Devin Bramhall

Co-host: Don't Say Content. Marketing Advisor. Agency Growth Strategist. Former CEO of Animalz.

Your CEO doesn't hate marketing. They hate that you can't prove that it works.

I know because I've been the marketer pitching brilliant strategies that get shelved and the CEO wondering why marketing feels like an expensive black box.

After 15+ years building content strategies as a marketer and tripling Animalz to nearly $12M ARR as CEO, I realized the real problem:

We're optimizing for activities instead of outcomes. Checking boxes instead of driving growth.

The dirty secret? Most "content marketing strategies" are just glorified to-do lists.

My book "B2B Content Marketing Strategy" shows why "do more marketing" is killing growth and what to do instead.

Now I help companies stop doing marketing and start growing businesses as a fractional Chief Growth Officer.

If you're tired of: 
→ Defending your work instead of leading with it 
→ Following frameworks that feel like busy work 
→ Watching brilliant ideas die in committee

You're in the right place.

I help marketers ask better questions. Not “what content do we need?” but “what does the business need to grow?'"

Get weekly no-BS takes on growth: devinbramhall.com/newsletter

Chief Executive Officer

Every marketer I know has the same story right now. 

You followed the rules, the LinkedIn algorithm changed, your reach tanked, and somehow it's your fault.

So I made a carousel about it.

Shout out to Ashley Faus, Stephanie Trovato, Pranav Suryawanshi, Insiya Bharmal, and Rand Fishkin who inspired this post.

Chief Growth Officer [Fractional]. Author: “B2B Content Marketing Strategy” out now on Amazon

A survival guide for marketers

John Short

CEO at Compound Growth Marketing

I spent the first decade of my career building demand generation teams at Monster, LogMeIn, Yesware and Workable. During my time in operating roles I saw the market of B2B tech grow faster than the supply of B2B marketing talent, which created an opportunity to build a demand generation focused firm. 

We have built CGM different than the agencies I worked with when I was in-house. We built the Predictable Demand System to integrate strategy, demand generation, demand capture and GTM engineering to support the businesses we work with on a deeper level.

Compound Growth Marketing delivers transformative go-to-market results for B2B tech businesses by blending strategic consulting with expert execution across the entire customer acquisition journey. Our Predictable Demand System operationalizes GTM strategy, GTM engineering, demand generation and demand capture as a unified system that drives sustainable business outcomes.

Core Member

The Underscore Core is a curated group of exceptional entrepreneurs, executives, and experts who work in partnership with Underscore VC, an earliest stage venture capital firm, to identify transformative entrepreneurs and support them as they build iconic companies. Core Members have collectively built hundreds of companies, created thousands of jobs, served millions of customers and created billions of dollars in value for their stakeholders.

"LinkedIn Ads is expensive." Maybe, but not if the ROI is strong.

The problem isn't the platform. It's that most people are running campaigns with no real strategy.

I talk to ~2 or more marketing leaders every week about their LinkedIn ads, and the issue is always the same:

They either have a offer problem, or are only executing a partial strategy (just top of funnel or just bottom of funnel). 

Either they're running only awareness campaigns, getting lots of engagement but zero pipeline.

Or they're running only conversion campaigns, asking cold audiences to book demos and wondering why CPLs are so high.

Both approaches fail for the same reason: you're only focusing on one part of the funnel.

Here's what actually works:
> Top of funnel): Thought leadership, problem-solution content, industry POVs. No asks. Just education and perspective that builds trust.
> Mid-funnel: Case studies, webinars, events. For people who've engaged with your education.
> Bottom-funnel: Demos, consultations, high-intent offers. Only served to warm audiences who already know you.

When you structure campaigns this way, the math changes completely:
- You're not asking for commitment before trust 
- Leads come in educated, not just curious 
- Your campaigns work together instead of competing 
- ROI becomes measurable because you're building a system, not just running ads

The bet: if you educate people when they're not in-market, they'll know exactly where to go when they are.

We ran a CTV campaign through Linkedin at the top of the funnel and saw reduced CPLs and increase hand raisers from those who watched the ads, vs those who weren’t shown them.

This is a medium-term play. Not a quick fix. These campaigns take time to develop.

But if you're only running awareness OR only running conversions right now, you don't have a strategy.

With many clients we’re now spending 3X on Linkedin what we are spending on Google Ads. The channel can work, but you need to have the right strategy, creative and offer.

CTV is something we could only imagine in 2008. 

Many years ago at LogMeIn tested running TV ads through Google TV. The product from Google has since been killed, but I remember the excitement I had for what they were doing. 

I remember running the measurement after we had gotten "funny money" from our CFO at the end of the quarter and immediately seeing a lift in interest. 

We were showing up in primetime, and back then, the lift we saw from cable TV ads was significant. 

The opportunity to by TV in a biddable format was interesting. 

But today, its 10X more valuable because of the audiences. 

We're doing a webinar with the Kira Federer from Paramount+ to talk about the CTV landscape and what brands can do to deliver ROI.

Oh and by the way, Kym Parker will share case studies that we've run to increase down funnel velocity and quantity.

