The Marketing Front Lines

Building Trust in Grief: Why Empathy Bought Their Domain Early

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Cindy Goodrich, CMO of Empathy. Empathy is building the category of loss support and life hardship benefits, partnering with eight of the top ten life insurance companies in the US to provide comprehensive support during life's most difficult moments. Starting as a consumer company before pivoting to enterprise distribution through insurance companies and employers, Empathy demonstrates how category creators can transform legacy industries while building a meaningful brand around sensitive topics. Through research-backed education, strategic event presence, and thoughtful brand building, they're redefining how companies support employees through grief, loss, and major life transitions.
Topics Discussed
Building a category-creating company in the grief and loss support space
Pivoting from consumer to enterprise distribution through strategic partnerships
Marketing in sensitive, emotionally complex categories
Investing in premium domain names for trust and authority
Leading marketing teams through different company stages and growth phases
Using research and thought leadership to educate markets on new benefit categories
Strategic event marketing versus quantity-focused approaches
Adapting marketing strategies across different verticals and buyer personas
Building authentic brand positioning in industries perceived as transactional
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers
Prioritize Domain Investment for Trust-Critical Categories: When Ron Galeota, Empathy's CEO and co-founder, started the company, he invested his own money and early funding into acquiring empathy.com before even raising significant capital. In sensitive categories like loss support where trust is paramount, a premium domain signals legitimacy and longevity. For B2B companies selling to regulated industries like insurance or targeting enterprise buyers, the .com domain creates immediate credibility that alternatives like .io or .co cannot match. Empathy found this especially critical when asking people to share highly sensitive personal and financial information during vulnerable moments.
Lead Category Creation with Research-Backed Education: Empathy releases annual research reports like "The Grief Tax" that quantify the business impact of loss on employee productivity, retention, and performance. Their research revealed that over 90% of employees experiencing loss reported reduced productivity for over six months, 72% strongly considered leaving their jobs, and when one person experiences loss, nine surrounding colleagues have their job performance impacted. This data-driven approach transforms category creation from philosophical discussions about "culture of care" into concrete ROI conversations about productivity loss, absenteeism, and retention costs that resonate with benefits buyers and HR leaders.
Scale Event Presence Through Strategic Quality Over Quantity: When Cindy joined Empathy, the company had 50+ events on the calendar. She immediately prioritized measurement and strategic selection, cutting the quantity significantly while maintaining or increasing budget allocation to fewer, higher-impact events. This quality-over-quantity approach focuses on building compelling presence at strategically chosen events that genuinely drive pipeline, rather than spreading resources thin across dozens of trade shows simply because sales teams want visibility everywhere. The result: same or better pipeline generation with more focused execution and stronger brand perception.
Adapt Channel Strategy by Vertical and Buyer Universe Size: Empathy's marketing playbook varies dramatically based on whether they're targeting the 700 life insurance companies (known, finite universe) versus 30,000 potential employer customers. For insurance companies with 80% market penetration among top-ten carriers, growth comes through referrals, strategic introductions, and highly selective event presence. For the employer market, they deploy thought leadership, virtual events, and their "In Good Company" series discussing taboo workplace topics. Rather than applying one standard B2B playbook across all segments, successful marketers match channel intensity and tactics to the actual size and accessibility of each buyer universe.
Build Marketing Philosophy Around the Human, Not the Company Size: Cindy's core marketing philosophy centers on focusing on the human receiving your marketing and always considering "what's in it for me" from their perspective. Whether targeting large enterprises or mid-market companies, the decision-maker is still a human being navigating their own priorities, constraints, and motivations. This human-centric approach applies across consumer and B2B contexts, helping marketers avoid getting distracted by company classifications and instead focus on delivering genuine value to the individual evaluating the solution. The philosophy particularly matters in emotionally complex categories where empathy must permeate every customer interaction.
Maintain Measured Approach to Paid Advertising Investment: Despite 3x revenue growth in 2024, Empathy didn't proportionally increase paid advertising spend. Instead, they maintained relatively flat budgets overall while strategically reallocating spend—decreasing investment in mature verticals and increasing experimentation in new markets. This measured approach acknowledges that paid channels have become increasingly expensive while ROI remains difficult to prove in complex B2B sales cycles. Rather than defaulting to paid as the growth lever, focus budget on owned channels, organic content, strategic partnerships, and high-impact events that build lasting brand equity and pipeline.
Expand Into Adjacent Hard Moments Within Your Core Platform: Empathy started specifically in loss support but strategically expanded into pregnancy loss support, pet loss, leave management, and estate planning. Each expansion addresses related "hard moments" where their core competency—bringing empathy and logistics support to emotionally difficult situations—creates value. For platform companies, this adjacency strategy allows you to increase value to existing customers (employers and insurers) while maintaining brand coherence. The key is ensuring each new offering reinforces rather than dilutes the core positioning, and that you're solving related problems for the same buyer rather than chasing unrelated opportunities.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
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Why DELFI Writes Marketing Like an Informed Friend

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Jen Bruursema, Senior Director of Marketing and PR at DELFI Diagnostics. DELFI is transforming early cancer detection through blood-based testing, using AI machine learning and whole genome sequencing to identify cancer signals before traditional screening methods. Their FirstLook Lung product represents a new paradigm in lung cancer screening—adding a simple blood test before CT scans to identify truly at-risk patients. Jen navigates one of healthcare's most complex marketing challenges: simultaneously educating health systems, providers, patients, payers, and regulatory bodies while building toward FDA approval in a heavily regulated space where clear, authentic communication can literally save lives.
