#34 - Your team is running tests. But are they running the right ones — and do they actually know what they're trying to learn? Most B2B marketing teams test without a clear hypothesis, report on campaigns without asking why results were what they were, and scale pilots that were never designed to produce conclusive reads.

Sarah Renner, VP of Marketing Strategy and Analytics at MarketBridge, has spent 20+ years at the intersection of data strategy and go-to-market experimentation — helping B2B companies replace opinion-driven decisions with evidence-based growth models. In this episode, she shares the go-to-market science framework her team has built, why most B2B experimentation fails before it starts, and what it actually takes to build a testing program that produces results you can act on.

What we cover:

• The 3-part go-to-market science framework: data-backed, hypothesis-driven, and reproducible — and where most teams fall down
• Why "did this campaign work?" is not a hypothesis — and what real hypothesis-driven testing looks like
• The experimentation factory: how to pick the right tests for B2B's long sales cycles and small transaction volumes
• Incrementality testing in practice — including a real-world example using a podcast as the marketing channel
• Why your test result will almost never translate 1:1 at scale — and how to set C-suite expectations before you roll out
• What's actually working in B2B marketing right now: quality over volume, offline custom audiences, and why you should be skeptical of any platform that won't show you the data
• AI's role (and limits) in marketing analytics — and the free data science packages worth knowing about

Chapter Markers:

• (00:00) Sarah's Background and MarketBridge
• (05:30) Go-to-Market Science: The 3-Part Framework
• (20:30) Building Your Experimentation Factory
• (36:00) Scaling Results and Managing Expectations
• (44:00) What's Working in B2B Marketing Right Now

Connect with Sarah Renner:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraherenner/
• MarketBridge: marketbridge.com/consulting

If this episode shifted how you think about experimentation, measurement, or go-to-market strategy, share it with a marketing or revenue leader on your team. And follow Growth Activated on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#33 - A full brand relaunch and website rebuild in six weeks — with a small team, no agency, and AI doing roughly 60% of the heavy lifting. Dana Gagnon didn't just pull it off. She built a repeatable workflow that other marketing leaders can actually use.

Dana Gagnon is CMO at Every, a fintech payroll platform, and a former Pluralsight marketing leader who helped scale the company from 50 employees all the way through IPO. In this episode, she walks through the entire AI-powered rebrand process she ran — from Gong transcript analysis and Claude-built brand voice guidelines, to vibe coding website pages herself and getting 13 core pages of web copy done in a single afternoon.

This isn't a theoretical conversation about AI and marketing. Dana shares the exact tools, workflows, and decision-making frameworks she used — including where AI fell short and where human creativity still had to carry the weight.

What we cover:

• Why Dana's rebrand happened at all — the convergence of repositioning, product naming, and visual identity that made the timing right
• How she used 150 pages of anonymized Gong call transcripts to inform messaging and positioning before a single logo was designed
• Why Claude outperformed ChatGPT for brand voice and copywriting — and how she set up a project that let her write 13 website pages in an afternoon
• The vibe coding tools she used (v0 from Vercel, Lovable, Bolt) to prototype and build pages without a developer
• Where AI-generated design still falls short — image editing, animations, and complex product visuals
• The honest quality trade-offs: what she's happy launching as an MVP and what she plans to upgrade post-launch
• What the six-week sprint actually looked like — and the foundational work done in the months before that made it possible
• Her take on agencies using AI — and what she'd expect from an agency partner today versus five years ago

Chapter Markers:

• (00:00) Dana's Background and Path to CMO
• (09:00) Why Now: The Case for the Rebrand
• (13:30) Building the Foundation with AI
• (19:45) Writing 13 Web Pages in an Afternoon
• (29:50) Vibe Coding the Website
• (42:00) Lessons, Trade-offs, and What She'd Do Differently

Connect with Dana Gagnon:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-gagnon/

If this episode shifted how you think about what a lean marketing team can actually do with AI, share it with a CMO or VP of Marketing who's been putting off a rebrand because they don't have the resources.

Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#32 - It’s been a full season - from wedding planning and family celebrations to prepping new episodes for the podcast. In this short update, Mandy shares what’s been happening behind the scenes, why the feed’s been quieter, and what listeners can look forward to when Growth Activated returns in mid-November.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#31 – Your pipeline is down. Your team is hitting MQL targets. Your attribution tool isn't giving you answers. And marketing and sales are pointing fingers at each other. The problem isn't your team — it's that you're measuring the wrong thing.

Carolyn Dilks is a 4x marketing leader turned Co-Founder and CEO of Passetto, a company built to expose what she calls the pipeline black box — the poorly tracked period before an opportunity is ever created. It's where the most critical, most ignored data in your entire GTM system lives. She's also the co-host of the GTM Live podcast.

In this episode, Carolyn breaks down why most B2B revenue teams are flying blind before pipeline gets created, why attribution alone can't fix it, and what it actually looks like to run your go-to-market like a factory — with real visibility into what's working, what's wasting resources, and what to engineer for predictable, repeatable growth.

What we cover:

• What the pipeline black box is — and why even well-instrumented companies can't see inside it
• The manufacturing factory analogy: what running GTM like a production line actually looks like in practice
• Why MQLs are still the gold standard even though they're a terrible metric — and what to track instead
• A real client example: a $100M platform with decelerating pipeline, MQLs converting at 16%, and handraisers closing in 12 days vs. 130 days for scored leads
• The attribution myth: where it helps, where it misleads, and why it's secondary to operational pipeline data
• The GTM factory metrics every revenue team should layer in — trigger type, time-to-connect, qualification rate, disqualification rate, and more
• What marketing leaders can do immediately to start exposing pipeline efficiency without restructuring the CRM
• How brand, content, and dark social fit into the equation — and why Carolyn separates that from pipeline measurement entirely

Chapter Markers:

• (00:00) Carolyn's Background and Passetto
• (09:15) Inside the Pipeline Black Box
• (22:00) GTM Factory Metrics That Matter
• (32:00) What Marketing Leaders Should Do Now
• (40:00) Brand, Attribution, and Annual Planning

Connect with Carolyn Dilks:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-dilks/

Podcast: GTM Live

Website: passetto.com

If this episode changed how you think about pipeline measurement, share it with your CRO, your RevOps lead, or any marketing leader who's tired of defending MQL numbers that aren't moving the business.

Growth Activated is produced by Mandy Hornaday.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#30 - In this episode of Growth Activated, Mandy Walker sits down with Bryna Dilman—a seasoned Growth & Demand Gen leader—for our very first live coaching session on the show.

We tackle four questions many B2B marketing leader are wrestling with right now - and break down practical, real-world strategies you can take straight back to your team.

Inside, we cover:

• Evolving roles in the AI era - are generalists making a comeback, or do specialists still win?
• Digital marketing in a noisy world - how to break through oversaturation and build real trust and connection.
• Brand vs. demand - why brand gets deprioritized, and how CMOs can prove the multiplier effect to execs and CFOs.
• Go-to-market essentials - the baseline foundations every team needs: ICP, target account list, messaging, offers, and a clear path to sales meetings.

If you’ve ever felt like your channels are noisy, your brand work keeps slipping to the bottom of the list, and you’re still under pressure to deliver pipeline, this candid conversation will hit home.

🎧 Tune in to hear what’s working, what’s changing, and how today’s best marketing leaders are evolving their playbooks to drive growth.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#29 - AI is changing everything about how marketing gets done — but how are CMOs really adapting to it inside their teams, their strategies, and their leadership?”

Today I’m joined by four-time CMO Ruth Zive, who has led marketing at multiple AI-driven SaaS companies and now heads up marketing at Voices — a company redefining how brands show up through voice in the AI era.

In this episode, we cover:

• AI in customer experience — how it’s reshaping interactions and the future of brand identity.
• AI in the marketing team — the tools Ruth’s team uses and why humans still matter.
• Annual planning in the AI era — Ruth’s framework for setting bets and aligning with sales.
• Lessons from a 4× CMO — from sales/marketing alignment to her mantra: outcomes over strategy.

This conversation is full of perspective from the front lines of AI, brand, and executive leadership — and I know you’ll walk away with ideas you can apply right away.

Let’s get into it.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

Few conversations are more high-stakes for a B2B marketing leader than proving ROI to the C-Suite. Nail it, and you win trust, credibility, and budget. Miss the mark, and you risk being seen as a cost center instead of a growth driver.

In this episode of Growth Activated, host Mandy Walker shares seven mistakes marketing leaders make when proving marketing ROI to executives — and exactly how to avoid them. Drawing on her experience leading teams from $1M to $750M in revenue, Mandy reveals the pitfalls that derail even seasoned CMOs and VPs, and how to reframe your ROI conversations to strengthen executive alignment and support.

