The ChangeOver | by Weidert (Audio)

An AI tool falsely told buyers a company was bought by its biggest rival. Chelsea explains the audit that catches it.

Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini about your company before they ever call you, and those tools build their answers from every listing, directory, and profile that mentions you. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, host Greg Linnemanstons talks with Chelsea Drusch, Vice President of Marketing and Sales Growth Solutions at Weidert Group, about core market presence. They covered: the entity audit that finds contradictions in your digital record, how to decide which fixes and channels earn budget, and how to show progress before revenue does.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE:

LINKS MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Listen now and subscribe to The ChangeOver Podcast on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube Podcasts to stay at the front of the industrial marketing and sales innovation curve.

Two website quotes, $35K apart. Jo and Frank discuss what the difference buys and what an audit saves.

A marketing director puts two proposals side by side. One says $35,000, the other says $70,000, maybe more. From the outside they look like the same product. In part two of this conversation about the role of industrial websites, Jo Phillip and Frank Isca take apart what separates them, how an audit lowers a website budget rather than raising it, where AI earns its keep in a build (and where it doesn't), and the three questions that expose whether a partner is selling strategy or fresh decoration.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

QUOTES:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Listen now and subscribe to The ChangeOver Podcast to stay at the front of the industrial marketing and sales innovation curve.

Buyers build the shortlist before they ever visit. Frank Isca on what that changed about industrial sites.

INTRO: Five years ago an industrial website had one job on the front end: rank, get the click, and make a decent first impression. That sequence has come apart. Buyers now assemble a shortlist through AI assistants and directories long before they type your name into a browser, and roughly half of all page requests now come from machines rather than people. In part one of a two-part conversation, Jo Phillip and Frank Isca work through what actually changed, what it looks like in your analytics, and two things any marketer can go check this week.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

QUOTES:

LINKS MENTIONED:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Listen now and subscribe to The ChangeOver Podcast on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube Podcasts to stay at the front of the industrial marketing and sales innovation curve.

SmarterX’s Mike Kaput joins Jo to talk about the build: AI content machines, prospecting at scale, and the shift from doing the work to running the systems.

In Part 2 of a conversation with Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer at SmarterX, Jo Phillip gets into the execution layer: what an AI-assisted content system actually looks like for a lean B2B team, where AI prospecting tools genuinely deliver, and how to build a tool stack without chasing shiny objects. This episode highlights the mindset shift that separates practitioners who stay relevant from those who don’t: moving from doing the work to orchestrating the systems that do it.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

03:50 – Why your limiting factor is no longer production time, and where your effort should go instead

06:27 – Tool stack for a lean team: start with a frontier model and the AI in your existing tools before adding anything new

09:25 – AI-assisted prospecting: what’s working, where teams over-rely on it, and a real example of 250 personalized emails sent in 20 minutes

18:31 – How to evaluate and adopt AI tools without getting burned: the questions most teams skip

20:06 – Agentic AI: why you need a policy before you deploy anything, and the workflow mapping homework required for agents to work

24:50 – The mindset shift: from individual contributor to system orchestrator — and the risks of resisting it

QUOTES:

“I don’t think you’re probably served on that lean team as sitting in front of a blank page and typing out your thoughts. I’d be moving very fast towards having people interview me or interviewing subject matter experts or capturing all the meetings and calls we have in audio and text form.” — Mike Kaput

“You are probably no longer going to predominantly be the one doing the work. You’re going to be orchestrating and managing and overseeing, whether it’s even just systems, a bunch of different chat windows, or probably agents eventually.” — Mike Kaput

Links mentioned in this episode:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

47% of B2B organizations are stuck in AI piloting while individuals race ahead. Here's how to close the gap.

Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer at SmarterX and co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence, has spent the past decade watching companies say they’re “exploring AI” while their best people build personal superpowers with it, but remain siloed. In this episode, Jo digs into SmarterX’s 2026 State of AI for Business report — and the structural gap it reveals between what individual contributors are doing with AI and what their organizations have actually sanctioned.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

07:35 – The SMB’s “worst of both worlds” problem: why mid-market companies get stuck, with only 14–16% reaching scaling

10:38 – AI native, AI emergent, or obsolete: the three-category framework every SMB leader needs to hear

11:13 – Why “our data isn’t ready” isn’t the barrier leaders think it is — and what you can do today without involving proprietary data

14:08 – The three-tier AI tech stack: existing tools, frontier models, and specialized platforms, plus why sequence matters

18:04 – AI literacy before AI tools: why spending millions on software doesn’t help teams that still use AI like a search engine

24:47 – Why 58% of professionals want workflow integration training even more than prompting guidance — the shift from tactics to operations

28:28 – The workflow documentation step you can’t afford to skip

32:26 – The three moves a mid-market sales and marketing leader should make this week to get out of the silos and start building real AI infrastructure

LINKS:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Kyle Denhoff of HubSpot breaks down YouTube channel structure, search optimization, repurposing, and what to measure.

In Part 2 of this conversation with Jo, Kyle Denhoff, Senior Director of Marketing at HubSpot (where he manages 13 YouTube channels), gets into the practical mechanics of building a B2B YouTube presence that compounds. Jo and Kyle cover channel architecture, YouTube Studio optimization, AEO strategy, getting camera-shy technical experts on camera, scrappy repurposing workflows, and a three-step plan for practitioners ready to start or restart their YouTube presence.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

• 02:14 — Channel structure: why YouTube thinks like TV and what that means for B2B channel design
• 03:54 — Playlists as content clusters: the two models Kyle uses to organize for algorithms and audience
• 07:07 — YouTube Studio essentials: the three metrics that actually predict algorithm traction (CTR, average view duration, engagement)
• 10:16 — Title and thumbnail strategy: why Kyle’s team builds the brief around packaging first, content second
• 12:12 — Answer engine optimization (AEO): how YouTube content is being cited by LLMs, and what that means for your content brief
• 19:19 — Content strategy prioritization: demand capture vs. brand awareness and why Kyle always starts at the bottom of the funnel
• 22:52 — Getting camera-resistant SMEs on video: why interview formats outperform scripted solo content for reluctant experts
• 24:28 — Repurposing on a tight budget: the studio-day model, Opus Clip, Descript, and the transcript-to-LinkedIn workflow
• 28:06 — Measurement: quality signals vs. performance metrics, and why the first 24 hours matter more than you think
• 30:44 — The 3-step practitioner plan: audit, commit to one series, publish every two weeks for three months

QUOTES FROM THE EPISODE:

“You don’t need the charismatic, loud host to be successful on these platforms. You want someone who’s educational, has lived experience, and can share stories, mental models, and results.” — Kyle Denhoff

“The transcript immediately goes into Google Drive, and our team uses it as foundational material for an upcoming newsletter or blog post.” — Kyle Denhoff

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

CONNECT WITH US:

Kyle Denhoff of HubSpot makes the business case for YouTube as a B2B growth and AEO channel, not just a place to park videos.

INTRO:

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

03:24 – YouTube’s scale: last year Nielsen reported YouTube generates more streams than Disney Plus and Netflix combined on U.S. televisions, and it's now a primary source for AI-cited content

05:51 – YouTube and AEO: HubSpot data shows LLMs are consistently citing three channels in B2B queries: Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube

08:30 – LLMs seek consensus across sources: the shift from single-keyword blog strategies to intentional multi-channel publishing

09:29 – Format matters by channel (the “no copy-paste” rule): Reddit demands no promo, LinkedIn favors individual voices, YouTube earns trust through expertise on camera

11:33 – How YouTube maps to the full buyer journey: awareness, consideration, and conversion use cases, with examples from HubSpot’s channel architecture

13:12 – YouTube as a content anchor: why it’s easier to turn a YouTube video into a blog post than the reverse, and how one 8–10 minute video generates a full library of assets