Topics Discussed
Multi-stakeholder marketing in regulated healthcare environments Translating complex science into accessible patient and provider education Building credibility through scientific conference strategy Preparing for FDA submission through strategic content campaigns Leveraging LinkedIn for healthcare decision-maker engagement Context engineering and AI-powered audience segmentation Omnichannel approaches for time-constrained healthcare providers
Lessons For B2B Healthcare Marketers
Write Like an Informed Friend, Not a Press Release: In heavily regulated, technical fields, marketers often hide behind jargon and corporate language. Jen's core philosophy rejects this approach—she writes as an informed friend who respects both the personal nature of health decisions and the expertise of healthcare providers. This means clear, direct, honest communication that makes complex science accessible without obscuring or oversimplifying it. For healthcare marketers, this approach builds trust faster than polished corporate messaging ever could.
Earn Your Right to Sell Through Scientific Credibility: DELFI's go-to-market strategy begins not with marketing campaigns but with scientific conferences where they present clinical trial data, real-world evidence, and performance metrics. This creates the foundation for all downstream marketing activities. Only after establishing scientific credibility through peer-reviewed presentations can they amplify messages through webinars, advisory boards, and targeted content. For B2B healthcare marketers, conference presence isn't just awareness—it's the credential that unlocks conversations with VPs of oncology, Chief Innovation Officers, and other executive decision-makers.
Map Your Funnel to Organizational Decision Layers: DELFI markets to health systems as the gateway, knowing that system-level partnerships unlock access to practices, providers, medical staff, and ultimately patients. Their strategy sequences engagement deliberately: first winning over system executives through scientific validation and regulatory progress, then educating providers and patients within those institutions through traditional omnichannel tactics. This layered approach recognizes that in healthcare, you're not selling to multiple stakeholders simultaneously—you're moving through organizational decision hierarchies strategically.
Use Context Engineering to Find Audiences in Decision Moments: Rather than broad demographic targeting, Jen applies what she calls "context engineering"—understanding patient population subcohorts and provider segments well enough to intercept them at moments when they're ready to listen, consider, and act. This might mean reaching family practitioners on Facebook groups late at night when they're decompressing, or connecting with high-risk smoking populations at barbershops. For healthcare marketers, this requires deep behavioral understanding of when and where audiences are actually receptive to health information.
Let Authentic Voices Carry Your Message: Jen explicitly avoids being "the perfect voice for a product"—instead, she finds people who authentically represent lung cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, or infectious disease and empowers them to tell stories in their own words. Her process starts small: identifying voices with gravitas, having them repeat key messages to receptive audiences, learning and iterating, then scaling successful approaches through larger channels. This builds resonance that automated bullet points never could.
Prepare for Regulatory Milestones with Campaign Arcs: As DELFI approaches their FDA submission, 2025's marketing strategy centers on "big data, big campaign-worthy content" in a hub-and-spoke model around major clinical readouts. Each data announcement becomes the center of tactical campaigns building toward regulatory approval. For healthtech marketers navigating FDA or similar approval processes, this approach transforms regulatory milestones from constraints into strategic marketing moments that build momentum toward commercial launch.
Build LinkedIn Presence as Long-Term Infrastructure: With limited access to time-constrained healthcare decision-makers, DELFI is doubling down on LinkedIn to build followership and test content formats—clinical data highlights, behind-the-scenes team work, and clinical leader advisement. They're not treating this as a short-term campaign but as foundational infrastructure for reaching diagnostic decision-makers. For B2B healthcare marketers, LinkedIn isn't about viral posts—it's about consistent presence that positions you as a credible resource when executives finally have time to engage with new solutions.
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
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Community Lead Growth Masterclass w/ Beatriz Gomez

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Beatriz Gomez, CMO at Ontop, a global payroll and fintech platform. After eight years at BNP Paribas, one of the world's largest banks, Beatriz made the leap to startup life and discovered her passion for community-driven marketing strategies. At Ontop, she's pioneered a high-touch, in-person event strategy that targets startup founders across 10 countries, building authentic connections through curated dinners rather than mass marketing campaigns. Her approach centers on quality over quantity, creating intimate experiences where founders connect over shared pain points like loneliness and uncertainty—all without pitching the product. This conversation reveals how B2B companies can leverage in-person community building, social selling through executive LinkedIn presence, and data-driven engagement tracking to drive pipeline growth in an AI-saturated marketing landscape.
