Content Amplified

The old gated-ebook playbook stopped working around 2018, and slapping AI on top of it isn't going to bring it back. In this episode of Content to Close, Matt Zelasko, founder of growth agency Radish and self-described "Tom DeLonge of RevOps," makes the case that most teams are using AI to do the same broken things faster, then blaming AI for the falling engagement that was already happening. Matt walks through why content is saturated, why "intelligence" is the wrong word for what an LLM actually does, and why understanding how the technology works (it's speculating what comes next) is...

The content that actually sells often gets rejected in the first round of brand approval. In this episode of Content Amplified, Chelsea Clark, founder of Momfluence, shares what six years of running creator campaigns for over 500 brands has taught her about the gap between content that performs and content that gets approved. Chelsea explains why influencers are actually terrible at making polished ads, why the "speak to your audience like a friend" line in every brief almost never survives review, and why 80% of influencer-driven revenue never shows up in attribution software. She breaks down how to position creator work...

Most brands treat influencer marketing like an ad buy. Hand over some money, get a sponsored post, hope for awareness. In this episode of Content Amplified, Justin Levy, Director of Social Media, Influencer Marketing and Community at Nerdio, breaks down what an actual creator partnership looks like and why so many B2B teams leave pipeline on the table. Justin explains why the "only work with nano influencers" advice misses the point, how to stack a single partnership across LinkedIn, TikTok, newsletters, podcasts, and even internal sales trainings, and the per-creator UTM setup that ties revenue back to individual...

Personalization is still reactive, and that is why it stopped working. In this episode of Content Amplified, Katie Carroll, VP of Product Strategy at Businessolver, makes the case for moving past variable tags and behavioral triggers into anticipation: helping people before they know what to ask. Katie walks through findings from Businessolver's eighth annual Benefits Insights Report, including the counterintuitive idea that "quiet" (no clicks, no engagement, no support tickets) might be the real success metric, and how an in-house AI hit 91% instant resolution by reading the path a user is already on. She uses concrete examples (an HSA...

Most marketing teams hand sales a stack of brochures and never hear back. In this episode of Content to Close, Nat Norris, VP of Marketing and Customer Success at Model 1 Commercial Vehicles, breaks down how his team gets out of the trophy case of unused white papers and into the rooms where deals are won and lost. Nat walks through how he embeds marketers inside the company's three sales segments (public, commercial, and retail), why he forces his team into weekly quote review and deal loss meetings, and the data hygiene work he had to do in Power BI...

Stop chasing the customer and make the customer chase you. In this episode of Content Amplified, Trisha Navidzade, VP of Marketing at DZYNE Technologies, breaks down why most marketing KPIs are "KPI fluff" and how to swap booth-traffic and view counts for revenue-driven metrics that sales actually cares about. Trisha explains how she flips the usual sales-and-marketing conversation: instead of asking sales what brand awareness they need, she asks what's blocking them from closing, then designs press, content, and digital campaigns around those specific blockers. She walks through why press is her number-one source of qualified leads in a...

When your G2 category has 97 listings and the average is 75, sounding like everyone else is a death sentence. In this episode of Content Amplified, Mike McGee, Director of Product Marketing at Vantaca, explains why he's building his PMM team to look less like a traditional org chart and more like a digital newsroom, with product marketers assigned to specific customer roles the way reporters are assigned to beats. Mike walks through the inspiration (Nilay Patel's Decoder, the Brian Chesky episode on how Airbnb blended product, PMM, and program management), the internal precedent at Vantaca (support and implementation already reorganized...

Nobody wants to know about the space-age polymer in your product. They want to know what it's going to do for them. In this episode of Content Amplified, independent creative director Orin Bliss Brecht draws on a career that started at Spin Magazine and ran through Victoria's Secret Direct, the Foundry at Time Inc., Hearst, Pace Communications, and Choreograph to make the case that demystifying complex topics is the marketer's real job. Orin explains why illustrators make the best translators of complicated subjects (they aren't subject matter experts, so if they get it, the audience will), why the B2...

Most deals don't fall apart at pricing. They fall apart because trust was never built in the first place. In this Content to Close episode, Tamara Asselta, founder of Stratas Consulting, breaks down why trust is the most crucial skill any revenue team can work on, and how to build it both externally with prospects and internally across sales, marketing, product, and services. Tamara shares her "listening to understand" framework, the difference between asking what tool a client wants versus what's keeping them up at night, and a real client story where she rebuilt a sales-to-services handoff by co-creating...

