Ryan Nelsen, Chief Marketing Officer at StackAdapt, dives deeply into redefining value across today’s complex buyer journeys. He discusses the impact of trust, the power of customer-centricity, and the strategic role of brand marketing. He shares real-world insights on combining brand and performance efforts for maximum revenue impact. He also outlines how AI and creative collaboration spark new ideas in B2B marketing.
“Know your audience and the pain points they truly need you to solve. Understand the value you provide and how your solution addresses those challenges. That’s what it all comes down to—and that’s where the magic happens.” – Ryan Nelsen
In this conversation, Ryan shares how building trust with buyers means going beyond product pitches and truly connecting with their core challenges. He dives into the art and science of balancing brand awareness with targeted performance metrics, explains how real customer stories strengthen credibility, and shows how AI can amplify a marketer’s creativity, speed, and scale.
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[Transcript]
[00:00:00] Steve MacDonald: Welcome, everyone, to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we have a very interesting guest, Ryan Nelsen. Now, Ryan, you are currently the CMO at StackAdapt. I’m going to let you talk a little bit more about your professional background before we get started here, because we’re going to be talking today about how we redefine value in the buyer’s journey.
[00:00:22] Steve MacDonald: And I think that starts with really defining what the buyer’s journey is and what the challenges in today’s buyer journey are. So we’re going to jump into all of that. But I thought it was fascinating—some things that I’d love to have people know about you personally. You are a father of four daughters, which means you are highly resilient. Well, whether that’s four daughters or four sons, that’s a lot! I give that to you. You’re actually a descendant of Butch Cassidy, as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You live in Utah, so I think that you’re right up against the mountains there.
[00:00:58] Steve MacDonald: I’d love to have you just before we dig deep into all of this, maybe explain a little bit more about your professional background, and then we’ll get started.
[00:01:06] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here. So, I’m a B2B marketer. I’ve been fortunate to be at several different tech companies in the B2B space.
[00:01:13] Ryan Nelsen: I started at a couple of small tech companies and then joined Qualtrics in 2013. At the time, the company was around $40 million in ARR, and I left about six years later when we had grown to $800 million. It was a great journey of hiring, scaling, and learning a lot. I was very fortunate to be there at that time. Then, I joined a fast-growing company in Utah called MX, helping to scale that company.
[00:01:32] Ryan Nelsen: About a year ago, I was recruited to StackAdapt, where I feel incredibly fortunate to be. We’re growing super fast and adding a lot of value in the advertising and marketing space. So it’s fun to be able to speak and work with marketers every day because that’s what I do, and that’s what our software serves. It’s a pleasure to be here today.
[00:01:50] Steve MacDonald: Well, thank you. Managing all of that growth gives a really interesting perspective because I’ve talked to a lot of C-suite executives, and through that growth, one of the things that almost always happens is that, fundamentally, almost who we are as a company—our ICP and how we go to market—keeps evolving. You reinvent and reinvent, so you’re never standing back on your laurels, right?
[00:02:05] Steve MacDonald: I’d like to start out by talking about how to redefine value in the buyer’s journey. Just to get your perspective: What is the buyer’s journey? How has it changed recently? And what are the major challenges for CMOs today?
[00:02:24] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. I think I’d start by saying that buyers buy on trust. Businesses are really about building trust, and it all comes down to that. The key is figuring out how to build trust in creative, genuine ways.
[00:02:40] Ryan Nelsen: The buyer’s journey is not always linear. There are different inputs into that journey, different touchpoints, and inflection points along the way. The challenge is using technology, people, and AI to stitch that journey together in a more seamless, connected way.
[00:02:55] Ryan Nelsen: Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, it’s really business to human. We’re marketing to humans, and humans care about different things. So, understanding what they care about, what your value is, and how to connect the dots between those two is essential.
[00:03:10] Steve MacDonald: I love how you very quickly brought it back to humans. For me, that means it’s about the relationship. You started this off by talking about how it’s all about trust, right? Those are all woven together.
