As B2B SaaS companies focus on retention rather than acquisition, customer intelligence is becoming more important.

On this episode of Marketing Spark, Mike Diaz talks about the different ways that companies can leverage data and information to keep customers in the fold.

Chatbots are becoming more popular to serve the needs of customers and answer their questions, but the AI is making chatbots smarter and more valuable. On this episode of Marketing Spark, Liverperson's Sonny Patel's talks about the future conversational inteligence and how companies can use it to drive marketing and sales.

Podcasts can be a valuable marketing tool for B2B SaaS companies because they provide opportunities to connect with customers, prospects, and influencers. 

Podcasts can also help generate a lot of content by extracting insight about multiple topics, which can be useful for content marketing efforts. 

However, it can be challenging for marketers to convince senior executives to invest in a podcast because it can be difficult to measure return on investment (ROI). 

In this episode of Marketing Spark, Connversa Podcasting CEO Jeremy Shere, talks to Mark Evans about:

- How companies should quantify ROI

- Why podcasts continue to be embrace amid tough economic conditions

- The biggest reasons why companies shy away from podcasts

- The reasons why companies jump on the podcast bandwagon; podcasts done by competitors being one of biggest factors.

- Why consistency is the key to podcast success

- The role of podcasts within the sales process

The digital marketing landscape is always changing.

There are new channels, tools, and approaches.

But it feels like we’ve entered uncharted territory for digital marketing amid global economic growth.

The rising tide that lifted many, if not all, ships has disappeared. And there’s increasing pressure on digital marketers to perform and do marketing that converts.

I couldn’t think of a better person to offer insight and perspective about digital marketing than Andy Crestodina, who has been operating in the digital world since 2000.

On the podcast, we talk about:

- How blogs can rank in search

- How to use GA4

- The effectiveness of "Get a Demo"

- Why so much homepage messaging is unclear

- Whether AI-powered writing tools will make an impact

For many years, marketers have leaned hard into data for information and insight about how people interact with different activities.

But the landscape has dramatically changed. 

A lot of digital marketing can't be tracked or attributed. People see content but never click, or they learn about products on the Dark Web.

Spark Toro CEO Rand Fishkin says marketers need to return to the days of creativity and ingenuity to attract and engage customers. 

He says they need to make leaps of faith when making marketing decisions as opposed to depending on data to lead the way strategically and tactically. 

It's an insightful conversation with someone who's been in the digital trenches for a long time. 

Definition of annoying: most pitches from podcast booking agencies.

They’re not personalized.

Clearly, no research has been done.

They’re frequently off-topic.

And sometimes they use the wrong name.

Agencies using these types of agencies are getting bad deals.

It’s hard to get a guest on podcast, so you can't use a company that does a poor job.

Having received so many bad podcast guest pitches, I asked Jakub Zajicek from Speak on Podcasts for insight and advice on how and when to use a podcast agency.

Since launcing in 2020, Speak on Podcasts has booked more than 2,000 guests and represents companies like @gong and @paddle.

The key to finding the right partner is simple: research and being clear about your point of view and who’s going to do the talking.

As important, companies need a strategic plan that integrates how podcasts will fit into the marketing and sales mix.

The more that you know your customers, the better.

That's Marketing 101.

As marketing attribution becomes increasingly more challenging, companies will need new tools to identify and engage prospects.

Getting this type of customer intelligence will allow them to make better and faster marketing, advertising, and sales decisions.

On the Marketing Spark podcast, Clearbit CMO Kevin Tate talks about how companies can use technology to identify their ideal customer profiles (ICPs), how to gain insight into what customers and prospects are thinking and the questions being asked, and how to identify Website visitors who don't provide any contact information.

We also took a look at Clearbit's marketing activities - content marketing and free tools.

In theory, podcasts are a great thing for B2B and B2B SaaS companies.

They allow companies to connect with prospects, customers, and influencers and generate a ton of content (blog posts, social media updates, videos).

But podcasts can be a hard sell for marketers. One of the challenges is that the value and ROI of a podcast are more than data-driven.

When a marketer is asked by a CEO about how to measure a podcast's success, the answer is "a podcast can be quantified but many of the benefits aren't visible".

To get insight into the B2B podcast landscape, I connect with Tom Hunt , founder of Fame.

We talked about:

- Whether companies are still enthiastic about podcasts

- How to sell a podcast to. CEO or CMO

- The role and value of an internal podcast for employees

- Whether CEOs really understand their customers, and how a podcast and creating content is a great way to discover valuable insight.

Sales is a combination of art and science.

The best salespeople combine personality, insight, research and time to engage people and convince them to make purchases.

In this episode of Marketing Spark, SellX's Steve Schmidt talks about:

- How salespeople should operate given the economic landscape

- What makes for a great sales person beyond sales

- How sales and marketing can work together effectively

- The biggest mistakes made by salespeople on LinkedIn 

- Why Steve has enthusiastically embraced TikTok

- The link between sales and demand generation.