Performance Delivered

Hosted by Steffen Horst

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236

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Oct 2026

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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success

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November 5, 2026Episode 23424 min

AI Job Search: How to Treat Your Next Role Like a Pipeline

Most people approach an AI job search the same way they approach a regular one: update the resume, open LinkedIn and start applying. It's volume over strategy, which is exactly what no marketer would accept in their own campaigns. In this episode of Performance Delivered, host Steffen Horst is joined by Christine Castro, a B2B cybersecurity marketing executive and the builder of GTM Radar, an AI agent that tracks open go-to-market roles at pre-IPO cybersecurity companies. After a company-wide layoff, Christine took what she learned directing an agentic AI SDR pilot and pointed it at a new target: her own next role. She argues that any marketer, seller or operator can run a search like a pipeline, and use AI to build tools instead of just asking it questions. In this episode, you'll learn: - How to define your ICP tightly enough to stop "spraying and praying" - Which intent signals point to a company that's about to hire: funding rounds, leadership gaps, hiring bursts and job moves - How Christine went from a spreadsheet to a nightly AI agent in Claude Code with no engineering background - Why she keeps human oversight in her outreach instead of automating it - How she built her website for AI search engines, not just Google - What to do on Monday morning if you've just been laid off Christine Castro has more than two decades of experience building and scaling marketing engines for pre-IPO security companies, from seed to Series C, most recently at Constella Intelligence. Her teams have delivered 3x year-over-year ARR growth from marketing-sourced leads, and she has grown teams from 2 to 20 across the US, India and APAC. Connect with Christine: ChristineCastro.com (GTM Radar is available there too) Learn more about Symphonic Digital: https://symphonicdigital.com

October 29, 2026Episode 23323 min

The B2B Marketing Framework That Replaces the Four Ps

Most B2B teams still plan around the four Ps, but that B2B marketing framework explains what marketing does, not why a buyer picks one vendor over five others that sound the same. When buying committees grow and sales cycles stretch, more campaigns and more activity rarely close the gap. In this episode of Performance Delivered, host Steffen Horst is joined by Evan Goldberg, founder of Cyber CMO, a fractional marketing consultancy that helps cybersecurity and SaaS companies figure out what happens next when growth gets complicated. Evan argues that B2B growth depends on three things working together: a moat buyers can defend, a motivation that moves the purchase up the budget list, and memory that sticks with every member of the buying committee. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why heavy marketing activity can hide problems in your product, category, or go-to-market strategy - Why a real moat is rarely a feature, and what makes a product defensible - How external factors like regulation push a purchase into the next procurement cycle - The difference between being seen and being remembered by a buying committee - How the "actual customer profile" helps you map everyone who influences the deal - Why the framework matters more now that buyers research on ChatGPT and Claude Guest bio: Evan Goldberg has spent more than 20 years building marketing teams, transforming go-to-market strategies, creating categories, and launching products. He helped scale a technology marketing agency from startup through acquisition, has led marketing at companies including LastPass, ZeroFox, and BlackCloak, and has advised more than 60 cybersecurity and SaaS companies. Learn more about Symphonic Digital: https://symphonicdigital.com

August 6, 2026Episode 23226 min

Why Most Experimentation Programs Don't Drive Growth, with Shamir Duverseau

Most marketing teams are testing. Headlines, creative, landing pages, CTAs the activity is there. So why do so few experimentation programs produce sustained, meaningful growth? According to Shamir Duverseau, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Smart Panda Labs, the problem usually isn't the volume of tests. It's the expectation behind them. Teams go into experimentation hoping to watch a conversion-rate line climb steadily up and to the right — and that graph is never coming. Experimentation is a decision-making framework, not a conversion dial. Its real output is better decisions across the organization over time. In this episode, Shamir joins host Steffen Horst to unpack what's actually happening inside a high-consideration buying journey — and why uncertainty, not price or competition, is the thing freezing your customers in place. In this episode, we cover: Why experimentation programs stall even when teams are running hundreds of tests The decision hierarchy buyers move through: relevance, trust, motivation, orientation Why uncertainty — not your competitor or your price point — is the real conversion killer Optimizing for clicks vs. optimizing for decisions, and why click quality changes everything The "traffic accident" approach to analysis: why one data source always tells the wrong story Where AI genuinely accelerates insight work — and why it makes experts better without making non-experts competent Trust, security, and stimulation: the three psychological barriers that stall high-ticket purchases Mining chat logs, support calls, and exit surveys for the objections analytics will never show you What a healthy experimentation culture looks like when marketing, product, and IT actually align Why a losing test can be worth more than a winning one — and how it saves real money "More than any competitor, more than any price point — uncertainty is the marketer's greatest enemy." — Shamir Duverseau

July 30, 2026Episode 23127 min

Building a Marketing Engine for Long Sales Cycles — with Caroline Ang Wright (AidKit)

When your customers are governments, nonprofits, and humanitarian organizations, the traditional B2B playbook falls apart. Sales cycles stretch from six months to two years, buyers are complex, and trust is everything. In this episode, host Steffen Horst talks with Caroline Ang Wright, Vice President of Marketing at AidKit — a venture-backed public benefit corporation and certified B Corp that builds aid and benefits delivery infrastructure for governments and nonprofits at scale. Caroline has built marketing functions at early-stage startups working at the intersection of technology and public good. Before tech, she was a journalism fellow for the UN Environment Programme and a management consultant at Monitor Deloitte. She holds a BA in English literature from Brown University and master's degrees from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. In this conversation, Caroline shares how to build a high-touch marketing engine when you can't rely on capturing existing demand — and how she pairs relationship-building with scalable, data-driven systems. In this episode: Why the "capture demand" SaaS playbook breaks in B2G — and what to do instead The real length of a government sales cycle (and one deal that took 78 touches to close) How AidKit vets conferences: ICP, seniority, themes, speaking slots, and geography Why events are AidKit's strongest channel — and how digital works best as an amplifier, not a standalone Measuring ROI when deals take 18 months: leading indicators, MQLs, and pipeline created The anatomy of their best-ever webinar (250 live attendees, ~50 of 60 minutes average watch time) with former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell Using AI honestly — the "PhD intern" that still needs taste, QA, and direction Advice for small marketing teams deciding between high-touch events and scalable digital

July 23, 2026Episode 23022 min

Turning Webinars Into a Pipeline Engine — with Nicole Gates (VP Global Growth Marketing, Varonis)

Most marketers still treat webinars as a one-and-done content play — or worse, write them off as dead. Nicole Gates disagrees. As VP of Global Growth Marketing at Varonis, she's turned webinars into one of her top-of-funnel lead drivers and a repeatable, scalable revenue engine. In this episode, Nicole joins host Steffen Horst to break down how she structures webinar programs across the entire funnel, scales them globally without burning out a small team, and is now using AI to go further. What we cover: Why "webinars are dead" is wrong — and the mindset shift that makes them work Structuring webinars across the funnel (awareness → consideration → demo) and the metrics that matter at each stage How the monthly "State of Cybercrime" series became a brand of its own — with zero product pitching Using webinar data to uncover positioning and audience (the Salesforce upsell story) Scaling across regions: when to invest in local languages vs. just shifting time zones Where AI fits today (deeper audience analysis, reactivating churned customers) and tomorrow (dubbing, semi-live replays) Live vs. on-demand — what actually converts Nicole's advice for teams starting from scratch: consistency, thought leadership, and giving it a year

July 16, 2026Episode 22927 min

Why Marketing and Sales Alignment Fails (And How to Actually Fix It) | Gerardo Dada

Marketing and sales alignment is one of the most talked-about, least-solved problems in B2B. In this episode, Steffen Horst talks with Gerardo A. Dada, CMO at Catchpoint and former marketing leader at Microsoft, SolarWinds, Rackspace, and Motorola — about why the fix isn't more meetings or Slack channels, but shared systems and shared metrics. Gerardo explains why marketing should be measured on revenue instead of MQLs, tells the story of a team that gamed its PQL numbers with free t-shirts (and what it cost the sales team), and lays out a practical path for aligning on ideal customer profile, buying-stage gates, joint budget decisions, and "reverse forensics" on won deals. He also makes the case against merging marketing and sales under one leader, and shares how to keep messaging consistent between marketing content and sales conversations. Topics covered: Why misalignment is a systems problem, not a communication problem The cost of measuring marketing on leads instead of revenue How to define ICP, buyer personas, and true buying-stage gates Keeping marketing and sales in sync on long sales cycles Why a shared org chart isn't the fix Building a consistent narrative across marketing content and sales conversations

July 9, 2026Episode 22826 min

AI in Marketing: Deciding Better, Not Just Producing More (with Ashley Bowlin)

Most marketing teams are using AI to produce more: more content, more campaigns, more output. But the marketers pulling ahead are using it to decide better. In this episode, host Steffen Horst talks with Ashley Bowlin, a marketing and growth executive with nearly 20 years of experience helping SaaS and professional services companies grow through smarter go-to-market strategy, about what that shift actually looks like. Ashley specializes in the "glue functions" that connect brand, product, sales, and partnerships — and she's here to talk about using AI to think more clearly, not generate more noise. In this episode: [02:05] Why teams default to using AI for output instead of better decisions [04:38] Pressure-testing brand positioning and differentiation with AI [08:07] How AI search is changing buyer behavior — and why there are now 20-70 touchpoints in a B2B buying journey [11:40] Closing the gap between data insight and action [12:48] Using AI to align brand, product, sales, and partnerships without adding fragmentation [14:14] Why LLMs are "notorious for pleasing" — and how to train them not to [15:23] The "post-mortem" technique: asking AI to critique its own recommendation [16:49] Holding the line against content for content's sake [21:45] Where AI helps executive-level decisions — and where human judgment has to lead [24:58] Preserving the human element in an AI-driven marketing org About Ashley Bowlin: Ashley Bowlin is a marketing and growth executive with nearly 20 years of experience across SaaS and professional services. She currently works at Top Echelon, a staffing and recruiting technology company with an ATS, CRM, and split-placement recruiter network. Connect with her on LinkedIn: Ashley Bowlin. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Performance Delivered and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app: https://lovethepodcast.com/65692bc40e90de09ac168689

July 2, 2026Episode 22624 min

The Right to Win: How to Focus Your Go-to-Market Strategy

Growing B2B companies often have products that can do dozens, even hundreds, of things — but that doesn't mean they should market all of them. In this episode of Performance Delivered, host Steffen Horst sits down with Rob Karel, Principal of GTM Perspective and former marketing executive at Precisely, Informatica, Lattice, and Okta, to break down a repeatable framework for identifying the handful of use cases where your company has a genuine "right to win." Rob shares: Why the busiest websites often signal the least focused go-to-market strategy How to separate real market opportunity from internal wishful thinking A two-axis scoring model for prioritizing use cases (and how to weight it for your market) Why 3–5 use cases beats 15–20, even at enterprise scale How Precisely narrowed 70+ sales plays down to 11 owned "right to win" use cases for 2026 The difference between outbound and inbound GTM strategy — and how AI fits into the long tail Why executive misalignment is the #1 reason prioritization frameworks turn into shelf-war Learn more about Symphonic Digital: symphonicdigital.com

January 15, 2026Episode 22525 min

AI Personas Explained: The Secret to Better SaaS Messaging

AI has made content creation faster than ever — but for most B2B SaaS teams, it has also made messaging more generic, not more effective . In this episode of Performance Delivered: Insider Secrets to Marketing Success , host Steffen Horst is joined by Christopher Silvestri , Founder of Conversion Alchemy, to break down how SaaS companies can use AI personas, synthetic research, and AI-assisted workflows without losing clarity, differentiation, or brand voice . They explore why most messaging problems are not copy problems, but clarity problems, and why AI should be treated as an input system rather than an output shortcut . The conversation covers how to ground AI personas in real customer research, how to structure messaging frameworks that scale across teams, and where human judgment remains essential. This episode is especially relevant for B2B SaaS marketers, founders, product leaders, and growth teams navigating the intersection of AI, positioning, and go-to-market strategy. Key Topics Covered: Why AI tools do not fix messaging problems The difference between prompting and context engineering How to build AI personas based on real customer data Common mistakes SaaS teams make with AI-generated copy What a real AI-assisted messaging system looks like How to scale brand-consistent messaging without losing nuance The future of synthetic research in SaaS go-to-market teams 🔗 Learn more about Christopher Silvestri: https://conversionalchemy.net 🔗 Learn more about Symphonic Digital: https://www.symphonicdigital.com Subscribe to Performance Delivered for weekly conversations on performance marketing, AI strategy, and scalable growth.

November 6, 2025Episode 22438 min

Building a Brand That Moves People with Natasha Nikolaeva, Founder of StretchIt

In this episode of Performance Delivered , host Steffen Horst speaks with Natasha Nikolaeva , founder of StretchIt , a leading wellness app and workplace platform helping people improve flexibility, mobility, and mindfulness through movement. Natasha shares her journey from practicing corporate law to becoming a wellness entrepreneur — and how she turned a personal struggle with back pain into a purpose-driven business that empowers people and organizations to move, feel better, and thrive. She reveals how StretchIt grew from an Instagram community into a global digital brand, the strategies behind its early marketing success, and how it continues to innovate in both the consumer and corporate wellness space. In This Episode, You’ll Learn: How Natasha turned her personal wellness journey into a purpose-driven business. The early marketing strategies that helped StretchIt gain global traction. Why consistency and community were key to building long-term engagement. The shift from consumer fitness to workplace wellness — and what Natasha learned entering the B2B market. How StretchIt uses competitions, challenges, and personalization to boost retention. The metrics that truly matter when scaling an app-based wellness business. How purpose, storytelling, and product design drive user trust and brand growth. CONNECT WITH OUR HOST & GUEST 🎙️ HOST: Steffen Horst – Host, Performance Delivered Podcast 🔗 LinkedIn: Steffen Horst 👩‍💼 GUEST: Natasha Nikolaeva – Founder, StretchIt 🌐 Website: stretchitapp.com 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-nikolaeva-b108b92/ 📱 Instagram: @stretchitapp TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Intro: From law to wellness entrepreneurship 01:20 – The spark behind StretchIt and Natasha’s personal story 03:30 – Building an app before launch and early marketing prep 05:00 – Instagram as the foundation for brand awareness 07:00 – Launching globally through community engagement 09:15 – Positioning StretchIt in a crowded wellness market 12:00 – Expanding from flexibility training to workplace wellness 13:50 – The shift to B2B and offline marketing strategies 15:00 – How StretchIt keeps users and employees engaged 17:50 – Retention strategies and the upcoming AI Coach feature 19:40 – The key business metrics that drive StretchIt ’s growth 21:50 – How engagement differs between consumers and corporate users 24:40 – The power of small, consistent movement habits 25:30 – Where to connect and learn more about StretchIt The views and opinions expressed on the Performance Delivered podcast are solely those of the host and guests and should not be attributed to any other individual or entity. This podcast is an independent production of Performance Delivered , and all rights of ownership and reproduction are retained. © 2025