I had a call recently with a marketer who leaned into the PE playbook where most marketers would have leaned away. 

This person was put in a difficult situation over the last 24 months. New PE backer, new C-Suite and budget cuts. 

A new C-suite member had joined and immediately starting prying through the marketing budget. Most marketers I know would have run under the cover of "this PE firm doesn't get it". She leaned in. 

But this person did something smart. Instead of being intimidated. Instead of looking for a new job. Instead of fighting budget cuts she opened up to listen. 

The new executive had experience with: taking companies public, selling companies, and driving results. 

But most marketers would have ignored this. 

Instead, this marketer leaned in. She talked to the executive, asked them for their perspective, asked great questions, and even looked to connect with former marketers that person had worked with.

Its an important lesson for marketers because:
- It is no longer 2019, we don't live in growth at all costs
- B2B tech increasingly is getting bought by PE, not raising a Series E from VC

As PE continues to have more and more ownership in tech, its important for marketers to learn how to work with stricter budgets, and focus on results. 

For one, it will provide you with job security. Folks that know this playbook will have a more predictable career path. While VC can be reactionary to larger market trends like a big fund raise by a company in your industry, new round of funding, or the whims of the CEO, the PE playbook is a bit more consistent. 

Also, if you get into the C-suite in PE, it can drive predictability in your career especially if you know what levers to pull when brought in by the PE firm. 

So think twice before getting angry when your budget gets cut. Learn why the budgets getting cut, and lean in. 

*This is a real story, not dramatized. I had to keep it high level so no one would get caught*

Few things are sketchier than a Privacy Policy update sent at 6:25PM on Friday.

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Linkedin and Google takes up a giant share of advertising budgets.

Everyone's pouring budget into them because these channels have low barriers to entry. Both (plus Meta) have built really strong self-service platforms, which has increased demand and driven up prices.

When the focus is on just those channels, you miss out on the people who are not on the timeline or in the SERPs.

Kym Parker and team have focused on an omni-channel strategy outside of those two staples to combine programmatic (incl. CTV), direct buys, and content syndication. 

It works because:
↗️ You truly surround your audience outside of SERPs and Timeline
↗️ Different networks give you different content types (audio, video, visual)
↗️ Measurement needs to look at the entire buyers journey
↗️ Off those two platforms there are significant engagement opportunities

We've tested this with cybersecurity and DevOps clients selling to enterprise. There are interesting pricing opportunities, which enable companies to increase demand, affordably.

Because every company is on Linkedin and Google Ads, we need to come up with creative ideas of when to target users on those platforms.

One note is that this only works at a certain scale. I would look to start to expand once your getting close to full potential on Linkedin and Google Ads (If you're having trouble unlocking Linkedin, shoot me a DM). 

It's not revolutionary. It's just basic channel strategy that got forgotten when everyone decided LinkedIn was the answer to everything.

At scale, no single channel drives all your pipeline. The companies seeing significant growth from demand gen are using multiple channels and getting creative with how they activate them.

Everyone has had the same VC growth playbook since 2018.

Step 1: Raise money. 
Step 2: Flood LinkedIn and Google Ads. 
Step 3: Repeat.
Step 4: CAC increases

The problem? When thousands of companies run the same play simultaneously, the play stops working — and the cost of running it doubles.

B2B tech search CPCs hit $8.86 in 2024. That's 57% above the eight-year average. LinkedIn CPLs now routinely exceed $100, climbing to $314 for conversation ads. CAC payback periods stretched from 14 to 18 months in a single year.

This is a structural market problem, not just a need for better creative as many on this platform will say.

So what does a good company do when the entire industry is trapped in the same playbook that's driving an increase in prices?

You mix it up. 

The answer isn't to optimize harder inside two auction-based platforms where your competitors are also bidding. The answer is to go where they aren't.

The fastest-growing companies figured this out early. Brex, Slack, and Anthropic all moved aggressively away from a Google/LinkedIn-dominated strategy as they scaled — investing instead in brand, community, and channels their competitors weren't crowding.

They weren't being contrarian. They were being rational.

The diversification playbook looks like this: industry publications and niche communities where your buyers already congregate, programmatic display, and CTV. You're reaching the same decision-makers that you were trying to reach on LinkedIn at 10x the cost.

Our research on this is clear... companies concentrating a vast majority of demand gen budgets in LinkedIn and Google are holding a highly correlated, inflation-exposed portfolio. 

I'm not suggesting abandoning LinkedIn and Google Ads. Both still do something no other platform does well, LinkedIn's professional targeting is unmatched, Google captures active purchase intent. Use them surgically. 

But the playbook is getting used over and over and over. And we've seen significant increases to pipeline and improvements in efficiency when we create a proper channel mix.

The companies that recognize it early on will have a significant structural cost advantage compared to competitors.

Today is the day to learn how CTV makes every other channel work harder. 

Increase down-funnel conversions, reduce CPL by leveraging this channel. 

Learn from the best, Kira Federer and Kym Parker, on the one hour webinar today at 1PM EST (10AM PST). 

https://lnkd.in/g7XgtSa9

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