[00:03:31] Steve MacDonald: I want to ask you something because you brought this up. There was a study that came out about a year ago called The Trust Gap, focused on B2B buyers. It said that 74% of B2B buyers do not trust the customer evidence we present to them.
[00:03:50] Steve MacDonald: We spend a lot of time communicating our value, but to learn that three-quarters of buyers don’t believe it? There’s a trust gap. In Marketing 101, we learn that brands are trust marks. What does that mean for us as CMOs operating in this kind of environment?
[00:04:03] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah, there’s a lot of noise out there. Everybody listening to this knows that. There’s a lot coming at you, and you never know what to trust. Is someone being genuine, or are they just trying to sell you something?
[00:04:21] Ryan Nelsen: Most of the time in business, we are trying to add value while also selling something. But how do you do that in a way that is genuine and meaningful? It comes down to deciphering signal from noise—what truly adds value to our business versus what is just another sales pitch.
[00:04:50] Ryan Nelsen: Sometimes, using the ecosystem around them is a great way to build that trust.
[00:04:55] Steve MacDonald: I want to throw you a curveball almost right away here in the podcast. There was a B2B CMO on about a year ago—she’s been a CMO three times—and she said, “Steve, almost exclusively, our marketing campaigns, sales campaigns, and product development efforts are more effective if the voice of the customer leads ours.”
[00:05:43] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah, absolutely. We’re a very customer-driven company, and I try to be a leader who listens to our customers. We just hosted a Customer Advisory Board last week with 20 of our top clients. We gathered feedback on our roadmap, positioning, messaging, pain points, and differentiators.
[00:06:46] Steve MacDonald: That’s a lot of work. It takes time, dedication, and focus. Every company says they want to be customer-focused, but the difference is whether they actually do something about it. Many CMOs have 150–180% of their capacity filled every single day.
[00:07:26] Steve MacDonald: The list of requests coming to marketing never ends. It’s very easy to avoid the harder but right things. What you just described is not easy—it takes time, dedication, and resources.
[00:07:12] Steve MacDonald: What is your advice to CMOs, CEOs, CROs, and other C-suite executives on why that amount of time and dedication is worth it?
[00:07:51] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah, it comes down to focus and priority. I think a good question to ask yourself is: Are you a customer-driven company, or are you a product-driven company? And I think there are actually good benefits to both. You can think of iconic brands and companies that build what they know to be true, regardless of customer feedback, because the customer might not yet know what the next phase of AI is going to be. For example, going back to Henry Ford, they were building the car instead of faster horses.
And so, there’s a combination of that as we think about building a roadmap, but I do want to make sure there is always a strong lens on the customer—making sure that we’re close to what is truly going to resonate, what’s going to pack the biggest punch. So, I think every tech leader needs to ask themselves: How much does the customer influence the roadmap, the messaging, and the journey? Because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re here to do—serve them as a customer.
[00:08:40] Steve MacDonald: So how does that fit into the topic of our conversation here today?
[00:08:44] Steve MacDonald: How do we redefine value in the buyer’s journey?
[00:08:48] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah, I think as marketers, there are a lot of things we can be doing. I always like to see marketers go deeper into the funnel and own the entire journey end to end. A lot of times, marketing leaders will rely on a CRO—a Chief Revenue Officer—to take over, thinking, “We passed the lead off, and we did our job.” I always prefer having our teams measured one or two steps deeper in the funnel, even into the opportunity creation phase, and then all the way through the journey—getting the client to sign a contract, their renewal, and what their onboarding and renewal process look like.
[00:09:18] Ryan Nelsen: So it’s end to end. And I think that leads into the two parts of marketing that would be helpful to discuss: brand marketing and performance marketing. If you think about those two as a two-headed monster—or the heart and the mind, or the art and the science of marketing—both are critical. They help cover the entire journey: top of the funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom of the funnel. So, I think it would be good to dive into that.
[00:09:43] Steve MacDonald: That’s an interesting topic, right? Because I know you’re involved in a lot of executive meetings and board meetings where the first questions are, “Hey, where are we on this month’s or this quarter’s quota? How are we looking for next?”