17:35 – The organizational shift: what it takes to move from “do more video” to a video-first content strategy

21:33 – The team you need: on-camera expert, producer, and editor — and why the producer role is often underestimated

22:12 – Making the ROI case: UTMs, QLs, influenced MRR, and how to frame brand-building value when direct attribution isn’t available

25:28 – Time horizon: 9–12 months for a B2B YouTube channel to compound, and what early signals to watch for while you wait

39:28 – Three decisions before you invest: business objective, proof your buyers are there, and commitment to format and resourcing

NOTABLE QUOTES:

“YouTube is a massive media company with distribution into the family television to the search engines. If you’re looking to get visibility for your company and your products, you have to be there.” — Kyle Denhoff

“LLMs are lazy readers. We have to draw the thread for them — the link in the description has to point back to our product or service that has to do with this video.” — Kyle Denhoff (quoting HubSpot's head of growth, Aja Frost)

“It’s really hard to turn a blog post into a YouTube video. It’s a lot easier to turn a YouTube video into a blog post.” — Kyle Denhoff

Links mentioned in the episode: HubSpot AEO Grader (free tool): https://www.hubspot.com/aeo-grader

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Kelly Wilhelme, Director of Marketing at Weidert Group, sits down with HubSpot Senior Director of Marketing Kyle Denhoff to dig into why the traditional inbound playbook is losing effectiveness — and how to replace it.

They unpack how buyer behavior has shifted over the past 3–4 years, why marketers are seeing declining traffic and rising ad costs, and why the answer isn't more AI — it's a stronger foundation. The conversation centers on the Express stage of Loop Marketing: how to define an ICP using real customer data, how brand guidelines must evolve beyond visuals into usable systems, and how a solid foundation is what makes AI actually work.

Kyle and Kelly also explore how teams can move from one-off campaigns to an always-on, multi-channel approach — and why centralizing brand and messaging inside your core tools is what separates scalable marketing from AI-powered chaos.

If your traffic is dropping, your costs are rising, and AI isn't delivering the results you expected, this episode explains why — and where to start.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Nicole Mertes, Weidert Group COO, and Director of Business Development Frank Isca tackle one of the most common frustrations in B2B marketing: teams that are constantly busy but can't show consistent growth.

In this episode of The ChangeOver Podcast, they unpack why "random acts of marketing" create an illusion of productivity without building long-term momentum. Then they go further, walking through exactly what it takes to replace that pattern with a systems-driven growth engine that compounds over time.

The conversation covers how buyer behavior has changed, why the traditional inbound playbook is losing effectiveness, and why personalization at scale is nearly impossible without a connected foundation. Nicole and Frank then lay out the full architecture of a growth engine: four non-negotiable foundational elements that must be in place before the engine can run, and three always-on tracks that keep it moving once it does.

If your team feels like it's working harder than ever but still struggling to build consistent pipeline momentum — and you want a clear picture of what to do about it — this episode delivers both the "why" and the "how."

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

Amanda Natividad explains how AI search, zero-click behavior, and disappearing data are forcing marketers back to craft, clarity, and value.

In the second half of this conversation on The ChangeOver Podcast, Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, and host Chelsea Drusch move from diagnosing the zero-click and attribution problems to answering the harder question:

They explore how zero-click dynamics and AI-driven search are stripping away the illusion of perfect attribution, and in the process, pushing marketing back toward fundamentals that were never optional to begin with.

From AI visibility (not rankings), to why gating content can sabotage discoverability, to the growing importance of taste, craft, and clarity, this episode reframes modern marketing as both more human and more demanding than before.

For industrial B2B teams navigating AI search, skeptical executives, and shrinking data certainty, this episode offers a practical mindset shift — and a reminder that “doing good marketing” is no longer a cliché. It’s the strategy.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

CONNECT WITH US:

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST AND GUEST:

CHECK OUT SPARKTORO: https://sparktoro.com/