Demand Decoded: Marketing, Demand Generation & Business Growth

Account-based marketing is one of the most effective ways to win high-value accounts when you build it as a system. Dan shares a practical ABM strategy blueprint, from deciding whether it suits your business to turning intent data into timely plays.

He walks through a five-step framework (qualify, define, connect, activate, measure) that gives every stage a clear job. Your total addressable market tells you which approach fits: one-to-many, one-to-few or fully bespoke one-to-one. So when does account-based marketing work best? When deal values are high, sales cycles are long, five or more people sit in the buying group and sales have the capacity to follow up on signals.

Dan shows how to make your CRM the spine of the programme, layer signals into scoring thresholds and let data trigger every play. LinkedIn ads, sequences, gifting, private dining and your podcast all help you earn a place on the day one shortlist. For ABM measurement, he maps leading, middle and lagging indicators through to pipeline, win rate and deal size.

Essential listening for marketing managers ready to launch ABM with confidence and show the board real pipeline.

What we cover:

• What separates a true ABM programme from a list of target accounts
• Why account-based marketing works best as a shared commercial strategy
• How your total addressable market shows which ABM approach fits
• What makes ABM a strong fit: deal value, sales cycle, buying group, capacity
• How to invest across one-to-many, one-to-few and one-to-one ABM
• Why making your CRM the spine connects intent data, outreach and reporting
• How scoring thresholds let data trigger the right ABM play at the right time
• What to measure at each stage, from engagement scores to win rate and deal size

Chapters:
(00:00) What account-based marketing really is
(06:56) The five-step ABM framework
(09:03) Is ABM the right fit for you?
(13:20) One-to-many vs one-to-one ABM
(16:28) Connecting intent data to your CRM
(24:42) Triggering plays with data, not dates
(32:35) How to measure ABM at account level
(36:27) Getting every ABM stage right

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Most marketers in PE-backed businesses can’t explain how their work drives PE value creation through its three levers: EBITDA growth, a higher exit multiple and paying down debt. Dan and Josh show where sales and marketing teams make the biggest difference, and when.

They start with the first 100 days, when PE firms look for revenue that doesn’t need a sales cycle, such as price increases, tighter discounting, upfront billing and cleaner CRM reporting. Then the focus shifts to expanding your existing customer base and building qualified pipeline instead of reporting vanity metrics, including why big trade show spend so often produces leads but no pipeline.

On the exit multiple, they explain why quality of revenue, forecast accuracy and consistent inbound demand count for more than one standout campaign or star seller. Why? Because a PE firm is buying a repeatable process, not a hero. They finish with how commission structures and payment terms affect cash.

Essential listening for marketing and sales leaders in PE-backed businesses, or those preparing for investment, who want to speak the language of value creation.

What we cover:

• What the three levers of PE value creation are, and why multiples are unpredictable
• How PE firms lift EBITDA in the first 100 days without a sales cycle
• Why a 10% price increase is often worth the risk of losing customers
• Why expanding existing accounts is the fastest route to EBITDA growth
• Why marketing in a PE-backed business must report pipeline, not likes or leads
• Why a small booth at a big trade show won’t build your brand
• How forecast accuracy and founder reliance shape your exit multiple
• How paying multi-year sales commission upfront drains cash meant for debt

Chapters:
(00:00) Intro
(02:58) The three levers of PE value creation
(07:44) Quick wins in the first 100 days
(18:14) Expansion, pipeline and trade shows
(28:25) Efficiency metrics as a shared language
(31:18) How to raise your exit multiple
(41:24) Sales commission, cash and debt
(45:54) Two things to fix next week

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You probably understand your CMO’s metrics. But the revenue metrics your CRO, CEO and board are judged on are a different scorecard, and knowing them, from pipeline velocity to the Rule of 40, shows how your work moves the numbers leadership cares about.

Josh walks Dan through the numbers, from net revenue retention and forecast accuracy to pipeline velocity, with benchmarks for what good and great look like. He also explains why CAC must include every sales cost, not just marketing spend.

Then it’s on to the investor’s view. Josh shows how debt boosts fund returns, why cash conversion and days sales outstanding matter, and why the value creation bridge should rely on EBITDA growth rather than multiples that rise and fall with the market.

Essential listening for marketing managers who want to understand how leadership and investors judge performance, and why decisions get made the way they do.

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A strong quarter feels great until nobody can explain where it came from or how to repeat it. Predictable pipeline is what turns those lucky quarters into repeatable growth, and gives leadership a number they can plan hiring, budget and sales targets around.