[00:09:54] Steve MacDonald: And then you come in and start talking about—I’m not saying you specifically, but in general—the brand. And everybody’s eyes glaze over because you have a CRO thinking, “Hey, I’ve got a quota over my head. I’ve got a team that has to deliver against this.”
[00:10:11] Steve MacDonald: How do you reconcile or balance those? Because we all know that today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand, right? We can’t ignore that. But in your mind, how do you think about that two-headed monster, as you put it? How do we accomplish both sides of that equation while keeping our jobs and staying aligned with our CEOs and CROs?
[00:10:32] Ryan Nelsen: Well, first off, I envision a world where everything is measurable. Oftentimes, brand marketing is a lot more difficult to measure. You can do brand lift studies and other things, but it’s not as crisp as performance marketing channels, where you can track leads, pipeline, SQLs, and funnel impact.
[00:10:48] Ryan Nelsen: What’s interesting about brand marketing is that it’s critical. But if you only focus on brand marketing, you’re probably going to get fired because you’re not proving ROI to the board and the CEO. On the other hand, if you only focus on performance marketing, your top-of-funnel will dry up quickly, and there will be no brand association.
[00:11:01] Ryan Nelsen: In a B2C context, imagine standing in a grocery aisle deciding which product to choose. If there’s no brand loyalty, people often pick based on price or promotions. But if someone is an advocate for a brand, they’ll pay double, triple, even quadruple the price because of their emotional connection to it.
[00:11:19] Ryan Nelsen: That’s why I talk about the art and science, the heart and mind of marketing. But if we zoom out to proving value as a marketing leader, what if we could make everything performance-driven while still executing brand marketing activities? That’s something we’re excited about at StackAdapt—connecting brand lift and emotional connection to tangible campaign touchpoints and ROI.
[00:11:54] Ryan Nelsen: Most B2B companies focus heavily on performance marketing—it’s a given. I’ve said this before: My mom probably doesn’t even know who Salesforce is, and I don’t know if I’ll ever lead marketing for a company that the whole world knows. But as a B2B marketer, what really matters is that the right buyer knows who we are.
[00:12:09] Steve MacDonald: You gave a good B2C example—brand trust leads to significant pricing power. I think it was 8 or 10 CEOs ago at Coca-Cola when the CEO said that if Coca-Cola were obliterated off the face of the earth, he could walk into a bank and get a $100 billion loan based solely on the brand’s value.
[00:12:26] Steve MacDonald: How does that thinking translate into B2B? Because more and more B2C customer experience expectations are bleeding into B2B. Today, B2B buyers expect the same level of experience. Why is a strong brand just as important in B2B?
[00:12:59] Ryan Nelsen: Absolutely. I think it comes down to the word “momentum.” In B2B, you can feel which companies are the horse to bet on because of their momentum.
[00:13:06] Ryan Nelsen: You see it in LinkedIn conversations. I don’t post much, but many people do, and it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. But when there’s an ecosystem of people saying, “Hey, we’re choosing this technology,” or “Have you checked this out? It’s a different way of doing things,” that influence starts to affect decision-making.
[00:13:44] Steve MacDonald: You also mentioned something earlier that I want to revisit. Without revealing anything proprietary at StackAdapt, you said that brand and performance marketing don’t always have to be separate activities.
[00:14:00] Steve MacDonald: Many people believe they are distinct, but you said they don’t have to be. Can you share an example—beyond what you’re rolling out at StackAdapt—where that’s true? Where a company successfully combined both brand and performance marketing?
[00:14:23] Ryan Nelsen: Yeah, absolutely. I think traditionally, let’s talk about advertising for a moment, since we’re in this space and a lot of people on this podcast are very engaged in advertising.
[00:14:31] Ryan Nelsen: Traditional programmatic channels have been display and native—some of the standard advertising methods. However, as we move into connected TV and digital out-of-home, these channels are increasingly being used for brand marketing rather than direct response. A great example is the Coinbase Super Bowl ad from a few years ago.
