Future of Marketing

Mada Seghete
  • 5.0 (8)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

Future of Marketing explores how B2B marketing teams are actually using AI at work. Each episode features honest conversations with CMOs, growth leaders, and operators about real workflows, real decisions, and the trade-offs involved in AI adoption across GTM, content, SEO, analytics, and revenue teams. This isn't about tools or perfect answers. It's about how marketing actually gets done when AI enters the system: what works, what breaks, and where teams are still experimenting. Live uncertainty is allowed. Concrete examples are required. If you're responsible for growth, pipeline, or brand and trying to turn AI into something genuinely useful, this show is for you. thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

  1. Oct 8

    Building a Startup Inside an Enterprise with Alex Atzberger of Optimizely

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete (Upside) and Ethan Smith (Graphite) chat with Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. This conversation explores how a well-known marketing technology company evolves when AI starts reshaping the category it helped define. Alex breaks down why he treated AI as an existential threat to the core business, and how the company built a “speedboat” startup inside the “cruise ship” of the existing organization. We discuss: * Why Optimizely kept the brand name after the acquisition, and how Alex thinks about turning strong category recognition into a broader platform opportunity. * How Optimizely is reframing experimentation as part of the full marketing workflow, not a side function owned by a small testing team. * Why Alex sees AI as an existential threat to the core business, and how Optimizely responded by building a standalone AI platform alongside the existing company. * Why AI adoption in marketing should focus on removing organizational burden, so talented people can spend more time on customer work, strategy, and creativity. * Why the best AI workflows are not one-off productivity agents, but full agentic systems that change how work gets done across content, ABM, experimentation, and performance loops. Where to find Alex: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aatzberger/ About Alex Alex Atzberger is CEO of Optimizely, where he is leading the company’s evolution into an AI-native marketing platform built around content, experimentation, personalization, analytics, and agent orchestration. Since taking over as CEO of Episerver in 2019, he has led the acquisitions of Optimizely, Welcome, and Netspring, rebuilt the company as the modern Optimizely, and scaled it to more than $400M in ARR. In his role, Alex focuses on helping marketing teams move from fragmented tools to a composable AI platform where every campaign, workflow, and AI output can be measured against business impact. Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    Building a Startup Inside an Enterprise with Alex Atzberger of Optimizely

  2. Sep 15

    How To Scale Founder-Led Growth with Tom Sweeney from Watt

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, host Ethan Smith (Graphite) chats with Tom Sweeney, Head of Growth at Watt. This conversation explores how an early B2B company can sell an enterprise product without immediately building a classic SDR-heavy motion. Tom breaks down how Watt is using founder-led content, LinkedIn, Reddit, creator partnerships, and product-led sales to reach marketers with a small team and a sharper signal. We discuss: * Why Watt is focused on real consumer behavior, what people click, search, buy, and engage with, rather than only what people say online. * How customer intelligence changes marketing decisions across ICP, pricing, offer, creative, and product. * Founder-led content as an acquisition channel, and why brand accounts struggle when buyers want a real human point of view. * How Watt uses “content ABM” on LinkedIn, combining a timely topic, a strong graphic, a sharp point of view, and proprietary data to engage target accounts. * Building a product-led sales motion where users reach value within 30 seconds, then qualify themselves through product usage, prompt quality, reports created, and fields consumed. * How Reddit can build trust when operators answer real questions with expertise, useful data, and no hard CTA. * Why 200 to 300 thoughtful community responses a month can improve recognition and brand sentiment, even when direct attribution is difficult. * How Watt plans to scale founder-led content across the team, then layer in creator-led distribution through DTC brand and agency operators who can become real product users first. Where to find Tom Sweeney: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdamien/ About Tom Thomas Sweeney is Head of Growth at Watt, where he leads brand, marketing, and GTM as the company scales from category creation to category leadership. Watt helps growth teams get grounded answers to customer and market questions by combining 200,000 behavioral signals across 300M+ US shoppers with a company’s own first-party data, making enterprise-grade behavioral intelligence accessible through simple, plain-language questions. In his role, Thomas focuses on positioning Watt as the platform for teams that want to understand how people actually behave, not just what they say. Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    How To Scale Founder-Led Growth with Tom Sweeney from Watt

  3. Aug 11

    The Case Study Playbook with Russell Banzon, Cresta’s CMO

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete (Upside) and Ethan Smith (Graphite) chat with Russell Banzon, CMO at Cresta. The conversation works through problems most B2B marketers hit. How do you get a Fortune 500 logo to agree to a case study, and when. How to make numbers credible in a category full of fabricated ones, and how to justify a channel that is hard to measure. We discuss: * Case studies as a commercial term. Why the rights conversation belongs in presales, and what to trade for it. * Distinguishing real case studies from fabricated ones, and what Cresta invests in to make its own numbers hard to dispute. * Analyst reports as a mid-to-bottom funnel asset. Where Cresta places them, and how analyst interest starts compounding through customers rather than outreach. * Buying out of home without direct attribution. How Cresta selected cities, the signals they used to measure it, and the unexpected return. * The $1 / $10 / $100 / $1k task framework for deciding what to automate, and where automation stops being worth the build. * Hiring for agency, curiosity, and taste, including the specific interview questions for each and why taste is not a visual trait. * Matching your growth rate to the company’s, and how to tell when the two have diverged. Where to find Russell Banzon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellbanzon/ About Russell Russell is a B2B GTM leader who is passionate about driving pipeline and revenue for SaaS technology companies. As the former VP of Marketing at Gong, he played a key role in scaling the company from seven figures to nine figures in ARR, leading category creation, international expansion, and the evolution from a single-product company to a multi-product platform. Now, as the CMO at Cresta, he is helping to shape the future of AI in the contact center space, though that story is still being written. Outside of work, you might find Russell at a Hip Hop dance event, cheering on the Raiders, or competing in a local bowling league. Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    The Case Study Playbook with Russell Banzon, Cresta’s CMO

  4. Jul 28

    Rethinking Brand Multi-touch Attribution and Entry Level Marketing Careers in the AI Era with Kelly Hopping of 6sense

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Ethan Smith sit down with Kelly Hopping, CMO at 6sense, to unpack how AI is changing the way marketing teams are built, measured, and managed. Kelly explains why she no longer backfills roles one-for-one, how agents are shifting manual execution work, and why modern marketing teams need more senior strategic thinkers, editors, prompt engineers, and customer journey owners. She also shares how 6sense uses BDRs, AI email, event follow-up, multi-touch attribution, paid social, owned communities, and intent data to understand which accounts are in market, how buyers are forming shortlists, and where marketing should invest. We discuss: * How AI is changing marketing org design, hiring philosophy, spans, layers, and backfill decisions * Why Kelly now aligns her team more closely to the customer journey and KPIs * Why junior marketers can still build strong careers through events, BDR roles, field marketing, marketing ops, and product marketing * Why Kelly believes BDRs are still critical, especially for enterprise and strategic accounts * How 6sense uses AI email, automated follow-up, scheduling, routing, Clay, Nooks, and event sequences to support BDR workflows * Why BDRs drive 64% of 6sense’s pipeline, and why humans still matter in higher-value sales motions * Why trade show booths alone rarely create pipeline, and why ancillary events, executive meetings, VIP dinners, and owned experiences often perform better * How multi-touch attribution helps reveal the value of paid search, webinars, events, and brand activity across long enterprise buying journeys * Why last-touch attribution can make teams cut channels that are actually influencing deals earlier in the journey * How 6sense uses revenue intelligence, intent data, predictive modeling, APIs, and integrations to feed smarter GTM decisions across the tech stack * Why LLM visibility is pushing marketers back toward brand, owned content, press releases, research, communities, podcasts, and thought leadership * Why Kelly believes marketing needs to focus more on the 95% of the ICP that is not in market yet * How 6sense’s CMO Coffee Talk built brand loyalty strong enough to influence competitive buying decisions * Why paid social works better when it is focused on target accounts and intent signals instead of broad awareness Where to find Kelly Hopping: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyhopping/ Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    Rethinking Brand Multi-touch Attribution and Entry Level Marketing Careers in the AI Era with Kelly Hopping of 6sense

  5. Jul 14

    The four pillars that build demand when no one knows your brand with Jonathan Kvarfordt of 1mind

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Ethan Smith sit down with Jonathan Kvarfordt, VP of Marketing at 1mind, to unpack how AI is changing pipeline generation, buyer coverage, and the structure of GTM teams. Jonathan argues that most teams are using AI too narrowly by trying to make old workflows faster, cheaper, and easier, especially around meeting booking. Instead, he makes the case for using AI to create better buyer experiences, answer deeper product questions, support solutioning, and move buyers further through the decision process before a human gets involved. He also shares how human effort, customer amplification, trusted communities, valuable content, AEO, and AI-powered analysis shaped his GTM approach at Momentum and now at 1mind. We discuss: * Why Jonathan believes most teams are asking too little of AI when they only use it to book meetings * How 1mind thinks about AI as closer to a solutions engineer than a traditional SDR * Why buyers should be able to ask pricing questions, get product guidance, and explore demos before speaking to a human * How AI can create more buyer coverage without removing the human moments that still matter * How Jonathan used four GTM pillars at Momentum: customer amplification, trusted communities, valuable content, and surround-sound visibility * How partnerships with trusted communities and thought leaders can create more leverage than chasing every buyer one by one * Why a 200-prompt GTM library became Momentum’s strongest lead magnet * How AI can analyze thousands of sales conversations and turn unstructured buyer data into strategic insight * Why human-to-AI conversations can produce cleaner signals, fewer filler words, and more direct buyer intent * Why GTM engineers need to connect workflows to business outcomes, not just build impressive automations * How company-level memory and intelligence layers could reshape how marketing organizations operate * Why human ingenuity remains the moat when everyone has access to the same AI tools Where to find Jonathan Kvarfordt: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmkmba/ Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    The four pillars that build demand when no one knows your brand with Jonathan Kvarfordt of 1mind

  6. Jul 1

    The Three Roles Every Lean Marketing Team Needs to Hire First with Scott Holden of Vanta

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Ethan Smith sit down with Scott Holden, CMO at Vanta, to unpack how marketing changes when AI accelerates output, weakens old playbooks, and makes authenticity harder to fake. Scott shares why he believes “expertise is dead,” how Vanta is moving upmarket from SOC 2 into broader compliance, risk, trust centers, vendor questionnaires, and privacy, and why the company’s “compliance” campaign used buyer pain, humor, AEO, LinkedIn, and AI-mined Gong insights to reach senior CISOs. He also explains why brand can act like performance spend, how AEO requires repeated message consensus across trusted sources, and why the modern marketing team needs product marketers, systems architects, and creator-style operators. We discuss: * Why Scott believes marketing is moving toward human authenticity as AI-generated content floods every channel * Why relying on old CMO playbooks is no longer enough, and why reinvention now needs to happen weekly or daily * Why category creation is less effective when competitors can copy category language quickly * How Vanta balances technical category language with emotionally resonant messaging around audit stress and compliance fatigue * How Vanta is using humor, risk messaging, thought leadership, social, out-of-home, and executive content to keep a theme fresh * Why brand spend can behave like performance spend when the product solves an urgent, transactional pain * What Scott learned at Brex when pausing out-of-home and top-of-funnel brand activity caused search, SEO, LinkedIn, and other metrics to drop * How Vanta used AI to mine hundreds of Gong calls and identify “audit hell” as the emotional insight behind its enterprise compliance campaign * How Scott thinks about AEO as a strategic discipline, especially when AI tools understate enterprise capabilities or product differentiation * Why AI can help draft executive content, but human editing is still required to preserve personality, taste, and credibility * Why Scott would build a 10-person marketing team around three profiles: product marketer, systems architect, and influencer-style creator * How messy GTM systems become even messier with AI, and why shared workflows, company-level memory, and systems thinking are the next advantage Where to find Scott Holden: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottiholden/ Future of Marketing is brought to you buy the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    The Three Roles Every Lean Marketing Team Needs to Hire First with Scott Holden of Vanta

  7. Jun 17

    The AI Native CMO Playbook with Morgane Palomares of Braintrust

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Camille Ricketts and Mada Seghete sit down with Morgane Palomares, VP of Marketing at Braintrust, to unpack how marketing leaders can build credibility, speed, and leverage inside technical companies. Morgane shares how she used Reddit scraping, Gong calls, AI transcript analysis, and monthly executive readouts to shape her first 90 days at Braintrust. She also breaks down why Braintrust prioritized brand before education, how AI agents are changing PMM and field marketing workflows, and why developer marketing teams should move fast without lowering the quality bar. We discuss: * Why the first 90 days as a marketing leader should start during the interview process * How Morgane used Reddit feedback, Gong calls, and AI transcript analysis to diagnose Braintrust’s market and customer reality faster * Why monthly executive readouts helped build trust by making observations, gaps, and tradeoffs explicit * How to decide whether a technical company needs education, brand visibility, demand creation, or executive-level messaging first * How San Francisco transit shelters, bus wraps, posters, a 500-person user conference, a Series B announcement, a new brand, and a new website worked together as one market signal * Why product marketing may become one of the highest-leverage AI-enabled functions in technical B2B companies * How to earn credibility with engineering teams by shaping technical insight without slowing down product launches * Why dev tool companies may not need marketing early if users cannot already experience product value on their own * How senior marketing leaders can use AI to move faster without outsourcing their judgment, taste, or point of view Where to find Morgane Palomares: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganepalomares/ Future of Marketing is brought to you by the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    The AI Native CMO Playbook with Morgane Palomares of Braintrust

  8. Jun 9

    Building Radical Empathy at Scale with Vanessa Thompson of Twilio

    In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Mada Seghete and Ethan Smith sit down with Vanessa Thompson, a senior marketing leader who helped scale Twilio from a developer tool into a $5B revenue company, to unpack how AI changes the operating model for marketing. Vanessa argues that the future of marketing is radical empathy at scale: using data, AI agents, and customer signals to help buyers succeed in the moments where they are actually stuck. She shares how Twilio runs PLG and sales-assisted motions in parallel, why brand has to serve developers, solopreneurs, and enterprise CEOs at once, and how experimentation, usage data, LLM visibility, Reddit, video, and AI-powered workflows are reshaping modern GTM. We discuss: * Why Vanessa believes the future of marketing is “radical empathy at scale” * How AI can remove the repetitive work that makes marketers less human and create more room for creativity, taste, discernment, and customer understanding * Why the old model of forms, nurtures, lifecycle emails, and one-size-fits-all journeys is giving way to more personalized buyer support * How marketers can use customer signals, usage data, product errors, search behavior, and drop-off points to improve the experience * Why Twilio runs PLG and sales-assisted motions in parallel with one marketing team * How brand has to do more work when the same company serves enterprise CEOs, solopreneurs, developers, and API-driven teams * How Twilio built a test-and-learn culture where teams own budgets, run two-week experiments, and reallocate spend based on what works * How Twilio uses AI agents across 100% of signups and inbound sales requests to help prospects get started, qualify intent, and route the right people to sales * Why gated thought leadership is no longer the high-performing lead engine it used to be * How Twilio approaches LLM visibility through structured developer documentation, video, Reddit, AMAs, and community participation * How internal hackathons, team-built tools, and experimentation OKRs help create the cultural conditions for AI adoption Where to find Vanessa Thompson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessathomps/ Future of Marketing is brought to you by the Upside AI Revenue Intelligence and Attribution platform, Graphite Growth Research-Driven SEO & AEO Agency and XYZ Venture Capital and is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

    Building Radical Empathy at Scale with Vanessa Thompson of Twilio
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Future of Marketing explores how B2B marketing teams are actually using AI at work. Each episode features honest conversations with CMOs, growth leaders, and operators about real workflows, real decisions, and the trade-offs involved in AI adoption across GTM, content, SEO, analytics, and revenue teams. This isn't about tools or perfect answers. It's about how marketing actually gets done when AI enters the system: what works, what breaks, and where teams are still experimenting. Live uncertainty is allowed. Concrete examples are required. If you're responsible for growth, pipeline, or brand and trying to turn AI into something genuinely useful, this show is for you. thefutureofmarketing.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Mada Seghete
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    23
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Mada Seghete
  • Show Website
    Future of Marketing

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