In this solo episode, Dan explains what pipeline predictability really means: a number, a tolerance range and a track record. He shows why hitting your target once isn't enough, and why even beating your forecast by too much counts as a miss.

From there, he walks through the CRM foundations that make pipeline forecasting reliable, three layers of pipeline source data, and how self-reported attribution and split funnel analysis reveal which channels create pipeline that converts. He also shares how to choose the one to three channels to bet on, set test windows that match your sales cycle and use decision rules to avoid tactic hopping.

Essential listening for marketing and growth leaders who want a pipeline number they can trust, plus a quick exercise to see where they stand this week.

What we cover

• What predictable pipeline means: a number, a range and a track record
• The CRM hygiene that undermines pipeline forecasting
• Three layers of pipeline source data, including self-reported attribution
• Using split funnel analysis to find the sources that convert
• Setting test windows and decision rules to stop tactic hopping
• A one-hour exercise to see where your pipeline comes from today

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Generating plenty of inbound leads but not seeing pipeline turn into revenue? The issue may sit further upstream than your sales team.

In this solo episode, Amanda McGrath, Blend's Director of Growth Consulting, shares what she learned moving from customer success into new business sales, and what it revealed about lead quality, ICP and the link between marketing and sales. With up to 12 new inbound enquiries a week, opportunities stacked up and it became hard to spot the best fit leads. The fix was hard triage: ruling out poor fit enquiries before discovery calls even happen.

Amanda explains why win rate is a downstream symptom of positioning and ICP decisions, and how redefining Blend's ICP around private equity backed businesses improved both triage and the quality of sales conversations. She also covers why the service instinct to say yes to every brief can backfire in sales, and why expertise is what prospects really buy.

A useful listen for marketing managers who want their demand generation to create better fit pipeline, not just more leads, and a clearer view of what happens after the handover to sales.

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If your LinkedIn strategy still revolves around the company page, your content is reaching very few people. Organic company page reach has fallen sharply, while personal profiles now take the lion's share of the feed and earn far higher engagement. So which LinkedIn post formats are driving reach and engagement right now?

In this solo episode, Dan draws on recent algorithm research to break down the five formats performing best on personal profiles: unpolished images and selfies, scripted conversations built on real tensions, raw product demos, original data and LinkedIn articles. He explains the algorithm signal behind each one, from early comments to saves and sends, and why a slightly wonky event photo will beat an infographic that took a day to design.

He also covers how to stop these formats tipping into cliché or performative posting, where smaller teams can find original data, and why LinkedIn articles are becoming a route into AI search citations.

A practical listen for B2B marketers building personal brands across their business who want LinkedIn engagement that turns into lasting trust, not just impressions.

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Dan's back from HubSpot's Unbound with a recap full of energy, insight and practical takeaways, starting with Demand Decoded's first ever live show recording on the main stage.

He breaks down the panel he ran with HubSpot's Kyle Denhoff and Asja Frost on The Loop, HubSpot's framework for modern B2B marketing, built around expressing, tailoring, amplifying and evolving your message. Dan shares why dropping gated forms from LinkedIn content can multiply your reach, and a sharper way to judge whether your strategy is really paying off.

He also unpacks the biggest opportunity that came up in conversation after conversation on the show floor: bringing marketing, sales and finance data together into one source of truth, and what that unlocks for teams who take it on. He wraps up with the standout ideas from the event itself, including the activation that had queues forming at the booth all week.

Great listening for any marketer after fresh inspiration and practical ideas for their next event or marketing strategy.

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When private equity buys your business, everything about your go-to-market has to change, and most marketing and sales leaders aren't ready for it. In this episode, Dan is joined by Josh, who brings hands-on experience from both sides of PE deals, to break down what a private equity-backed GTM transformation actually looks like once the deal closes.

They explain why recurring revenue suddenly becomes the only metric that matters, how CAC payback period reveals whether your go-to-market model is capital efficient, and why marketing needs to hold the line when finance tries to force attribution into a simple formula. They also cover why disconnected marketing and sales systems put your job at risk during due diligence, and why over-investing in Google Ads because it's "measurable" often leads to bad decisions.

If you work in marketing or sales at a PE-backed B2B company, or think you might be acquired soon, this is a practical look at the mandate you'll be operating under, the metrics your board will actually care about, and how to prepare before the pressure hits.

Essential listening for anyone navigating go-to-market under private equity ownership.

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Most B2B marketers are still guessing when it comes to AI search. Some are pouring effort into listicles that never get cited. Others don't realise that promoting bigger competitors in "best of" lists can push their own brand out of the answer entirely.

In this episode, Dan and Phil unpack how large language models actually retrieve information, including the "fan out" process that determines what gets cited and what gets ignored. They break down real examples from Blend and its clients, covering listicles, pillar pages, PPC landing pages, and product-led blog content, showing exactly which structures are earning citations right now and why saturation levels change the right approach for different markets. They also cover how to measure AEO properly, and why YouTube is fast becoming a critical citation source.

Essential listening for any B2B marketer trying to move beyond guesswork and build an AEO strategy backed by evidence, not assumption.

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Pipeline not moving? Most marketers reach straight for the campaign, blaming channels, budgets, or creative. Dan argues that's almost never where the real problem sits.

In this solo episode, Dan runs through a five point diagnostic for working out why demand generation isn't converting into pipeline, checking each stage in the order a buyer actually experiences it rather than jumping to tactics. The five checks cover product market fit, the inseparable trio of positioning, messaging and audience, mental availability and multi channel distribution, website conversion, and the handoff from marketing to sales. Along the way, he shares a real example from Blend's own LinkedIn ads strategy and a case study showing how fixing the sales handoff lifted lead to conversation rates by 50%.

Essential listening for any B2B marketer staring at underwhelming pipeline numbers and instinctively blaming the wrong thing.

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We're resharing this episode of Demand Decoded because we think it's worth watching again.

Looking to improve demand generation in your business, but not sure where to start?

In this episode of Demand Decoded, we strip things back to basics and explore a comprehensive approach to enhancing demand generation across all stages of the buyer journey.

From initial demand creation to final conversion, tune in for practical, actionable advice on improving demand gen.

Click here to get your free AEO visibility audit

Click here to subscribe to the new Demand Decoded YouTube channel.

Click here to see how we can help you drive demand for your business.

Positioning is the most overlooked fundamental in B2B marketing, and it's the one thing everything else depends on. Get it wrong and no channel, campaign or piece of content can compensate. Get it right and the rest of your marketing engine runs far more efficiently.

Dan and Phil sit down with Anthony Pierri, co-founder of Fletch, the positioning and messaging consultancy that's worked with close to 600 B2B companies, to unpack why positioning is so hard to get right and so easy to overlook. Anthony shares the simple test he uses to spot weak messaging (would a competitor claim the same thing?), the three legitimate strategies for category positioning, and why having six "ideal" customer profiles defeats the point of the word ideal. He also explains how large language models now read and rank your messaging, and why clarity matters more than ever in an AI-first search world.

Essential listening for any marketing leader who suspects positioning is the thing holding everything else back.

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Most B2B marketing teams pour their budget into new logo acquisition while ignoring the growth channel already sitting inside their business: their existing customers. Sentiment gets reduced to a single NPS score sent to the wrong person, and by the time an account looks at risk, it's often too late.

In this episode, Dan and Josh unpack why customer sentiment needs to be measured continuously, across every stakeholder, not just the day to day contact. They explore how first party signals (usage, tickets, engagement) and third party intent data (hierarchy changes, layoffs, competitor research) combine to reveal churn risk and expansion opportunities long before they surface in a renewal call. They also get into why unnamed case studies do nothing for credibility, and how building authentic, mutually valuable advocacy programmes turns happy customers into your most powerful marketing asset.

Essential listening for anyone building a customer marketing or customer success strategy that's about more than ticking a box.

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At the start of the year we made three bold predictions about the channels that would define B2B marketing in 2026. Now it's time to mark our own homework.

Dan and Phil react to their 2026 predictions on events, YouTube and AI search, checking what actually played out against what they called back then. They discuss why small, curated dinners are outperforming big exhibitions, why YouTube is driving volume but not always the right buyers, and why AI search looks set to overtake Google for high intent leads within the month. They also share the tactical shift needed as listicle content becomes saturated, plus how they're using HubSpot and Claude together to prove which content is genuinely influencing buyers.

Essential listening for any B2B marketer who wants an honest gut check on which predictions are holding up, and which need rethinking.

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Traffic is collapsing across B2B. Some brands are down 50 to 60% year on year, yet pipeline and revenue keep climbing regardless. If your dashboard still treats traffic as the leading indicator of success, you're tracking the wrong thing, and you're far from the only one getting this wrong.

