Content Amplified

70 to 80 percent of jobs never make it to a job board, and over 65 percent of hires still come through networking and referrals. In this episode of Content Amplified, Katie Fortunato, EVP of Platform and Innovation and co-founder of Hire Innovations, breaks down what AI has actually changed about hiring and what both job seekers and employers should be doing right now. Katie explains the rise of "bot on bot" application activity, why mass-applying on LinkedIn is a dead end, and how job seekers can use the Ikigai framework plus account-based marketing tactics to target the right roles. She also makes the case for why every company needs an employer value proposition, how marketers can help surface the culture signals candidates actually care about, and why creator-driven video content is becoming the most future-friendly way to attract talent. If you're a marketer navigating a messy hiring market, on either side of the table, this is a practical playbook. About Katie Katie Fortunato is EVP of Platform and Innovation and a co-founder of Hire Innovations, the company behind Jobstream, a creator-powered recruitment marketing channel. Her career includes marketing roles at the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, Airbnb, and AOL, where she worked through the programmatic ad tech boom and helped shape how content connects brands to audiences. Today Katie sits at the intersection of marketing and human capital, and she believes we are entering the era of the "chief work officer," where HR, marketing, and operations converge around how companies attract, retain, and communicate with the people who do the work. Show Notes - Connect with Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieclarkfortunato/ - Jobstream (Hire Innovations): https://www.getjobstream.com/ Text us what you think about this episode!

Awareness, opens, and clicks are vanity metrics, and most marketing teams are still measuring content as if they aren't. In this episode of Content Amplified, Justin Chappell, Head of Digital Strategy, CX and Operations, breaks down how to connect content to the numbers that actually matter: gross revenue retention, net revenue retention, renewal rates, and time to value. Justin walks through the three places content programs typically break down, why a "peanut butter" health-score approach fails customers, and how predictive engagement models beat old-school drip campaigns. He shares his long form / short form / micro-learning framework for building a content roadmap every team can contribute to, explains why you have to stop measuring success at the open and start measuring it at 30, 60, and 90 days, and makes the case that self-service content is really about removing friction, not removing humans. If your content program is stuck proving awareness instead of proving value, this conversation gives you a clear path forward. About Justin Justin Chappell is Head of Digital Strategy, CX and Operations, where he leads post-sales marketing and content strategy across the customer lifecycle at a large enterprise software company. Based in Atlanta, Justin brings a marketing background rooted in predictive modeling, intent data, and reach expansion, and has carried those disciplines into the post-sales world to shape how content drives adoption, retention, and expansion. He is an active voice in the Atlanta customer success community and a frequent in-person speaker. Justin believes the best content programs are built like systems: one roadmap, three formats, and outcomes measured against financial metrics, not vanity ones. Show Notes - Connect with Justin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justchappell/ Text us what you think about this episode!

Email is saturated, and your best content is stuck behind a screen. In this episode of Content Amplified, Kris Rudeegraap, Co-CEO of Sendoso, walks through how to take the digital content already performing well for your team and put it in front of prospects as a physical mailer they actually open. Kris explains how to shortlist your highest-performing assets using sales enablement platforms, web analytics, and paid ad data, then how to repurpose that content into formats worth mailing: Mad Libs books, scratch-off insight cards, workbooks, video mailers, trading cards, even quarterly printed magazines. He lays out where physical mailers fit across the buyer's journey, from top-of-funnel SDR plays to stage-three air cover in competitive deals to post-sale onboarding kits. He also breaks down how AI is changing the space through personalization, print-on-demand, smart delivery to home addresses, and signal-based automated workflows, plus a simple get-started plan: pick your best-performing asset, print 50, pick 25 in-pipeline deals and 25 target accounts, and test. If you're looking for a way to break through the digital noise without burning your budget, this episode is worth your time. About Kris Kris Rudeegraap is the Co-CEO of Sendoso, the direct mail and gifting automation platform he founded about a decade ago after a career in sales at TalkDesk. A lifelong entrepreneur, Kris started Sendoso after feeling the pain firsthand: packing boxes at night, running to FedEx, and watching tracking links, all while email was losing its edge. He believes the tangible psychology of unboxing, the pattern disrupt of a physical package, and the personalization AI now makes possible are what give physical mail its edge in a saturated digital world. Show Notes - Connect with Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudeegraap/ - Sendoso: https://sendoso.com Text us what you think about this episode!