You’ll learn how to:

• Avoid poor data hygiene that undermines marketing metrics and trust
• Give the right context before showing results to the C-Suite
• Define marketing attribution in a way Sales and Finance will stand behind
• Show ROI without pitting Marketing and Sales against each other
• Calculate ROI the way your CFO expects
• Move beyond vanity metrics to business outcomes
• Prove incrementality — the true lift your marketing delivers

Whether you’re a CMO, VP, or aspiring leader, this episode will help you master boardroom presentations and earn the credibility every marketing leader needs at the highest levels.

If you’re heading into planning season and want to strengthen your executive presence while building a marketing strategy that gets buy-in from the C-Suite, check out Mandy’s Lead Like a CMO program at growthactivated.com.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#27 – The first 90 days in a new marketing leadership role can make or break your long-term success.

You’re learning a new company, navigating personalities and politics, absorbing new systems—and all eyes are on you to make an impact fast.

In this solo episode of Growth Activated, Mandy Walker is sharing the 3 priorities she focuses on in every new CMO role—priorities that help her align with the business, unite her team, and deliver quick wins without burning out.

Inside, we cover:

• How to prioritize alignment with the C-Suite so you’re focused on the right segments, solutions, and opportunities from day one
• How to get your marketing team rowing in the same direction and working toward shared goals instead of operating in silos
• How to leverage incrementality and quick wins to build trust and momentum while laying the foundation for long-term success
• The simple frameworks Mandy uses to depersonalize decision-making, clarify team priorities, and identify low-effort, high-impact actions

Whether you’re stepping into your first CMO role, moving into a new company, or leading a team as a fractional or interim CMO, these principles will help you start strong, earn trust, and set yourself up for measurable impact.

If you’re a B2B marketing leader who wants to hit the ground running in your next role—and lead with clarity and confidence—this episode is your playbook for the first 90 days.

🎧 Listen in, then go activate growth.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#26 -  In this episode of Growth Activated, Mandy Walker sits down with Morgan J. Ingram — LinkedIn strategist, content creator, and founder of AMP Creative — to talk all things LinkedIn marketing, social selling, and building a personal and brand presence that actually drives results.

Morgan breaks down the five key components of a high-impact social selling strategy, the role of marketing leadership in enabling sales teams on LinkedIn, and how modern B2B marketing leaders can create alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success.

Whether you're just starting to explore social media as a B2B channel or looking to elevate your entire go-to-market motion, this episode is packed with tactical advice and strategic insight.

We cover:
✔️ What most B2B marketers get wrong about LinkedIn
✔️ The 5 C’s framework for social selling
✔️ How to align sales, marketing, and customer success
✔️ What content actually works today
✔️ How to pilot a LinkedIn strategy with your sales team
✔️ Why personal profiles matter more than company pages
✔️ The one thing every marketing leader should optimize today

Perfect for marketing leaders, founders, and anyone driving go-to-market strategy in today’s noisy, AI-driven digital landscape.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪

#25 - If your team keeps waiting on you to move forward, the problem might not be them.

Being the bottleneck is one of the most common — and most costly — leadership patterns for marketing leaders managing fast-moving teams. In this episode, Mandy Hornaday shares a leadership framework she returns to again and again: the four things every marketing team needs their leader to provide, and five practical ways to stop slowing your team down.

This is part of the Growth Activated Summer Leadership Mini-Series — short, focused episodes on the leadership lessons that matter most right now.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• The fast train metaphor that reframes what your job as a leader actually is
• 4 essential tracks to lay for your team: vision, business context, ruthless prioritization, and decision-making guardrails
• Why giving your team the ‘why’ behind decisions changes how they execute
• 5 ways to remove yourself as a bottleneck — including the one move that takes work off your plate immediately
• How to delegate ownership (not just tasks) so your team thinks more strategically
• Why progress over perfection is a leadership skill, not a compromise

Chapter Markers:

• (00:00) The Fast Train Metaphor and Why It Matters
• (03:53) The 4 Tracks Every Marketing Leader Must Lay
• (08:27) 5 Ways to Stop Being the Bottleneck

If this episode resonated, follow Growth Activated on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review — it helps more marketing leaders find the show.

Growth Activated is hosted by Mandy Hornaday — strategist, fractional CMO, and coach for B2B marketing leaders ready to lead like operators. New episodes drop weekly.

Thanks for hanging out with us today!

Come build with us:
The CMO Operating System is a six-week live cohort where you build one connected foundation for how your function plans, decides, and reports, with AI partners running on top of it. The system is yours, and it goes with you wherever you go next. The founding cohort is small and first by design. Enrollment closes September 30 and we start October 12. 

👉 Join the CMO OS waitlist 

Come say hi on LinkedIn: Mandy Hornaday
Visit us: growthactivated.com

Keep activating growth for yourself and your company. 💪