In part one of this mini-series, Dan and Josh tear through the chaos list: why answer engine optimisation has gone from nice-to-have to non-negotiable, why the old lead waterfall no longer holds up, and why long-form video and podcasts are now doing the discovery work blogs used to. They also tackle the conversation most CMOs are avoiding: disconnected systems between marketing, sales and customer success that leave leadership flying blind on revenue, and why net new logos can't be the only number that matters anymore.

Essential listening for anyone in B2B marketing leadership trying to work out what's actually broken in their go-to-market, and what to fix first.

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Every B2B marketer is being told ChatGPT ads are the next big channel, but almost nobody's actually run them. There are no keywords, no search volume data, and no way to see what buyers are typing into the chat that triggers your ad. So how do you target, and how do you know it's working?

In this solo episode, Dan shares Blend's real testing data from months of running ChatGPT ads, covering the campaign structure, the shift from keywords to context hints, and why the simplest, most literal ad copy is consistently outperforming anything clever. He breaks down real cost-per-click figures against Google Ads, the platform's biggest current weakness, and why conversions are still lagging behind other channels despite promising click-through rates.

Essential listening for any B2B marketer with test budget to spend and a reason to get ahead of a channel that's about to become unavoidable.

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Your sales team could be pitching your competitor's narrative right now, and they wouldn't even know it. That's the risk hiding inside AI adoption. As more of your business relies on ChatGPT and Claude to write proposals, RFPs and content, without any shared context or governance, the gap between what's true about your brand and what's actually being published grows wider every day.

In this episode, recorded live on LinkedIn, Dan and Josh break down exactly how to fix this. They unpack the data behind the problem (63% of B2B marketers say AI is increasing noise, not differentiation) and explain why cloud projects and custom GPTs only patch the issue rather than solve it. Then they demo Blend Core, a governed knowledge base that plugs your ICPs, tone of voice, case studies and convictions straight into any AI tool, so every output stays consistent, on-brand and actually sounds like you.

Essential listening for any marketing or sales leader scaling AI usage without a governance plan in place.

Want to see how BlendCore keeps your brand's voice consistent everywhere your team uses AI? Find out more: blendb2b.com/blendcore

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Most B2B marketers think persuasion is instinct. It isn't. It's psychology, and most brands are getting it wrong without realising why their messaging falls flat while competitors' sticks.

In this episode, Dan sits down with Phill Agnew, host of Nudge, to unpack the behavioural science principles hiding behind some of the biggest marketing wins in history. They cover why Zoom beat GoToMeeting by saying less, not more (the goal dilution effect), why Apple never mentioned megabytes and instead sold "1,000 songs in your pocket" (concrete phrases), and why anchoring a scary price before the real one makes buyers say yes. They also dig into the human-to-human connection principle: why Banksy hides behind anonymity, why Lush sticks employee names on products, and what that means for faceless B2B brands trying to build trust.

Essential listening for any B2B marketer who wants their messaging to actually stick, not just sound clever.

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Most B2B businesses are unknowingly marketing for their competitors. They invest in content that educates the market, builds awareness of a problem, and creates real demand, then watch the majority of that demand flow straight to the category leaders already occupying the most mindshare. This is the duplication of purchase law in action, and it's costing businesses far more budget than they realise.

In this episode, Dan and Amanda break down why this happens and what to do about it. They explore the trap of leading with the problem rather than your answer to it, how to define a value proposition that is genuinely yours rather than the sum of your parts, and why partner marketing amplifies this risk more than almost any other channel. They also dig into category-aware versus category-unaware audiences, the role of authentic personal brand in cutting through, and why clarity of positioning is the single biggest unlock for most B2B teams.

Essential listening for any marketer or business leader who suspects their campaigns are doing more for the competition than for their own pipeline.

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Most B2B teams buying intent data are either over-trusting it or barely using it at all. They're treating weak signals as buying intent, spamming entire lists off the back of a topic search, and wondering why response rates look like cold outbound. The tool isn't the problem, the way it's being operationalised is.

In this episode, Dan and Phil cut through the vendor hype and get into what intent data can and can't actually tell you. They cover first party versus third party intent, the right way to build LinkedIn audiences from intent signals, using company news triggers that map to real buying moments, intent-triggered account reactivation, and how AI prospecting agents are changing the outbound motion, without removing the need for a decent offer.

Essential listening for any B2B marketer or revenue team trying to get real return from their intent data investment, not just a more expensive cold list.

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Click here to see how we can help you drive demand for your business.