Valerie Tarangelo - MQLs Are a Participation Trophy

AJ Wilcox - Stop Copying Competitors' Ads. You Have No Idea If They're Working.

AJ Wilcox has managed over $200 million in LinkedIn Ads spend. He's the founder of B2Linked, the only LinkedIn-certified ad agency on the planet, and hosts the LinkedIn Ads Show with 17,000+ newsletter subscribers. In this episode, we get into why "LinkedIn is too expensive" is the wrong conversation entirely, what actually drives underperformance in B2B campaigns, and why the LinkedIn Ad Library is both useful and wildly misunderstood. A few things we covered: * Why the sales team at AJ's first company was fighting over his LinkedIn leads two weeks in; * Why cost per click is the wrong benchmark, and what to track instead; * The two default LinkedIn settings that are killing your performance right now; * Why lead gen forms convert 3-5x higher than landing pages, and why that's not always a good thing; * How to use the Ad Library for competitive intelligence without just copying the wrong ads; * Why LinkedIn's AI recommendations are mostly bad advice, and what to do instead. If you run LinkedIn Ads and you haven't looked at your bid model lately, this episode is going to be annoying. In the best way. Find AJ on LinkedIn and subscribe to the LinkedIn Ads Show wherever you get your podcasts.

Valerie Tarangelo - MQLs Are a Participation Trophy

Valerie Tarangelo has spent over a decade building the operational backbone that most B2B SaaS companies skip on their way to scale. She's done it at Publicis Sapient, GumGum, and now Interact Software, where she owns the entire marketing to pipeline funnel end to end. This episode gets into the unglamorous stuff that actually moves the needle including data fragmentation, audience segmentation, creative fatigue, competitive intelligence, and why the MQL framework is doing more harm than good. In this episode: 00:04 — Scott introduces the show and Valerie's background 01:44 — The through line across Valerie's career: every company has the same fundamental tension between ambition and infrastructure 03:11 — Ready, fire, aim: what it looks like when a team is running campaigns without knowing what success looks like 04:27 — How to make changes without shutting everything down — and why 90 days of observation isn't as crazy as it sounds 05:57 — Where the ops side ends and the strategy side begins — and how technical credentials give you credibility with your own team 09:25 — The real cost of stitching together five dashboards every Monday morning: it's not the time, it's that the data's already stale by the time the report is done 11:44 — How confident should teams actually be that their pipeline data and ad performance data are telling the same story? (Spoiler: way less than they are) 13:53 — Why marketing is almost always overconfident and sales is almost always underconfident — and what to do about it 15:00 — The MQL is dead. How Valerie redefined the lead lifecycle at Interact to align marketing and sales around the same thing 16:31 — Creative fatigue: how do you know when a campaign has hit the wall, and what do you actually do about it? 18:57 — What good audience segmentation looks like versus what most teams think it looks like 21:01 — How granular is too granular — and when broad targeting is just burning money on the wrong people 22:39 — How much attention should demand gen teams actually pay to competitors in paid channels? Valerie's honest answer 24:28 — The magic wand question: what would AI actually have to do to be genuinely useful to a demand gen team? 27:04 — Why every tool that promises to unify everything underestimates how messy your existing environment actually is 31:52 — What's considered best practice in demand gen right now that Valerie thinks is broken 33:28 — Where the CMO should report and why it matters for revenue alignment 33:59 — If you could fix one thing about how demand gen teams are measured, what would it be? 36:18 — Micro wins for long sales cycles: how to evaluate a campaign before it's had time to close anything 37:56 — Why tracking unique contacts per account is a better signal than leads generated 39:07 — Where to find Valerie ---------------------------------------- Connect with Valerie: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/valeriekuller [http://linkedin.com/in/valeriekuller] Connect with Scott: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scottschnaars [http://linkedin.com/in/scottschnaars] Yirla: yirla.com [http://yirla.com]

Medhi Labidi - Unlocking AI's Potential in B2B Marketing: Insights from LinkedIn's Demand Gen Lead

Summary In this episode of Beyond the Dashboard, Scott Schnaars (CEO of Yirla) interviews Mehdi Labidi about the intersection of AI and marketing. They explore how engineering thinking influences marketing strategies, the challenges of AI adoption in large organizations, and practical tips for leveraging AI effectively. Key topics * AI's impact on B2B marketing and demand generation * Pragmatic problem-solving with an engineering mindset * Challenges of AI adoption in large organizations like LinkedIn * Effective cross-channel budget allocation using media mix modeling * The role of creativity and testing in successful AI marketing campaigns Chapters 00:00 - Introduction to Scott Schnaars and the podcast 00:33 - Guest introduction: Mehdi Labidi and his background 01:46 - How engineering thinking influences marketing 03:11 - Destructuring processes for scaling impact 04:50 - Internal pushback and organizational challenges 05:12 - Patterns of successful campaigns on LinkedIn 06:36 - The role of creativity and testing in campaigns 08:13 - Using generative AI for creative campaigns 09:23 - Cross-channel budget decision-making and media mix modeling 11:22 - Adapting to external factors and ROI considerations 13:33 - Challenges of AI adoption in large organizations 16:29 - Governance, security, and responsible AI 17:28 - Building AI tools for different organizational sizes 20:10 - From AI laggards to AI-enabled teams 23:16 - Future of AI in onboarding and employee tools 25:14 - What makes AI adoption easier in small teams 27:20 - The concept of micro-global companies 28:16 - Data-driven decision making in marketing 29:38 - How AI frees up creative and strategic focus 34:13 - Upskilling on prompt engineering and AI mastery 37:57 - The importance of critical thinking in AI use 38:59 - Patience and iteration in prompt engineering 39:48 - Handling variability and unpredictability of AI outputs 44:16 - Structuring prompts with frameworks like BRIGHT 45:40 - Targeting and formatting prompts for specific audiences 46:45 - Using master prompts for recurring tasks 47:54 - The ask-me-questions tip for better prompts 48:24 - Auto-prompting and optimizing prompts with AI 49:52 - Achieving consistency with master prompts 50:45 - Reusing prompts for automation and collaboration 51:52 - The future of AI literacy and competitive advantage 53:12 - Human connection versus AI personalization 55:26 - Where to find Mehdi on LinkedIn RESOURCES * https://linkedin.com/in/mehdilabidi [https://linkedin.com/in/mehdilabidi]

Korstiaan Hardam - The Dairy Farmer in Istanbul

Korstiaan Hardam has spent 25+ years building demand gen engines at some of the most recognizable names in enterprise tech — 8 years at Salesforce during their hyper-growth era, and nearly a decade at SAP where he currently leads global outbound campaign management for the corporate segment. His team supports over 500 sales development executives and is responsible for roughly 40% of SAP's corporate segment pipeline. In this episode, we get into what demand gen actually looks like at true enterprise scale — the organizational structure, the metrics that matter to leadership, and why the playbook that worked two years ago is quietly falling apart. We cover: * How Salesforce's V2MOM framework created alignment from Marc Benioff all the way down to the front line * The "STEAM" model SAP uses to run programmatic outbound at scale * Why a Swiss insurance company complained that they didn't know who to talk to at SAP anymore — and what that broke open internally * Why email-heavy sequences are dying, especially in Europe, and what's replacing them * The "dairy farmer in Istanbul" — Korstiaan's shorthand for what great personalization actually requires * Where AI is genuinely moving the needle in demand gen, and where it's still more hype than reality * The three things that have stayed constant about great demand gen across every era, company, and channel If you want to understand what it takes to build a demand gen machine that holds up at real scale, this one's worth your time. Find Korstiaan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/korstiaanhardam/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/korstiaanhardam/] Beyond the Dashboard is a Yirla podcast. Yirla is an AI platform that unifies your paid campaigns, finds wasted budget, and tells you exactly where to move it. Try it out at http://yirla.com

Jason Seeba - The Playbook is Dead

What happens when the marketing playbook you've spent 20 years building stops working? You rewrite it. In this episode, Yirla founder Scott Schnaars sits down with Jason Seeba, CMO of OneSignal, to talk about what's actually changing in B2B go-to-market — and what most marketing leaders are getting wrong about it. Jason has built growth engines at Bloomreach, Eightfold, MParticle, and Session AI, and advised companies like Clari, OfferFit, and LeadSpace. This conversation covers AI-driven GTM, the death of MQLs, why mass outreach is a losing strategy, and where human judgment still wins in an agent-powered world. If you're a demand gen leader, CMO, or founder trying to build a modern marketing engine — this one's for you. ---------------------------------------- What You'll Learn * Why the traditional B2B marketing playbook is no longer enough * How AI agents are replacing SDR workflows — and what that means for your team * Why MQLs are just a notification threshold — and what to measure instead * How the CMO/CRO relationship directly drives revenue * What the best first marketing hire looks like today * How product discovery is shifting from Google to LLMs ---------------------------------------- Timestamps * 00:00 — Introduction & Jason's background * 01:32 — Lessons from Dynamic Signal: product-market fit and pipeline * 03:36 — Moving beyond MQLs to revenue accountability * 04:54 — Being an early adopter: from high school radio to AI workflows * 07:37 — Why personalization at scale is breaking outbound * 09:47 — How to evaluate early-stage MarTech for real value * 13:08 — What Jason looks for before joining a new company * 15:45 — How to uncover true customer pain as a marketer * 18:13 — What's actually changing with AI — vs. what people think * 21:13 — GTM mistakes Jason sees most often at startups * 24:22 — Who to hire first: brand, demand gen, or ops? * 27:08 — Volume outreach vs. hyper-personalization * 33:08 — Where human judgment still wins * 39:55 — Building a great CMO/CRO relationship * 42:20 — The hardest part of being a CMO right now * 47:00 — What Jason wishes he knew earlier in his career ---------------------------------------- Connect with Jason Seeba onesignal.com [http://onesignal.com] | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonseeba/] | seeba.net [http://seeba.net] Connect with Scott & Yirla yirla.com [http://yirla.com] | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/yirla-ai] ---------------------------------------- Beyond the Dashboard is for B2B demand gen professionals who want real talk on paid media, pipeline, and go-to-market strategy. Hosted by Scott Schnaars, founder of Yirla — the AI platform that consolidates your paid campaigns, finds wasted budget, and tells you exactly where to move it. ---------------------------------------- Want to see your paid campaign data in one place? Visit yirla.com [http://yirla.com].