[Closed] Ask Me Anything about B2B Marketing | March 16 - 20, 2026

News Ask Me Anything and Panel Discussions
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Hello HubSpot Community!

Join me starting March 16 through March 20, when I’ll be hosting an AMA on the topics of what’s working in B2B marketing right now (and what isn’t) — especially in what’s quickly becoming an AI-first world.

We’ll leave the deep technical HubSpot questions to the HubSpot experts, but you can ask me anything about:

  • B2B demand generation and pipeline strategy
  • Content that actually drives revenue (not just traffic)
  • AI’s impact on search, brand visibility, and buyer behavior
  • Managing creative and marketing teams at scale
  • Positioning strategy vs. feature-led marketing

I’ll be answering questions live during the week of March 16th, primarily during East Coast business hours (ET), and will check in multiple times throughout the week.

Need some suggestions for what to ask? Here are some example questions:

  • What B2B marketing channels are genuinely driving pipeline in 2026 — and which ones are losing effectiveness?
  • How should we be adapting our content strategy for AI-driven search and browser experiences?
  • What’s one “best practice” in B2B marketing that you think is quietly underperforming right now?
  • How do you measure marketing impact in long, complex sales cycles?
  • How can partners and in-house teams avoid becoming overly tool-focused instead of strategy-led?

A little about me…

My name is Aaron Mazze. I am the Founder & Principal of Inveniv, a creative marketing agency and HubSpot Platinum Solutions Partner (since 2017) based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I specialize in B2B marketing strategy for complex industries — especially life sciences, SaaS, and emerging technology — where long sales cycles, technical products, and multiple stakeholders are the norm. I spend most of my time helping companies answer two questions: “What’s actually working?” and “What should we stop doing?” Fun fact: I’m currently deep in research on how AI-first browsers and evolving search behavior are reshaping how brands get discovered.

Looking forward to hearing your questions and having a candid conversation about what’s really moving the needle right now.

Your fellow HubSpot Agency Partner,

Aaron Mazze, Principal @Inveniv

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Hello HubSpot Community!

As we kick off our AMA in B2B marketing week, I wanted to share a specific workflow I’m using right now to move past “feature-led” marketing and back into deep positioning strategy.

We’ve all seen AI used to churn out blog posts or emails. But the real “unfair advantage” for B2B marketers isn’t faster writing—it’s being a sharper thinker.

Here’s my tip: Build your personal AI “Board of Directors”

Instead of starting with a blank page or asking an LLM to “write a strategy,” use it to pressure-test your existing judgment. It’s all about providing clear instruction and context. Here is how you can do it today:

STEP 1 - Curate your experts: Pick 2-3 strategists, authors, or industry leaders in your market whose mental models you trust.

STEP 2 - Feed the context: Upload their public strategic frameworks or articles into a tool like Google Gemini, ChatGPT (using Memory), or Claude (using the context window). This can be links, PDFs, presentations, artcles, anything you’ve found useful.

STEP 3 - The “Pressure Test” Prompt: Share your current GTM plan or positioning documents — and then use this prompt:

“Act like a growth strategist who thinks like [Expert Name]. Critique this plan [Attach plan or include in-line]. What am I missing (risks, opportunities) and what would you recommend doing instead?”

Why this matters for B2B: In complex industries like SaaS or Life Sciences (were we operate), we often get too close to our own product features. AI can act as that 3rd party thought partner to find the blind spots in our positioning before we ever present to stakeholders or go to market.

Hope this is helpful!

I’m looking forward to your questions! I’ll be checking in throughout the day to talk B2B demand gen, pipeline, and how you’re evolving your own AI workflows.

Ask me anything below! :backhand_index_pointing_down:

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A huge thank you to our Community Champion @Mazze for hosting this week’s (March 16-20) AMA on B2B Marketing!

Inviting some other Community Users --
@karstenkoehler @CHawkins @colinwitt @Crystal_Hopper @danmoyle @franksteiner79 and @Ian_Matt

Got questions about B2B marketing or want to learn more? Share them below and @Mazze will jump in to answer them!

