Demand Decoded: Demand Generation & Business Growth

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

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. 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 .

Most B2B businesses are still hiring and structuring their teams the way they did a decade ago, more headcount to hit more targets, more layers between marketing, sales, and customer success. That model is already breaking. In this episode, Dan and Josh map out what the GTM organisation actually looks like in the AI era: fewer people, more senior, with entirely new roles emerging, the Growth Architect, the Brand Knowledge Steward, the Agentic Operations Lead. They get into how every function changes, from content and demand gen through to BDRs, AEs, and customer success, why human-to-AI ratios are shifting fast, and what governance has to do with whether any of it works. Essential listening for revenue leaders, heads of marketing, and anyone trying to figure out whether their current team structure will still make sense in two years' time. 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 .

Most B2B content operations don't fail because of a lack of effort, they fail because they were never built on the right foundations. Jumping straight to "let's start a podcast" or "we should post more on LinkedIn" before answering the harder questions about point of view, ICP, and channel strategy is where most teams go wrong. In this episode, Dan and Phil break down what it actually takes to build a content engine that scales. They cover how to extract genuine insight from subject matter experts (without asking them to write newsletters), why video has become the non-negotiable starting point for a modern content strategy, how to repurpose long-form content into a connected multi-channel system, and why consistency at scale now depends on having a single source of truth for your AI outputs. Essential listening for B2B marketers who know content should be driving pipeline, but are stuck figuring out how to make the engine run. 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 .

89% of B2B buyers are using generative AI to research vendors. 60% of searches now end without a click. And most shortlists are formed before anyone picks up the phone. If your marketing still treats every buyer the same way, you're not just losing deals. You're being cut from the list before the race has even started. In this episode, Dan is joined by Josh Bouk to break down why procurement-led and economic buyer-led journeys demand completely different playbooks. They cover how to engineer your presence into the day-one shortlist, why marketing and sales teams need to stop lobbing leads over the wall and start building a genuinely connected buyer experience, and the specific tactics that make you easier to buy from at every stage. Essential listening for B2B marketing and sales leaders who want to build a revenue process that maps to how buyers actually buy today. 89% of B2B buyers now use generative AI in research: https://www.forrester.com/report/b2b-buyer-adoption-of-generative-ai/RES181769 60% of searches end without a click: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2026/03/02/the-zero-click-economy-why-60-of-searches-end-without-a-click-and-what-ceos-should-do-about-it/ 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 .

Website traffic is down, traditional SEO metrics are losing their meaning, and most teams are either not measuring their AEO performance at all or drowning in data they don't know what to do with. In this solo episode, Dan breaks down how to build an AEO measurement framework that goes beyond vanity metrics. From choosing the right prompts to track, to analysing your citation data for strategic insight, to tying AI visibility to pipeline and revenue, this episode gives you a practical system you can actually use. Essential listening for B2B marketers trying to make sense of AI search and prove its impact on the business. HubSpot State of AEO report: https://hubspot-state-of-aeo-report-web-view.lovable.app/ How to build an AEO strategy: https://youtu.be/kSM8TvmFAwo 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 .

Your PPC dashboards are all red, but your campaigns aren't the problem. In this episode, Dan and Phil unpack why paid search performance is declining across the board, and why the real culprit is a fundamental shift in buyer behaviour, not campaign quality. They cover why AI overviews are tanking click-through rates even on commercial queries, how to reframe your PPC optimisation strategy around conversions not clicks, the truth about Performance Max, and why the real opportunity now is being present in research, not just search. Seer Interactive CTR study mentioned in this episode: https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update 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 .

Most B2B companies still grow the same way they always have. More headcount, more tools, more effort. Dan and Josh make the case that this model is fundamentally broken. In this episode, they introduce the eight-stage B2B growth cycle and explore what it means to engineer each stage. From product market fit and messaging through to customer expansion, as a connected, scalable system rather than a collection of manual processes. They also discuss the risks of ungoverned AI across the revenue life cycle, and why Blend Core was built to solve exactly that problem. Essential listening for B2B leaders who want predictable, scalable revenue without simply throwing more resource at the problem. 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 .

Most B2B companies running paid media are doing it wrong, not because the channels don't work, but because they're measuring them the wrong way. In this episode, Dan is joined by Adam Holmgren, founder of Fibbler, to cut through the noise on paid media in B2B. They cover why chasing leads from LinkedIn is killing your results, how to use retargeting and thought leader ads effectively, and what it really takes to build the kind of brand presence that stays front of mind when buyers are ready to move. 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 .