[00:14:50] Ryan Nelsen: If you remember, they had a QR code bouncing on the screen, and everyone was waiting for it to hit the corner. From what I saw, they had 20 million downloads, and it was trending among the top apps in the app store. It was incredible. They used a Super Bowl ad—traditionally a branding play—to drive immediate revenue and performance.
[00:15:12] Ryan Nelsen: At StackAdapt, we support running various programmatic channels, including connected TV and digital out-of-home, which we’ve launched over the past couple of years. More importantly, we’re measuring the impact of these channels as well.
[00:15:27] Ryan Nelsen: The ability to measure TV opportunities—reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message—is becoming more accessible. What’s exciting is that with AI, ad creation that used to take months and cost over $100,000 can now be done in minutes. This opens the door for more brands and agencies to enter the ecosystem.
[00:15:55] Steve MacDonald: That’s a great idea. And it’s out-of-the-box thinking. In our previous conversation, you talked about the importance of thinking outside of the box in B2B marketing—like that Super Bowl ad you just mentioned. Can you expand on that?
[00:16:08] Ryan Nelsen: Absolutely. We, as marketers, work so hard to reach our audiences and cut through the noise. I’ve had experiences where we followed the playbook perfectly, but it just wasn’t resonating.
[00:16:22] Ryan Nelsen: We had a multi-touch campaign: a white paper, a webinar follow-up, a landing page, and even direct mail timed perfectly. But sometimes, the perfect business message isn’t what the audience wants to hear.
[00:16:37] Ryan Nelsen: They want something personal—something that actually matters to them. Let me give you an example. We were trying to engage a Fortune 20 company’s CMO, someone with a massive budget and a packed schedule.
[00:16:53] Ryan Nelsen: Our well-crafted ABM campaign wasn’t getting through. So, I told my team, “Let’s find out what this person really cares about.” I checked their Twitter (now X) and found out they were a huge BMW fan.
[00:17:19] Ryan Nelsen: Coincidentally, BMW had just become a client of ours, and I was in touch with the President of BMW North America at the time. I pitched him an idea.
[00:17:38] Ryan Nelsen: I suggested hosting 15-20 CMOs at their racetrack in South Carolina—offering a backstage factory tour, a look at the robots in action, and an afternoon of racing. His response? “Done. Sold. Let’s do it.”
[00:17:54] Ryan Nelsen: Minutes later, I sent a simple two-line email to the Fortune 20 CMO. Eight minutes later, they replied, “I’ll be there. Who can I bring?”
[00:18:00] Ryan Nelsen: That was a lightbulb moment for me. If something is highly targeted, personalized, and relevant, it will cut through the noise.
[00:18:09] Ryan Nelsen: That approach led to a new way of thinking. We brought together top brands, created an unforgettable experience, and it had a ripple effect. The fact that BMW was a client validated the event’s value. It was a win-win that led to great business outcomes.
[00:18:28] Ryan Nelsen: It was an incredible experience.
[00:18:29] Steve MacDonald: That’s a phenomenal story. When we talk about creating real value in the buyer’s journey, we all have CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot and high-priority targets. But sometimes, traditional outreach just doesn’t work.
[00:18:51] Steve MacDonald: So, redefining value—it doesn’t have to be about our product, technology, or service, right? There was nothing in that message about your product. It was all about relationships.
[00:19:09] Steve MacDonald: You built a relationship first, which then turned into a business relationship. Is that an accurate way to frame it?
[00:19:23] Ryan Nelsen: Exactly. It’s about creating win-win moments. Business is about relationships—it’s about people.
[00:19:30] Ryan Nelsen: At the end of the day, we do what we do for the people around us—to make an impact, to give back. It all comes down to meaningful connections that drive value for businesses and the world.
[00:19:44] Ryan Nelsen: So yes, you put it well.
[00:19:46] Steve MacDonald: You mentioned AI earlier. AI is changing how we deliver value. What do you see as the future of AI in B2B marketing and the buyer’s journey?
