Marketing Channels are Dead with Mark Kilens, TACK

Are marketing channels dead?

In this episode of The Unexpected Lever, Jarod Greene sits down with Mark Kilens, CEO and Co-Founder of TACK, to challenge a long-held belief in B2B marketing. 

Mark argues that traditional channels—email, paid ads, and SEO—are losing effectiveness while networks are becoming the real drivers of growth. He breaks down the shift from channels to networks and why companies need to rethink their marketing strategy. From building a network map to understanding the power of trust, this conversation explores a new way to connect with buyers.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. Why traditional channels are losing impact – High costs, crowded spaces, and diminishing returns are making old-school marketing tactics less effective.
2. How networks are shaping modern marketing – People, brands, and places hold more influence than ever, and leveraging them is key to growth.
3. The role of trust in reaching buyers – Aligning with trusted figures, communities, and brands can build credibility faster than any paid campaign.

Things to listen for: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:25) Channels are dead—sort of

(00:56) The challenge with traditional channels

(01:36) The power of networks over channeling

(02:22) Rethinking marketing plans and budgets

(03:40) Building a network map
(04:37) Trust: the foundation of successful networks

What is The Unexpected Lever?

The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.

The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.

Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.

Jarod Greene [00:00:00]:
Hey everybody and welcome to V5 where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox about some of the hottest takes in all of B2B sales, B2B SaaS. I'm joined today by Mark Kilens. Mark is the CEO and Co-Founder of TACK. Now, true story. I don't know Mark's hot take. He said he's going to surprise me in real time. So Mark, you know how to play? Let's, let's do it.

Jarod Greene [00:00:25]:
Your hot take. Let's go.

Mark Kilens [00:00:27]:
I'm going to go right into it, Jarod. So channels are dead. Even though I don't like absolute statements. But channels are dead. Networks are the future of all of marketing.

Jarod Greene [00:00:40]:
Okay, tell me more.

Mark Kilens [00:00:42]:
So you know a typical channel, you got email marketing, paid social, paid search. There's like 12 to 15 of them. Typical channels. Everyone thinks in channels. We got to plan for channels. We got to optimize your channels. We look at the ROI of channels. But here's the thing with channels.

Mark Kilens [00:00:56]:
There hasn't been many new channels created in the last 10 years. Every channel that exists out there is becoming more and more noisy. You talked about this right before we went live. Everyone has less and less attention or is willing to give you less and less of their attention for anything these days. So you're competing with more people in these channels that are costing you more money. And for a lot of companies that are VC backed, even private equity backed, it is not easy to see the investment payoff in these channels and the investments you've made. A lot of times they're very short term in nature. They don't compound.

Mark Kilens [00:01:36]:
They're not like annuities. However, if you think about networks, and there's three types of networks you should look at people, brands and places. How do you partner with different individuals, different brands, AKA companies or different places, like an online community, an event, a physical location. How do you partner with those networks? And those networks probably have networks within those networks to help you reach the right buyers, the right customers. I'll pause there.

Jarod Greene [00:02:05]:
Well said. And I feel seen with that take. I feel like a lot of other marketers and go to market leaders, feel seen and validated with that take. Many of us have just completed kind of our annual budget and what did we do? We aligned our spin to channels. There's still time. What would you say to us?

Mark Kilens [00:02:22]:
So here's what I would do. So channels are not technically dead. And that's why I said I hate absolute statements. You're going to need channels because that's what you Use to get your message out there. But there's two things to consider now. The message is becoming more and more important. How you say it, but like, how it's truly different. But what's even more important, the message is the messenger who says that thing and even how they say it.

Mark Kilens [00:02:48]:
And then the channel still just like what they're going to use to say what they have to say. So the messenger is more important. So what I'd recommend companies do, and we help customers do this, is build an ecosystem map, a network map, if you will. So you're literally going to take your ideal customer profile or segment of it and say, I'm going to map out, and I'm going to first identify and find and research all of the people, brands and places that could be part of this map, build them into the spreadsheet, organize as much of the data as I can get on each of them, and then I'm going to visualize it and even start to make connections between the different networks to see where. Where are the biggest areas of opportunity. And then you could think about, well, how do I reach my ICP through these networks? Is it email, is it paid, is it an influencer play, is it a webinar, is it an event or whatever, right? That's the channel piece.

Jarod Greene [00:03:40]:
Yeah. Yeah, I love this. And again, it's part of what, you know, we think a lot about, even internally in terms of how do we reach our audience. What I pick up in what you say is trust really underpins it all. When I think about people, when I think about places, when I think about brands, those are things you have to trust, right? I got to trust. I got to trust in this network, I got to trust in this brand. I got to trust in this person.

Jarod Greene [00:04:01]:
And I do feel like, you know, if you can find. Find a way to, for lack of a better term, bottle all that up or get an understanding of some of the synergies between the people you want to buy your stuff and the people that they trust. Everything gets easier. But I'm not paraphrasing. It's just what I. What I took away.

Mark Kilens [00:04:17]:
Yeah, no, trust is one of the core components. I mean, resonance is very important. It goes back to, like, trust. You trust a person, it goes back to the idea of the messenger, right? And you trust that person because there is consistency over time that allows you to build that trust, right? And there's usually some form of reciprocity in play.

Mark Kilens [00:04:37]:
So, yeah, I mean, how do you create trust faster? Well, you can't circumvent that. But you can find, to your point, the people, the place of the brands that have established trust and see if there's ways you could add value to the trust they've created to their audience so that at some time in the future, you might be able to get some value back from what you give.

Jarod Greene [00:05:00]:
Thank you, Mark. Appreciate that. You heard channels are not dead yet. Dead-ish. And for more on this hot take, don't hesitate to drop your comments in our feeds anywhere you get your podcast. We'd love to expand on this accordingly. So, Mark, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.

Mark Kilens [00:05:16]:
Thank you, my friend.

Jarod Greene [00:05:17]:
All right. Thank you. You're listening to The Unexpected Lever. For additional resources, check out vivun.com Got a soapbox you'd like us to talk about longer? Let us know by messaging me, Jarod Greene on LinkedIn.