Most discovery calls fall apart for the same reason: the seller asks surface-level questions, bounces between topics, and then defaults to pitch mode the second things get quiet. In this Content to Close episode, Nick Lopez walks through a discovery framework that fixes all of it. Nick teaches the "pillar" approach, where every question you ask drills deeper into one topic before moving on, so you actually uncover the pain instead of skimming past it. He explains the 80/20 listening rule, why personal pain matters more than company pain, and the specific questions that get prospects to sell themselves on your solution. Nick also shares how to build a clean handoff from sales to customer success so the rapport you built in discovery doesn't get lost the second the deal closes. If you want discovery calls that actually move deals forward instead of burning them, this episode is worth your time. About Nick Nick Lopez has a background in both marketing and sales, with experience across industries ranging from plastic surgery to theater to travel and multifamily real estate. He moved from marketing into sales, then into learning and development, where he now helps sales teams get better at the fundamentals, especially discovery. Nick believes great discovery is less about clever questions and more about active listening, patience, and the discipline to keep digging until you find the real pain. Show Notes https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicklopez81/Text us what you think about this episode!

Data is only interesting if it tells you what to do next. In this episode of Content Amplified, Kirsten Von Busch, Director of Product Marketing at Experian Automotive, shares how her team turns one of the richest datasets in the auto industry into content that marketers, dealers, lenders, and OEMs actually use. Kirsten walks through her "treat it like a science experiment" approach: start with a hypothesis, let the data confirm or kill it, then build a narrative people can act on. She explains when brand messaging still matters, how partner stories add proof to the data, why you have to publish the same insight in three or four different formats, and which metrics actually tell you if the content hit. If you've ever stared at a spreadsheet wondering how to turn it into something people will care about, this episode gives you the framework. About Kirsten Kirsten Von Busch is the Director of Product Marketing at Experian Automotive, where she helps turn automotive data into insights clients can actually take action on. Experian Automotive sits at the intersection of vehicle history, consumer demographics, and credit data, giving Kirsten and her team a rare full-picture view of the car-buying journey. Kirsten is a self-described "talker" who believes the best data stories are the ones that start with a hypothesis and end with a clear next step. Show Notes https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-von-busch-5512767/Text us what you think about this episode!

For twenty years, marketers wrote content to rank. We told ourselves we were writing for users, but most of us were really writing for Google. That playbook is breaking. In this episode of Content Amplified, Rich Missey, a 20-year SEO veteran who has led search at Hyatt, Cars.com, Groupon, and Whirlpool, walks through what's actually changing, what it means for your content, and what marketers should be doing right now. Rich explains query fan out, why informational content is getting swallowed whole inside AI overviews, and how structure (not just words) is becoming the thing that determines whether generative systems surface your content. He also makes the case for why internal linking, heading hierarchy, and good old-fashioned sentence diagramming might be the most important SEO skills of the next decade. If you're trying to figure out where SEO ends and GEO begins, this conversation is a must-listen. About Rich Rich Missey is a 20-year SEO veteran who has led organic search strategy for some of the biggest brands on the internet, including Hyatt, Cars.com, Groupon, and Whirlpool. He specializes in breaking down silos between SEO, content, social, and paid teams to make search work at scale. Rich is passionate about the fundamentals most teams skip (structure, internal linking, conversion funnels) and how those same fundamentals translate into the new world of generative search and AI-driven discovery. Show Notes https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmissey/Text us what you think about this episode!