[00:20:03] Ryan Nelsen: Right now, most marketers are using predictive AI effectively, but we’re not fully leveraging generative AI in the most impactful ways.
[00:20:24] Ryan Nelsen: That’s why, on Fridays, I’m setting up a recurring session called “AI Coach” with my team. We’ll bring in external speakers and internal experts to share new learnings about AI every week.
[00:21:00] Ryan Nelsen: And I’d love to hear from listeners. What are you doing to improve in AI? Because I don’t think CMOs are spending enough time on it. We’re just scratching the surface, and the next few years are going to be exciting.
[00:21:28] Steve MacDonald: How long have you been doing this weekly, brown bag lunch AI?
[00:21:32] Ryan Nelsen: We’re just kicking it off, actually, this last little bit. It’s TBD on the nuances of what works best, but I want it to be a combination of our team. Sometimes, when you teach something, you learn a lot better and a lot easier.
[00:21:44] Ryan Nelsen: So, it’s a combination of our team volunteering and sharing—what did they learn? What made them better? But also, what our internal experts can bring to the table.
[00:21:54] Steve MacDonald: That is a phenomenal idea. And here’s what I’m taking away from that: in redefining value, what you just said is that I have a lot of faith and hope in AI—that it is going to redefine value.
[00:22:07] Steve MacDonald: I don’t necessarily have all the answers, but let’s create something very creative, dynamic, and collaborative. Let’s start exploring it internally and externally because I need to understand. I need to find the solutions that are going to add more and more value to what we’re doing. I have to do that in order to stay competitive and stay ahead.
[00:22:28] Steve MacDonald: Right? So my big takeaway is you don’t have to have the idea right now necessarily, but if you have the desire—I’m going to focus, I’m going to be creative, I’m going to find new ways to create value, and I’m going to make sure I have the time to do that.
[00:22:44] Steve MacDonald: I love how you run into a wall, a problem, or see an opportunity, and you think about it differently. On another podcast we do, we talk a lot about company culture, collaboration, and psychological safety. We discuss how everyone should have a role in contributing and feel comfortable doing so.
[00:23:05] Steve MacDonald: I hadn’t planned to ask this, but it feels like that’s a lot of what you’re doing with your team.
[00:23:12] Ryan Nelsen: Definitely, lots of collaboration. I love brainstorming and riffing on new ideas. I certainly don’t have all the ideas, and I don’t always know the best way to execute them. So, looping in the team and ensuring there’s a strong cross-functional dynamic between our marketing team and other departments is key. Getting ideas from across the organization, from customers, from colleagues—both current and former—is always a great way to tap into new insights.
[00:23:36] Steve MacDonald: Ryan, we’ve covered a lot of territory here, right? And our poor human brains can only remember about two or three things at a time. If you were to tell the audience tuning in, what’s the single most important takeaway you want them to have from consuming this podcast, what would that be?
[00:23:55] Ryan Nelsen: That’s a great question. I’d say: know your audience, know your value, and then connect those two. Be bold about it, and have a lot of fun along the way. We’re all in business, and things get really serious, but I think life is about having fun, doing big things, and dreaming big. It’s about the journey.
[00:24:20] Ryan Nelsen: It all comes back to the audience. Know your audience, know the pain points they really need you to solve, and understand the value of how you solve those pain points. That’s where the magic happens.
[00:24:23] Steve MacDonald: I love it. Here’s what I know is going to happen—people are going to have questions. Is it okay if we provide a link to your LinkedIn profile so they can reach out and ask you questions?
[00:24:32] Ryan Nelsen: Absolutely! Yeah, please do. That’d be great.
[00:24:34] Steve MacDonald: All right. Well, Ryan, thank you so much. Incredible thinking, stories, and elaboration on ways we need to be thinking differently—creating and adding value in new ways. This has been a real shot in the arm today. I really appreciate your time and insights.
[00:24:49] Ryan Nelsen: It’s a pleasure being here, Steve. Thank you so much for having me.