Dave Goes UNBOUND: 5 Things B2B Marketing Leaders Are Doubling Down On

0:00Hey, it's Dave. So Zoom Webinars and Events has made our recent Exit 5 Live sessions way more pro lately. But don't just take my word for it. Check this out. This is what Kelly B said. She said, I compare all other webinars now against Exit 5. I love that. And look, in a world of AI slop, we just want to make something that's actually worth going to. It's not easy to get an hour out of your day. I'm just the on-air talent, though. So I'm going to kick it over to Marissa and Maria. This is our Exit 5 Live production team, our content team here at Exit 5, since they're the ones actually making this all happen.

0:29And Marissa. I've been doing B2B content a long time. I know. It's hard to hold attention for more than 30 seconds, let alone a whole webinar. But Zoom webinars helps. Recently, we've had nearly 2 ,000 registrants, over 500 live, and hundreds of hours of watch time on our sessions. Maria, what would you say is driving that? It all starts with prep. We do up to seven hours per session. Choosing a topic, prep calls, building the run of show, and so much more. With Zoom webinars and events, everything's in one place. registration, emails, polls, analytics. So it's simple to run that cycle every two weeks.

1:02At Showtime, I hand it back to Marissa in Zoom's production studio. With Zoom's production studio, I can set the scenes in advance. So on the big day, I just send them live with speakers and content already in place. Clean transitions, crystal clear audio and video. I feel like I'm running the big game back there. So this is why our webinars have been crushing it lately. Look, they just said we're spending seven hours per session on this. And don't just take our word for it. Come and see firsthand. And we run these every other Friday. It's called Exit 5 Live, now powered by Zoom webinars and events.

1:32So come and check us out, see this whole thing live. And if you want to learn more about using Zoom at your company, check out zoom.com slash exit five. That's zoom.com slash exit five. Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Convertive, a B2B marketing agency that helps enterprise teams build an AI-powered go-to-market strategy. Q4 is the time of year when having a great agency partner matters more than ever. If you're shopping for a new agency, Convertive is worth looking into. They work with marketing and operations leaders to help grow revenue across the business and AEO. One of the things I know you're thinking about right now is one of their specialties.

2:08Trusted by companies like DocuSign, Databank, and Constructor, Convertive builds on the search and marketing work you're already doing and helps optimize your site so more of your buyers find you and turn it into pipeline. Right now, they're offering Exit 5 listeners a free AI search review. They'll run the questions your buyers are actually asking through your Google and AI tools, show you how you stack up against competitors, and tell you what's worth fixing. If you're looking for a refresh of your AEO strategy in 2027, this AI search review with Convertive is a great place to start. Check it out.

2:38It's convertive.com slash exit5. That's convertive.com slash exit5. And you can also see the link in the show notes. You're listening to The Dave Gerrard Show.

3:02All right, this is a fun little change of pace episode for everyone. I was down in Boston for some crazy reason after drive. I decided to go immediately next week back down to Boston to check out HubSpot's Unbound event. It had been a decade since I had been there. I knew a bunch of people from the Exit 5 community were going to be there. So I wanted to go really with no agenda, just have some meals with people and be content Dave. And so I almost forgot to do this. Then Marissa pinged me and was like, hey, are you going to make any content while we're down there? And so I grabbed my phone and I was literally just going down the escalator, saw a bunch of people, bunch of familiar faces and friendly folks, marketing leaders from in and around the Exit 5 community.

3:43And so at Unbound Live on the conference floor, I asked everybody two questions. I said, hey, tell me one thing you're doubling down on in your work life right now. And tell me one thing you're doubling down on in your personal life right now. And that's what you're going to hear. This mashup of episodes, this mashup of little audio voice notes that was recorded straight from my phone from the floor at Unbound. I hope you like this. It's a nice little change of pace. Send me a note, David Exit 5. If you want to suggest a topic for the future, have any feedback, or just want to say hi to me and the Exit 5 team.

4:16Shout out to producer Marissa for making this happen last minute. Here it is. Enjoy this little short little episode all about doubling down. All right. So the number one thing everyone is talking about at these dinners and lunches and around the venue, it's actually, I'm seeing less people interested in, it's different than it was three or four months ago about, you know, this Claude scale or that the bigger conversation now, especially among founders and executives, it's like, how do we stand out? how do we differentiate? Everyone is saying the same thing, or they're saying AI powered this, or AI powered that, or you have all these beliefs within a market that a product can or can't do this thing, or hey, maybe why do I even need your$100 ,000 SaaS product at all because I have Claude.

