Many growing businesses reach a tipping point where ad hoc campaigns and word of mouth simply are not enough. But knowing when and how to make that first senior marketing hire is harder than it sounds.

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd is joined by Joe Walker, Head of Global Marketing, and Victoria Wilson, HR Director at Panorama Antennas, to explore what really happens when a business brings in its first true marketing leader. From recognising the triggers for the hire to transforming a fragmented, sales-driven function into a strategic growth engine, Joe and Victoria offer a candid and practical first-hand account of the journey.

From calibrating the right level of hire to building a data-driven, full-funnel marketing function, this episode is packed with actionable insights for founders, business leaders, and marketing professionals alike.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ How to identify the right moment to hire your first senior marketing leader
✔️ The key criteria for finding someone who can balance strategy with hands-on execution
✔️ What changes when marketing shifts from a support function to a strategic partner
✔️ Why emotional intelligence and cultural fit matter as much as technical skill
✔️ How a new marketing leader should approach their first weeks, listening before acting
✔️ The power of HR and marketing collaborating on employer branding
✔️ What the Great Place to Work accreditation is and why it drives commercial value

Whether you are a founder considering your first senior marketing hire, an HR leader navigating the process, or a marketing professional stepping into a new organisation for the first time, this episode will give you a practical framework and the confidence to get it right.

Connect on LinkedIn with:

Joe: https: linkedin.com/in/joewalker

Victoria: linkedin.com/in/victoria-wilson

Karen: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

Sales are asking what marketing is doing. Marketing is questioning where sales are focusing. Teams operating in silos instead of segments. Sound familiar?

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Louise Early, Marketing and Commercial Director at Navtech Radar, to explore how she is tackling that challenge head on. By building segment teams where sales, marketing and product work together, aligned to the same market focus and success metrics.

With a career spanning engineering, field sales, product management and strategic marketing, Louise brings a rare end-to-end perspective on what it actually takes to make these functions work as one.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ Why frontline sales experience shapes stronger, more empathetic marketers
✔️ How to implement true segmentation — not just talk about it
✔️ What a segment team model looks like in practice
✔️ How to define shared KPIs built by the team, for the team
✔️ Why curiosity is the most important hire criterion in technical B2B
✔️ The real risks of duplicating capability in a segment model
✔️ Where AI fits in — and where to be cautious

If you are leading marketing in a technical or engineering-led business, this one is for you.

Connect with Louise on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/louiseearly/

Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

How do you lead a full rebrand, restructure a global marketing team, and compete with better-funded rivals — in the middle of an economic downturn?

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Angela Brown, Chief Marketing Officer at NCC Group, to share her truly inspirational journey. Angela joined the business in January 2023, just as the macroeconomic turndown started, but since then has delivered a complete brand transformation while working with challenging budgets.

From navigating profit warnings to restructuring a global team across multiple disciplines, Angela offers unfiltered insights that marketing leaders can implement when facing their toughest challenges. This is real experience from a CMO who actually did it.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ How to execute a complete rebrand during a profit warning and budget cuts
✔️ Why decision-making by committee kills rebrand projects and what to do instead
✔️ How to restructure a global marketing team from regional silos to a unified function
✔️ The secret to competing against better-funded competitors without matching their budgets
✔️ How to balance internal and external communications during massive organisational change
✔️ The mindset shift required to move from digital-heavy to relationship-driven marketing

Whether you're leading a rebrand in uncertain times, competing with companies that can outspend you, or rebuilding a marketing team through a restructure, this episode is packed with practical takeaways from a CMO who successfully navigated all three challenges.

Connect with Angela on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/angelabrowncmo/
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

There's an ongoing debate in B2B tech: should you let your product sell itself through product-led growth, or invest in a traditional sales-led approach? 

What if the answer isn't binary?

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd speaks with Gary Gonsalvez, Marketing Director at Coveo, who brings over 20 years of experience delivering 10x growth through strategic marketing. Unlike many marketing leaders who stay in one lane, Gary has successfully operated in both sales-led organisations like SAI Global and Coveo, and product-led growth companies like Pledge.