Topics Discussed
Building authentic community through high-frequency, intimate in-person events
Scaling curated founder dinners across 10 countries with 15-person sweet spots
Leveraging WhatsApp and Slack for regional community management
Developing automated growth machines to track LinkedIn engagement
Social selling through C-level personal branding on LinkedIn
Balancing authentic connection with pipeline conversion
Using Innate and Lovable for workflow automation and lead scoring
Creating community-first marketing strategies that prioritize belonging over transactions
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers
Prioritize Intimate Experiences Over Scale: Ontop hosts curated founder dinners capped at 15 people—deliberately avoiding the 20+ attendee trap where personalized connection becomes impossible. They've executed this across 10 countries with plans for 12-24 events annually. The constraint forces quality interactions where every attendee can share vulnerably about founder loneliness and business challenges, creating deeper brand affinity than any webinar or conference booth.
Build Your Growth Machine Around LinkedIn Engagement: Ontop developed a custom system using Lovable that scrapes and analyzes every reaction and comment on C-level LinkedIn posts. When a target ICP founder interacts multiple times—reacting to both personal and company-related content—they're flagged as engaged prospects and entered into targeted outreach workflows. This transforms social media from a vanity metric channel into a qualified lead generation engine with clear scoring mechanisms.
Match Channel Strategy to Regional Behavior: Rather than forcing a single community platform globally, Ontop uses WhatsApp for Latin American founders (where daily usage is ubiquitous) and Slack for US-based founders (integrated into their existing workflows). This localization principle applies beyond geography—the key is identifying where your ICP already spends time daily, then building community infrastructure there rather than asking them to adopt new tools.
Make Your Hero the Community, Not Your Brand: The biggest mistake in community-led growth is positioning your company as the solution hero. Ontop's events never pitch the product—instead, they facilitate peer-to-peer connections around founder pain points. When Beatriz helped a stuck founder with marketing strategy advice, that organic value exchange led to conversion and word-of-mouth referrals. The sale came from being helpful, not from selling.
Structure C-Level Content Around Four Pillars: Ontop's executives post across multiple content pillars with only one weekly post directly tied to their roles at the company. The rest covers family, personal challenges, and life experiences. This 4:1 ratio builds authentic personal brands while maintaining enough company relevance to drive pipeline. They've seen direct correlation between this content strategy and pipeline growth, as prospects engage with the human before evaluating the product.
Create a Personal Brand Incentive for Executives: Rather than mandating C-level LinkedIn presence as a company obligation, Beatriz frames it as building personal equity. The pitch: this community follows you, not just the company. If you start another venture or pivot careers, your LinkedIn audience is a portable asset. This shifts the conversation from "help the marketing team" to "invest in your own future," dramatically improving buy-in and consistency.
Leverage VC Networks for Systematic ICP Targeting: Ontop scrapes portfolio companies from their VC connections, creating a systematic pipeline of qualified founder prospects. They score these profiles based on company stage and fit, then deploy targeted outreach strategies through automated workflows. This turns warm network effects into a repeatable, data-driven targeting system rather than relying on one-off introductions.
Post-COVID, In-Person Is Your Competitive Advantage: In a world oversaturated with Zoom fatigue and AI-generated content, in-person experiences create disproportionate impact. Ontop found that intimate dinners and curated gatherings drive stronger conversion than digital events or massive conferences. The trend mirrors podcasting's shift to in-person studios—logistics are harder and costs higher, but the authentic human connection delivers measurable ROI that digital channels can't match.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM
 

Why Product Marketing Should Be Your First Category Creation Hire

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Ksenija Rohrkamp, Director of Marketing at Buynomics. Ksenija is on her third category creation journey in B2B SaaS, currently leading marketing for revenue growth management (RGM) software targeting enterprise CPG companies like Unilever, Nestlé, and Coca-Cola. With experience spanning data protection software during GDPR's emergence, construction tech, and now RGM, she brings hard-won insights about the structural differences between category creation and demand capture marketing—and why most founders would avoid category creation if they could.
Topics Discussed:
Transitioning from e-commerce demand capture to B2B SaaS category creation
Building marketing teams specifically structured for category creation vs. established markets
The founder thought leadership playbook: balancing consultant expertise with practitioner credibility
Community-building as a category creation pillar in underserved, niche segments
Managing the tension between long-term category building and short-term pipeline targets
Continuous positioning and repositioning as customers reveal how they actually talk about solutions
The reality of AI positioning in 2025 and why "sprinkling AI" on branding is losing impact
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers:
Hire Product Marketing First in Category Creation: In early-stage category creation, product marketing should be among your first hires, not an afterthought. The foundational work of positioning, voice of customer research, sales enablement, and bridging product with GTM becomes critical when you're educating a market that doesn't yet understand your solution exists. This differs markedly from established categories where demand gen can lead.
Structure Your Team Around the Category Creation Funnel: The ideal team architecture for category creation differs fundamentally from demand capture. Build around four pillars: product marketing as foundation, content for thought leadership and education, design and brand to support content quality, and growth as the engine using content as fuel. Add events and community as a fifth pillar for niche, underserved audiences who crave connection.
Transform Customers Into Category Ambassadors: While founder thought leadership provides initial credibility, peers trust practitioners more than consultants or executives. Double down on customer ambassador programs—feature RGM leaders from recognizable brands in webinars, create opportunities for peer learning at flagship events, and build content around their real-world implementations. In category creation, people need to know not just what you do, but who's aligned with you.