Most B2B marketing is a sea of gray. Same content. Same formats. Same safe ideas. In this episode of Content Amplified, Logan Freedman, Global Head of SEO at ManyChat, shares how he built a career out of standing out in industries everyone else calls boring. Logan walks through how he defines creativity (hint: it starts with having fun), how to spot when your team has stalled out, and the ideation habits that keep ideas flowing. He also tells the story of how he swabbed Austin City Limits for fecal matter to land national press coverage for a lawn care startup (and got banned from the festival for life in the process). If you're tired of playing it safe and want a practical approach to creative content that actually drives backlinks, traffic, and brand awareness, this one's for you. About Logan Logan Freedman is the Global Head of SEO at ManyChat, where he leads search strategy for a platform that powers social media automation for content creators across Meta and TikTok. Logan has spent his career moving between agencies and startups, specializing in creative content campaigns that turn "boring" industries into press magnets. Before ManyChat, Logan built data-driven studies and unconventional campaigns at LawnStarter and a handful of other high-growth startups. Show Notes https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-freedman/https://manychat.comText us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified (Content to Close special addition), host Ben Ard sits down with Jessika Ward, a sales enablement leader with 13 years of experience building enablement programs from the ground up at SaaS startups ranging from 45 to 1,000+ employees. Jessika challenges one of the biggest instincts in enablement: the urge to create more. She makes the case that enablement should operate as a performance management function, not a content factory, and that the best enablement content feels like a shortcut, not homework. It should find sellers when they're already stuck and help them move forward immediately. The conversation digs into how to protect seller attention as a commodity, why engagement metrics are vanity metrics in enablement, and how to earn trust with sales teams by acting as an advisor instead of a professor. Jessika also shares her "air traffic control" approach to filtering the flood of messages sellers receive from every direction. What you'll learn in this episode: Connect with Jessika on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard sits down with Frank Pasquine, Marketing Director at DoubleVerify and author of the newly released novel The Prince of New York. Frank has spent nearly 20 years in marketing across ad tech, entertainment, and agencies, but publishing his own book forced him to see content strategy from an entirely new angle. Frank shares the story of how he went from studying economics at Fordham to screenwriting at NYU, nearly beat Gossip Girl to the punch with a pilot at William Morris, and eventually built a full marketing career while holding onto that creative spark. Now he's applying everything he's learned in B2B to promote his debut novel as a one-person team with a personal savings budget. The conversation gets into the reality of marketing your own product versus marketing someone else's, the surprising fragmentation of platforms when you're the one spending every dollar, and why in-person activations combined with digital amplification have been his most effective strategy on both sides. What you'll learn in this episode: Find The Prince of New York on Amazon or search for Frank Pasquine. Connect with Frank on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard talks with Allison Myers, Director of Marketing and Communications at Fives Interlogistics, about how identifying your professional superpower changes everything, from your personal brand to how you hire, how you show up on LinkedIn, and how you cut through the noise in B2B marketing. Allison shares a simple three-question framework for finding what you're actually great at, and explains why your superpower shows up in patterns, not job titles. She breaks down how she blends personal and professional brand on LinkedIn without crossing lines, why consistency beats cleverness every time, and how she builds teams by hiring for the gaps her own strengths don't cover. What you'll learn in this episode: Connect with Allison on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard sits down with Natalie Cunningham, SVP of Marketing at Data Axle, to tackle the tension every marketing team feels: you're producing more content than ever, but pipeline isn't moving. Natalie breaks down why the constant pressure to produce is actually the problem, not the solution. She introduces the concept of audience intelligence, going beyond personas and firmographics to understand the whole human inside your buying committee, including what generation they are, how they identify professionally, and what they care about on Saturday morning, not just Monday afternoon. She shares findings from first-party research at Data Axle that challenged her own assumptions, including a surprising insight about which generation actually wants pricing transparency the most (it's not who you think). And she makes a compelling case for why measuring content against pipeline generation is setting your team up to fail. What you'll learn in this episode: Connect with Natalie on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

Most companies still treat sales enablement like a training department. Jason Gwilliam thinks that's exactly why their reps take too long to close. With 25 years in healthcare and med-tech, Jason has built enablement programs from the ground up at companies like Abbott, and he's seen firsthand what happens when enablement is treated as a true revenue system. In this episode, he breaks down how to measure enablement's ROI through time-to-competency and sales cycle compression, why marketing alignment is critically undervalued, and how AI coaching tools should help reps improve without being punitive. He also shares why fractional enablement roles are emerging as the next big trend. Jason Gwilliam is a sales enablement practitioner with over 25 years of experience in the healthcare and medical device industry. He began his career in the cardiac cath lab before moving into territory sales, where he earned President's Club recognition. Since 2008, Jason has built and led enablement programs at companies including Abbott, transforming traditional sales training into cross-functional revenue systems aligned with marketing, sales operations, and executive leadership. He is a vocal advocate for coaching over managing and for positioning enablement as a strategic business function. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