5:02And so the marketers at these companies, the number one challenge that they have to fight against is one, the perception that AI can do all these things. And so your$20 a month subscription at ChatGPT can do this thing for you. And then number two is there's just so much noise and so much competition in any industry because of AI. Everyone's adding new AI features and this and that. It's really hard to stand out. Even if you have something that's better, faster, easy to use, people like it more. People don't necessarily believe that because they're skeptical of marketing. And so a lot of it comes back to how do you stand out?

5:36And I think the number one thing for marketers right now is to really, it's less about tactics and channels, and it's more about digging into company strategy, positioning, messaging, but not just website messaging, actually fundamentally go to market, like bringing marketing back. Marketing needs to have more involvement again in the four Ps of marketing, not just, hey, here's this update we got from product, or here's the packaging for this. Marketing, it's almost like strategy is going to be more important than ever because all the tactics and stuff, that can be done with AI or any of these tools.

6:15The harder conversations are like where the humans need to be involved. And that's the CRO talking to the CMO and the chief product officer and the CEO making big bets and strategic decisions on where the company is going to go. And I think it's a great time right now for marketers or aspiring marketing leaders and current marketing leaders to really think about strategy. I'll give you an example. I was at dinner tonight with someone on Katie from SurveyMonkey's team. And we just were talking about Katie on our podcast. I don't think this episode has come out yet or maybe it's coming out soon.

6:48But a couple of years ago, they rebranded to Momentive or something like that because they didn't want to be perceived as SurveyMonkey in the enterprise. But it's actually funny because today in 2026, it's almost like being SurveyMonkey, they're going back to their roots and back to their brand. And the monkey is actually what's going to make them stand out and be recognized. And so there's a whole interesting thing there that it's like, it's either people are talking super tactical about like, how do you use Claude to run their ads or they're really high level. And I think this is the really important part is like making marketing a strategic partner to the business in terms of generating revenue, as opposed to obsessing over little channels.

7:26We need more marketers having a seat at the table with the product team, with the sales team with the CEO and influencing and truly being the voice of the customer and understanding the market again. All right. So I'm here with Jonathan Hunt. He's VP of media at HubSpot. Two questions I'm asking everyone. Okay, let's do it. What is one thing that you're doubling down on at work? And what's one thing you're doubling down on in your personal life? Okay. At work, it's going beyond thinking about brands as just being channels, but thinking about brands as being things that people experience across all different mediums and touch points so brands as events as webinars as youtube channels as newsletters as what's an example like a show like one of your shows is a brand like yeah my first million for example like imagine that being a live multi-thousand person event at the 92 y so things like that really showing up someplace in new york yeah yeah exactly yeah sorry it's too cool for you dave i'm sorry you and sam had that yeah yeah but But really, really understanding that customers are human beings too.

8:28And like they want to experience your brand and not just YouTube or newsletters, but in real life as well. Yeah, do more in real life. Okay. And then something you're doubling down on in your personal life. Examples are like, you know, someone mentioned like, I want to read more. I used to read a book a week. And I want to get back into, you know, playing pickleball or I want to, you know, learn how to cook. Yeah, yeah. um probably trying to get uh probably trying to uh be more present for my kids i think in general never ending never never ending what what does that mean for you at home how does that play out uh you know not not um not delaying things for multiple weekends and feeling really bad about being this like absentee father figure but like trying to show up more you know and like being okay with the fact that they busted at four o 'clock in the afternoon i may have a meeting in 30 minutes and be like, you know what?

9:17That's okay. Good. It's a feature, not a bug. Yes. All right. Good job. I'm on the escalator with Palmer. Palmer's VP of marketing at G2. Actually, someone yesterday asked me one of my favorite brands of all time, B2B brands. You know what I said? I bet you said, I'm going to guess MailChimp. I said that. I would say the same thing. You're an OG MailChimp guy. We're here at Unbound slash Inbound. Yes. What's one thing at work that you're doubling down on right now? I know everybody's saying AI, but really for our side, it's like, what's the balance between efficiency and effectiveness? Because I feel like everyone's been like, oh, AI, AI, everything.