From understanding which customer tasks suit each model to navigating the organisational challenges of hybrid approaches, Gary provides a framework for choosing the right growth strategy based on customer behaviour rather than industry trends.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ The fundamental difference between product-led and sales-led growth—where you place the burden of education and value demonstration
✔️ How to determine which growth model suits your business based on three critical questions about customer tasks
✔️ Why transitioning from PLG to sales is significantly easier than going sales-to-PLG
✔️ The hidden costs of PLG that many companies underestimate—from continuous UX investment to product analytics


Connect with Gary on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gary-gonsalvez/

Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

How do you encourage creative marketing campaigns while still hitting your pipeline targets? It's the question every marketing leader wrestles with, especially in field marketing where ROI is constantly under scrutiny.

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Tech Marketing, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Joe Dotson, Director of EMEA Field Marketing at Infoblox, an award-winning marketing leader who has transformed field marketing from tactical execution to strategic partnership. With sevenyears at Infoblox, Joe has developed frameworks that allow his team to innovate boldly while maintaining strict accountability to revenue goals.

From the "Patch Plan" strategy that aligns marketing with sales territories to the "Fail Forward" philosophy that dedicates 20% of time to experimentation, Joe shares the processes that have driven significant growth.

**What You'll Learn in This Episode:**

✔️ The "Fail Forward" approach: dedicating 20% of time to innovation while hitting 100% of targets

✔️ How to create "Patch Plans" that align marketing strategy with individual sales territories

✔️ The follow-up framework that ensures no lead gets left behind after events

✔️ How to position field marketers as "mini CMOs" rather than just "the events people"

✔️ How to break down sales-marketing silos by treating sales as your customer

✔️ Practical tactics for working across diverse regional cultures in EMEA

Whether you're a field marketing leader looking to elevate your team's strategic impact, a CMO restructuring your marketing team, or a CEO trying to understand how marketing can truly partner with sales, this episode delivers actionable frameworks you can implement immediately.

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joedotson
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

Customer advocacy is no longer just a nice-to-have—it's a revenue driver. But how do you build a systematic approach that turns happy customers into active revenue generators? And more importantly, how do you make this everyone's responsibility, not just marketing's?

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Faith Wheller, VP of Global Marketing for TeamViewer, to explore how to build customer advocacy programmes that directly impact your bottom line. 

With over 25 years of marketing experience and a track record of managing 700,000 customers, Faith shares the frameworks and strategies that transform customer satisfaction into measurable business growth.

From creating tiered advocacy programmes to making customer advocacy an organisation-wide responsibility, Faith provides practical insights that CEOs and marketing leaders can implement to reduce acquisition costs and accelerate sales cycles.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ How to build a systematic customer advocacy platform that tracks and rewards customer actions
✔️ Why customer advocacy must be an organisation-wide responsibility beyond marketing
✔️ How to identify your advocates using existing platforms and customer signals
✔️ Strategies for rewarding advocates beyond traditional swag (sustainable and meaningful incentives)
✔️ The business case for customer advocacy: ROI, brand awareness, and diversity goals

Whether you're a CEO looking to reduce customer acquisition costs or a marketing leader building advocacy programmes from scratch, this episode is packed with practical takeaways to turn your customers into your most effective sales force.

Connect with Faith on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/faithwheller/
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

Every founder reaches a point where they realise they don't know what they don't know. But how do you scale a business when there's no manual to follow?

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd speaks with Nick Mason, co-founder of Turtl, about his remarkable journey from writing a few lines of code with his co-founder whilst on a project at Oxford University to building a revenue-generating content platform now supporting hundreds of brands.

Nick shares the honest reality of bootstrapping to £1M ARR with no funding, navigating the leap from software engineer to CEO, and competing with giants like Adobe in the crowded MarTech space. From identifying critical knowledge gaps to building a marketing team that influences product strategy, Nick reveals the hard-won lessons that separate founders who scale successfully from those who get stuck.