Marketing exists to generate pipeline and create bookings, full stop. In this episode of Content Amplified, Mike Madden, VP of Marketing at Boomi, makes the case that the marketers who win are the ones who understand every part of the revenue engine, not just the part they own. Mike draws on his years running demand gen at Marketo and then across the Americas at Adobe to explain why "pretty" content is the fastest way to lose your headcount, and why a five-out-of-eight lead score on a paid search infographic can matter more than another glossy asset. He shares the...

When anyone can produce decent content in minutes, "good enough" stops being a differentiator. In this episode of Content Amplified, Julio Ramirez Berroa, a marketing operations leader at a Connecticut-based lighting manufacturer, argues that the next phase of AI (he traces it from machine learning to generative to agentic to what he calls "directive") will commoditize content quality and force marketers to compete on experience instead. Julio walks through how B2B teams can turn customers from spectators into participants using 3D product visualization, WebGL environments, and tools like Twinmotion and TouchDesigner, several of which are free or low...

Most marketers still treat social media like a megaphone. Austin Price treats it like a nervous system. In this episode of Content Amplified, Austin, Director of Social Media at H&L Agency in Oakland, walks through how he runs creative as a hypothesis and lets data confirm or kill it before a campaign scales. He explains why engagement rate is his default metric (and how it gets gamed), the 24-hour read he uses to decide whether to pivot or lean in, and why a 100 million person reach against a 5 million person addressable market should embarrass everyone in the room...

Most people use AI like a chatbot: one short prompt, a back-and-forth, and a mediocre output that gets worse the longer the thread runs. In this Content to Close episode, Richmond Taylor breaks down a smarter way to think about AI across the whole go-to-market motion. Richmond uses the Feynman technique to simplify go-to-market into three connected functions, sales is how you speak, marketing is how you look, and customer success is how you get the second date, and explains where AI can take over 80 percent of the work in each. He digs into why prompt engineering is the...

Speed is not strategy. In this episode of Content Amplified, Amanda Landsaw, CMO at Endeavor B2B (a marketing, media, and intelligence organization with 90+ brands across 16 verticals), explains why pumping out more AI-generated content does not translate into relevance, differentiation, or trust. Amanda argues that "crap input equals crap output" and walks through what it actually takes to use AI well: developing an almost intimate relationship with the model, layering prompts to peel back the onion, and treating point of view as the one thing AI cannot replicate. She also covers how buyer behavior is shifting as people use...

Most teams still treat customer marketing as the place that writes case studies and chases logos for the website. In this episode of Content Amplified, Antu Buck, who built the customer marketing pillar from scratch at Gigamon and previously led programs at McAfee and Intel, lays out a much bigger blueprint. Antu walks through the three pillars she uses to run customer marketing as a growth engine: customer advocacy (testimonials, case studies, reference programs), community engagement (executive briefings, advisory boards, social), and customer lifecycle management (onboarding, renewal, expansion). She explains why she refuses to let brand teams script customer...

When enablement gets treated like a help desk, sales requests training, enablement delivers it, everyone feels good, and the revenue needle never moves. In this episode of Content Amplified, Christa Fisher, Head of Sales Training and Development with two decades in sales, enablement, and L&D, explains how to break out of that reactive cycle and turn enablement into an actual growth driver. Christa walks through her race car driver analogy for separating training from enablement, the one diagnostic question that changes everything ("what has to change in live deals to drive more revenue?"), and why sticky training beats...

Most sales enablement teams are stuck running training programs when they should be running a revenue execution system. In this episode of Content to Close, Robin Schweitzer, a Revenue & Sales Enablement Executive with a background that spans carrying a bag, running marketing, and leading enablement, makes the case for pulling enablement out of the classroom and into live deals. Robin lays out the pillars she installs when she walks into a new role (rep readiness, pipeline management, deal execution), explains why SKO momentum dies a month later without micro-trainings tied to real deals, and shares the signal that helped...

70 to 80 percent of jobs never make it to a job board, and over 65 percent of hires still come through networking and referrals. In this episode of Content Amplified, Katie Fortunato, EVP of Platform and Innovation and co-founder of Hire Innovations, breaks down what AI has actually changed about hiring and what both job seekers and employers should be doing right now. Katie explains the rise of "bot on bot" application activity, why mass-applying on LinkedIn is a dead end, and how job seekers can use the Ikigai framework plus account-based marketing tactics to target the right roles. She also...

Awareness, opens, and clicks are vanity metrics, and most marketing teams are still measuring content as if they aren't. In this episode of Content Amplified, Justin Chappell, Head of Digital Strategy, CX and Operations, breaks down how to connect content to the numbers that actually matter: gross revenue retention, net revenue retention, renewal rates, and time to value. Justin walks through the three places content programs typically break down, why a "peanut butter" health-score approach fails customers, and how predictive engagement models beat old-school drip campaigns. He shares his long form / short form / micro-learning framework for building a content...

Email is saturated, and your best content is stuck behind a screen. In this episode of Content Amplified, Kris Rudeegraap, Co-CEO of Sendoso, walks through how to take the digital content already performing well for your team and put it in front of prospects as a physical mailer they actually open. Kris explains how to shortlist your highest-performing assets using sales enablement platforms, web analytics, and paid ad data, then how to repurpose that content into formats worth mailing: Mad Libs books, scratch-off insight cards, workbooks, video mailers, trading cards, even quarterly printed magazines. He lays out where physical...

Most discovery calls fall apart for the same reason: the seller asks surface-level questions, bounces between topics, and then defaults to pitch mode the second things get quiet. In this Content to Close episode, Nick Lopez walks through a discovery framework that fixes all of it. Nick teaches the "pillar" approach, where every question you ask drills deeper into one topic before moving on, so you actually uncover the pain instead of skimming past it. He explains the 80/20 listening rule, why personal pain matters more than company pain, and the specific questions that get prospects to sell themselves on...

Data is only interesting if it tells you what to do next. 

In this episode of Content Amplified, Kirsten Von Busch, Director of Product Marketing at Experian Automotive, shares how her team turns one of the richest datasets in the auto industry into content that marketers, dealers, lenders, and OEMs actually use. Kirsten walks through her "treat it like a science experiment" approach: start with a hypothesis, let the data confirm or kill it, then build a narrative people can act on. She explains when brand messaging still matters, how partner stories add proof to the data, w...

For twenty years, marketers wrote content to rank. We told ourselves we were writing for users, but most of us were really writing for Google. That playbook is breaking. In this episode of Content Amplified, Rich Missey, a 20-year SEO veteran who has led search at Hyatt, Cars.com, Groupon, and Whirlpool, walks through what's actually changing, what it means for your content, and what marketers should be doing right now. Rich explains query fan out, why informational content is getting swallowed whole inside AI overviews, and how structure (not just words) is becoming the thing that determines whether...

Most B2B marketing is a sea of gray. Same content. Same formats. Same safe ideas. In this episode of Content Amplified, Logan Freedman, Global Head of SEO at ManyChat, shares how he built a career out of standing out in industries everyone else calls boring. Logan walks through how he defines creativity (hint: it starts with having fun), how to spot when your team has stalled out, and the ideation habits that keep ideas flowing. He also tells the story of how he swabbed Austin City Limits for fecal matter to land national press coverage for a lawn...

In this episode of Content Amplified (Content to Close special addition), host Ben Ard sits down with Jessika Ward, a sales enablement leader with 13 years of experience building enablement programs from the ground up at SaaS startups ranging from 45 to 1,000+ employees.

Jessika challenges one of the biggest instincts in enablement: the urge to create more. She makes the case that enablement should operate as a performance management function, not a content factory, and that the best enablement content feels like a shortcut, not homework. It should find sellers when they're already stuck and help them move forward...

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard sits down with Frank Pasquine, Marketing Director at DoubleVerify and author of the newly released novel The Prince of New York. Frank has spent nearly 20 years in marketing across ad tech, entertainment, and agencies, but publishing his own book forced him to see content strategy from an entirely new angle.

Frank shares the story of how he went from studying economics at Fordham to screenwriting at NYU, nearly beat Gossip Girl to the punch with a pilot at William Morris, and eventually built a full marketing career while...

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard talks with Allison Myers, Director of Marketing and Communications at Fives Interlogistics, about how identifying your professional superpower changes everything, from your personal brand to how you hire, how you show up on LinkedIn, and how you cut through the noise in B2B marketing.

Allison shares a simple three-question framework for finding what you're actually great at, and explains why your superpower shows up in patterns, not job titles. She breaks down how she blends personal and professional brand on LinkedIn without crossing lines, why consistency beats...

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard sits down with Natalie Cunningham, SVP of Marketing at Data Axle, to tackle the tension every marketing team feels: you're producing more content than ever, but pipeline isn't moving.