9:51And it's like, what's the outcome? Like, what are we driving towards? And so I think my team sort of, we're trying to figure that out and do it in the right way. Okay, side questions. This is not my original question. Since you're here. You know, you worked at MailChimp. I know you. I know you get marketing a certain way. How do you guide them to like, not AI-ify everything? I like lean into the productivity piece of it versus the like, hey, you're a designer. I don't want you to go use Cloud Design like you can still design and trust you to be a designer same way with a writer. Okay. But it's like, what are you doing to be more productive to maybe get to that final version faster?

10:23And that could just be like, hey, I'm not spending as much time like taking notes doing this because I can just go reference that in Grindelwald or whatever it is. That's the thing. It's like, I don't think AI for marketing is one size fits all. And I think folks are referring to kind of say that like, oh yeah, let's just go get the draft all done and call out. I'm like, yeah, maybe not. Add some of your sauce on you there. Like the weirdness. I just want my whole. my whole talk for our event last week i tried with ai and it was terrible yeah and i went back to like just dave's weird you know right it's like be be yourself be yourself and it was really right and like your ai helps you get to like hey i need i need help outlining this or just like thinking organize my thoughts great but like it's probably you're probably going to come up with something better than okay uh personal life some of your double down i'm doubling down on my you'll like this one my my gym routine i've gotten into a good like monday wednesday friday sort of go i I go to, it's funny, I go to what you call a, what do they call it?

11:15A silver hair gym? Like it's attached to a hospital and it's me and a bunch of 70 year olds. And so I also, I feel great. Like I'm going to, and I'm doing. I live in a small town in Vermont. I live in a small town in Vermont. I go to the gym very early in the morning. I am the only person in the gym at that hour under 70. I mean, it's great. I've made all these friends of like, you know, retirees. And the only place I've ever been hit on in my life. I don't think I've been hit on yet, but I gotta, I gotta, I gotta. One woman. You have such incredible balance. It's awesome. It's awesome. No, but I like my exercise on Friday.

11:47I did. I did. I did take a golf lesson too recently, but I'm not ready. I'm not ready to commit all in. I'm not ready to commit all in. All right. Thank you, Palmer. All right. Look who I ran into Sangram's here. Sangram, good to see you. My brother. How you doing? I'm excited. You're nice. How many times have you been to this place? This is my 10th year. Okay. 10th year speed. That's crazy. 10 years. All right. I got two questions for you. What's one thing in your work life that you're going to double down on? And what's something in your personal life that you're doubling down on? I think I'm going to double down on one-on-one conversations.

12:18I think it has been eye-opening how many partnerships and things that I wasn't even thinking about that happened just because I had one-on-one conversation. The whole idea of having hundreds of people won't work. So one-on-one is what I'm going to double down on. Okay, love that. One-on-one, more one-on-one. Yeah. What about personal life? Something you're going to double down on your personal life. Well, yesterday there was a conversation by Mel Robbins. She was speaking here and she said, you know what purpose is? Purpose is not what you do. Purpose is the impact that you have on others when they see what you do and how you do it.

12:51So I'm going to double down on my purpose. I thought I'm going to build this great company and do all these things. I'm like, no, no, no. I want to see the impact that people have and what they're going to do as a result of how I do what I do. So I think that's reframed my purpose. Thank you, brother. I'm here with Jess Cook, VP of Marketing at Vector. She's wonderful. They crushed it at Drive. We're now at Unbound. You had 650 people at your session yesterday. That's amazing. I want to know one thing in your work life and your personal life. So one thing in your work life that you're doubling down on or you're like long on, and one thing in your personal life that you're doubling down on trying to do more of.

13:27Hey, it's Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Optimizely. If you want to know what AI agents can actually do for a marketing team, Optimizely is where I'd point you to right now for a real example. Last month, we ran an exit five live session where a bunch of our members showed off their best AI agent use cases. And McKeel, director of AI innovation at Optimizely actually won the whole session. He showed us how he used Optimizely's AI agent platform to run an ABM campaign that gave 2000 accounts, their own landing pages built from signals like job postings, press releases, and leadership changes.

14:00That's like the holy grail of ABM, by the way. Optimizely's agent platform is built specifically for you, the B2B marketer. You can build your own agents like McKeel did or pull from a directory of 50 plus pre-built ones made just for marketing use cases all in one place. They also just launch virtual teammates. These are digital members of the team that learn over time and can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. If you're being asked to look into AI agents right now, Optimizely should be at the top of your list. Go and see how they can help you reclaim your time and build cool stuff just like McKeel did, check them out at optimizely.com slash exit5.

14:37That's optimizely.com slash exit5. Hey, it's Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Compound Growth Marketing. They're a full funnel demand gen agency that I've personally hired twice. Yep, before I was just a thought leader. I was a real marketer and CGM was one of the best agencies that I worked with. They help high growth software companies show up earlier in the buying journey where potential customers are forming opinions about which product to use. They've helped an enterprise cybersecurity company grow pipeline 168 % year over year with full funnel media and an HR tech company grow 48 % through paid search.

15:11And they can do the same for you. They offer a combination of full funnel paid advertising strategy and execution, AEO, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Everything CGM does gets tracked, measured, and improved over time. That means more pipeline for you. And this works because they were started by an actual former VP of marketing who really gets this space that you work in in B2B. So visit compoundgrowthmarketing.com slash exit five to see how they can help you meet your 2027 revenue goals. That's compoundgrowthmarketing.com slash exit five. Okay. Work life. I really got into cloud code this year.

15:46We just took our website off of Webflow and we hard coded it and we moved it over to like GitHub. I know, I know. She and I are in the her her no devs were harmed community together, which is amazing. But yeah, so I'm excited just to like see what else I can do there. Like really surprised myself with how much I learned and how much I was able to build. Why was it powerful? I think it completely removed the intimidation factor of AI for me. Like I just made myself do it and I figured it out. And now I'm like, oh, I can literally do anything. And how did you do it? Did you like block a Tuesday or a weekend or like what was the?

16:22because everybody talks about what was the forcing function where you actually sit down and do it. It was this event. Like we had to have this new site live by yesterday, our product launch. And so deadlines are good. Deadlines make it happen every time. And so, yeah, it was like 80 hours of just like sitting down and figuring it out, making it happen. And you did it, not a website developer. I did it, which is incredible. It's the best way to learn. Yeah, it was. And it's the benefit of that. Now you can basically like prompt to make updates on your site. Like you're like, I changed this page to this.

16:51You don't have to, there's no dependency. You don't have to wait for anybody. We made them today. Like we, I sat down this morning. I like made a couple of changes, some little updates. Like you're sitting, having a coffee, like making updates. That's yes. It's incredible. Okay. That's a good one. So more Claude Code for Jess Cook. What about in your personal life? Well, you know, in my effort to always be more like Dave Gerhardt. You just shave your head? No, no, God, no. Sorry. I can't do that. However, I do want to double down on my efforts at the gym. Okay. I've been lifting. I only do that as a corporate executive and a busy mom.

17:20I think the only hack is really just wake up earlier. Like that is it. Like that just another hour in the morning when the kids are not awake. What time do you wake up now? Right now I wake it up at like 545. I think I got to make it a five o 'clock wake up. I know. The difference between five and 545 is like immense though. Okay. Yeah. Monday through Friday, every day. I would love to like really be consistent, like three days a week lifting. Okay. Yeah. I have confidence in you. Thank you. You can do it. Thank you. You have a plan. I do have a plan. And like, it's not like you haven't done things while being tired anyway.

17:51You know, you're just tired for like 13 years. Exactly. Exactly. And your kids will get older and you'll only be tired. Leah and I were talking about this. It's like, it's like right now we can go to bed early. But when they're like 18 or 20 and you're wondering about where they are, I'm going to have to like stay up late wondering where everybody is. And reactions to Unbound, this event, why are you here? What does it do for you? It's funny. We've been talking about this weird drive last week. We're here now. They're like events on two totally different ends of the spectrum, right? Like this one is just enormous.

18:19It's huge. There's 12 ,000 people here. And Drive is so intimate and like camp, right? Okay, so I'm here. I'm sensitive because a bunch of the feedback was like, Drive feels like a conference now. And I'm like, it is a conference. But I took a video going down the escalator yesterday. I'm like, this is a conference. They're worlds apart. Worlds apart. But yeah, I think, you know, what's funny is we were saying last week, I think we got so much like traffic and value of being at our booth at Drive. Here it's more like. Here it's going to be like the connections we make. Like we have a ghost tour tour dinner tonight.

18:49I think that's going to be the big driver for us of pipeline this week. It's just real personal stuff. You and your CEO, Josh, you guys have a podcast together. It's been your whole thing. And you did a talk in front of 650 people here yesterday. Why do you think that was such a popular session? I think because Josh and I are bold enough to just be ourselves. People really love our chemistry, like our interactions together, our professional relationship. And I think people wanted to know like how to capitalize on something like that, how to build it and how to capitalize on something like that in marketing.

19:17All right. Jess Cook live at 940 at Unbound on day two. I'll walk you to your booth now. All right. Here with my guy, Amit. He runs marketing at Tatari. What is Tatari? TV ad platform. TV ad platform. The big dogs. They do Super Bowl ads. I'm asking everyone two questions. Number one is what is something that you are doubling down on at work right now? It's going to be the obvious answer you've probably heard 15 times already. TV? AEO. Oh, AEO. I haven't heard that one yet. Yeah. Okay. Why? Like what and why? So what are you doing to double down on that? You and I talked about this on your podcast where I was one of those marketers with the nature of our business.

19:57I didn't invest in SEO early because we were just one of the top three people that you would look at when you're going to do TVX. You know, you're selling to bigger companies. And so now people, I don't need to explain this to you, people are searching in a different way. And so you actually got to create a lot of content. even or even actually transcribing youtube videos that's made a difference for us being cited in these lms what does that mean transcribing you like they automatically do a transcript so you're taking the transcript like putting it somewhere believe it or not we actually had to go back to some old videos that were being automatically through and so we are creating more videos with the intention of what is being searched by lms cited by lms rather than being watched by is that on oh and are the videos on youtube yeah so like you don't care if the video has 17 views is interesting.

20:43I'm also not making it in this perfect production quality type of, I want this awesome video on YouTube that tells you. It might explain CTV 101. It might explain what you have to think about when you're doing your TV. It's got a product. It's SEO on its video. Using any AEO tools, how do you measure this? Tell me. We use a company called Bluefish. Like a pro battle commander. They're able to cite, but show us our favorability and our visibility scores. We look at it on a weekly basis and we see all the things that are trending up versus, you know, what's so well and losing ground. And then we focus on creating content in those areas.

21:22Is it like, instead of just looking at the website, what matters is website plus the LLMs? Like, and so they'd give you that. Where does it, what is it? I'm trying to say like, it's aware we're being cited. So sometimes it could even be trades, you know, like, hey, this article on this trade website that you guys were mentioning is like getting cited a lot. So maybe see more of that. Maybe I want to do more VR there, or maybe I actually want to do a sponsored particle there. Maybe here's this kind of blog that I never really would have paid attention to, but it's actually really high ranking. Are you able to understand like the impact of ranking for something like getting picked up on one of those blogs leads to more people coming back to your site and just someone raising their hand for a devil.

22:01So getting back to the site, we obviously have like UTMs and all the kind of tracking methodologies, but we also have the good old how'd you hear about us. Okay. And we're seeing more and more people putting in a Claude or a chat sheet. Next question. We're doing an interview right now. And last question. Same question, but for your personal life. What's something in your personal life you're doubling down on? Football's back, man. I'm not going to double that one. I want to lie around all day and watch football. Okay. That's because we're out of commons with 13 ,000 football. Sorry. I've given all year.

22:34I'll accept it. I do all the things. Now we're back at football. Who's your football team? Dallas Cowboys. I'm sorry to hear last.

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23:18People are in there posting every day, asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers, building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group. Or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100 % free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk-free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more. Exit5.com. And I will see you over there in the community.

23:57Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Customer.io. They're one of our longest running sponsors. Customer.io helps marketing teams get more impact from every message they send so you can reach the right people with the right message at the right moment. What we love about Customer.io is that they have a great team of marketers who really care about the craft. They just get marketing and understand our audience. Molly, Rosie, and the team bring something creative. Every time that we work together at our Exit 5 event in Austin, they handed out cowboy boots in our newsletter. They shared an AI prompt cookbook.

24:28And at Drive last month, they were giving out Airbnb gift cards and AirPods. They believe marketing is a craft that takes creativity, thought, and taste. And no, AI can't do this part for you. The best teams treat AI as infrastructure and built the right way, it actually makes marketing feel more human, not less. Customer.io helps product teams build personalized campaigns across email, SMS, push, in-app, and webhooks using their own first-party data. And today, more than 9 ,000 brands trust Customer.io to send their messages, including Notion, Les Mills, and Angie. So if you need a new vendor to power your customer messaging, or you just want a great marketing team to follow, it's time to go and check out Customer.io.

25:05Go to customer.io slash exit5. That's customer.io slash exit5.