Happy HubSpotting!

Cassie
Community Manager

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Hello fellow HubSpotters! Here’s to Tuesday!

And here’s my Tuesday Tip: Why being “AI’s Number One” is a losing B2B strategy

AI’s impact on search, brand visibility, and buyer behavior is undeniable. But here is the shift we’re seeing for 2026: The goal isn’t to be “the answer”—it’s to be the best option among several.

We’ve noticed (and have done this ourselves) that audiences now leverage AI for comparison and recommendation more than traditional search. Before these AI tools existed, seekers would hunt through forum threads or “Top 10” listicles. Now, the market trust has tilted 4-to-1(!) in favor of AI recommendations.

Personally, I say take it all with a grain of salt. These engines are ever-learning… about you… about the world around us. And I’ve read and seen AI results sway in favor of the viewer. Think about a scenario where you’re trying to sell something… or trying to buy something. In the case of selling, AI may tell you that you can get more money. In the case of buying, AI may tell you that you can get what you want for less. It’s all in context to the person making their request considering previous chats and their behavioral patterns.

So what’s my tip?: Win the comparison, not just the “rank.”

Stop trying to be AI’s sole “number one” recommendation and start winning the favorable comparison. Data shows that 40% of B2B decision-makers remember brands more when they are presented as one of several compared options, rather than a single recommendation.

The Insight: The “Vetted” Factor

Buyers actually trust these “robot” recommendations. 42% of decision-makers say a brand feels more trustworthy if AI recommends it, assuming it has been vetted. Only 11% view it as manipulated or “paid placement.” In short: To most buyers, AI search visibility feels honestly earned.

The Action: Feed the Models Comparative Language

One way to better prepare for this type of AI compartive search behavior is to create content that specifically uses “unlike X, our platform does Y” language. This gives AI models the exact comparative material they may need to include you in those high-trust comparison tables and summaries.

Quick poll for the group: Have you tried asking ChatGPT or Gemini to compare your brand to a competitor lately? What did it get right (or dangerously wrong)? Enter your replies below!

Not sure about those results? Try out HubSpot’s AEO grader. We’ve found this to be a great start at knowing what’s working what’s not.

Where did I get these tasty stats? Check out the Marketing Against The Grain. They offer an excellent newsletter and accompanying marketing insights website.

I’ll be here all day answering your questions on GTM strategy and AI—ask me anything! :backhand_index_pointing_down:

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Hi @Mazze - excited to learn from you!

I’ve been in-house for a while now, so I’m curious to get your perspective from the agency side. With all the new AI features out there, how do you keep creative teams strategy-led when there’s constant pressure to produce more content at lower cost?

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@gaherrera - Solid question! I think the uncomfortable truth right now is that AI isn’t replacing creativity, it’s exposing where it was already weak.

The pressure to produce more content at lower cost is real. But AI didn’t create that pressure, it just made it easier to scale it. And what we’re seeing as a result is a flood of content that all feels… eerily similar. Our team calls this the “sea of sameness.”

Most of the major AI tools (Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT) are incredibly good at identifying patterns and generating something that looks right. But that’s also the trap. When everyone is using the same tools, trained on the same data, and prompted in similar ways, you start to get an “algorithmic average” of what marketing should look like.

Safe. Polished. And honestly, very forgettable.

The thing AI doesn’t reliably introduce is the non-obvious idea; the pivot, the tension, the point of view that makes someone stop scrolling. That kind of spontaneous creativity still comes from people.

So for us, the shift hasn’t been “how do we use AI to make more content?”

It’s been: how do we use AI to handle the heavy lifting so our team can focus on the idea itself?

  • AI handles research, synthesis, and speed
  • We own positioning, brand-defining ideas, voice, creative direction, and the final call

If anything, the bar for creative teams is going up—not down. The expectation isn’t just to produce volume—it’s to produce something that doesn’t feel like it came from a prompt.

Because ultimately, that’s what audiences respond to. Strong ideas. Clear points of view. Storytelling that actually makes a brand memorable.

If it feels like everything else, it gets ignored.

