Why Marketing Can't Prove Its Value to the C-Suite And What Has to Change - Dr. Alok Saboo

Why Marketing Can't Prove Its Value to the C-Suite And What Has to Change - Dr. Alok Saboo

Dr. Alok Saboo is a Professor of Marketing at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business, Director of the MS in Marketing program, and an AMA award-winning researcher whose work sits at the intersection of marketing, finance, and firm performance. In this episode, Alok explains why marketing consistently fails to earn executive trust, why defining marketing as communication or sales is the root of the problem, and what it actually takes to connect marketing decisions to the financial outcomes CEOs and CFOs care about. You will hear: - Why short-term metrics like clicks and impressions hurt marketing's credibility more than they help it - How post-click experience is where organizational misalignment becomes impossible to hide - What marketing leaders need to say and do differently when they walk into the boardroom Learn how to move marketing from a cost center conversation to a strategic growth function that speaks the language of finance. === Connect with Alok: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arsaboo/ - Website: https://robinson.gsu.edu/ === About the Everything Clicks podcast: Everything Clicks is a podcast about customer experiences that wow consumers while driving profitable growth. Each week, we dissect the strategies and tactics of top B2C marketers at leading Fortune 5000 companies. 📣 Subscribe now for more insights on creating digital experiences that convert.  📱 Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamirduverseau/  🌐 Smart Panda Labs: www.smartpandalabs.com

Why Humanizing the Post-Click Experience Is the Only Sustainable Growth Strategy - Ethan Beute

Ethan Beute is a Principal Brand Marketing Strategist at Zillow, co-author of Rehumanize Your Business and Human-Centered Communication, and a former Chief Evangelist at BombBomb with over a decade of experience building human-centered communication practices at scale. In this episode, he explains why brands keep defaulting to the top of the funnel instead of fixing the experience underneath it and what it actually takes to make a post-click experience feel human in a world increasingly filled with synthetic content. You will hear: - Why viability and feasibility almost always crowd out desirability, and what gets lost when that happens - How qualitative research and quantitative data each reveal things the other can't, and why you need both - Why high-consideration categories like real estate and financial services demand a fundamentally different post-click approach Learn how to build the kind of trust that drives repeat business, referrals, and word-of-mouth that never shows up in your attribution data. === Connect with Ethan: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanbeute/ - Website: https://ethanbeute.com/ === Resources: - Rehumanize Your Business by Ethan Beute and Stephen Pacinelli: https://www.amazon.com/Rehumanize-Your-Business-Accelerate-Experience/dp/1119576261 - Human-Centered Communication by Ethan Beute and Stephen Pacinelli: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Centered-Communication-Business-Against-Pollution/dp/1639080007 === About the Everything Clicks podcast: Everything Clicks is a podcast about customer experiences that wow consumers while driving profitable growth. Each week, we dissect the strategies and tactics of top B2C marketers at leading Fortune 5000 companies. 📣 Subscribe now for more insights on creating digital experiences that convert.  📱 Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamirduverseau/  🌐 Smart Panda Labs: www.smartpandalabs.com

Why Relevance, Trust, and Empathy Are the Only Marketing Principles That Scale - Yazan Kakish

Yazan Kakish is the Director of Marketing & Communications at East Texas A&M University, with 14+ years of international experience across hospitality, education, aviation, finance, and tech, including leadership roles at Marriott International, Ogilvy, and BBDO. In this episode, Yazan explains why the same core marketing principles hold across every industry he's worked in, why segmentation fails when it stops at demographics, and why marketers who treat their role as a finishing department are already too late. You will hear: - How the hospitality mindset of creating evangelists translates directly into higher education marketing - Why cross-functional collaboration is what separates campaigns that land from campaigns that stall - What empathetic marketing actually means in practice—and how to teach it to the next generation Learn how a marketer who has built brands across five continents and multiple industries thinks about storytelling, segmentation, and the human truth behind every campaign. === Connect with Yazan: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yazzankakish/ - Website: https://www.etamu.edu/ === About the Everything Clicks podcast: Everything Clicks is a podcast about customer experiences that wow consumers while driving profitable growth. Each week, we dissect the strategies and tactics of top B2C marketers at leading Fortune 5000 companies. 📣 Subscribe now for more insights on creating digital experiences that convert.  📱 Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamirduverseau/  🌐 Smart Panda Labs: www.smartpandalabs.com

Enterprise-Scale Marketing on a Nonprofit Budget - Phalak Betab

Phalak Betab is the Director of Marketing & Communications at Progressive Intercultural Community Services (PICS) Society, a $20M nonprofit with 300 employees delivering 50+ programs across British Columbia, and the youngest director in the organization. In this episode, Phalak explains why nonprofits face enterprise-level post-click complexity with a fraction of the tools and budget, how undervaluing marketing directly breaks the user journey, and what corporations could do differently if they designed with the same empathy nonprofits depend on. You will hear: - What post-click complexity actually looks like when you serve families, seniors, newcomers, and job seekers across dozens of programs - Why misalignment between marketing, communications, and service delivery destroys user trust fast - How empathy-driven design for vulnerable audiences sets a standard most corporate post-click experiences don't meet Learn how one of Canada's most complex nonprofit marketing operations runs, and what it exposes about where for-profit post-click experience falls short. === Connect with Phalak: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/betabphalak/ - Website: https://pics.bc.ca/ === About the Everything Clicks podcast: Everything Clicks is a podcast about customer experiences that wow consumers while driving profitable growth. Each week, we dissect the strategies and tactics of top B2C marketers at leading Fortune 5000 companies. 📣 Subscribe now for more insights on creating digital experiences that convert.  📱 Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamirduverseau/  🌐 Smart Panda Labs: www.smartpandalabs.com

How Healthcare UX Keeps People at the Center - Maria Alexander, Tu Nguyen & Megan Baker

In this special panel episode, three experts share how they approach user experience in healthcare, one of the most regulated, emotionally complex, and high-stakes digital environments there is. - Maria Alexander is a Principal Content Designer at Blue Shield of California - Tu Nguyen is Head of Customer Success at Ours Privacy and a former experimentation leader at Disney and Smart Panda Labs - Megan Baker is Partner and Senior UX Managing Director at Slide UX, a consultancy focused on cognitive impairment, brain health, and aging. You will hear: - Why privacy constraints don't mean less understanding of users, they mean more intentional researc - How backend system failures undermine even well-designed front-end experiences - What "trauma-informed writing" means and why content teams should design for imperfect attention - Four design principles that carry over from healthcare to any high-stakes UX And much more. Learn how the toughest UX environment in digital can teach every industry how to keep real people at the center of the experience. === Connect with the panelists: - Maria Alexander: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariaalexander/ - Tu Nguyen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nguyen-tu/ - Megan Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganbaker12/ === Websites: - Blue Shield of California: https://www.blueshieldca.com/ - Ours Privacy: https://oursprivacy.com/ - Slide UX: https://slideux.com/ === Resources: - Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability-ebook/dp/B000SEGQNS === About the Everything Clicks podcast: Everything Clicks is a podcast about customer experiences that wow consumers while driving profitable growth. Each week, we dissect the strategies and tactics of top B2C marketers at leading Fortune 5000 companies. 📣 Subscribe now for more insights on creating digital experiences that convert.  📱 Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamirduverseau/  🌐 Smart Panda Labs: www.smartpandalabs.com