{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Marketing B-Sides","title":"\t Track #26: Marc Bitanga – Beyond the Funnel: Why Business is Personal and Trust Beats Data","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2181,"description":"Most marketers spend their entire careers in one lane. Marc Bitanga, founder at Persuasive and former Director of Growth at Hootsuite, has hit for the cycle. Having worked in-house during massive hypergrowth, ran his own agency, freelanced, and served as a fractional executive, Marc brings a rare, 360 degree perspective to what it actually takes to survive and grow in B2B marketing.\nMarc sits down with Tom to pull back the curtain on the side hustle. He shares what it was like managing a million dollars in ad spend on evenings and weekends while working fifty hours a week, and the stark reality check that comes when you swap a steady paycheck for what he calls the diamond crushing pressure of making payroll. They unpack why standard SaaS marketing playbooks fail miserably when applied to agency lead generation, including the hard lesson learned from sending fifty custom, painstaking audits that yielded exactly one reply.\nThe conversation dives deep into the mechanics of professional services: why trust transfer beats cold outreach every time, how using close the file emails helps maintain pipeline sanity, and why taking on a bad fit client guarantees you will only get referred to more bad fit clients. Marc also breaks down his three non-negotiable red flags for vetting prospects, and explains why you do not need a massive social media presence or viral personal brand to build a wildly successful business.","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/36PIZanV9DclOom8ilMHsbH0ksenNpAuppakMWXiYOA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lNjEy/NmYyMzZhYWM2OTE1/NjM3NmY3YzhlOTM3/MTg1Ni5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}