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Nick Rybak explores how modern B2B companies grow through marketing strategies, website innovation, and content that converts. Every two weeks, we talk to marketing leaders and founders about what’s working and what’s not.
Let's pray for a conversion!
Nick Rybak (00:00)
Josh, thank you for joining. Really happy to have you here. Could you please introduce yourself for those who don't know you yet?
Joshua Schwartz (00:06)
Sure, so I'm Dr. Joshua Schwartz. I'm the Vice President of Marketing and Demand Generation for LN 451. We are an AI-powered CRM platform for higher education. And in my role, we know we are about demand gen, everything that you can do to top a funnel and mid funnel to go into the journey of higher education and bringing in a CRM platform that's AI-powered. So the world of AI in higher education.
Nick Rybak (00:33)
Sounds interesting. and let's actually start with the bold question. So what is your biggest marketing fact up and what did it cost you in money, time, or what did you learn from it? Not only on this current job, but maybe in the entire career.
Joshua Schwartz (00:50)
Yeah, great question. So everyone has one of those fucked up moments in life. And I'll tell you, mine was when I was an interim CMO for an international company based out of Africa. And we, did both B2B and B2C marketing. And when I went in there, I was like, okay, you know, we need to align like all of our processes. We need to standardize how we go in and communicate to both B2B and B2C markets. And when you do that,
Like, you look at that paper and you see, okay, this region's doing it this way, this region's doing it that way. I was like, no, it's just so messy on the paper.
I was wrong. And here's why I was wrong. When we standardized everything, we start to see numbers from certain regions drop. And I was like, what the hell's going on? Like, why is this happening? And it's because when you look at the regions that you're in between North America, Europe, parts of Asia and Africa, how you go to the population and how you reach the consumer is so different. In North America, I learned that, you know, they wanted to do the research on their own.
Like they were okay going to the gated content and going through and doing the research in parts of Africa and Europe. Absolutely not. They wanted somebody on site. They wanted personalization, like where they're feeling involved with a human touch. Like they wanted people to be in person. They wanted that relationship building and that cost us. And in the long run, when I made that decision to just bring everything together, I still think there needs to be standardized processes, standardized branding, standardized messaging, standardized reporting.
But how you go out into the market, like that was my biggest mess up for the company. And were we able to pivot? Yes, because I think in anything in the world of marketing, you can easily pivot and quickly realign in a matter of days rather than weeks and months. But that cost us, you know, from a revenue perspective, I'm going to say maybe two or three deals before I realized something was wrong. And I had to listen to the market. I had to listen to my sellers and say, okay, like they didn't feel heard. They didn't feel that
they
were aligned to what was happening in the market and that cost us. So from a dollar perspective, wouldn't say it was around.
$2, $2.5 million that we potentially lost. And I say potentially lost because we connected right back. I let the team go do what they needed to do and we were able to save some of those deals. The turnaround time, what would have been 30, 60, 90 days, in that case turned 120 to 150 days because we had to make up for some work. And it cost me more money to re-nurture them. I had to do a little VIP work for them, a little white glove service for them to really make
Nick Rybak (03:00)
Already?
Joshua Schwartz (03:26)
them feel okay you know what we messed up but here here's what we can do and here's how we are as a company and that made the difference but that came with again sales loss at the start and then having to bring in additional spend to make up for the mistake.
Nick Rybak (03:40)
And what did it teach you? This mistake.
Joshua Schwartz (03:42)
to listen
to your sales team and when you're going international and you're really working on the international side is every country is different, every market is different, every segment in the market, even regional perspectives are different. You can go to one side of the coast for Africa to first the other side of coast to Africa and how they want to be engaged with is very different. You need to know your market, you need to know your personas, you need to be able to speak to them in a way that they wouldn't be spoken to and that was the biggest takeaway, especially against
when you're going on four different continents and you're trying to do cross network marketing and branding, it was an eye-opener.
Nick Rybak (04:17)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that story. So 2.5 million. Yeah, that's impressive mistake. Really. I mean, everyone, everyone did some so that that's okay. And you work mostly in B2B personalization. So that that's going to be the topic for today. And for someone who's never actually seen B2B personalization done well, could you tell like, what does it look like in practice, especially in 2026?
Joshua Schwartz (04:23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Nick Rybak (04:44)
And what is like happening on the website in Paydas and other channels? So what is the B2B personalization?
Joshua Schwartz (04:51)
Yeah, great question here. And I think people need to look at the big idea for this, personalization, it's not behavior-based. And I think in the past it was. It's not demographic in any perspective. And you have to look at that website-based, the email, and the ads, and how that really aligns.
If I can give one big point to this, that the best personalization isn't demographic, it's behavioral. Think of it that side. Websites. Good personalization when you look at the website, what it looks like. Are you returning visitors seeing something different? So if they're coming there for the first time, if they're coming back in a month or so, is there something different? What are they going to see different there for you? Is it industry specific? If you're going to two different markets and industries, make sure it's very easily aligned. For us, we have higher edged
We have four-year institutions and two-year institutions. They're very different in how they work. So for Element 451, we try to push through and have a page that's dedicated to the two-year side. Then we have a page that's dedicated to the four-year. And then you have private versus public institutions. You have to have industry-specific perspectives there. You also have to think about your high-intent visitors. They need to see the case studies. Everybody loves data. Everybody loves to see an ROI. I think that's super important for your website to be able
to show right from the start. If I can tell a case study and I can say here's the results that clients had and here's the logos for them, for my market in higher education, it's a small tam. So people will go from one place to the other. They can go from one institution and three years later be in another institution. So word of mouth is so, so, so valuable. And hearing and seeing those ROI numbers and case studies on a website make that for those high intent buyers to understand, yes, let me go call that school.
I
know somebody there.
Email, I think when we look at the email, it adjusts based off the behavioral signals. So what are they doing? Do they go to a webinar? If they attended the webinar, they get a different follow-up and a different nurture. If they're downloading an e-book, they get a different perspective. They want educational content. That's where they're coming in from. If someone's viewed the product page or they're looking at pricing, you now want to start communicating them with product emails. So you have to narrow based off their behavior and what they were looking at and what they were
engaging from your website or from their interactions as well. Ads, I think personalization shifts when you look on the engagement depth.
For example, if you're looking at educational content, or like what I like to call my thought leadership, you then need to move it into proof. And then you need to go back to that ROI and really narrow the ROI from it. So start with the thought leadership if that's where they're coming in from, but then show the proof of how that happened. What made that work? And then what was the final ROI in there? So you have to personalize that journey for the ads perspective as well. It takes a lot of strategy to make that work. talks about like it takes a lot of personalization
make that work. But I think that's what we're seeing in 2026 that's very, very much been different in the past.
Nick Rybak (07:43)
⁓ All right. And is there any specific tool set or playbook that you can recommend? let's say, so you've said that personalization based on geography is not the best one and behavioral is much better. So how does it actually look in practice? I mean, for example, on landing pages,
And how do you, how you nurture your prospects ⁓ down the funnel? So how does it work in practice?
Joshua Schwartz (08:11)
Yeah, so again, you have to have that similar, that personalization. There's some, I'm jumping the gun here by saying this a little bit. Personalization can work, but personalization can fail. And why I say that is because when you look at the personalization, if you're personalization and personalizing too much,
Right from the start, it's creepy, it's odd. Like, how did you know certain things like this? Like, how did you know about that? So when you come to a landing page and it's completely filled out with all of their information already, that there's a form on there, that's kinda creepy. Like, how do know which email I wanna put in there? How do you know how to align that? So when you're looking at like a playbook, it goes off, you have to create that playbook. And if I can give the best advice I can say is,
know your audience, know your ICP, know those industries, and know what they like. I know I can't go to a president of a college and university and have their full form completed for them. They're gonna be like, what the hell?
How did this happen? How do they know all of this information? But if I went into another B2B market outside of higher education, absolutely, they'd be okay with that. They're like, great, this just saved me some time. So you have to know your industry. When you're going into that landing page and you're creating that strategy for that landing page, again, be very specific for it. When you're completing that form and you're nurturing with the follow-up email.
Yes, it's okay to say in the subject line their first name. But yes, it's okay to even say inside the email nurturing, hey, we saw you went to this page, like thank you for filling out this form. Here's your content. Make sure the content in that message is narrow to them and the insides personalized for them. And then when you get to that middle part of the funnel, personalize the hell out of it. Because if they got that far into that funnel, and they're now a more of an intent, they want that VIP service, they want that white
glove service. want to see that you know who they are, what their pain points are. So at the top of the funnel, like don't personalize as much. When you get into that mid funnel,
dive in with their first name, dive in with whatever you can to support them in that process because that's your market. That's the time that you want to get them in the sales funnel to really navigate the conversation and get them to know that you know who they are and let them learn who you are. So that would be like, there's no set playbook. I can only give what I think is the best strategy for that.
Nick Rybak (10:24)
And they're talking about this mid-final personalization. From which angles do you personalize any activity? So you've mentioned like a first name obviously, and basically all the information they shared with you, but can you use anything rather than just their like first name, last name, email, maybe phone number, other information?
Joshua Schwartz (10:47)
Yeah, absolutely. They're pain points. You know what they're searching on your website. You know what webinar they attended, which means there's probably a pain point that you can actually tailor it to. When I'm looking at, and I'm going to just use higher ed because that's in the top of my mind right now with higher education.
I know the seasonality of what's happening in higher ed. For our U.S. clients, FAFSA is huge. Application timelines are set. We're getting narrowing down to the end of the semester is happening in a matter of like six to eight weeks. So what are they trying to do? They're trying to make sure the seniors are set to graduate and make sure that the current students are going to move to next year are registering. That's a pain point. So if they're coming to a webinar that's talking about application and getting those decisions made, that's how I want to
narrow that perspective down. You can also use tools to help you in doing this. When I look at narrowing an email with a pain point, can say, you went, like we'll say David, David, thank you for coming to our website or to our webinar. As you heard, So-and-so College, know, saw this return on investment based off these pain points. Tailor it to them. If you can make it regional, based off institutions for us or companies within their region, and show that
that,
it narrows it even more.
But then again, it's telling their pain point, putting their pain point in the email, putting their pain point in a phone call. If you're using AI, you have AI agents, let your AI agents take those phone calls. If you have a BDR team, make sure your BDR is utilizing those pain points and understanding what's happening in that market. For US, what's happening in higher education in Pennsylvania can be very different than what's happening across the country in California. You need to know that market.
need to know what's happening in those areas and those pain points because that's how you can personalize everything.
Nick Rybak (12:32)
Well, honestly, think for many people personalization sounds.
like some sort of a bullshit already because the first thing I think of when I see, when I hear personalization is that like, you know, these cold emails you get on the email that are telling you like, Hey Nick, great post on LinkedIn, like such an interesting perspective, blah, blah, blah. And that's basically how you know that people, this person never ever heard about yourself.
Joshua Schwartz (13:01)
Yeah.
Nick Rybak (13:04)
and never looked at your LinkedIn. So it's just a general like AI automation that like somehow personalizes the email. But in reality, I don't think it's like a personalization at all because it has nothing to do with the offer, with my situation. I could literally post like about my cat yesterday and how does it make it.
Joshua Schwartz (13:09)
Yep.
Nick Rybak (13:27)
my life somehow related to your product, for example.
Joshua Schwartz (13:30)
Yes.
Yeah, no, that's what I call the creepy personalization. Like, it's like the big brother of personalization. Like, it is creepy and I'll give you a story. Like, you know, a few months ago, unfortunately, we lost my mom. I put a post on my LinkedIn about losing my mom and going through that process. And I had some, like two different companies, like salespeople, message me on LinkedIn, talking about how great my post was. And I was like, did you read my post?
Nick Rybak (13:34)
Yeah, for sure.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Joshua Schwartz (13:59)
Like that was like it was and right. I was like like and they're like, so sorry. was like, I know the power of AI know how you can utilize AI like we are an AI driven company. That's what we we help our clients utilize to speak to the students. But you still have to add that human touch to it. I constantly get emails that come from like within LinkedIn that say, hey Josh, I'm going to be in your town. I'm like,
Nick Rybak (14:00)
That's the worst example in the world.
Joshua Schwartz (14:25)
how do you know what my town is? Why are you gonna be in my town and why are you reaching out? And then when I look at it and I read it, yeah, because it caught my attention. Those are folks that I'm gonna actually, on subscriber, disconnect from because I don't think they're genuine. And I felt that was super, super creepy. So I agree with you that there's a lot of bullshit out there on how that's being utilized, but that's where it comes to that strategy of utilizing AI features and tools in the most effective way.
has to be, you can't just go out there and utilize AI. You have to have a strategy around AI and you have to have a humanized approach to utilizing AI.
Nick Rybak (15:04)
Absolutely.
So it's basically personalization in your perspective. It's more about knowing your ICP and their pain points and personalizing like their experience with your company around their situation and pain points rather than collecting some weird data about them and writing some weird emails.
Joshua Schwartz (15:21)
Yeah.
Yeah, don't tell me that you're gonna be in my town and call out my town in an email. That's creepy. It's creepy.
Nick Rybak (15:25)
You
Yeah, the best response could be like, thank you for information, right? Because it doesn't give me anything, anything valuable. All right, so let's imagine like two marketing managers, same stack, same budget. Let's say in 90 days to build a working personalization system. One marketer succeeds and one doesn't. What's the difference between them?
Joshua Schwartz (15:31)
Yes, yep.
I'm going to say that first and foremost, the difference isn't going to be about the tools, it's going to be about the clarity of the buyer signals. I talked about the buyer signals before. A successful team, if you have these two teams doing that, they know who their buyer is. They know that pain point, that problem that they're trying to solve, and they know what signals indicate buyer content. So again, knowing your ICP, knowing what's happening, knowing what's happening in their market. Again, that can be a seasonality piece of their market. That can be very different from November.
to March. So you need to know that buyer content and a successful team built what we call the signal map. You know exactly what one pain point is going to lead to another pain point and you build that full workflow. Examples of you know those signals again webinar attendance. My team loves webinars. We're seeing webinars for whatever reason grow in B2B. Like normally let's say a year or so ago maybe two three hundred people would register.
We just did a webinar for the, like a week or so ago, over 700 people.
I'm like, wow, and it's growing from one webinar to the next. Is it how we're doing our strategy? Yes, because we're looking at that signal mapping that we're putting in there. We're now being very reactive to what's happening in the market. The topic is on spot. So we know if they come to that webinar, great, benchmarks for webinar to attend, maybe 35%. We're seeing 47%. So nearly half of the people that register are actually still showing up to the webinar, which is phenomenal. That's a huge buyer signal for us.
Nick Rybak (16:49)
Now that's what.
Joshua Schwartz (17:16)
Repeat.
Nick Rybak (17:17)
Do you think it's
related more to the hot topic and the situation so that the topic is really, really interesting for them right now or any other idea?
Joshua Schwartz (17:25)
Yep. No,
it's because the topic is so...
point on it's hitting the pain point in that market and that seasonality piece. And I know it keeps saying seasonality, but in higher ed, like that's how it works. I mean, but if I'm looking at like an ice cream shop, I'm not going to push in the winter months, huge piece of like focusing on ice but you come spring and summer. Absolutely. We have RIDA's in the U S and on the first day of spring, what do they do? They give free gelatos away to everybody that comes to their stand. Everybody knows it. It's year after year, they do this.
Their lines are outside, down the street for that opening day. That's like repetitive marketing that they now don't even have to market to. People just know the first day of spring, this is happening. It's they knew their buyer signal. They knew it was great weather. They knew like this was gonna, they knew the pain point. They knew what would happen and how it would market that. So even outside of them, like the B2B side, it aligns to B2C too. But from the B2B world, you wanna focus on that.
Nick Rybak (18:12)
you
Joshua Schwartz (18:25)
You want to look at your repeat website visits as well. There's tools that are out there in that track it. We utilize some at our company as well. And I can see who's coming to the website how many times. I can see what pages they're coming to on our website. I'm not going to be creepy and say, hey, I saw you come to my pricing page at 914 at PM last night. No, I'm going to be strategic in how I market and message and personalize that. Same thing with demo engagement. If they're starting to attend the demo, we move them into
from an MQL into a new business meeting or SQL. And they're aligning in that perspective and they're showing up for the demo and then they're coming through. That's a huge intent to say, okay, there's an interest there. Sometimes you can do those gift cards and say, hey, come to the demo, complete the demo, great. But if you're doing the demo well and you personalize that demo, again, that personalization, you're now at that mid-funnel section of the sales funnel and you personalize that to them.
they're more likely to come back for that second demo or they're more likely to add more expression and more intent to buy. So it's really, really knowing that that's where team one like does really, really well. You need to look at the automation without looking at the signal strategy. It just noise at scale. If you're looking at the signal strategy and you're just pushing out messaging and messaging, that's noise. You're not going to get anything out of it. You have to make sure it all aligns. And that will be the difference between the two teams.
Nick Rybak (19:43)
Got it. And all right, so we've figured out what the personalization is and basically how what are the keys to make it right. So without that, I have a next question. How do you know when the personalization is actually can be the solution? For example, I guess that there are plenty of situations where that that won't help you at all.
And you would probably just spend like ⁓ your resources and time on something that doesn't move the needle. So how do you actually understand where it's time to start personalizing?
Joshua Schwartz (20:18)
Yep. My key moment here, this is why I tell my teams is don't personalize traffic. Personalize intent. If you're looking at personalizing everything in a reference report, that's a mistake.
personalize what's best, which is in that middle of the funnel. People want useful content. We know that at the top of the funnel, they want the personalization that has minimal impact. It's not going to do much for them. They just want that content. They just want to go to that webinar. when you get to that middle part of the funnel, which I also call the consideration side of the stage, it's, know, where you want to personalize and what we're seeing, like it's not just like I'm giving the strategy and saying, here's doing, we're actually seeing the results of personalization working in that middle side.
the funnel, looking at the industry case studies, the relevant proof points, the messaging tied to their problem. That's where the conversion starts to increase. And again, data is showing that not just for our company, but for multiple companies. When you do that personalization in that perspective and in that point in the market is where you're getting the most results.
So I would say, you as you're looking to move the needle and you're looking to align, that's what's working. That middle side of the funnel and personalization there. Don't over personalize. You have to use it with strategy.
Nick Rybak (21:31)
What's the over personalization here? Can you give us an example?
Joshua Schwartz (21:35)
Yeah, first name, last name in the subject line. Just use the first name maybe if you want, if you feel like you have to. When you're looking at the start of the content, and they're doing it, say, a gated content from the landing page, it's okay to just say, hey, in the subject line, here's your gated content. Download now. You don't have to have their first name in there. When you're looking at the email messaging for that download, they're not gonna read your entire email. They just want the darn download. So, two sentences.
Thank you for like coming visiting our website. Thank you for requesting this info. Here's your content to download. We'll follow up in the coming days. That's completely, that's all they want. They don't want to read a whole thing that's personalized with them with all their pain points in that top of the funnel perspective. That's over-personalizing it. Just give them what they want. Give them the content they want. Give them the link to the webinar they want to attend and call it a day. Don't over-personalize that approach.
Nick Rybak (22:25)
Got it. All right, so let's move to the flywheel five section where I ask the same five questions to each guest. And the first one is what's one channel you would bet everything on right now and one that you would kill? Marketing channel.
Joshua Schwartz (22:39)
Yeah, email. think email is one that I would actually put everything on right now. Some people would say, what the hell, no, that's spam, like you're spamming. No, email. People are connecting. If you can do the right subject line and you can connect to the right point in it, that's your best bet. You're gonna see the more open rates and we're starting to see that. Do A-B testing with your email. Like come up with that strategy, but email is still the key to getting in to the person's mindset.
Excuse me if I had to kill something. I- I'm good.
Nick Rybak (23:07)
Do you mean
cold outreach or just a regular email drip campaigns?
Joshua Schwartz (23:12)
Both.
Both. Both. Like, don't be creepy about it.
Nick Rybak (23:14)
⁓ actually like
I've had Michael Maximoff here, who is like the master of outreach. And he said that like one, one single channel outreach, like email doesn't really work anymore. So do you disagree?
Joshua Schwartz (23:28)
Yeah.
I would disagree if it's one single outreach. I mean if you're looking at one Email or two email you have to have that pain point you have to know your market It's okay to say in that email subject line against and it could depend on the industry for higher ed if I can say hey fast for application changes happening now I Guarantee you a lot of my folks will open that because that's my market and that's subject line Like they're gonna they're gonna be like what the hell's happening with fast for us like that's financial aid for their institutions
financial aid for their students. If you can tie in that subject line to be their pain point at that seasonality, absolutely. If I was looking outside of higher ed, if I was going back to my old CMO times where I was looking at that and I was looking at the industry between Africa and North America and Asia, I would totally agree with him. Absolutely agree with him. But within the in the industry, higher education, that would work.
Nick Rybak (24:22)
Got it. Yeah, that makes sense if you know your market. So I also think that one channel could work really well. So the next question is what tool are you using or recommending that the most BTB marketers have never heard of?
Joshua Schwartz (24:35)
Yeah, so I hope if you're in the world of AI and you're doing the world of marketing right now, you know this tool, but it's clay.
Clay is a great enrichment tool. It does your data enrichment. It can do automation. It can help you build out single driven outreach. What I love about it, it can do my lookalikes. So I can say, hey, run this through. I'm looking for vice presidents of an institution at a four year institution. Here's similarities to it. And it can pull me a whole list of enriched contacts to say, yep, these are folks that are very similar to that. So that's knowing my ICP, knowing their pain points. Clay helps us get that.
like it helps us make sure that like you know if my BDR team is going to out do outreach and cold call the emails are correct the phone numbers are correct so clay is the tool if you're not using clay you need to get clay and this is not an endorsement for them I'm not getting paid for that I just truly love clay
Nick Rybak (25:27)
You
Yeah, I use that as well. can I agree with you? And what's the most overrated marketing advice you keep hearing?
Joshua Schwartz (25:35)
⁓
chat GBT.
I mean, and I know that's so controversial. Yeah, chat GBT. If you don't know how to code and you don't know how to prompt your chat GBT, it's not going to work for your messaging. It's not going to work for how you're trying to create your content.
Nick Rybak (25:39)
like using it.
Joshua Schwartz (25:52)
you need to know the basics of AI and how to use ChatGPT to make it work for you. You can't just go in there and say, hey, I'm going to send an email to 10 people or to 100 people or to 1,000 people about my new product launch that I'm pushing out there or about my new company.
touchy-be-tees pulls from so many different sources. It's great if you're trying to narrow something down, but if you're trying to do a strategic marketing campaign or strategic messaging and you're looking at your content being driven, it doesn't know your brand, it doesn't know your tone, your voice. You have to prompt it to do that. So right now, do I think it's completely overrated and how people are utilizing it? Because I don't think they're utilizing it efficiently. If you're able to create your own agent, which can take five to 10 minutes to do, and you prompt it and you tell it, hey, here's my brand, here's the tone that we like,
here's the style that we like and then you're using your agent that way, yes, it will work effectively. But if not, it's not valuable for you.
Nick Rybak (26:45)
Yeah.
Joshua Schwartz (26:45)
Yo, you're questioning that one. You're questioning that one.
Nick Rybak (26:48)
⁓ Not really. just remember the quote
from Alex Hormozi who said like, you have to be AI driven and AI driven doesn't mean like, ⁓ HRGPT write me an email. So it's not enough.
Joshua Schwartz (26:58)
Yes, yep, that's so true.
So true.
Nick Rybak (27:02)
Alright, so what is your North Star metric? So the one number you actually run toward.
Joshua Schwartz (27:09)
Yep, pipeline creation. Like, what was the pipeline created? I can look at what's happening at the top of the funnel and I can move it forward, but if it's not bringing me a revenue generation at all, it's not working, it's not successful, my campaign failed. So it's definitely pipeline.
Nick Rybak (27:23)
Yeah, boring answer, but true too.
Joshua Schwartz (27:26)
Yep, I know, I know. can't,
can't, I cannot make that any more fancier than what it is. Yeah, it's pipeline.
Nick Rybak (27:32)
So what does a great B2B marketer know that a mediocre doesn't?
Joshua Schwartz (27:37)
Yeah, I think a great marketer understands their buyer psychology. And an average mediocre marketer just knows and understands marketing tactics.
Nick Rybak (27:49)
What do mean by my syntax?
Joshua Schwartz (27:51)
You know the basics, you know how to run a campaign, you know how to create a drip campaign and nurturing, you know how to do social ads, you know how to do paid marketing in the Google search, you know the basics of marketing tactics. But if you don't know that buyer psychology and how that buyer is thinking, those tactics aren't gonna get you anywhere. It's just that noise, that large-scale noise without strategy.
Nick Rybak (28:15)
So no URLCP again, right?
