Trust & Influence in B2B
Trust & Influence in B2B
Podcast Description
Trust is the biggest challenge facing B2B marketers today. Buyers have always been cynical, hard to reach and even harder to convince, and increasingly expect to be self-directed in their research. In other words, they only want to engage with you on their terms. As if that wasn't bad enough, media and content channels are fragmented whilst AI is opening the floodgates to a tidalwave of content of questionable quality and veracity. It all adds up to a crisis of trust in B2B.
In this podcast, I'll be interviewing innovative and inspirational marketers in the front line of addressing this challenge, providing deep insights into the context of this challenge, exploring new insights about its implications and looking at real world solutions and success stories.
We'll focus in particular on the topics of thought leadership and influencer marketing, but inevitably brand, advocacy and demand generation, and much, much more.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores topics such as thought leadership, influencer marketing, and brand advocacy, with episodes discussing real-world campaigns like Capgemini's 'Building Trust in Data' and Circana's insights on turning data into strategic conversations, as well as the findings of Edelman's Trust Barometer report
I’m Joel Harrison, founder of B2B Marketing.net (formerly B2B Marketing magazine) Propolis and the B2B Marketing Awards. It’s been my mission for the past 21 years to recognise, celebrate and evangelise for the amazing profession that is B2B marketing, which has evolved beyond that recognition in that time.
In this podcast, I’ll be exploring what I believe is the biggest challenge facing B2B marketers today: Trust.
Buyers have always been cynical, hard to reach and even harder to convince, and increasingly expect to be self-directed in their research. In other words, they only want to engage with you on their terms. As if that wasn’t bad enough, media and content channels are fragmented whilst AI is opening the floodgates to a tidalwave of content of questionable quality and veracity. It all adds up to a crisis of trust in B2B.
In this podcast, I’ll be interviewing innovative and inspirational marketers in the front line of addressing this challenge, providing deep insights into the context of this challenge, exploring new insights about its implications and looking at real world solutions and success stories.
I’ll be exploring this topic from every relevant angle and perspective, but I’m going to focus particularly on thought leadership, influencer marketing and advocacy as they have particular relevance to this challenge.
In this episode of the ‘Trust & Influence in B2B’ podcast, host Joel Harrison speaks with Paul Collier, CMO of Funnel Fuel, and Preeti Saini, Global Marketing Leader at IFS, about the critical need for transparency and accountability in B2B digital advertising. The conversation, recorded live at Marketing Ignite, explores the widespread lack of visibility into where digital advertising budgets actually go and how much reaches target audiences. Paul shares his personal journey from ignorance to awareness after experiencing a costly digital advertising failure, while Preeti discusses IFS’s approach to taking control of their digital destiny. Together, they examine why the traditional B2C-focused digital advertising model doesn’t work for B2B, the importance of challenging agency relationships, and practical steps marketers can take to regain control of their digital spend. Join them as they advocate for a fundamental shift from blind trust to informed scrutiny in digital marketing.
Takeaways:
🔍 Challenge what you’ve been doing and why – question your current digital advertising approach
💰 Understand where your advertising dollars actually go in the supply chain
📊 Demand transparency from agencies beyond impression data and eyeball metrics
🎯 Start with inclusion lists rather than exclusion lists when targeting audiences
🧪 Test small, learn fast, and scale successful campaigns gradually
🤝 Take back control of your digital destiny rather than outsourcing blindly
📈 Focus on conversion into your funnel, not just media conversion metrics
🔄 Use multiple data sources to piece together the complete customer journey
💡 Fail faster to identify where to place confident bets with your budget
⚖️ Balance agency expertise with internal control and oversight
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction and Setting the Stage
01:50 – Guest Introductions: Preeti Saini and Paul Collier
03:20 – The Problem: Inefficiencies in Digital Advertising Spend
04:56 – Paul’s Journey: From Ignorance to Awareness
08:12 – Preeti’s Perspective: Moving Beyond Tick-Box Marketing
11:09 – The Industry Structure Problem: B2C Models Applied to
B2B 15:19 – Taking Back Control: Agency vs In-House Approaches
18:40 – Q&A: Making Data Meaningful in Digital Advertising
23:40 – Preeti’s Practical Approach: Breaking Down the Elephant
26:23 – Q&A: Showing Value in Programmatic Advertising
28:22 – Final Thoughts: Challenge Yourself and Fail Faster
Resources Mentioned:
🔍 Gartner CMO Survey – Latest research on digital marketing spend priorities 📊 Funnel Fuel – funnelfuel.com 🏢 IFS – ifs.com
Follow the Guests:
Follow Paul Collier https://linkedin.com/in/paul-collier-cmo/ Funnel Fuel – funnelfuel.com
Follow Preeti Saini https://linkedin.com/in/preeti-saini/ IFS – ifs.com
Follow Joel Harrison https://linkedin.com/in/joelharrison/
B2B Marketing – https://linkedin.com/company/b2b-marketing/
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