Joaquin Dominguez: Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing Futures. Today we are diving into one of the most important shifts happening in our industry, B2B go-to-market in the AI era. AI is not just another tool in the stack, it's fundamentally changing how buyers discover, evaluate, and engage with companies. From content creation and search behavior to measurement and team structures, the traditional GTM playbook. is being redefined in real time this episode we'll explore how marketing leaders are adapting to these changes what's breaking in current strategies and what needs to evolve to stay effective but before we jump into discussion i'd love for our guests to introduce themselves and share a bit about their background and current focus ⁓ lisa maybe would you like to start? welcome Lisa Bonanno: Hi, everyone. So happy to be here. Lisa Bonanno. I have 25 years in B2B marketing in the tech sector and really looking forward to a great conversation. Joaquin Dominguez: Awesome, thank you so much, Ziza. Welcome. welcome. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Thank you so much. I am so happy to be here as well. I consider myself a scholar practitioner. I've worked in B2B, ⁓ GTM and marketing. I'm a career marketer. And I am also an adjunct faculty in marketing at Columbia University SPS ⁓ the University of the Cumberlands. So really excited to have this discussion with this amazing group today. Joaquin Dominguez: Welcome, thank you so much and under welcome Ander: Yeah, it's nice to meet the fellow guests on the podcast and Joaquin, thank you for having us on. My name is Andrew Frisher. I've been doing in one form or another for the past 12, 15 years, depending on how you want to look at it. And I've been focused in B2B most of that time. Currently, I am working at Gong and leading our SEO and AEO efforts there as well. Joaquin Dominguez: Really interesting. Thank you. Thank you so much for those great introductions. start with the big picture, right? AI is already reshaping how marketing teams operate day to day from content production to targeting measurement. ⁓ the most meaningful changes you're seeing in how B2B companies approach go-to-market today? And where is ⁓ generally adding value versus where it might be over hype? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: I think I can get us started and we can all contribute to the discussion. But I think what's happening is that there's a lot of rigor around using AI in marketing operations. And one of the key reasons for that is the scale that it offers, which I think is not overhyped. ⁓ I it's making us a lot more efficient and faster in getting campaigns out in market. and also producing content at scale. But I think that's essentially the content production piece is where we need to be a little more cautious because there definitely is an saturation ⁓ when it to messages and a lot of generic content that's out there. really, you know, that human element and that personalization ⁓ that we talk about is diluted in the mix. And I think those are two. ⁓ dichotomous aspects of AI application that we are seeing more and more today. Ander: I would agree with that. think that one of the biggest opportunities is obviously the scaling of content, but that does come with managing the risk having all that AI can produce content out there. And at GONG we've actually created some workflows where we've been able to scale content production with human led inputs that I actually still consider to be very authentic. So there are certain ways around it. But the other thing that I think about when I think of how AI is reshaping marketing and reshaping the day to day. it's changing a lot of the value that we as individual marketers can bring to the table. Whereas ⁓ there was a lot of value I find placed on how much can we get done in a certain amount of time? And what AI is allowing us to do now is really down ⁓ on ideas that are really working. So we can spend our time as humans with the context that we have about our industry and about our company and. come up with these great ideas that we can then use AI to execute and scale. Lisa Bonanno: That's what I'm seeing, Andrew. I'm seeing more of a quicker iteration of what's working and then to your point at scale, right? So it's like, how do we bring together our persona information, our content bytes, what we know about the buying behavior or what's been working so far, and then give a good prompt that can then tell us what kind of content to be putting in front of this person or this account at this time. then you get you refine it right as you go. So as things are proving be more successful, you kind of add that into the recipe and is ⁓ constantly of learning and improving like a flywheel on its own, which I think is fascinating. I think the buying behavior is in marketing, we thought of it as linear, right? You do this and then you do this and then you do this. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Absolutely. Lisa Bonanno: And I think AI is completely changing that on its side allowing us to think about all different places that our prospects and customers are natively going ⁓ and can we show up and kind of meet them there ⁓ with right piece of content at the right time for where they are in their journey, right? So it's, I'm Italian, I talk about recipes a lot, but like it changes the recipe, right? And it's like, you know, different ingredients. Joaquin Dominguez: I would love to come back to that ⁓ nonlinear behavior in a second. But ⁓ we get into that, I would to come back to producing content at scale. And I was listening a podcast this morning, Neil Patel's podcast. I don't know if you follow Neil Patel. I really like his podcast, by the way. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. Yeah. Joaquin Dominguez: And they were analyzing Alexander's Hermosus content strategy. I don't know if you know Alexander Hermosus, but he's really popular in the startup world, creating enterprises, and he has millions of followers on YouTube. was produced, ⁓ were analyzing his content production on YouTube, and he's publishing more than 100 videos a day. in a period of like 10 hours. it's like 20 videos per hour. And are all of them generated by AI, however, from a human-led input. ⁓ So he's recording some workshops ⁓ and he's editing every single part of the video, like the hooks, everything. I would to know, what are your thoughts on that? What are the risks? Because you, you mentioned Rashmi at the beginning that we need to be cautious with content created at scale with AI. are your thoughts on strategy like that, for example? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. I think that kind of approach, I would be candid in saying, is probably not well thought through. Because what AI is doing, to Anders' point, is giving us a lot of time back to reinvest in understanding our users, consumers, prospects better, but also identifying what content, what channels resonate most. And so just because we can, and therefore we must, ⁓ put out content there is probably not the best approach. And I'm seeing this with no conscious evidence of these videos are performing, ⁓ also how much time users are spending consuming this content. So ⁓ think with having the ability to scale as fast as we can, ⁓ is also a responsibility and an onus on the marketer to understand. you know what the message is. I don't think the vision should get diluted at the cost of our ability to do things faster. think vision today is much more critical than anything anytime before. It's always been critical, your vision and vision and mission for a brand and a company. ⁓ today it's much more important to hold that central to everything that we do because otherwise we stray in ⁓ you know our ability to scale would take away from us. the purpose and why, the why behind the things that we do. Joaquin Dominguez: the author's mission was to put his message across and if in doing so you need to tweak the algorithm somehow and find a way of putting your message out there and show your videos to as many... Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: So here's the thing, right? Are we trying to the algorithm by frequency, or are we trying to change the algorithm by sentiment tracking? Right? The sentiment matters as much as volume does. And I think it's important to track that. Joaquin Dominguez: Okay. Lisa Bonanno: And I consistency, I think it's having the same message very consistently wins out. So I think we're how ⁓ content content sake or content for volume sake isn't always the winning approach. But if the content is meeting an end need ⁓ and we the algorithms love a good video, I mean, it just does. And so how do you take existing content and maybe, ⁓ actually, I think were talking about this before. It's like, Joaquin Dominguez: I like that. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Lisa Bonanno: OK, you could do a webinar and now you have an asset and then from that asset, you can pull out sub assets and have it work for you in this modular way. And so that's That's a scale as opposed to needing 100 videos in 10 minutes. Right. So it's like, and where does this where does this asset fall into the buyer's journey and for and for who who we see consuming it. And so you kind of think about filling out almost like a matrix. you know, of your people and their journey and the asset chunks that we need to kind of tell the ROI and tell the story across the, you know, consideration buying. And then it may be we need a thousand pieces of video. You it may that may be part of the ⁓ I question that too. Andrew, you had a thought. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the science behind it matters. Yeah. Ander: I think word that I always think of when we think about, think about quality content ⁓ balancing that quality content with retail is authenticity. Are you creating content that is authentic to who your brand is, is going to come across or ⁓ shouldn't even say come across, is actually going to be authentically valuable for your audience. And there's another ⁓ aspect producing Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ander: hundred pieces of content, especially within a large enterprise, where at the end of the day, content appears on your website ⁓ there is something there that might ⁓ violate some legal component ⁓ you know, might spill some secret sauce or maybe, you know, any sort of content that says something that maybe we don't want to say. Ultimately, at the end of the day, there is going to be a human on the hook for that. And so. Reviewing all of that content and really applying that human QA in a meaningful and thoughtful way is very important for preserving that authenticity and making sure that the content is doing its job in the way that you want Lisa Bonanno: I think this is what's so fascinating. It's like, so here we are in an AI era and we're using tools to help generate content. And yet at the same time, we're saying the most valuable content is content in other people's words, right? So you think about like the G2s and the Reddits ⁓ Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yes. Lisa Bonanno: ⁓ all these other review sites. So using humans' words to describe their experience or the solution or the benefit really the ringleader ⁓ the So I almost think it's less about maybe even writing the smartest prompt to generate a widget of content and maybe it's ⁓ how do inspire your customers to help sell more product for you, you know? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: in the Lisa Bonanno: have them become your evangelists, have them write those reviews and take the phone call and put a social post out there. I was just reading this little blurb about how the C-suite is being encouraged to do more free-form social posts, right, on their own, in their own words to kind of talk about their experience at the organization and their solutions and, you know, creating heroes out of their customers. and it kind of just helps humanize the customer, or I'm sorry, humanize the organization and bring them forward. So I just think it's almost ironic, right? Like two sides of this of needing human in the loop and how it's even higher in the picking order, but still needing to kind of execute stuff at scale. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I totally agree on the user-generated content piece and inspiring customers to become advocates, even past users, I might say. It's become more critical. And that's where EEO is from in terms of sources. ⁓ what I'll also add is that another thing that AI is helping us do really well is read signals and act on them very fast, right? So I think to your point, ⁓ you know, the recipe and getting ⁓ recipe is changing real fast. ⁓ it's going to be so critical to understand where different types or ingredients fit in. Right? So the AI generated content pieces, including a more humanized, authentic version of what our brand should sound like alongside user generated content, where does it fall in that matrix? you know, the funnel structure that is, I don't know if it still exists, it's definitely very dynamic than it's been in the past. So really, you know, figuring out the the ingredients and where they fit and what the right mix is for your brand and the channel that we, or channels we're using to go to market is becoming so much more critical. that's where I think we are spending a lot of our time as well at work figuring that out. Lisa Bonanno: you mentioned the funnel. Sorry, go ahead, Andrew. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Ander: ⁓ no, go ahead, Lisa. Lisa Bonanno: I was just going to say, I don't think anyone has remastered the new funnel. if they have, I would love to have a chat with them because I just feel like it's so iterative and every company is trying to take different inputs of what's working, what isn't, and trying to figure out how it kind of plays down. I mean, at the end of the day, you still need the booking, right? You still need the revenue. And so there's a set of actions that you're going to have to follow to kind of get the account warmed up, the human warmed up. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah Yeah. Lisa Bonanno: And those actions may be different depending on the ASP, the persona, all the things, all the variables. think what we're talking about is that ⁓ able to listen more through the awareness and consideration stage than ever before to kind of see what accounts are bubbling up faster than others, which people within those accounts are showing signs of ingesting information that may Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Lisa Bonanno: show us that they're more likely to buy sooner than later, right? And kind of pull these folks forward. So it's almost like the funnel is still there. And yes, it is still linear, but the actions happening at the top are kind of a little bit more sporadic and crazy. But there is a moment where we're going to say, you're warm, right? And we're going to bring you over and take you down the bottom of the funnel. And I would say, know, marketing's job hasn't doesn't stop there. It needs to really continue down the bottom in partnership with sales so that, you know, even though there might be an opportunity on the record, you know, marketing should still be going into that account with appropriate content to kind of continue to warm them down to the close. So, yeah, I think it's a it's definitely a ⁓ shifting. ⁓ funnel, but I think the funnel is still there and people are just trying to figure it out. Ander: I was going to say one of the interesting things, speaking of the funnel is there's also this visibility gap that we do not, that is not being covered at the moment. And I'm not sure how we will cover it of understanding how a late stage prospect, someone who already has a statement of work or a proposal or whatever it might be in front of them, how they are using LLMs to evaluate the solution that you are offering. We don't really have any data. that tells us exactly how they're doing that. But anecdotally, I've heard stories of seven figure deals being closed because of the research that executives are doing within an LLM. And that's something that we just don't really understand. But to your point, Lisa, that's why we as marketers have to pay attention to that bottom of the funnel as well and continue making sure that that content is available. Lisa Bonanno: And I think you hit it on the head. So if they're going to LLMs, not just in the beginning, but all the way through, we need to make sure that we're showing up in whatever that query is. So we need to make sure, ⁓ Anders, this is your background, right? It's like, how do we structure our content on our website in such a way that if there's a side-by-side comparison, we're being included in that side-by-side comparison, or what's the FAQ that needs to roll up so that we are one, at the table, and then two, winning the day, right? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah, and I'll also add that it's not just about ⁓ how the brand shows up or how we show up on our website. I think it's a lot more about corroboration through and through, awareness through closing, where, know, LLMs constantly ⁓ pulling ⁓ different that see the same thing. So the principle of ⁓ corroboration, right? So they're going to be, if your website is seeing the same thing as G2 ⁓ and That's what's going to show up in the results. So it's so much more important to really create that surround sound of everything that the brand wants to say, but having users say it and other credible sources like analysts replicate the same thing and publishers ⁓ that ⁓ what essentially feeds ⁓ LLM models. And going back to content, didn't mean to digress, but I think one really cool thing that we were able to do with AI, ⁓ especially in the context of content, is that keeping content fresher and really it down or creating that, you know, the funnel effect, which ⁓ a of time just sits in the marketer's head and doesn't really exist in paper, or really creating that journey ⁓ has so much more easier. So you're keeping content fresh, but you're also driving people down at the same time by giving them prompts ⁓ off of signals that they're displaying in real time. I think that's something that's that's happening that ⁓ we didn't have before. ⁓ And think it'll ⁓ lend the funnel structure much more robustly in years, weeks, whatever. ⁓ You never how this thing progresses. Ander: Thank you. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: But it'll definitely lend more to a more formal funnel I think. Lisa Bonanno: I think marketers are going to be asked, if they're not already, to be thinking about setting up those systems. So maybe the system might replace campaign at one point, but it's almost like, so what signals are we going to listen for, to your point, Rashmi? And then what's our system to kind of support that signal? And it will include all the different channels that are appropriate. But you're kind of creating the work stream. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: May. you Yeah. Lisa Bonanno: ⁓ and then monitoring the workstream and then iteratively improving that workstream. So it's a little bit of a different mind shift too that I think is happening. when we say signals, like we sit here and we sound all smart, but like there's so much tech debt ⁓ these companies and finding the data to actually cue off of, like it's order of operations. I mean, you can't even think about building the system until you're thinking about Joaquin Dominguez: Thank Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: you Lisa Bonanno: What's my data input to kind of cue off of and like have a smart system to even build? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah, absolutely. Ander: And also with how fast things are moving right now, as soon as one new AI oriented strategy or tactic, as soon as we feel like we have one of those down, there's another thing that's happening. You know, so speed at which there's this acceleration happening with what we're able to do as marketers that I think most of us can agree sometimes feels a little hard to keep up with, you know, what is the most important thing to be doing? Where should we be spending our time when there's Lisa Bonanno: Mm-hmm. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. ⁓ absolutely. Ander: 100, you know, shiny objects showing up on LinkedIn every day. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: There is definitely a lot of noise. And I think personally, the way I'm trying to break through it is to see what gets me most bang for my time. So. without naming names, like if I have any favorites that I like to go to, whether I have favorites for different things. So content creation, you my certain model is trained to deliver on that. Or campaign optimization, we have a separate tool that, you know, I lean on more. I think that's how I'm evaluating tools that I want to spend my time in, where ⁓ I know exactly what I get out of these tools. But also, ⁓ what's the best use of ⁓ What's the best use of my time in that sense? Ander: I think that the multi-model approach is actually very important is understanding if you're using LLMs to scale a bunch of your work or you're using tools that are leveraging LLMs, when is Claude appropriate ⁓ versus OpenAI versus any the other tools out Joaquin Dominguez: No, no, Go ahead. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. you know, because, like I said, I'm a scholar practitioner. So what's more important as a practitioner versus a scholar, right? Like there's different tools that work best in different environments. you know, not just utilizing them for my personal use and at work on the day-to-day, but also educating the next generation of marketing leaders on Lisa Bonanno: you Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: how they should be approaching and thinking about some of these things and some of these tools without completely getting overwhelmed. Because sometimes in the classroom, Excel is hard enough to get around and get behind. so introducing so many different tools can only add to a lot of confusion. Lisa Bonanno: Well, it's funny, we started the conversation around like, you know, there's, there's so much AI tools out there to use and every company seems to have an AI mandate to, you know, get smart about AI and no one really understands what that means. it can feel a little bit like a frenzy, you know, I got to get some AI. I feel like calling it like, ⁓ know, the Facebook, you know, it's like the AI, we got to get the AI like everyone's just, you know, we don't even know what we're saying, but we're saying it to be cool and relevant. ⁓ Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm. Lisa Bonanno: I think it goes back to the content question. It's like, what problem are we trying to solve? Could AI solve this better for us? Is there a tool out there today that I should explore to help solve this problem? And if like, no, no, no, then keep going. really have to think about, from very strategic perspective, what problem are we hoping to overcome and solve? And is there an AI tool that could help us do this better, quicker, more effective? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Lisa Bonanno: so on and so forth. And yeah. Joaquin Dominguez: Exactly. What's role of brands in this context, right? Because if everyone can create content, personalised messaging, scale distribution, there is a lot of saturation, of course, right? Even we want to pick the right AI tool, there is saturation. Imagine creating content with these tools. There's even more. ⁓ what ⁓ the role of a brand in this environment? Is it becoming more important as a signal of trust and differentiation or... Ander: I see you, I see Lisa Bonanno: Yeah. Joaquin Dominguez: Is it evolving into something totally different? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: I think it's so critical to humanize the brand. ⁓ again, like going back ⁓ to what we started like it's so important brands to appear as humans or have human qualities ⁓ much more than before. And for those qualities to up and the values to show up in real time. And not just one for the reason of humanizing the brand ⁓ and driving connection. Ander: I for... part. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: but also because the user is evolving. Even multi-generationally, we see that different generations resonate better with different things. But millennials and Gen Zs and beyond connect more with brands that have purpose and stand for their values and are vocal in talking about those things. And so if we want to stay relevant, think creating that authenticity and human value going to be most critical for brands. Ander: One of the things that I find most interesting whenever a brand does this is when they are able to give insights about the problem they're solving through their own data set. We have something at Gong called Gong Labs, where we analyze, we analyze conversation data and ⁓ other types, other revenue data points across our massive data set. And we're able to actually share things that are unique. And I think that part of doing that is part of what's important about that is the uniqueness and the fact that it's only coming from a particular brand. So if there's a brand that has, could almost say like a moat with the types of insights that they're able to offer, I find that that's very. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Lisa Bonanno: I definitely concur that the role of brand is even more important than ever before. your point, content is a commodity now, right? Anyone can generate it. So that's not the thing. And more important is defining what is our brand. You think about the positioning statement and the ⁓ messaging It's like, how are we different? Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: See you next time. Lisa Bonanno: and in driving that consistency of how your different Rashmi to your point in all the channels. Right. And so even as you think about your executive team and them going out and posting stuff, it's from the same piece of music. Right. They're all saying the same thing consistently and humanizing the experience of that brand through the same use of words. And then you think about like all the tools we have on the customer side. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. Thank you. Lisa Bonanno: to really harness that communities I think are going to have or already have a great role in ⁓ supporting everything we're talking about here. So having a place for customers to go and find each other and solve problems collectively and together and human to human, chat to chat, right? There's something very about that. And I think companies that really do that well are probably going to... have higher renewal rates and just be able to harvest the goodness through those type of channels too. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: You know, something comes to mind as we talk about this, Lisa, I think in marketing or in the business context, we've never considered people, whether that's we when I say people like internal people and executives as a channel, right, as a as a forum for generating word of mouth or promotion. But we are our best advocates. ⁓ I think the storytelling aspect and extending that consistency, like you said, across people treating them as a channel and bringing them into the fold and measuring against that ⁓ going to be key. I don't think we're thinking about that right now ⁓ as marketers, but how do we evaluate word of mouth from our own people? ⁓ our employees as a channel is something maybe we should look at. ⁓ aspect is, ⁓ I hate to say it because I used to hate it when senior leaders would ⁓ say this, But storytelling, storytelling, storytelling, storytelling. Like you said, using the same source, the same music to deliver the same message consistently across channels, across people, across users. I think the surround sound that's going to change the narrative, build the narrative, and set organizations apart from their competitors and peers. Joaquin Dominguez: Yeah, one thing that comes really evident, I believe in the AI era is that brand matters more than ever. When everyone can create content at scale, what really sets apart companies are true connection they build with their audience. ⁓ ⁓ the same time, most marketing teams are still stuck in execution. They are spending time researching accounts, finding the right people, managing campaigns. Even researching the new like the new thing. ⁓ So we building at Adzact is a different of You allocate budget and the system takes care of the rest. We find the right companies, we find the right decision makers, we run and we optimize the campaigns for you. And ⁓ we combine everything back to And actually we can track... Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yep. Joaquin Dominguez: personal level intent. So you can actually see when the people that you have been reaching through your brand activity start to show real buying signals. And that means that brand is no longer something you just hope works over time. You can see which companies and which decision makers are exposed to your campaigns and how they move from awareness to consideration. So at the end of the day, brand It's just not hard to justify anymore. It becomes measurable. You can tie it back to pipeline, to revenue, and you can invest more on brand. I the big shift here is that people spend more time focused on brand and building real connections with their consumers instead of managing campaigns or finding the new tool or tweaking the algorithm ⁓ of LinkedIn or tweaking the algorithm of YouTube and you really focus on what really matters. And with that in mind, I love to finish with one question. If you had more time to focus on brand and customers, what would you do differently and what's actually currently getting in the way? Lisa Bonanno: I think what's so interesting about what you just said is, know, brand has always been this soft thing. We can't measure it, right? I don't know about a PR, AR, like how do I measure the effectiveness? ⁓ just feels so soft and squishy. The CFO doesn't understand it. ⁓ just so hard for marketers to kind of justify. the elements needed to elevate brand. And now we're in this AI era where we're all agreeing on this panel that brand is more important than ever. And so I'm hoping that a shifting conversation around brand isn't about your icon or imagery. It's these words that you're using and the feeling you're giving people when they are near your company. And so I think what might be interesting is I'm kind of going to watch for this. mean, COVID took a turn, right? And we were not doing events. Now we're kind of back to events. And I think that in person, the face to face is going to become even more important to driving that those connections that people are dire for. At the end of the day, it's a human buying. something from another human. are human to human. I know we talk about B to B, B to C, right? We're B to H. We're like, you know, or even H to H. We're human to human. people want to know that they're buying from another good human that's going to have their back and take care of them. They're not going to lose their job because they bought their thing ⁓ they're going to be a partner in their growth and their success. And that comes from building those relationships from the moment they kind of come over to your front door, you know, all the way through to them becoming an advocacy and renewing and Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yes. Lisa Bonanno: buy more from you. So I think a little bit of a shift, not that digital is going anywhere. I digital is still in the recipe, but I think a little bit more face-to-face might be taking a share of the budget. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. I love that direction. And for years, think B2B marketers have struggled with how to bring emotion into the picture. why we try mimic consumer marketing or see how, ⁓ because easier to do that, to lead with emotions on the B2C side. ⁓ And think it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves and how we are able to do that more with ⁓ ⁓ with the eye and with the noise that it creates. So looking forward to seeing how that evolution happens and how, you know, we kind of, we lead emotions a little more. And I think we've played safe ⁓ for a really time on the B2B side. I think ⁓ it's now becoming to really say the things ⁓ or stand for what believe in. So we'll see how that goes. But I totally agree that in-person is going to be very, critical in the next couple of months and years. Ander: And one thing I think is also important with digital still being obviously a very important factor in this H2H selling that siloed approach ⁓ to marketing channels really needs to be broken down because at the end of the day, your brand is going to be bigger than the sum of its parts. And it's just about what you have on your website and what you have happening on your organic social and paid search and all of your other channels. It's how ⁓ all of things are working. working together. I think that a change that is ⁓ for ⁓ to really stay relevant is to think cross-functionally ⁓ for people who are individual contributors to really think outside of the channel that they work in and about the work they're doing applies to the collective picture of the brand ⁓ and making brand authentic and human. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Absolutely agreed. Lisa Bonanno: That's a good point. I wonder if we're going to see organizational structures start to shift too. You know, a little bit less of functional experts and a little bit more of system experts. Or even heard the term like a revenue pod, right? We're all kind of working together to kind of ⁓ move the buying journey. So I'm kind of watching that too, to kind of see how... Ander: Thank Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Mm-hmm. Lisa Bonanno: where we put the people in our teams needs to be adjusted as well. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Absolutely, definitely seeing the role of marketing demand generation and even brand evolve like within our own ecosystem. I think we are constantly trying to pull marketers outside of just their piece of the pie because you the pie is not that big and we it's a collective pie. Everyone owns it. And I think getting marketers out of that mindset of this is my like healthcare is all I focus on or tech as an industry is all I focus on and seeing their collective impact on the business and across channels and really getting a better understanding of how do we really go to market and how do the things that I do influence everything that everyone else is doing. Basically, if you look at Personas, we are all basically talking to the same account, like different people within the same account. And so, removing that sense of ownership a little bit and making it a collective is definitely an evolution that I'm already seeing motion. Joaquin Dominguez: Exactly. And if you analyze all the good brands and most of them are B2C brands, they have a great culture behind. They have an organizational culture and leadership that they have been building for decades. probably in B2B, we will need to start doing the same and start being ⁓ boring and being emotional. But you don't just switch ⁓ an or organization. ⁓ Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. Joaquin Dominguez: to be fun the day after because you want to be fun. You need to changing things from the believe. Believing in your vision and changing your culture and the way you work with employees, with providers, procurement, everything ⁓ to change if you want to a new brand to consumers. At the end of the day, brand is holistic, in my opinion. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Yeah. Lisa Bonanno: Yeah, it's like taking some bold strokes and putting yourself out there and being a little vulnerable. you know, I was reading it was like, you know, what was it? Nike and Apple do this really well. They're not the cheapest and they're not, you know, well, we could say they're some of the fastest, but people are attracted to them. Right. There's this magnetism to those two brands. Joaquin Dominguez: Exactly. Mm-hmm. Lisa Bonanno: And so we have to ask ourselves, why, what are they doing? And how could that essence be replicated on the B2B side where people are just drawn to what you're offering, how you're offering it, how you're treating your customers, whatever it is that your brand stands for. And, ⁓ know. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: I think it starts with culture ⁓ because, know, when I'll be honest, like just across the B2B in, I ecosystem companies that have strong cultures where employees are strong advocates of the brand and of the organization, ⁓ like they stand out. They don't even have to invest in. ⁓ in marketing or making themselves look good because, you know, the biggest cheerleaders do that for them. The customers do that for them. And I think, you know, just going back to everything that we've said so far, like humanizing, authenticity, vulnerability of brands, think everything stems from culture also fun. Fun is something that we miss, right? Fun starts at the top. So ⁓ let's get C-suite to become more fun and embrace fun as a core value. Ander: having that consistently across ⁓ all of your channels, whether out of home or digital or in person, whatever it might be. I kind of joke when I SEO doesn't stand for search engine optimization everywhere, it stands for search everywhere optimization. And having that consistency to ⁓ risk fun across everywhere is really And that's what helps get it done. Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi: Absolutely. Yep. Love that. Joaquin Dominguez: All right, well, this has been a really insightful discussion. Thank you all for sharing your thoughtful perspectives on this topic. It's clear that we are in the middle of a fundamental shift in how B2B marketing works. AI is changing a lot of things, if anything, it's reinforcing the importance of brand trust and truly understanding your customer. Thank you again, Rashmi, Lisa, Ander for joining us today and for everyone listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and share it with your team. We'll see you in the next episode of B2B Marketing Futures.