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Hi @Mazze thanks for doing this AMA!
2 questions that are top of mind for us:
We are selling a very niche product (HubSpot deduplication app), how should we balance educational content with pain-driven demand gen content that actually creates pipeline? And which channels should we use to distribute this content?
Thanks in advance for your feedback!

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@Jonas_De_Mets Thanks for the question! This is a great example of where niche products actually have an advantage if you approach it the right way.

The reality is, no one wakes up thinking, “I need a HubSpot deduplication app.” That said, everyone feels the pain… 16 versions of the same company record, inaccurate reports, duplicate contacts, sales reps calling the same prospect, messy lifecycle stages, etc. I’ve been there… I’ve had to deal with it!

In my humble opinion, the balance isn’t really 50/50 between educational and pain-driven content, it’s about aligning content to when the buyer feels the problem.

If I simplify it (and maybe this sounds a little old school), we still think in terms of funnel:

Top of Funnel (Education / Demand Creation)

This is where you zoom out and help buyers recognize the problem:

  • Why dirty data breaks attribution
  • How duplicates impact sales + marketing alignment
  • What good CRM hygiene actually looks like

Mid + Bottom of Funnel (Pain-Driven / Demand Capture)

This is where you get very specific and position your product clearly as the solution:

  • “How to remove duplicates in HubSpot”
  • “Why your HubSpot reports don’t match”
  • “Fix duplicate contacts in 10 minutes”

Where I tend to disagree with current trends:

There’s been a big push to ungate everything to remove friction. I understand the logic, but for B2B, especially with a niche product like yours, you still need a way to capture intent.

What’s worked well for us is a hybrid approach:

  • Build a genuinely valuable resource library
  • Gate only the initial conversion
  • Then ungate the rest (once someone converts)

With cookies + HubSpot, you can make that experience seamless. No one wants to fill out five forms, but they’ll certainly fill out one if the value is clear. You can still track everything the visitor is doing in HubSpot and set up all sorts of automation to assist with a nurturing strategy.

On balance:

If anything, I’d lean heavier on mid- and bottom-of-funnel content. Traffic is harder to earn than it used to be, and the people who do make it to your site are often already informed and closer to a decision. So your content needs to be a win/win. They quickly find an answer to a real problem and your solution is an obvious next step.

On channels, think in terms of intent:

Every single touchpoint is an opportunity to leave a great impression!

  • Search (SEO + AI search) → highest buyer intent, especially for pain-driven queries (And if you haven’t already, be sure to include an FAQ on your website for the purposes of AEO.)
  • YouTube / short-form video → strong for “how-to” and problem-solving content
  • LinkedIn → better for framing the problem and building awareness, always a solid channel for ABM / ICP targeting
  • Lifecycle email / in-product → highly effective if you already have HubSpot users (with sizeable contact databases) in your audience
  • HubSpot Marketplace → If you’re in the marketplace, take advantage and treat this like a full-funnel page that serves top, middle, and bottom-of-funnel audiences - again with a lean on mid-to-bottom of funnel

I am still a huge proponent for inbound content. So, in short… Use educational content to help people recognize the problem. Use your pain-driven content to help them solve it. And make sure when they’re ready to solve it, you’re right there to capture their interest.

Hope this helps!

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We’ve made it to Wednesday! And my pro tip for today is all about “fighting forgetting”.

In B2B, especially in complex industries, we often default to being “feature-led.” We talk about specs, speeds, and data points. But the most valuable thing a brand can do is fight forgetting.

How? Through storytelling.

I’m a huge fan of the project Significant Objects by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. They took worthless thrift-store items—averaging $1.25 in cost—and attached fictional narratives to them on eBay. The result? Those ordinary objects sold for nearly $8,000. Storytelling increased their intrinsic value by over 2,700%.

In B2B marketing, a compelling story is what connects you to your audience emotionally. It’s why when many of us think of Disney, we think “Magic”, and why the stickiest brands aren’t just vendors, they’re part of our culture and become unforgettable.

