Listen now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple.

—

Brian Austgen is the Director of Demand Generation at Maxio, a B2B billing and financial reporting platform, and has over a decade of experience in digital marketing. (including a time when we both worked at the same education technology company)

Here’s some of my takeaways from this week’s episode…

1/ 🚀 The best-performing B2B marketing channel in 2025? Webinars. At $20k per event, they're delivering 4x expected results. Pro tip: Focus on timely messaging + strong partners/influencers + strategic promotion timing2/ 🎯 Your budget = your strategy. When allocating funds, map spending to company goals first, then use data for established channels and gut instinct (backed by experience) for new ones3/ 🧠 Want better marketing instincts? Test with discipline. Set clear hypotheses, define success metrics upfront, and ensure failures create actionable feedback → knowledge → power4/ 🤝 Agency management golden rule: If you're constantly pushing back on their recommendations, you've either hired the wrong agency or you're being stupid. They should drive strategy while you provide context5/ 📊 PLG (Product Led Growth) is transforming B2B marketing. Converting users to a free trial > booking sales calls. Focus on the first 2 minutes of product experience to start the flywheel6/ 🎨 Color testing in ads is surprisingly impactful. Simple color changes can dramatically affect performance - sometimes more than messaging tweaks7/ 🤖 AI sweet spots: Creative asset generation, video editing, and campaign planning. But garbage in = garbage out. Experienced marketers get better AI outputs because they feed it better inputs8/ 🎯 Top B2B marketing mistake? Assuming what worked before will keep working. Great marketers have multiple playbooks ready when the current one stops performing

—

Where to find Brian Austgen:

* Maxio billing software: https://www.maxio.com/

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianaustgen/

* X: https://x.com/brianaustgen

—

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Introduction and Setup 01:41 Undervalued Marketing Channels 05:26 Balancing Focus and Experimentation 08:06 Improving Marketing Intuition 09:12 Testing Methodologies in Marketing 09:42 Leveraging Data for Marketing Decisions 19:09 The Power of Webinars in Marketing 28:28 Building Credibility in Leadership 36:16 Navigating Rebranding Challenges 43:26 Building an Effective Marketing Team 46:22 Navigating Agency Relationships 49:33 Managing Agency vs. Direct Reports 53:56 Impressing Leadership as an Employee 55:49 Best Practices for Agency Interactions 57:53 Strategic Marketing Allocation 01:00:58 Common Growth Mistakes in Scaling 01:03:58 Sales and Marketing Alignment 01:08:04 B2B vs. B2C Marketing Dynamics

—

Obligatory disclaimer: I've worked at YouTube and Google for about a decade in various marketing teams. Nothing I say in my personal spaces is necessarily endorsed by them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit horizonspod.substack.com