You can create the greatest content in the world, but if it shows up on the wrong channel at the wrong time, it still falls flat. In this episode, lifecycle marketing expert Leslie Bartley makes the case for treating content as guidance rather than just marketing. She walks through how to match message urgency to the right channel, how to keep the human touch while scaling through automation, and her "core four" metrics framework for knowing whether your content is actually landing. If you're blasting and hoping for the best, Leslie's approach will sharpen everything about your distribution strategy. Leslie Bartley is a lifecycle and customer marketing expert with over 15 years of experience spanning e-commerce, advertising, luxury hospitality, healthcare, and SaaS. She has held roles at Amazon, GoodRx, and early-stage startups, working across demand generation, marketing automation, product marketing, and product management. Now at Squire, Leslie focuses on behavior-based content delivery across owned channels, building systems that guide customers rather than just market to them. Connect with Leslie on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

What if you treated every digital event like a live television broadcast instead of just another webinar? Roisin Hunt spent a decade in Irish television and radio before bringing that production-first mindset into B2B marketing, and the results speak for themselves. In this episode, Roisin explains why dead air is a crime, why production quality doesn't require a massive budget, and how to turn your customer stories into compelling content that practically writes itself. She also shares how her conference stage has become a year-round content pipeline. If your virtual events feel flat, this conversation will change how you think about them. Roisin Hunt is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Great Place to Work, where she leads digital event strategy. Her career began with a decade in Irish television and radio production, including work on national PBS-style programming and an internship at NPR. After moving to the U.S., Roisin worked in immigration nonprofit communications, boutique leadership consulting for early-stage tech founders, and global events at Zendesk. She brings a broadcast producer's eye for pacing, storytelling, and audience engagement to everything she builds in B2B marketing. Connect with Roisin on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!

In a world where AI can produce polished content at scale, audiences are craving something different: realness. In this episode, content marketer Marisa Lather breaks down why the "anti-AI aesthetic" is gaining momentum and how brands can close the trust gap by putting real humans front and center. From leveraging creators and employee voices to rethinking how you measure personality-driven campaigns, Marisa shares practical ways to humanize your brand starting today. If your content feels too corporate or too perfect, this episode is your wake-up call. Marisa Lather is a content marketer whose work sits at the intersection of marketing, communications, data, and business strategy. She specializes in building awareness, credibility, and trust by creating content informed by audience insight and shaped to resonate across constituencies and algorithms alike. A passionate advocate for media literacy and authentic brand storytelling, Marisa helps organizations humanize their content through creator partnerships, employee advocacy, and customer-centric messaging. You can find her across platforms as Marketer Marisa or at MarketerMarisa.net. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content to Close, host Ben Ard is joined by Claire Scull, founder of ORDO Consultants, to explore the powerful connection between seller curiosity and winning business. Claire breaks down how the best salespeople use natural curiosity to deeply understand prospects — and how that directly increases close rates. She walks through two key sales frameworks — BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) and SciPAB (Situation, Complication, Implication, Position, Action, Benefit) — and explains how each serves different stages of the sales cycle. Claire emphasizes the critical importance of continuous discovery and revalidation throughout the opportunity lifecycle, sharing a real-world cautionary tale of a committed forecast opportunity lost because a seller stopped asking questions. She also discusses how content plays a vital role across the sales process, from onboarding and enablement to customer references and thought leadership. Guest Bio: Claire Scull is the founder of ORDO Consultants (from the Latin "Ordo Ab Chao" meaning "order out of chaos"), a business transformation consultancy based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. With a career rooted in sales, commercial operations, and delivery, Claire brings deep expertise in sales enablement, revenue operations, and programme leadership. She specializes in helping organizations implement change and transformation — from planning through execution — and is passionate about the intersection of curiosity, discovery frameworks, and content in driving sales performance. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard is joined by Justin Steinman, CMO of ModMed, for a masterclass on marketing organizational design and how it fuels a powerful content engine. Justin breaks down his philosophy of structuring marketing teams like a free market economy — aligning product marketers with product managers, specialty marketers with general managers, and demand gen managers with sales segments (even tying their bonuses to sales quota achievement). He explains the critical role of corporate marketing as the unifying brand voice and introduces his "steak and sizzle" framework: product marketing delivers the substance while the content team in corporate marketing adds the voice and consistency. Justin also dives into how AI is reshaping content demands, why press releases are back in vogue thanks to LLMs, and how he positions AI as an "intern" — an accelerant for his content team rather than a replacement. Guest Bio: Justin Steinman is the Chief Marketing Officer at ModMed, the leading provider of electronic medical records, practice management, and revenue cycle software for specialty physicians. A seasoned B2B marketing executive with over 20 years of experience in healthcare IT, Justin previously served as CMO of Insora Health and Definitive Healthcare (where he helped take the company public on NASDAQ). His earlier career includes roles at Aetna, GE Healthcare IT, and Novell. Justin holds an English degree and is passionate about organizational design, content strategy, and building marketing teams that make everyone around them better. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard chats with Tuesday Hagiwara about a side of AI that most marketers are overlooking — using it for high-level strategic research and trend analysis rather than just content creation. Tuesday walks through her process of identifying mega trends using the PESTLE framework (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) and how she leverages tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Miro to consume and synthesize massive amounts of research — including 160+ pieces of thought leadership and 60+ reports. She explains how grounding your LLM conversations in deep research produces dramatically better campaign ideas and content strategies. Tuesday also shares how she validates insights through real-world conversations and emphasizes using AI for what it does best — summarizing and pattern recognition — rather than writing content directly. Guest Bio: Tuesday Hagiwara is a research-driven marketing strategist with a background in broadcast journalism. She spent years at Nielsen working on both the consumer goods and media sides of the business, followed by consulting work. She currently works for a nonprofit focused on research. Tuesday is known for her expertise in using futurist frameworks and AI tools to identify mega trends and translate them into actionable content strategies that help brands stay ahead of the curve. Text us what you think about this episode!