Balance Long-Term Category Building With Short-Term Pipeline: Category creation doesn't excuse missing pipeline targets. Run parallel tracks: invest in long-term plays like analyst relations, flagship events (planned 6+ months out), and brand ambassador development while simultaneously driving a demand generation engine through content advertising on LinkedIn and qualified lead delivery to BDRs. As long as top-of-funnel pipeline targets are hit, boards remain patient with longer-term category investments.
Expect Continuous Repositioning Based on Customer Language: Category creation requires constant testing of what resonates. Customers often describe your product completely differently than founders envision—and that customer language unlocks new growth opportunities. Rather than fighting to educate the market on your preferred terminology, adapt to the language customers naturally use, even if it means pivoting from your original positioning.
Build Events as Category-Defining Moments: When creating flagship events for a new category, every decision leaves an impression about what this category represents. Move beyond standard conference formats toward elevated experiences that signal this is something different and important. Feature complete lineups of recognizable brand practitioners rather than vendor panels, and design the experience to match the sophistication level you want associated with the category.
Understand AI Positioning's Diminishing Returns: Simply adding "AI-powered" to software names generates skepticism rather than trust, particularly as buyers face black box concerns and board-level explainability requirements. Take time to understand the actual AI shift in your specific market, differentiate your AI features from competitors' claims, and reposition based on genuine technical advantages rather than buzzword adoption. The market moves too fast for generic AI positioning to sustain differentiation.
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here:
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Why GrowthLoop Ditched Paid Ads for Influencer Marketing

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Rebecca Corliss, VP of Marketing at GrowthLoop. After nearly a decade at HubSpot beginning as employee #45, Rebecca now leads marketing for a composable CDP that helps enterprise organizations like Costco leverage their data cloud for sophisticated audience segmentation. As B2B marketing faces seismic shifts—web traffic plummeting, LLMs reshaping discovery, and traditional playbooks failing—Rebecca shares how she's rethinking enterprise marketing around influencer relationships, authentic content partnerships, and strategic focus over scattered tactics.
Topics Discussed
Transitioning from inbound content strategies to relationship-driven enterprise marketing 
Building influencer partnerships in B2B through authentic industry relationships 
Optimizing for LLM visibility and the resurgence of PR Managing marketing teams through rapid AI-driven workflow changes 
Balancing paid advertising versus influencer investment in resource-constrained environments 
Navigating enterprise sales cycles with ABM and targeted positioning
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers
Map Your Customer's Influence Network With Precision: Rather than broad targeting, identify specific individuals your best customers respect and listen to by name. Rebecca focuses on understanding who her target buyers follow, where those influencers participate, and how they contribute to the industry. This creates a foundation for strategic relationship building that reaches buyers through trusted voices rather than interruptive advertising.
Reframe Influencer Partnerships as Mutual Growth Opportunities: B2B influencer marketing succeeds when positioned as authentic partnerships rather than sponsorships. Rebecca approaches industry experts by acknowledging their need for platform neutrality, being transparent about GrowthLoop's objectives, and focusing on how collaboration can grow both brands. She leverages her HubSpot credibility to earn respect while seeking ways to add value beyond financial support—thinking about content, audience access, and brand association as mutual assets.
Ruthlessly Prioritize Focus Over Scattered Tactics: The shadow side of ambition is trying to do too much. Rebecca identifies her biggest 2025 learning as the need for greater focus, particularly questioning whether traditional paid advertising spend delivers value compared to investing that same budget in authentic influencer relationships. For resource-constrained teams, this means choosing fewer channels but executing with depth rather than spreading thin across multiple mediocre efforts.
Optimize Content for LLM Recommendation Engines: With web traffic plummeting, marketers must think beyond traditional SEO. Rebecca observes that PR may experience a resurgence because LLMs perceive journalistic content as more reputable. Tactics include maintaining consistent company descriptions across all content, creating LLM-specific pages, and thinking about what you want AI to say when recommending your solution. The goal is training the algorithm through repetition and authoritative sources.
Structure Small Teams Around Category Leadership, Not Just Functions: GrowthLoop's six-person team organizes around demand generation, events, and a "category team" that combines product marketing, sales enablement, and content. This structure emphasizes building market category understanding and point of view rather than siloed functional execution. Rebecca personally leads influencer marketing and customer announcements, showing how leadership can fill strategic gaps without hiring.
Create Conditions for Self-Empowerment, Not Control: For first-time marketing managers, the hardest transition is measuring impact through team output rather than individual contribution. Rebecca's leadership philosophy centers on creating environments, resources, information, and direction that enable team members to make great decisions independently. This approach scales leadership impact while developing stronger contributors who don't need constant oversight.
Test AI in Your Personal Workflow Before Scaling to Team: Rather than implementing AI tools top-down, Rebecca makes it her job to personally integrate AI into her own workflow first, questioning existing processes and instinctively gut-checking what could be done with AI instead. This hands-on experience informs better investment decisions for helping the team work faster and smarter, while modeling the continuous learning mindset needed in this transition.