Here’s my Wednesday pro tip:

Stop listing countless features and start “fighting forgetting.” Features are just technical data; benefits are what solve human problems. When you attach those benefits to a compelling story, you give your audience a reason to care—and a reason to remember. People assign significantly higher value to businesses that move beyond the spec sheet to show they understand the high-stakes reality of their customers.

How to make it “sticky” with AI:

  • Brand Guardians: Feed your favorite AI tool your brand voice, tone, and core messaging pillars so it acts as a “brand guardian,” ensuring every headline and landing page reflects your story rather than just listing technical specs.
  • Creative Iteration: Treat AI as a “brandstorming” partner (see what I did there!) to generate a high volume of creative angles—from humor to curiosity—to find the most resonant way to tell your story and break through the “feature-led” noise.
  • Personalized Narrative: Scale your story so it feels tailor-made for the reader. Use AI to adapt your core message based on their specific industry, job title, or historical behavior so the benefit hits exactly where they feel the most pain.

A brand that tells a better story and connects with audiences in an emotional way is a brand that wins.

I’m answering questions all week on the HubSpot Community about how to build strategy-led (not just tool-led) marketing. Drop your questions below! :backhand_index_pointing_down:

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Thursday Tip: The job of marketing is the conversation

Hello HubSpotters! We’re heading into the home stretch of our AMA week.

I’m a firm believer that in B2B, marketing’s only real job is to get to the conversation as soon as possible. In complex industries with long-tail selling cycles (like SaaS or Life Sciences), a lead is just a data point until a human connection is made. Everything we’re working on is towards this goal of connecting the right people with the right expert at the right time. The universal challenge is scaling that “human” touch without burning out your team. This is where AI moves from being a “writer” to being an execution partner.

My Thursday Pro-Tip: Leverage AI to bridge the “Research and Analytics Gap”

Research that used to take hours/days/weeks, can now take a fraction of the time. By using AI to handle the “pre-conversation” heavy lifting, you enter every room (or Zoom) with a brilliant amount of intel (and an unfair advantage).

How to get to the conversation faster with AI:

  • Run Deep Research Sprints: Before a big outreach or strategy session, drop customer feedback, competitor pages, and product notes into an LLM. Ask it to surface patterns and specific pain points so your messaging hits home immediately. We use Gemini for deep research, competitor insights, and strategic planning and Claude (and sometime Google’s NotebookLM) for analyzing long documents, finding patterns, and refining tone.

  • Build Autonomous Workflows: These days it’s possible to use AI agents to handle the multi-step process of launching a campaign. You can have one agent handle research, another draft the personalized copy, and a third format it for your CRM. This lets your team focus on high-impact strategy while the “prep work” runs in the background. AI tools like CrewAI + Replit can make this happen. Transparently, in our daily workflows, we are testing out this level of automation, but haven’t fully allowed AI to automate every step. That may change in the near-term, but for now, we like to maintain a tight level of control over outputs.

  • Performance Analytics: Use AI-powered reporting to explain ROI across campaigns or flag why certain segments are underperforming. It’s like having an analyst on-call 24/7 to tell you exactly where the most valuable conversations are happening. HubSpot’s Breeze AI is excellent for real-time campaign insights and skipping any type of manual reporting phase

The Bottom Line: AI shortens the time from idea to launch. It allows you to plan the campaign, write the copy, and generate the visuals so you can spend your energy where it matters most: generating new ideas and connecting with your customers.

Have any thoughts, comments, pro tips on how to leverage AI in your B2B marketing stack? Please share with the community here! :backhand_index_pointing_down:

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@Mazze this is great - thank you for doing this! Here’s my big picture question. In this age of AI, a lot of folks are saying “be more human and connect.” That’s a great platitude, and yeah… we should all be more human.

But in the B2B space, I feel like a lot of businesses are focusing on doing more with less (because they have to - budgets, economy, technology are all hammering them). That leads me to think that many businesses in the B2B space might care less about “be more human” when it comes to their own buying, and more inclined to lean into efficient buying, touchless research, and less “let’s be human together” relationship-based buying.