Natalie breaks down why the constant pressure to produce is actually the problem, not the solution. She introduces the concept of audience intelligence, going beyond personas and firmographics to understand the whole human inside your buying committee, including what generation they are, how they identify professionally, and what they care about on Saturday morning, not just Monday afternoon.

Most companies still treat sales enablement like a training department. Jason Gwilliam thinks that's exactly why their reps take too long to close. With 25 years in healthcare and med-tech, Jason has built enablement programs from the ground up at companies like Abbott, and he's seen firsthand what happens when enablement is treated as a true revenue system. In this episode, he breaks down how to measure enablement's ROI through time-to-competency and sales cycle compression, why marketing alignment is critically undervalued, and how AI coaching tools should help reps improve without being punitive. He also shares why fractional enablement roles...

You can create the greatest content in the world, but if it shows up on the wrong channel at the wrong time, it still falls flat. In this episode, lifecycle marketing expert Leslie Bartley makes the case for treating content as guidance rather than just marketing. She walks through how to match message urgency to the right channel, how to keep the human touch while scaling through automation, and her "core four" metrics framework for knowing whether your content is actually landing. If you're blasting and hoping for the best, Leslie's approach will sharpen everything about your distribution strategy.<...

What if you treated every digital event like a live television broadcast instead of just another webinar? Roisin Hunt spent a decade in Irish television and radio before bringing that production-first mindset into B2B marketing, and the results speak for themselves. In this episode, Roisin explains why dead air is a crime, why production quality doesn't require a massive budget, and how to turn your customer stories into compelling content that practically writes itself. She also shares how her conference stage has become a year-round content pipeline. If your virtual events feel flat, this conversation will change how...

In a world where AI can produce polished content at scale, audiences are craving something different: realness. In this episode, content marketer Marisa Lather breaks down why the "anti-AI aesthetic" is gaining momentum and how brands can close the trust gap by putting real humans front and center. From leveraging creators and employee voices to rethinking how you measure personality-driven campaigns, Marisa shares practical ways to humanize your brand starting today. If your content feels too corporate or too perfect, this episode is your wake-up call.

Marisa Lather is a content marketer whose work sits at the...

In this episode of Content to Close, host Ben Ard is joined by Claire Scull, founder of ORDO Consultants, to explore the powerful connection between seller curiosity and winning business. Claire breaks down how the best salespeople use natural curiosity to deeply understand prospects — and how that directly increases close rates. She walks through two key sales frameworks — BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) and SciPAB (Situation, Complication, Implication, Position, Action, Benefit) — and explains how each serves different stages of the sales cycle. Claire emphasizes the critical importance of continuous discovery and revalidation throughout the opportunity lifecycle, sharing a real-world cautio...

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard is joined by Justin Steinman, CMO of ModMed, for a masterclass on marketing organizational design and how it fuels a powerful content engine. Justin breaks down his philosophy of structuring marketing teams like a free market economy — aligning product marketers with product managers, specialty marketers with general managers, and demand gen managers with sales segments (even tying their bonuses to sales quota achievement). He explains the critical role of corporate marketing as the unifying brand voice and introduces his "steak and sizzle" framework: product marketing delivers the substance while the co...

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard chats with Tuesday Hagiwara about a side of AI that most marketers are overlooking — using it for high-level strategic research and trend analysis rather than just content creation. Tuesday walks through her process of identifying mega trends using the PESTLE framework (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) and how she leverages tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Miro to consume and synthesize massive amounts of research — including 160+ pieces of thought leadership and 60+ reports. She explains how grounding your LLM conversations in deep research produces dramatically better campaign ideas and content strategies. Tues...

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard sits down with Tiffanie Reynolds, owner of MARCOM Consultants, to explore why trust-driven content comes from real people — not polished corporate messaging. Tiffanie shares why subject matter experts and authentic customer stories outperform traditional brand content, citing research that storytelling is 20 times more memorable than corporate messaging and that consumers trust SMEs 63% more than corporate brands. She highlights brands like Tampa International Airport and Wendy's as examples of companies doing human-centric content right, while calling out the professional services industry for playing it too safe. Tiffanie also discusses the role of...

One fumbled call with a hot prospect. One honest conversation in a weekly check-in. One sales enablement leader who refused to let it happen again.

Cassie Watkins didn't just create a battle card after her BDR struggled to differentiate against a competitor — she listened to the call, put herself in his shoes, and built something most enablement teams have never thought to create: a choose-your-own-adventure playbook that mirrors the actual flow of a real sales conversation. In this episode of Content to Close, Cassie walks through the whole story.

What you'll learn in this ep...