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here:
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Why Cold Email Is Dead (And What Verity Does Instead)

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Raphaël Morgulis, Head of Marketing at Verity. Verity has deployed autonomous drone systems across 150+ warehouse sites for clients including UPS, DSV, and Maersk, solving the critical challenge of real-time inventory accuracy in logistics operations. Raphael shares how Verity navigates B2B hardware marketing in the warehousing sector, from event-driven outreach strategies to the discipline required at early-stage companies. The conversation explores the fundamental tensions facing B2B marketers today: balancing tactical execution with strategic foundations, resisting channel proliferation pressure from leadership, and filtering signal from noise in an era of content explosion.
Topics Discussed
Marketing autonomous drone systems for warehouse inventory management
Event-driven cold outreach timing and mental availability
Trade show strategy in warehousing and logistics markets
Leveraging enterprise reference customers for credibility
The declining effectiveness of cold email outreach
Using customer site visits as conversion tools
Stage-appropriate marketing strategy from Series A to Series B
Lessons for B2B Tech Marketers
Time Cold Outreach Around Mental Availability Windows: Verity structures cold outreach campaigns around industry events when prospects actively think about operational improvements. Rather than generic timing or superficial company signals, they target the week before major trade shows when warehouse managers and innovation leaders mentally prepare for discovering new solutions. This approach recognizes that inbox availability correlates directly with purchase cycle readiness—Monday morning leadership meetings leave zero mental bandwidth for vendor discovery, but pre-event research periods create natural openings.
Anchor Early-Stage Marketing in Ruthless ICP Clarity: At Series A, Verity's approach prioritizes deep customer psychology over channel proliferation. Raphael emphasizes that marketers must function as "customer psychologists," understanding buyer fears and deeper motives through direct research conversations—not just documentation exercises. This foundation enables confident channel selection and provides the infrastructure needed when scaling demands shift the marketer role from psychologist to systems engineer at Series B. Testing six channels simultaneously without this foundation creates noise without learnable signals, undermining future attribution and scale efforts.
Leverage Enterprise Logos as Live Conversion Environments: With deployments at UPS, DSV, and Maersk, Verity transforms reference customers into immersive proof environments. Rather than relying solely on case studies or testimonials, they physically bring prospects to operational warehouse sites where they observe autonomous drone systems in action and speak directly with operations teams experiencing the benefits. This approach moves beyond innovation theater to tangible ROI demonstration, particularly critical for hardware solutions where seeing becomes believing.
Engineer Trade Show Strategy by Buyer Stage: Verity segments its trade show presence based on distinct buyer roles within the warehousing sector. Innovation-focused events connect with leaders exploring robotics and operational improvement solutions, while operationally-oriented shows reach warehouse managers responsible for day-to-day logistics execution. This segmentation ensures message-market fit and efficient resource allocation across the lengthy enterprise sales cycle typical in warehouse automation.
Resist Channel Expansion Pressure Through Disciplined Focus: Raphael identifies a critical leadership challenge for early-stage marketers: pushing back against investors, executives, and market noise demanding presence across PR, LinkedIn, paid media, and additional channels simultaneously. Without marketing operations infrastructure, data models, or attribution systems, multi-channel testing at Series A produces indecipherable results. The discipline to validate two or three channels before expansion requires both technical judgment and executive confidence—a rare combination that determines whether growth scales on solid or unstable foundations.
Filter Best Practices Through Stage-Appropriate Context: The explosion of marketing content in 2025—from AI implementation frameworks to pipeline generation tactics—rarely includes critical context about company stage, team size, or budget scale. A Series D CMO's 20-person team executing sophisticated HubSpot-Claude integrations provides zero actionable blueprint for solo marketers at Series A companies. Raphael advocates for brutal honesty about current stage and capabilities, using that clarity to filter which best practices apply versus which create dangerous distraction.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
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How a 30% Budget Cut Forced Better Marketing

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Joyce Yeung, VP of Marketing at Pico MES. Joyce brings a contrarian perspective forged through experience at both enterprise (GE) and four different startups. At Pico MES, a 25-person manufacturing software company, she leads a lean two-person marketing team with a $500K annual budget. When faced with a sudden 30% budget cut mid-year while maintaining aggressive growth targets, Joyce demonstrated how behavioral adaptation and strategic constraint navigation unlock innovation that larger budgets cannot buy. Her journey from GE's 12-director marketing team to startup marketing leadership reveals the mindset shifts required to thrive in resource-constrained environments.
Topics Discussed:
Operating effectively within severe budget constraints 
Building scalable partner marketing programs that split costs and expand reach 
Transitioning from enterprise to startup marketing environments 
Developing self-awareness to break ineffective habits and old playbooks 
Leveraging AI tools for marketing efficiency without expanding headcount 
Creating custom GPT copilots for marketing teams 
Prioritizing communication skills as the foundation of marketing excellence 
Evaluating whether startup marketing is the right career path
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers:
Protect Headcount Over Agency Spend During Budget Cuts: When Joyce faced a $150K budget cut (30% of her $500K annual budget), she preserved her two-person team and eliminated agencies instead. While painful short-term, this forced her to internalize expertise and build sustainable internal capabilities. The constraint became the catalyst for developing partner marketing programs that ultimately recovered half the lost budget through cost-sharing arrangements.