What say you? Are you seeing this trend spin up or is it unfounded? And how should be businesses deal with this if it’s a concern?

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@danmoyle This is a phenomenal question. You’ve touched on a real tension of 2026. It’s the clash between the demand for operational efficiency and the growing value of authentic connection. Here is how I’m seeing this play out on the ground:

1. The Rise of “Concentrated Connection”
You’re right. Efficient, touchless research is the new baseline. Decision-makers are exhausted and budgets are hammered, so they lean on AI to handle the “due diligence” for them.

But here’s my twist: because we are so digital-first, live events and industry conferences have exploded in value (shamelss plug for conferences like Inbound!). Since buyers don’t have time to vet partners year-round, they are making concentrated efforts to meet face-to-face at market specific seminars, tradeshows, and conferences. It’s actually more efficient for them to do a year’s worth of “human vetting” in three days at a conference than to facilitate constant sales trips. The human element isn’t dead; it’s just become more intentional.

2. The “Full-Stack” Marketer is the New Survivor
Businesses always want to do more with less, and AI has definitely put a magnifying glass on tasks that benefit from automation. But “doing more with less” doesn’t mean doing less stuff. It means doing more of the new stuff: more engaging video, more live activations, and more complex media.

To stay invaluable, marketers have to be “Full-Stack”—appreciating everything from deep research and strategy to design and analysis. In my humble opinion, we aren’t being replaced; our roles are evolving to wield these tools and managed brands to drive and enhance the entire customer experience lifecycle.

3. Amping Up the Experience, Not Replacing It
While it’s been measured that nearly half of buyers look to AI to vet companies, the organizations that win are those that use tech to amp up the human experience, not replace it. AI may help a buyer find and compare you quickly. But at least in B2B, it’s still the “Human” factor closes the deal. We see organizations bringing our agency in specifically because they want to be seen as more personable, more accessible, more human. We leverage the tools (AI included) just to be in the right place at the right time for the right audience. (Basically, inbound marketing 101.) :innocent:

The Bottom Line: Buyers are absolutely choosing efficiency for the research phase. Our job as marketers is to use these tools to remain invaluable to our company’s commercial imperatives while ensuring that when the “human conversation” finally happens, it’s high-value and unforgettable.

Hope this provides a helpful lens or at least affirms some of what you’re also seeing on the ground!

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Friday Tip: Is your marketing recipe scalable? :hot_beverage:

Hello fellow HubSpotters! We’ve made it to Friday, and it’s been an absolute blast hosting this AMA.

I’m wrapping up the week with a final thought on Consistency. One of the hardest parts of scaling a B2B brand—especially across multiple channels—is keeping your tone, visual imagery, and engagement style in sync. In the mug hallway today, you can see it clearly: a brand is only as “sticky” as its ability to be recognizable every single time it shows up.

My Friday Pro-Tip: Turn your “Secret Sauce” into a Prompt Library

To scale without losing your creative flair, you have to move from “random acts of marketing” to a repeatable system.

How to build your brand’s “Recipe Book” with AI:

  • Document the Best Stuff: Stop writing new prompts from scratch every Monday. Audit your best-performing ad headlines, SEO briefs, and landing pages. Turn those successful prompts into reusable templates with variables like [persona], [topic], and [messaging pillar].
  • Build a “Prompt Library”: Store these inside a custom GPT or a shared Notion page. This ensures anyone on your team—from content to demand gen—can pull from the same playbook and get consistent, on-brand output.
  • Enforce with AI “Guardians”: Feed your favorite AI tool your brand style guide PDFs. Once it’s in the model’s memory, it will automatically apply those rules when generating new copy, helping you scale production without sacrificing the quality that made you successful in the first place.

The Bottom Line: A brand that stays “on-recipe” across every channel is a brand that builds deep trust. Use AI to handle the consistency so you can spend your energy adding that unique creative flare that makes your brand unforgettable.

It’s the final day of the AMA! If you’ve been sitting on a question about GTM strategy, pipeline, or “fighting forgetting” in an AI-first world—now is the time! :backhand_index_pointing_down: