The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)

#383 | YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet, yet few B2B marketers know how to use it optimally. Dasha Shakov , the newest Exit Five podcast host, sits down with Samu Kovács , founder of the B2B YouTube agency KS Media, to unpack why he calls YouTube the hedge against AI slop. Samu breaks down the research process his team runs before writing a script, what belongs in a hook t...

#382 | Rob Sobers has been CMO of Varonis for 15 years - through its growth from startup to public company doing over $700 million in revenue. Dave talks with Rob about how he's stayed sharp enough to keep the job this long, starting with the fact that as an engineer, he still writes JavaScript and even fixes bugs on the Varonis website from time to time. Rob explains why no manager on his team ov...

#381 | Dave sits down with Emma Robinson, Head of B2B Marketing at Canva, and Christine Siegrist, VP of Consumer Marketing at Canva, to talk about how the two teams operate as one org instead of fighting over lead credit. They get into Canva's matrixed structure across consumer, B2B, and international, how signals from free users turn into team and enterprise upgrades, and why Canva built a dedica...

#380 | Eight B2B marketers get two minutes each to pitch the single best marketing play they ran this year - and the crowd votes on who moves forward. Dave Gerhardt and Dasha Shakov hosts the second round of the Exit Five B2B Marketing Blitz, and this episode covers a lot of ground: updating old blog content to win AI search citations, turning product into research that got a company's CEO in fron...

#379 | Dave sits down with Patrick Shea , SVP of Global Marketing at BlueVoyant, to discuss how enterprise marketing really works inside a $175 million cybersecurity company built heavily on partnerships. Patrick breaks down the difference between hyperscaler tech alliances and reseller partnerships, how BlueVoyant defines and qualifies leads by account rather than volume, and why he treats partne...

#378 | Dave sits down with Ethan Clouser , Head of Marketing at Bland AI, to talk about running marketing at a 22-year-old-founded, enterprise voice AI company that just raised $100 million - at 22 years old himself. Ethan breaks down Bland's early viral bets like the "Still Hiring Humans?" billboard, why they bought Soulja Boy's voice rights for an AI phone campaign, and how a giant red telephone...

#377 | 80% of B2B brands are completely forgettable - and it's not because their product is weak. Dave sits down with Louis Grenier , founder of Stand The F*ck Out and author of the book by the same name, to unpack a study he ran scoring 100 B2B companies on how distinctive their brands actually are. Louis breaks down the real difference between "distinctive" and "different," why almost no B2B Saa...

#376 | Eight marketers. Two minutes each. One live bracket to crown the best-performing paid ad play. We brought back the Blitz Exit Five Live session format - this time for the Paid Ads Playoff: a head-to-head paid ads showdown, where marketers pitch their single best ad from 2026 in real time to our live voting audience. The plays cover a lot of ground: scroll-stopping creative for an unfamiliar...

#375 | If you can double your ad's click-through rate, you can usually cut your cost-per-click in half. Anthony Blatner , founder of Speedwork, sat down with Matt Carnevale to walk through how he's using AI to run LinkedIn ads at scale for clients right now. The conversation covers connecting Claude Code directly to the LinkedIn Ads API to automate bid management and reporting, building personaliz...

#374 | Most B2B marketers think brand means bigger budgets. This episode shows otherwise. Dave sits down with Ryan Narod, VP of Marketing at Rippling, to talk about what it actually takes to build a brand people recognize in B2B. Ryan walks through the real campaigns behind that shift - from scrappy iPhone videos and webinar promos to high-production customer films and their Super Bowl commercial....

#373 | Dave sits down with Rebecca Busk , CEO and Partner at Kvalifik, to talk about what it actually takes to show up in AI search. Rebecca breaks down the three types of prompts you need to rank for - foundational, core, and must-win - and why most AEO content fails because it's too generic to ever get cited. They get into the technical side of AEO like crawlability and schema markup, why Reddit...

#372 | Dave sits down with Jay Schwedelson , founder of subjectline.com and Guru Media Hub, one of the sharpest tactical minds in email, webinars, and live content. Jay explains why so many B2B marketers get live content wrong from the very first step, and how small shifts in packaging can completely change who shows up and who doesn't. They dig into the psychology behind when people actually open...

#371 | Most B2B companies gate everything and hide their pricing. Funnel Leasing does neither, and grew from $3 million to $50 million in revenue anyway. Dave sits down with Alex Howe, SVP of Marketing and Growth at Funnel Leasing, to talk about how he built that growth engine with no marketing background, no paid ads, and no sales team pressure. They get into why his whole philosophy is built aro...

#370 | Most B2B marketers have no idea you can run TV ads for $50 a day. Dave sits down with TV advertising veteran Amit Sharan, SVP of Marketing at Tatari, to talk about this, and how to think about CTV as a B2B channel. They get into the difference between linear and streaming, why programmatic buying only reaches 15% of total TV inventory, and the case for retargeting your website visitors on T...

#369 | It's hard to know what works and what doesn't, what's real and what's not right now. So we tapped 9 B2B marketing pros, all specialists in their area, to share one thing that's produced real results so far this year. Here's how it works: 9 speakers, one play each, two minutes on the clock. When host Dave Gerhardt hits the buzzer, it's on to the next play. The audience votes on their favorit...

#368 | Dave sits down with Jonathan Hunt, VP of Content and Media at HubSpot, to talk about what it means to run a media company inside a software company, and why that framing changes everything about how you build a content team. Jonathan runs a 70-person operation reaching 50 million people a month across 17 YouTube channels and a creator network of 150. They get into how HubSpot thinks about t...

#367 | Dave sits down with Jess Cook, VP of Marketing at Vector, to talk about how she spent $12K on seven micro-influencers with zero UTM tracking and generated $1.1M in pipeline. Jess also breaks down why she started a brand podcast as an awareness play, how a B2C copywriting background at major CPG brands shaped the way she thinks about brand and standing out in B2B, and what it actually takes...

#366 | The B2B buyer has gone antisocial. No form fills, no hand raises, just self-directed research through Google, Reddit, and AI before they ever talk to sales. In this session, you'll hear from three marketing pros about how they built a LinkedIn influencer program that doubled branded search volume, why ungating top-of-funnel content drives more meetings - not fewer, and how to build an LLM v...

Most B2B influencer programs fail for the same reason: no defined success metrics before the first post goes live. Brianna Doe, founder of influencer marketing agency Verbatim, breaks down how to actually build an influencer program that maps to pipeline — not just impressions. She covers her "Creator Engine" framework, how to tier creators by authority and reach, and why 90 days is the absolute m...

Dave sits down with Eoin Clancy, VP of Growth at AirOps, to talk about what's working in B2B marketing right now. They get into the rise of the content engineer role, how to use AI to produce high-quality content without creating AI slop, and why webinars have become AirOps' top growth channel in 2026. Eoin breaks down the three signs that content is AI slop, how AirOps runs their webinar funnel e...

#363 | Louis Grenier joins Dave for a conversation about what it takes to stand out in B2B marketing when everything feels the same. They get into how people really decide to buy, why most B2B brands look and sound identical, and the marketing fundamentals that hold up no matter what's changing around them. The kind of conversation that reminds you why you got into marketing in the first place. Ti...

#362 | Dave sits down with Eddie Shleyner, founder of VeryGoodCopy.com , to talk about why great marketing copy can't be generated — it has to be written. They get into why AI writing feels flat, what separates copy that moves people from copy that just fills space, and why the process of writing is where the real work happens. Eddie also shares how he accidentally built one of the most-read copyw...

#361 | In this episode, Matt Carnevale, Head of Community at Exit Five talks with three marketers doing impactful work in AEO. AI search is changing how buyers find products, and most B2B teams are still figuring out where to start. In this session, each marketer shares what's working and wins they’ve experienced — from earned media and technical audits to homepage fixes and tracking AI visibility...

#360 | Dave sits down with Ishveen Jolly, founder and CEO of Open Sponsorship, to talk about what influencer and athlete marketing actually looks like for B2B brands — and why it's more accessible than most marketers think. Ishveen breaks down how a $5K March Madness campaign outperformed traditional ads, why your first influencer deal will almost certainly miss on the offer, and how to think abou...

#359 | Dave sits down with Casey Patterson , Director of ABM at Snowflake, to talk about what ABM actually looks like inside one of the biggest companies in enterprise software. Casey breaks down how she cold LinkedIn messaged her now-boss Hillary to get her ABM decks reviewed before ever working together, why ABM works best when marketing stops thinking about credit and just focuses on helping sa...