Structure Partner Marketing Around Cost-Sharing, Not Just Co-Marketing: Joyce built a three-tier partner marketing framework: zero-cost LinkedIn Lives for thought leadership, sponsored webinars through third-party media outlets with shared costs, and joint trade show booths where multiple partners exhibited together. This approach transformed manufacturing tool brands like Ingersoll Rand, Mazak, and Fanuc from potential competitors for booth space into collaborative marketing partners who split expenses while accessing each other's customer bases.
Reframe Budget as Fuel, Not the Bottleneck: The real constraint isn't budget—it's reach. Joyce recognized that slashing marketing spend wasn't the fundamental problem; activating new audiences and resonating with the right message was. Budget accelerates reach, but doesn't create it. This perspective shift enabled her to identify partner marketing as the strategic solution: leveraging partners' existing audiences and open API integrations to expand reach without proportional budget increases.
Build Marketing Teams for Efficiency Before Expansion: With a company of 25 people, Joyce deliberately keeps her marketing team at two people plus herself. Rather than lobbying for headcount growth, she's investing in a custom GPT copilot and exploring AI tools for ideation and heavy lifting. This efficiency-first approach creates organizational discipline that prevents the "meetings about needing more resources" syndrome she witnessed at GE, where 12 directors perpetually felt under-resourced.
Master Communication Before Mastering Tactics: Joyce attributes her marketing philosophy to observing her parents struggle with communication throughout their lives—in business negotiations, team management, and family relationships. She recognized early that strong communication skills unlock recruiting, convincing, and enrollment. For marketers, this means storytelling and listening skills matter more than technical execution. Joyce recommends John Maxwell's "Leadershift" for anyone navigating leadership transitions, emphasizing that behavioral adaptation requires both self-awareness and the ability to enroll others in change.
Evaluate Startup Fit Through Hunger, Not Skills: When advising marketers considering startups, Joyce uses one criterion: hunger. Hunger to learn, hunger to work, hunger to build something new. Technical skills can be developed, but the willingness to operate without safety nets, navigate ambiguity, and internalize expertise when agencies disappear requires intrinsic motivation. She views each startup as "an MBA you don't pay for"—three years at GE felt resource-rich but development-poor compared to the accelerated learning curve of startup environments.
Normalize Behavioral Constraints Over Physical Constraints: Most marketing constraints aren't actually budget or headcount—they're behavioral. Joyce identifies reluctance to abandon familiar playbooks as the primary bottleneck for scaling. This requires self-awareness (acknowledging what's not working) and leadership (enrolling teams in new approaches). For 2025, her biggest lesson is "be adaptable and don't think you know everything," while her 2026 priority is ensuring her team becomes genuinely comfortable with AI tools as force multipliers.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Why Amaze Markets Experiences Over Channels

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Danielle Pederson, CMO of Amaze, a creator-powered commerce platform that transforms viral moments into revenue. Amaze uses AI-driven intelligence to anticipate and capitalize on content spikes, converting fan engagement into sales for creators across all platforms and verticals. As the creator economy matures beyond traditional monetization models, Amaze is positioning itself at the intersection of real-time commerce and AI-powered merchandising, helping creators monetize their moments faster than traditional e-commerce platforms allow.
Topics Discussed
Building marketing strategies around creator identity versus consumer behavior 
Developing AI-driven lifecycle marketing for diverse creator segments
Creating productized storytelling to explain complex platform value
Executing impactful brand moments through strategic event activations
Leveraging UGC-style content where creators speak to their peers
Structuring small marketing teams around strategy versus execution
Positioning category shifts rather than product updates
Building community-focused experiences in the creator economy
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers
Reject Traditional Consumer Assumptions for Non-Traditional Audiences: Amaze discovered that traditional marketing tactics failed because they assumed creators behave like consumers when fundamentally they don't. Creators aren't looking to buy something—they're looking to share. This insight led them to abandon high-volume paid campaigns with generic messaging, traditional linear onboarding flows, and one-size-fits-all email approaches. The takeaway: When your ICP fundamentally doesn't behave like typical buyers, don't just adjust your messaging—rebuild your entire approach around their actual motivations.
Build Strategy Around Experiences, Not Channels: Rather than organizing marketing around channels (paid, email, social), Amaze structures everything around four pillars: storytelling, intelligent lifecycle marketing, impactful brand moments, and community. This experience-first framework ensures every tactic serves a larger narrative about what's possible for creators. For B2B marketers, this means asking "what experience do we want to create?" before asking "which channels should we use?"
Use Productized Storytelling for Complex Value Props: When launching Amaze Moments at Adobe Max, the team created a fictional creator narrative that demonstrated exactly how the product works and its value. This "productized storytelling" approach transforms abstract platform capabilities into concrete, relatable scenarios. For B2B companies with complex technical products, embedding your value proposition in a story format makes it immediately understandable versus listing features.
Leverage Peer-to-Peer Content Over Brand-Led Messaging: Amaze found that UGC-style content where creators speak to their peers significantly outperforms the company trying to tell creators something directly. In B2B contexts, this translates to customer-led content, user testimonials in their own voice, and peer case studies. Let your users explain your value to other users in their language, not yours.
Market Category Shifts, Not Product Updates: For 2026, Amaze is explicitly positioning their AI Moments product as "a full category shift, not just a product update." This framing changes everything about go-to-market strategy, messaging, and timeline expectations. When you've genuinely built something that redefines how a market operates, don't diminish it by calling it a feature release or product enhancement.
Build Teams Around Strategy Capacity in Disruptive Markets: Amaze intentionally built their marketing team around strategy-focused roles (growth marketing specialists, brand marketing strategists) rather than channel specialists. In fast-moving, disruptive markets, the ability to think strategically and pivot quickly matters more than deep channel expertise. This structure enables rapid iteration when traditional playbooks don't apply.
Segment Aggressively, Then Personalize Ruthlessly: Working with creators from all verticals and at all stages required Amaze to build sophisticated segmentation into their lifecycle marketing. They recognized early that the diversity of creators coming through the door meant one-size-fits-all approaches would fail. For B2B companies serving multiple personas or use cases, the lesson is clear: segment first, then build tailored journeys for each segment rather than trying to serve everyone with generic flows.
Position AI as Amplification, Not Replacement: Amaze frames their AI not as replacing creators but as "that intelligence layer that powers core KPIs" and "the bridge between engagement and revenue." This positioning matters—they're not automating creators out of existence, they're giving them superpowers. B2B companies integrating AI should adopt similar framing: AI as the layer that amplifies human capabilities and accelerates outcomes, not as a replacement for expertise.
 
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
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How VirTra Markets Training Simulators to Law Enforcement

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Maria Urs, Head of Marketing at VirTra, a company creating immersive training simulators for law enforcement, military, and security personnel. VirTra builds 180-degree and 300-degree simulation environments that train officers on split-second decision-making, de-escalation tactics, and use of force scenarios. With 70-80% of their customers coming from law enforcement agencies across 46 countries, Maria leads marketing efforts in a highly specialized govtech niche where trust and human connection outweigh traditional B2B playbooks. Through her Google-trained discipline and hands-on approach, she's learned that marketing to law enforcement requires abandoning cookie-cutter strategies and starting every campaign with a clear, audience-specific goal.
Topics Discussed:
Marketing immersive training technology to law enforcement and military audiences
Building trust as the foundation of govtech marketing strategy
Leveraging trade shows and in-person product demonstrations for high-touch sales
Tailoring messaging across different security verticals (law enforcement, military, education, healthcare)
Managing a lean, high-performing four-person marketing team
International expansion strategy for training simulators across 46 countries
Optimizing website and CRM workflows to accelerate sales velocity
The role of human expertise vs. AI in products serving first responders
Why govtech marketing requires constant adaptability and cannot follow standard playbooks
Lessons For B2B Tech Marketers:
Reject the Copy-Paste Playbook in Specialized Markets: Maria observed that most govtech marketers make the critical mistake of applying generic B2B SaaS playbooks across different audiences, assuming that if it works in one government context, it will work in another. VirTra abandoned this approach entirely. Instead, Maria starts every campaign by defining the specific goal and customizing messaging for each distinct audience segment—whether law enforcement, military, or education security—recognizing that each has fundamentally different motivations, procurement processes, and success metrics.
Build Trust Before You Build Pipeline: In the law enforcement and military space, trust is the prerequisite to every deal. VirTra's marketing strategy centers on proving credibility through product demonstrations at trade shows rather than driving website conversions. With a team composed primarily of ex-military and former law enforcement personnel (including the CEO), VirTra leverages insider credibility and lets prospects experience the product firsthand. Maria recognized that in high-stakes training environments, marketing materials alone cannot convince buyers—they need tangible proof that the product works.
Optimize for Trial, Not Clicks: Unlike typical B2C or SaaS companies that optimize conversion paths from website to purchase, VirTra's marketing prioritizes getting prospects into physical product demonstrations. Maria invests heavily in national and local trade show participation, viewing these events as the primary conversion channel. The marketing strategy accepts that law enforcement agencies will not purchase based on specifications and testimonials alone—they must experience the immersive training scenarios themselves. This insight led VirTra to measure marketing success by demo completions rather than traditional digital metrics.
Start Every Campaign With the End Goal, Not the Channel: Maria's discipline from her Google experience taught her to identify bad advertising instantly—ads that lead with features rather than outcomes. For VirTra, this means every piece of marketing content articulates the specific benefit for that audience: budget savings, improved training outcomes, reduced liability, or enhanced officer safety. Maria emphasized that marketers often jump to creating "shiny ads" without defining what success looks like for the specific audience segment, resulting in high spend with low conversion.
Scale Lean Teams by Defining Clear Ownership: With just four direct reports, Maria built her marketing operation around high-performing individuals who own specific domains but remain flexible enough to support cross-functional projects. She deliberately chose a smaller team over a larger one after experiencing both structures, finding that condensed teams with clear accountability produce more proactive results than larger teams with diffused responsibility. Each team member knows their core responsibilities while maintaining the flexibility to assist wherever needed.
Tailor International Expansion to Local Market Dynamics: As VirTra expands across 46 countries, Maria's 2026 strategy focuses on recognizing that international law enforcement markets have distinct procurement processes, training requirements, and regulatory environments. Rather than deploying a single global marketing approach, she's building region-specific strategies that account for how different countries prioritize officer training, allocate budgets, and evaluate immersive technology—acknowledging that a marketing playbook that works in Arizona won't necessarily translate to Europe or Asia-Pacific.
Accelerate Sales Velocity Through CRM Integration, Not Just Lead Generation: Maria identified that generating more leads wouldn't solve VirTra's growth challenges. Instead, she focused on connecting CRM systems and optimizing internal workflows to reduce friction in the sales process. By improving how marketing passes qualified leads to sales and how the team tracks prospects through lengthy government procurement cycles, VirTra increased deal velocity without necessarily increasing top-of-funnel volume—a critical insight for B2B marketers in industries with long, complex sales cycles.
Recognize When AI Enhances vs. Replaces Human Value: While Maria uses AI tools like ChatGPT for research and quality control, she maintains that VirTra's core product and marketing approach must remain grounded in human expertise and real-world scenarios. First responders train for genuine life-or-death situations, not "imaginary scenarios," which requires content filmed with professional actors based on actual case law and after-action reports. Maria applies this same principle to marketing—using AI as a supplemental tool while ensuring that all messaging, positioning, and customer interactions maintain authentic human connection.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Trade Pubs Over TechCrunch: Rethinking B2B PR Strategy

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Kaitlyn Chiu, Head of Marketing at Partful. Partful creates digital parts catalog and work instruction software for OEMs—a highly specialized B2B SaaS product in a niche manufacturing space. Coming from a fashion marketing background, Kaitlyn brings an unconventional perspective to technical B2B marketing, emphasizing the emotional dimension that's often overlooked when targeting enterprise decision-makers. Eight months into her role, she's transformed Partful's marketing from brand-focused PR into a balanced demand generation engine, leveraging behavioral email marketing, trade publication targeting, and AI-powered personalization to build pipeline in a category disruption play.
Topics Discussed:
Applying B2C emotional marketing principles to niche B2B SaaS products
Rebalancing marketing strategy from brand awareness to demand generation
Building behavioral email marketing programs using HubSpot's native capabilities
Leveraging AI for hyper-personalized prospecting at scale
Targeting trade publications over tech media for direct ICP reach
Staying current in marketing's rapidly evolving AI landscape
Lessons for B2B SaaS Marketers:
Don't Abandon Emotional Marketing in B2B: While ROI and commercial value matter, B2B buyers are humans with KPIs, stress levels, and sleep patterns affected by their purchase decisions. Fashion marketing's emphasis on emotional connection and brand meaning translates directly to B2B—decision-makers consume the same high-quality content outside of work and expect that caliber during work hours. Messaging should address both the rational business case and the emotional relief of problem resolution.
Behavioral Email Marketing Delivers More Signal Than Brand Channels: Email marketing isn't archaic—it's data-rich. Unlike paid media, email provides granular behavioral signals: which pages someone visited, how long they engaged with interactive demos, how many steps they completed, and whether sales has made contact. Use this behavioral data to trigger hyper-targeted campaigns based on actual intent signals rather than demographic attributes. Being "brave with words"—borrowing B2C's FOMO tactics and harder-hitting copy—can break through B2B's typically conservative messaging.
Reorient PR Toward Trade Publications Where Your ICP Actually Reads: Generic tech press and regional business magazines build brand awareness but rarely drive pipeline. Shift PR efforts toward the specific trade publications your ICP consumes daily. For Partful, this meant deprioritizing Northern UK tech magazines in favor of manufacturing and OEM industry publications. This surgical approach to media relations delivers both brand credibility and demand generation simultaneously.
Scale Personalization with AI Prospecting Agents, But Mind the Tonality: HubSpot's Prospecting Agent functionality (and similar CRM tools) enables sending 700+ hyper-personalized emails daily by automating research and customization. The key is calibrating tonality to show genuine care rather than "Big Brother" surveillance—reference what the prospect's business does in ways that demonstrate research, not creepiness. This approach removes manual work while maintaining the personalized touch that drives response rates.
Balance Quick Wins with Long-Term Platform Experimentation: When entering a role, identify underutilized owned channels that can deliver immediate results—like email marketing on an existing HubSpot instance. This creates "free" marketing capacity while you experiment with emerging platforms. Test AI operational tools (segment building, workflow automation) even if manual execution is currently faster; the learning compounds as the tools improve.
Stay Curious About Adjacent Consumer Marketing Tactics: B2B marketers should actively study B2C newsletters and campaigns, particularly in email marketing where consumer brands push creative boundaries. Chase Dimond's newsletter exemplifies B2C email innovation that can be adapted to B2B contexts. The discipline of translating consumer tactics into specialized B2B applications keeps marketing fresh and prevents the creative stagnation common in technical verticals.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co
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Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. 
Subscribe here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM