Notes On Marketing
David Ogilvy Didn't Just Write Ads
He understood enterprise buyers better than modern marketers understand dashboards
Most B2B marketers are chasing the wrong things. Growth hacks, automation sequences, attribution models. Meanwhile, they're ignoring the fundamentals that actually drive enterprise sales.
David Ogilvy figured this out 70 years ago. His core principle was simple: "the function of advertising is to sell" and "successful advertising is based on information about its consumer." While everyone else was trying to be clever, Ogilvy was busy understanding what actually makes people buy.
Here's the thing about enterprise B2B marketing. It's not really that different from what Ogilvy was doing. You're still trying to convince humans to spend money. Those humans just happen to work at companies and have bigger budgets.
Ogilvy understood that complex products require detailed explanations. Enterprise buyers need facts and education, not clever taglines and pithy LinkedIn posts.
The best B2B marketers I know operate exactly like Ogilvy. They research obsessively, understanding not just what their prospects do but how they think and what language they use. They create detailed content that educates rather than entertains. They make specific promises instead of vague claims about driving efficiency.
Most importantly, they respect their audience's intelligence. Ogilvy famously said "the customer is not a moron, she's your wife." Enterprise buyers are sophisticated professionals who see through marketing fluff immediately. They want facts, data, and genuine insight into how your solution solves their specific problems.
The companies that get this right build lasting relationships and premium positioning. They think in years, not quarters. Every piece of content contributes to their brand reputation, just like Ogilvy intended.
Everything else is just noise with better tracking pixels.
ABM is Dead…Well Kinda
Why Pods Are The Future of ABM
Account-based marketing was supposed to be the great saviour of B2B sales and marketing alignment. Brilliant idea, really. Except it mostly just gave marketing teams fancier ways to create leads that sales still won't touch.
The real problem isn't strategy. It's time and transparency. Marketing optimizes for long-term account development. Sales needs pipeline this quarter. Customer success only sees the full picture much later. Nobody has complete visibility into account progress, so everyone makes decisions based on incomplete information.
I've watched this play out at six different companies. Marketing reports engagement metrics that don't correlate to sales activity. Sales complains that accounts aren't moving fast enough. Customer success discovers opportunities that marketing and sales missed entirely because the handoffs happened at the wrong moments.
Enterprise Pods fix this by putting everyone on the same timeline with the same information. Three or four people from marketing, sales, and customer success who see the same account data, work toward the same deadlines, and share the same definition of progress.
You can organize them by vertical or geography. Vertical Pods work when industry expertise matters more than location. Geographic Pods make sense when time zones and cultural differences drive the sales process more than sector knowledge.
As you scale, these Pods naturally become distinct teams with their own budgets and decision-making authority. What starts as better coordination becomes the foundation for how your entire go-to-market organization operates. Instead of managing departments that work different timelines, you're managing autonomous teams that move at the same speed.
Most companies won't try this because it means admitting their current approach creates more delays than results. But if you want accounts that actually close and expand rather than just look busy in quarterly reviews, this is how alignment works in practice.
Everything else is just more sophisticated ways to work at cross purposes.
Brand Builds Demand
Stop treating brand and demand like divorced parents
Most marketing leaders treat brand and demand like divorced parents who refuse to talk to each other. Brand gets custody of the "awareness" budget. Demand gets the "revenue" budget. They both bad-mouth each other at company meetings. Then everyone wonders why the kids (your prospects) are confused and acting out.
Here's what I've learned building marketing teams at brand-forward companies like Dataiku and Percolate: brand and demand work best when they're actually talking to each other.
Your demand campaigns work better when prospects already know who you are. Your brand campaigns convert faster when they connect to real business problems. When I was scaling marketing at Dataiku, our best performing demand programs weren't the ones with the cleverest targeting - they were the ones where prospects said "Oh, you're those AI platform people I keep hearing about."
Brand gives your demand campaigns permission to be heard. Demand gives your brand campaigns a reason to exist.
The companies that figure this out early don't just grow faster. They grow more efficiently. Their CAC stays stable as they scale because they're not constantly introducing themselves. Their win rates improve because they're competing on value, not just features.
Build them together. Measure them together. Fund them together. Your CFO will thank you.
Horizon Thinking
Why quarterly tunnel vision is killing your growth
Every marketing leader gets caught in the quarterly trap. Board meeting coming up? Better show those MQL numbers. Pipeline looking light? Time to crank up the paid campaigns.
But the best marketing organizations I've built think in three horizons simultaneously:
Horizon 1 (0-12 months): Keep the lights on. Hit your pipeline targets. Optimize what's working.
Horizon 2 (12-24 months): Build the capabilities that'll matter next year. New channels, new audiences, new messaging.
Horizon 3 (24+ months): Bet on the changes that'll reshape your market. AI, new buyer behaviors, category shifts.
Most leaders live entirely in Horizon 1. They're always one quarter behind, always reactive, always explaining why the numbers dipped.
The ones who allocate time and budget across all three horizons? They're the ones who seem to predict the future. They launch new programs just as competitors realize they need them. They hire for skills before those skills become critical.
When I was at Conductor, we started investing in account-based marketing two years before it became table stakes. Not because we were geniuses, but because we were looking at Horizon 2 while still executing Horizon 1.
Linear growth is predictable - steady execution of what's working today. Non-linear growth is exponential, and it can go either way fast. When your market suddenly shifts or a new channel explodes, you can't build Horizon 2 capabilities overnight. When a downturn hits, you can't invent Horizon 3 bets from scratch. The companies that handle non-linear moments well are the ones already investing across all three horizons while growth is still linear.
Allocate accordingly.
Trust Is Your Moat
Your competitors' websites look exactly like yours (and other uncomfortable truths)
Every SaaS company has the same problem: their competitors' websites look exactly like theirs. Same stock photos, same benefit claims, same "seamless integration" promises.
In a world where features get copied in months and pricing gets commoditized by quarters, trust is the only moat that actually lasts.
Here's what enterprise buyers are really evaluating: Can I trust these leaders to execute their vision? Can I trust this company to still be around in three years? Can I trust their roadmap isn't just marketing fluff?
Enterprise software decisions are career-defining. Nobody gets fired for choosing the vendor they trust most.
That trust comes from multiple signals: respected customers who validate your approach, industry analysts who endorse your vision, partners who bet their reputation on your success. It's the CEO who sounds like they actually understand the problem. It's the customer stories that feel real, not scripted.
I've seen companies with inferior products win seven-figure deals because buyers trusted their leadership team. I've seen feature-rich platforms lose to simpler solutions because prospects couldn't trust the company's long-term stability.
At Dataiku, prospects didn't just buy our AI platform - they bought trust in our vision for democratizing data science. They trusted our leadership team had navigated enterprise complexity before. They trusted our customer base included companies like their own facing similar challenges.
When the decision is between two viable solutions, trust wins every time. When the decision is risky either way, trust reduces perceived risk.
Your product roadmap can be copied. Your pricing can be matched. But trust? Trust takes years to build and can't be replicated overnight.
That's your moat.
We Are Not the Heroes of the Story
Stop making your company Luke Skywalker
Every B2B marketer thinks their company is Luke Skywalker. The hero who saves the day, defeats the Empire, gets the glory.
Wrong story.
Your customer is Luke Skywalker. You're Yoda.
Luke had the problem (defeat the Empire). Luke had the motivation (save the galaxy). Luke had the agency to act. Yoda just gave him the tools and wisdom to succeed.
This isn't semantic wordplay. This changes everything about how you build campaigns.
Hero-focused marketing: "Our platform transforms businesses." Yoda-focused marketing: "You'll transform your business. Here's how."
Hero-focused messaging: "We increase conversions by 40%." Yoda-focused messaging: "You'll increase conversions by 40%. Here's the framework."
Hero-focused content: Case studies about how great we are. Yoda-focused content: Playbooks about how great they can be.
When I repositioned FlowX.AI for banking audiences, we stopped talking about our AI capabilities and started talking about their modernization challenges. People started to take notice.
Your customers don't want to hear about your journey. They want guidance on theirs.
Be Yoda. Let them be the hero.
Get Out of the Way
The best thing you can do as a leader is shut up
The best marketing leaders I know have one thing in common: their teams produce better work when they're not around. That's not an accident. That's the goal.
Early in my career, I thought leadership meant having all the answers. I'd jump into every campaign review, every messaging session, every creative brief. My fingerprints were on everything. My teams delivered exactly what I would have created. Nothing more, nothing less.
Then I learned the difference between being involved and being helpful. Being involved means inserting yourself into decisions. Being helpful means creating conditions where good decisions happen naturally.
Here's what "getting out of the way" actually looks like:
Set clear outcomes, not clear processes. Tell people what success looks like, not how to get there.
Hire people smarter than you in their domain. Then trust their expertise.
Create systems that surface problems early. Weekly pipeline reviews, monthly campaign post-mortems, quarterly strategy check-ins.
Protect your team from organizational noise. Be the filter, not the amplifier.
When I built the team at Dataiku to 20+ talent marketers , my job changed from doing the work to enabling the work. The campaigns got better, the results got stronger, and my team started solving problems I didn't even know we had.
Your job isn't to be the smartest person in the room. Your job is to make sure the smartest people in the room can do their best work.
Get out of the way.
Marketings AI Opportunity
No, a chatbot that writes subject lines isn't "transformation"
Every marketing leader is getting the same pitch: "AI will transform your marketing." Then they show you a chatbot that writes email subject lines.
That's not transformation. That's automation with better branding.
Here's where AI actually matters in marketing organizations:
Pattern recognition at scale. AI doesn't write better copy than your best copywriter. But it can analyze which copy patterns work across 10,000 campaigns faster than any human team.
Personalization that actually personalizes. Not "Hi [First Name]" personalization. Real behavioral personalization based on how prospects engage with your content, your product, your sales team.
Predictive pipeline health. AI can spot which deals are actually going to close three months before your sales team does. That changes how you allocate budget, how you prioritize accounts, how you plan campaigns.
Content optimization in real-time. Not A/B testing that takes weeks to get statistical significance. Real-time optimization that adjusts messaging, targeting, and spend based on performance data.
But here's what AI can't do: AI can't understand your market positioning. AI can't build relationships with sales leaders. AI can't make the strategic trade-offs that determine which campaigns to run.
The marketing leaders who win with AI aren't the ones who automate everything. They're the ones who use AI to make their strategic decisions faster and more informed.
AI is your research assistant, not your replacement.
What Is Experiential
Bigger trade show booths aren't "experiential marketing"
Most B2B marketers think "experiential" means bigger booths at trade shows. Better swag bags. Fancier customer dinners. That's not experiential marketing. That's expensive marketing.
Experiential marketing is designing every touchpoint to reinforce a single, clear experience of what it's like to work with you.
When a prospect downloads your whitepaper, they should feel like they just learned something genuinely useful - not like they got sold to.
When they attend your webinar, they should leave with actionable insights they can implement immediately - not just awareness of your product.
When they talk to your sales team, the conversation should build on everything they've already experienced in your marketing - not restart from zero.
At Dataiku, we designed our "Everyday AI" customer event around a single experience: "Working with data science feels approachable, not intimidating." Every session, every demo, every conversation reinforced that feeling.
The best B2B experiences aren't about entertainment. They're about education, enablement, and empowerment.
Your customers have a job to do. Experiential marketing helps them do that job better, even before they buy from you.
That's the experience that matters. That's the experience that converts. That's the experience that scales.t.