Davis Mastin

Hot take: a lot of the motions we still rely on in B2B make the buying process harder than it needs to be. Gated whitepapers, old-school press releases, long nurture tracks - all of these assume buyers move through a linear journey that doesn’t really exist anymore. People now look for answers through AI search flows, quick chat prompts, Reddit threads and the communities they already trust. By the time they reach you, they expect more clarity and less effort. That’s why asking for information before offering anything useful feels so out of place now. It slows people down at the exact moment they’re trying to move faster. Most buyers won’t do it and honestly, they shouldn’t have to. And with feature sets looking more and more similar, the difference someone actually feels is how clearly the story helps them understand your relevance. Not a capabilities list. Not a gated report. Just immediate, useful context. What I’m seeing work better is much more straightforward: > It’s being where the questions actually surface. > It’s giving people something that helps them understand the problem before you ask for anything in return. > And it’s explaining the product in a way that doesn’t require a long ramp-up or a sequence to make the point land. Credibility markers like analyst reports still matter because they’re signals of trust but they can’t be the whole strategy anymore. Buyers have already changed how they evaluate. The marketing needs to reflect that shift. Thoughts?

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12 Comments

You're paying high retainers for "results" that feel more like expensive experiments. Your agency isn't building *your* brand; they're building their portfolio on *your* dime. Every 'test' that bombs, every vague report, every strategy that disappears when a vendor leaves – that's capital burned. This isn't just inefficient; it's a structural vulnerability. You're effectively renting your marketing brain, not owning it. The enemy isn't the agency. It's the absence of *your* operating system. You haven't provided the Brand Source OS, the foundational Source Codes, so your partners are flying blind. They're trying to build a skyscraper without blueprints, and you're footing the bill for every collapsed wall. Stop letting them guess. You need to install the Brand Source OS. A Single Source of Truth that dictates your brand signal, customer profile, and product positioning. This is how you clean Brand Pollution, eliminate Brand Signal Loss, and finally give your agencies the precise inputs they need to deliver, not just experiment. You need Tanner Rankin to orchestrate this. To install the Brand Source OS, fortify your strategy, and own your source code. Because until then, inconsistency is an Entropy Tax, suppressing your revenue by 33%. Stop funding their learning curve. Start owning your growth.

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I've managed marketing teams as large as 40 and as small as one. I've had budgets as high as $15 million and as low as $200k. Here's the one thing I've learned: the fundamentals are always the fundamentals. More resources doesn't exempt you from needing them, and fewer resources doesn't mean you can afford to skip them. In fact, with more resources it often just means you make more noise in the wrong direction. More channels, more content, more campaigns, more activity. But if that activity isn't grounded in a crystal-clear market target, positioning, and a USP that actually differentiates you, it's just that: noise. AI has put this into hyperdrive. It is easier than ever to compound in the wrong direction. Volume is no longer a flex. Output is no longer a differentiator. Anyone can spin up 100 articles or 1,000 social posts. So before you hand your team a Claude subscription and call it a strategy, make sure they have the foundations to use it well. AI amplifies what's already there. Good, bad or ugly.

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27 Comments

Inside validation feels good. Outside validation matters. We can write the perfect narrative, build the perfect launch deck, and high-five across teams, but until a customer repeats your story back to you or an analyst echoes your positioning... It's just words on slides. True impact isn’t internal alignment. It’s when the outside world starts believing (and repeating) what you’ve been saying all along. That’s the moment you know the story stuck.

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You can buy $100K of enterprise software in one demo and a DocuSign. Agency services with the same budget...? Weeks of capes decks, forty-page proposals, sometimes a trip across the country and battle with procurement (if you won the pitch) that makes buying a house look efficient. This isn't just friction. It's a business model defending itself against obsolescence. The old logic used to make sense. When execution required human armies—copywriters, art directors, producers, coordinators—every engagement truly was unique. You couldn't productize creative development when it took 12 people and eight weeks to ship a campaign. Customization wasn't theater. It was a necessity. AI has changed the math. What used to require a team of three now requires one strategist and a handful of tools. Execution is abundant. Expertise is the differentiator. But agencies still resist productization—afraid it means commoditization. Here's what productization actually means: Productize the repeatable → frameworks, diagnostic processes, delivery models Customize the application → strategic thinking, specific insights, execution tailored to the client's needs. Gong productized sales call analysis. The platform—transcription, keyword tracking, deal insights—is repeatable. Your specific plays, scorecards, and coaching frameworks? Custom to your sales motion. Notion productized the workspace. The blocks and database structure are repeatable. Every company's wikis, roadmaps, and project workflows? Completely custom. Same logic for agency work. A Brand Positioning Sprint: six weeks, defined deliverables, proven process. The positioning itself? One hundred percent custom. Productization scales the expertise, not the labor. When execution is abundant and expertise is scarce, the way to win is to make the expertise easier to access—not harder.

23

3 Comments

Reposting this because it touches on something I’ve learned over and over again in product marketing: clarity isn’t something we inherit, it’s something we create. PMM sits in the middle of a lot of noise: product priorities, seller pressure, customer expectations, and a constant stream of “urgent” asks. The role is more than to be a handoff function, it’s to connect the dots. We translate the voice of the customer into positioning, turn product features into real business outcomes, and give sales a story they can actually win with. When it works, silos disappear and everyone starts pulling toward the same narrative to win together. The best product marketers have worked with bring structure to chaos, eliminate friction between teams, and make sure what we build actually resonates in the market. Curious how other PMMs define the moment when clarity finally clicks across Product, Sales, and Marketing.

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Behind every great marketing team is a great agency partner (or several). As the CMO of Zappi, I hire agencies with the same care I hire an FTE for my team. Here's the reality most CMOs face: Your headcount is always going to be lean. Your budget is finite. Your internal team can't be experts at everything. And you need to move fast. This is where agencies become critical. They give you: ▶ Flexibility you can't get with full-time hires ▶ Scale up for a launch, scale down after ▶ No long hiring cycles when you need to move quickly ▶ Specialized expertise your team doesn't have ▶ Deep knowledge in specific channels ▶ Cross-industry perspective from working with multiple clients ▶ Access to tools and tech you don't need to own ▶ Speed that changes everything ▶ Faster implementation than building in-house ▶ Teams ready to execute immediately ▶ No learning curve on new platforms or tactics The best agency relationships aren't transactional. They're partnerships. The agencies that understand your business. Know your customers. Challenge your thinking. Bring ideas, not just execution. At Zappi, our agency partners are essential. They enable us to punch above our weight. To compete with companies 10x our size. To launch campaigns that would take months to build internally. The mistake CMOs make? Treating agencies like order-takers instead of strategic partners. (By the way... same mistake when insights teams are treated this way, too!) The best CMOs I know: → Share business context deeply → Include agencies in planning early → Give them room to bring ideas → Build long-term relationships, not project-based transactions Your marketing results depend on your team AND your partners. Choose agencies that align with your values. That feel like an extension of your own team. Who embrace similar ways of thinking. And that stand to help you learn and make you even better. Shout out to Avery Akkineni and our partners at VaynerX VaynerMedia (pictured with the wonderful and hilarious Rob Mayhew). 💚 Follow me (Nataly Kelly) for more CMO advice. #CMO #marketing #agencies

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4 Comments