you actually are when the camera's off.

The bottom line is - stop trying to out-teach everyone. 
Start showing up as yourself. 

That's the marketing strategy AI can't copy.

Need help figuring out what this looks like for your business? 
I'm here. Let's talk.

Use the link in the featured section of my profile to schedule a call.

Ok, we built a lightweight SEO Crawler - and it’s completely FREE! Tired of complex, expensive tools just to get a quick health check on your website? 

We’ve got you covered!

Our new web-based SEO crawler is live, and you can start using it directly from your browser - no installation required.

What can it do for you?

It’s designed to be fast, simple, and effective. It crawls up to 1,000 pages and checks all the essentials:

1. Technical Basics: Meta tags, broken links, robots.txt, sitemaps, and canonicals.

2. Performance: Loading speed and Core Web Vitals.

3. Structure: Schema markup and header hierarchy.

4. Real-time Insights: See issues as they are found, with a clear priority list on what to fix first.

It is built for action!

Once the crawl is done, you can export everything to a CSV and start optimizing immediately. It’s perfect for beginners or anyone who needs a quick, reliable audit without the bloat.

Check the comments to find a direct link and get started.

This is just the beginning! A huge shoutout to the team, starting with Marko Cvijic (who did this during holidays), and then Sava Nikić, Slobodan Jelisavac, Dejan Pataki and others. 

We're already working on making this crawler even better, with more performance marketing tools coming your way soon to make your daily workflow easier.

Give it a spin and let us know what you think!

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays! 🎄✨

If you’re serious about LinkedIn, if your clients are there, and you think organic posts are enough - let’s be clear - you’re wrong.

People limit themselves to organic. They "post and pray," ignoring EDC (Employee-Driven Content). 

They don’t build a system. 
They don’t engage in the feed or the inbox.

And then they say LinkedIn doesn’t work.
It works. Just not the way most people use it.

If your clients are here, this is what you must do. It’s exactly what I do for global companies.

It starts like this 👇

Activate your employees. Everyone writes on the same topic from their own angle. 

No templates. Just unique POVs, value, and evergreen content.

Post 2–5 times a week for three months. 

Stay active in the comments - not just on your posts, but on others' too. 

Track your profile visitors, messages, and saves.

Start with high volume, then scale based on what works. Posts must be evergreen and specific: they educate + build trust + show your POV.

Simultaneously, DM your target audience who engage with you. Don’t sell - start a conversation. 

That’s how you build relationships.

After three months, pick your best-performing posts. Edit them slightly and add a CTA link to your site or sales page.

Run those as Thought Leadership Ads. 

Boost the individual, not the company page. People see the post in their feed same as organic, just promoted by the company.

This scales the individual’s visibility and the company brand while driving sales.

Why does it work?

Because these posts already have social proof. You’re just extending their lifespan and ensuring every relevant person sees them.

While ads run, keep engaging. 

After three months of advertising ($50–$100/day), use tools like Clay for data enrichment.

By then, you already have engaged leads you’ve spoken with. You know their names, roles, and companies.

Then you enter sequences, sales calls, and direct contact. 

This is ideal for high-ticket services and targeting 20–100 specific companies.

Staying organic-only isn't a strategy folks. It's a limitation. 

LinkedIn works when you do it right.

taplio

The Battle

Ryan Paul Gibson

Nemanja Zivkovic

Followers

Posts

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Performance ScoreRyan Paul Gibson's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNemanja Zivkovic's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Ryan Paul Gibson

Nemanja Zivkovic

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ryan Paul Gibson's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNemanja Zivkovic's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRyan Paul Gibson's LinkedIn Performance