In this episode of Content Amplified, host Ben Ard sits down with Tiffanie Reynolds, owner of MARCOM Consultants, to explore why trust-driven content comes from real people — not polished corporate messaging. Tiffanie shares why subject matter experts and authentic customer stories outperform traditional brand content, citing research that storytelling is 20 times more memorable than corporate messaging and that consumers trust SMEs 63% more than corporate brands. She highlights brands like Tampa International Airport and Wendy's as examples of companies doing human-centric content right, while calling out the professional services industry for playing it too safe. Tiffanie also discusses the role of AI in content creation, warning against using it as a writing tool while praising its value as a research assistant — as long as you always verify the citations. Guest Bio: Tiffanie Reynolds is the owner of MARCOM Consultants, a marketing and communications consultancy specializing in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. With over two decades of experience in marketing and communications, Tiffanie has worked across the AEC and business management consulting industries. She is also a freelance writer for several AEC industry magazines. Tiffanie is passionate about authentic storytelling, human-centric content, and helping brands find the right balance between corporate messaging and genuine connection. Text us what you think about this episode!

One fumbled call with a hot prospect. One honest conversation in a weekly check-in. One sales enablement leader who refused to let it happen again. Cassie Watkins didn't just create a battle card after her BDR struggled to differentiate against a competitor — she listened to the call, put herself in his shoes, and built something most enablement teams have never thought to create: a choose-your-own-adventure playbook that mirrors the actual flow of a real sales conversation. In this episode of Content to Close, Cassie walks through the whole story. What you'll learn in this episode: - Why the best sales enablement content starts with listening to a real call — and what frame of mind you need to bring to that recording to extract what actually matters - How to build trust with your BDR and sales team so they bring you the hard moments instead of hiding them — the kind of trust that turns problems into content before they become patterns - Why traditional objection-handling content fails: it answers questions in a vacuum instead of following the natural flow of a live conversation - The "choose your own adventure" framework for building competitor differentiation content that mirrors how a real conversation actually unfocks — not how you wish it would go - What a one-stop-shop sales playbook looks like in practice: daily metrics, call scripts, objection handling, AE territories, and flashcard-style competitor content, all in one living PowerPoint - The calendar invite trick that gets BDRs to actually *use* enablement content — a simple accountability system that works even on a one-person enablement team Guest Bio Cassie Watkins is a Sales Enablement Leader with five years of experience, preceded by a decade in sales itself — starting with door-to-door business sales in 2010, the kind of front-line experience that gives her an unusual empathy for the people she now enables. Based in Nashville, Cassie recently founded a local enablement chapter to help other practitioners — especially solo enablement teams — connect, share, and grow. She is a practitioner first: her ideas come from the field, from real calls, real coaching moments, and the daily discipline of making sellers better. Connect with Cassie on LinkedIn. Text us what you think about this episode!