The conversation also explores how ABM teams can demonstrate ROI through better measurement, personalisation at scale, and creating feedback loops that drive continuous improvement.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

✔️ How to bootstrap a tech startup from initial concept to 1M ARR with no funding
✔️ Strategies for identifying and overcoming "what you don't know you don't know"
✔️ How to compete with major players when you're a smaller company
✔️ Why marketing must be intrinsically linked to business strategy, not siloed
✔️ The importance of mentors, advisors, and continuous self-education in scaling
✔️ How to navigate from bootstrapping to Series A funding
✔️ The value of being noteworthy and differentiated in a crowded market
✔️How ABM teams can scale programmes, set up feedback loops, and connect content to pipeline

Whether you're a founder navigating early-stage growth, a CEO looking to understand marketing's strategic value, or an entrepreneur facing challenges you've never encountered before, this episode offers practical wisdom and inspiration for your scaling journey.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nickmasonsays/
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Find out more about Turtl at turtl.co

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

B2B buyers don't move in straight lines anymore, and the old MQL-focused approach is leaving revenue on the table.
In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Shana Brewer, Director of Global Campaigns at Veeam Software, to unpack the realities of modern B2B campaign marketing. 

With over 20 years of experience and nine years at Veeam, Shana brings rare insights into what actually works when buyers behave unpredictably.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

✔️ How to navigate non-linear buyer journeys where prospects move back and forth between stages

✔️ Why the shift from MQL-focused to buying group marketing strategies is essential for B2B success

✔️ The "Easter egg" strategy for creating omnichannel experiences that let buyers choose their own path

✔️ How to evolve from volume-based lead generation to quality-focused targeting as you scale

From ditching MQLs in favour of buying group strategies to planting "Easter eggs" throughout the buyer journey, Shana shares battle-tested approaches that marketing leaders can implement immediately.

Connect with Shana on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shanafbrewer/
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

Your customers are making buying decisions in ChatGPT before ever visiting your site—and your analytics can't see it happening. We reveal why traditional attribution is broken, how the "great decoupling" is misleading marketing leaders, and what you must do now to show up where buyers actually research.

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd explores the seismic shift in search behaviour with Semrush's Kyle Byers, a leading voice on winning in the age of AI. 

Discover why your traffic is declining even when rankings improve, how conversion rates from AI search are 4.4 times higher than traditional SEO, and why cutting content budgets now could be catastrophic for your brand visibility.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ Why traffic declines even when rankings improve (the "great decoupling")
✔️ How customers conduct entire research journeys in AI search before reaching your site
✔️ Why conversion rates from ChatGPT are 4.4x higher than traditional SEO traffic
✔️ The attribution crisis: why your best marketing shows up as "direct" or "unknown"
✔️ Why ChatGPT will become the most powerful paid acquisition channel ever created
✔️ Which off-site platforms are now critical for B2B visibility

From understanding how ChatGPT secretly relies on Google results to learning which platforms (Reddit, Quora, YouTube) are now essential for B2B brands, Kyle shares the tactical shifts marketing leaders need to make immediately. 

Whether you're a CMO defending your SEO investment or a CEO trying to understand where your customers have gone, this episode provides the clarity and actionable strategies you need.

Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kylebyers
Connect with Karen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lloydkaren/

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk

When growth stalls and something feels "off" with marketing, how do you diagnose the real problem? Is it the demand generation engine, the positioning, or something deeper in the business itself?

In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Tech Marketing, host Karen Lloyd sits down with Dani Smallbone, a transformational fractional CMO specialising in turning underperforming marketing functions into strategic growth engines. With experience scaling companies from start-up to £40M ARR, Dani shares the diagnostic frameworks she uses to identify what's truly broken and the practical steps to fix it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✔️ The telltale signs that indicate a marketing function needs transformation versus incremental improvement

✔️ How to diagnose whether your issue is product marketing, brand messaging, or demand generation

✔️ Real case studies of successful pivots including climate tech and HR tech transformations

✔️ How the CMO's role as diplomat and educator drives cross-functional alignment

From pivoting climate tech companies into new markets to rebuilding demand generation from scratch, Dani reveals the patterns that indicate when transformation is needed versus incremental improvement—and why marketing can never be the sole engine of growth.

Brought to you by Armstrong Lloyd - your go-to solution for recruiting marketing, sales, and business leaders in B2B.

Want to know more?
Discover more at armstronglloyd.co.uk