Joshua Schwartz (28:17)
Yep,
yep, I tried to rephrase it so it wasn't repetitive, but yes, exactly, now you're ICP.
Nick Rybak (28:22)
Got it. So give me your most controversial B2B marketing opinion. Something you would say out loud at a conference and watch people either nod or walk away.
Joshua Schwartz (28:32)
I think most B2B companies don't have a lead problem. They have a relevance problem.
And I think that probably the most controversial thing I can say, because everyone will align to it and say, no, we have a lead gen problem. Something's happening in the lead gen side. No, look at your product, look at what you're positioning. You probably have a relevance problem. You're probably not positioning your product or your platform the way it needs to be. And have I said this at conferences? I absolutely have. So I know it's controversial in that perspective. Do people take offense to it sometimes? They're like, yeah, my product is the best product in the
world or our solution is the best solution we know it is. Well then why are you having lead gen problems?
Nick Rybak (29:13)
Yeah, it
sounds weird. But you know, about the product market fit, I've read a documentation by some venture fund a couple of years ago. And I remember how they describe product market fit is that something that you would definitely know what it is when it's happening. So you would never like...
Joshua Schwartz (29:35)
Yes. Yep.
Nick Rybak (29:39)
question if you found that, you will understand that like right now, immediately. So that's why I think people who have lead gen problems with their products, yeah, that's kind of, as you call it, relevance problem.
Joshua Schwartz (29:52)
Yep.
I think that that's spot on. And that's why as a company, have to be innovative. You have to be fast. You can't be six months behind because you're actually two years behind when you think you're six months behind, because it's going to take you that timeframe to build your product the way it needs to do to test it. You're now solving a past problem when you need to be innovative, know your market and produce for your market what they need in the end and be able to communicate to that saying, Hey, we built this.
We know you need it now, but we built it better because we know what you're going to need in the future. And I'll say, and I'm not giving kudos to my company for this one because I am giving kudos to my company, but Elevent 451 is really, really good at doing that. Our product team knows our market, knows our industry, and it pushes out the product to be that effective. They're really, really good with that, which makes it easy for me from a lead side perspective for the demand gen.
Nick Rybak (30:47)
Yeah, it's, you know, there's always a debate between product and marketing teams like...
It's ⁓ like how it was in the Silicon Valley TV show, like when they talked about sales reps, like why do we need the best sales reps that can sell our product? And he was like, because your product is not that good. Yeah, but they are the best ones. They should probably sell that if they're the best. Yeah, I love that.
Joshua Schwartz (31:09)
Yep. Yep.
Yep, sell the story.
If you can sell this sometimes, folks, sell the story and not the product. And you gotta sell both. You gotta sell both.
Nick Rybak (31:23)
Love that. yeah, and the last question, what's something you've had completely wrong about three marks, like three years ago about marketing and that you now believe is true.
Joshua Schwartz (31:35)
Yeah, three years ago I believed more marketing technology would make both small and large teams more effective. I don't know if that's true anymore. You look at more tools, which means more automation, which means bigger stacks, I believe the opposite now. I think the best marketing today is simplifying your tech stack.
Utilizing it and strategizing it looking at the same signal quality looking at messaging Understanding the buyer going back to those three areas that kept saying throughout this whole chat today Like you don't need 20 different tools and processes to utilize those tools think of the integrations that are gonna have to occur I think of like the time your your rev ops teams are gonna have to Take this tool and integrate it into this tool and integrate it into this tool and enrich it through this tool and put it into your CRM by the time it gets to
CRM, like it can take a day or two and you're now stalling in your messaging. Keep it simple. know in high school and college my dad always said my best way to do the best work is to keep it simple stupid. I'm coming back to that basic now in marketing. Keep it simple. Don't be
over personalized. Don't be over dramatic with it. Just keep something simple. And that's aligning to me now even from the tech stack side. And we did cut our tech stack down here at Element. We looked at what tools we were utilizing and we've narrowed them down so we're being more effective in utilizing the tools and the features they have more effectively.
Nick Rybak (33:01)
Thank you for being here. It was Joshua Schwartz. Thank you for your wisdom. yeah, make sure to follow Joshua on LinkedIn and please subscribe to the podcast and see you in the next one.
Joshua Schwartz (33:10)
Thank you everyone.