Marketing Leader of 20+ years - AMA
Morning everyone - marketing leader with 2 decades of experience in multiple countries, regions and industries (a big focus on startups and B2B though). Worked as a consultant for IBM, marketed 3 companies during IPO and grown many brands' sales and marketing with low cost strategies.
AMA!
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Rustic AI
Hey @justisio thanks for AMA. I am sure in your career you fell short of good creatives many times. What tools, tactics, strategies did you use to get differentiated creatives to catch customers and clients attention. In first few years, it is most exciting but after that it becomes quite repetitive. All the creative ideas are either discussed earlier or been seen by leadership. How did you navigate this in your 20+ year long career. It would really help me.
TIA!
@shashwat_verma2 great question because you are 100% correct and its because of trends, copying and general laziness or lack of knowledge by key stakeholders.
I was lucky that I worked for a very large startup early in my career and my CMO kept talking about Challenger Mentality in branding and marketing and because I was a designer in my young life I could really get behind the concept of being the same... but standing out or surprising people.
Tools, Tactics and Strategies
I always try, whether its for a single channel or an entire brand focus on What needs to be achieved? eg. do I need to get a CLICK in an email or just a lingering VIEW on a platform. This is the sole purpose of the marketing activity and I then focus myself and my team on that. With some competitor knowledge I also know what they (and the other 100 like them) are saying eg. Problems Statement 1 or Solution Statement 1 and I either then go with a different set of statements OR slightly against it OR the full Shock and Awe if I can get away with it. This goes for message and copy. The reason is that doing that SHOULD differentiate you from the 100s of the same style and type of message for the same industry and people only react to either something that shocks them, something so beneficial they cant believe it OR something unexpected (not the same).
So tools would be:
Chatgpt (a quick peer review on your ideas and a quick way to run an alternative scenario eg. what the worst that can happen in industryA for buyer persona B),
a colleague (peer review and idea bouncing),
another colleague to confirm OR challenge the previous two's thoughts.
I bounce ideas off people often and I ensure i track ideas and feedback. Sometimes the most boring feedback of an idea and change the entire thing.
Tactics:
If you are NOT creative find someone who is, to fill the gap and use Chatgpt to confirm objective data points (not subjective). If you are creative then find someone who isnt and remember to gut feel on feedback.
I recently built a slot machine into a stand for a non-betting company at a marketing tradeshow. My goal was gamify with the highest attendance, NOT get our detailed benefit messages accross. I knew if I could gamify, I would create a crowd, I would create more conversations and I would create more deals. We left that event with 15% of the total audience in our leads list....
For ideas also step outside your industry, find something you like and make it look/sound great. There is a reason we have Black, Silver and Blue phones everywhere... its because they copy copy copy.... if Apple brought out a Pink phone today in the premium ranges, everyone eg. samsung, nothing would have a pink phone by 2026.
Just redid branding for a recruitment startup and agency and because they do technical hiring I looked at competitors, removed dark blue from the pallette and glass'esq design language and went for flat, white, light light blue, neon green and orange for the colours (everything opposite of my competitors and went for a design reminisint of a vintage mac interface. Result - it looks amazing, it appeals to those the client is targeting (technical hiring) as its very console and retro without feeling old and we stand out in the crowd.
hope that helps and sorry if there are any spelling mistakes *
Rustic AI
Hey, I have one!
Which country's people were the most difficult to do business with? This could be related to their mindset, their detachment, their high sensitivity to prices, etc. Conversely, who did you do business with well? (This is more of a question focused on cultural differences.)
@busmark_w_nika interesting question! I think cultures have nuances all over but for me its quite a complex answer as I am originally from South Africa and now in the UK. So my struggles have been few and far between as I understand a developed world and a undeveloped one.
Middle East - easy to get the meetings, hard to sign them as they love to shop as they are the center of attention (they = prospects) - easy to find the leads and contact as well.
Africa - Very price sensitive and love to activate 'africa time' which means a meeting is tomorrow or a week from now and buyers and prospects LOVE to involve many others (who tend to want to leave a mark of their own{mostly negatively) in their buying processes.
South East Asia - as for the process of getting inbound leads its a tough market... search volumes are low and inbound leads are a tough fight but the shallow management structures of their businesses means you can talk to a decision maker relatively quick.
@justisio Middle East – do they still have that negotiating culture on prices? :DDD
What about the US and Europe? :)
@busmark_w_nika middle east, yes negotiation happens because there are 4 more waiting outside the door BUT (I always use this analogy) they just want the baby and not the pregnancy. So if value is shown then price becomes less of an issue or blocker.
US and Europe - challenging markets but NOT because of cultures or mindsets, just because of sheer volume of competition, size of their existing tech stacks and the challenge of reaching decision makers. They are especially hard markets to crack with no presence and no local brand value.
@justisio TBH, many people aim just US because of the high purchasing power.
We work with b2b tech marketers (software dev, enterprise SaaS, etc.) and always see the vast majority of demand budgets automatically allocated to paid ads. As SEO is failing with the advent of AI SEO/GEO/LLM SEO/AEO, do you see paid's vice grip over budgets finally starting to loosen up?
@eric_buckley, in my experience working across many clients, paid performance is very cyclical. Google PPC often starts strong, delivering a high volume of leads at a low cost per click or cost per opportunity, then performance drops off and budget is reduced and then it restarts when the coast is clear again.
That said, in the B2B space, paid media still has real value. To make it work, you need strong page quality scores and high relevance. These factors not only improve paid results but also have a significant impact on SEO and organic lead generation. I saw this clearly with a fintech client. When we reduced or turned off paid activity, organic performance dropped noticeably. We reviewed the data in detail to confirm the connection.
The landscape is shifting. Programmatic and AI-powered tools have pushed PPC costs up significantly. It is no longer a guaranteed source of efficient leads. At the same time user behaviour is changing. People are skipping Google entirely and asking tools like ChatGPT or DeepSeek for information, where there are no ads. There is no clear playbook for this yet, and until businesses start seeing traffic and leads from AI discovery or AI SEO, everything is in flux.
One thing I have noticed over the past couple of years is that large B2B companies spending over $100,000 a month are often not optimising their PPC or Google Ads at all. They are running campaigns broadly, without much fine-tuning. I suspect this is because proper optimisation takes time, effort and budget with limited short-term gain. Instead, these companies are investing in platforms like G2 or Capterra to earn backlinks and show up in third-party listicles that dominate Google results. It is essentially doing SEO for someone else’s site, just to get visibility.
SEO is under pressure from all sides. Google is flooded with listicles that outrank even branded searches. AI is changing how people search. And anyone can now produce a constant stream of content using AI tools, something that was difficult or costly just a couple of years ago.
Even so, I strongly believe SEO remains a vital foundation. Creating clear, useful content with high page quality scores and technical features like FAQ schema will only help. As search behaviour shifts toward summary and answer-based results, having that foundation in place will become even more important.
I could be wrong, but this is what I’ve consistently seen.