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Hello and welcome to the Exit Five Weekly Newsletter - read by 25,000 B2B marketing professionals around the world. Exit Five is a membership site designed to help you build a successful career in B2B marketing. Join 5,000 other members at exitfive.com.

By the way - this email was designed in Knak which helps you create email and landing pages in minutes without having to write code. Learn more about Knak here.

🚪 Should you be gating your demos?

Maybe not.

In the 2025 State of the Interactive Product Demo that Navattic just put out, they found that ungated demos have a 5 - 10% higher engagement rate.

And if you *do* gate your demo, forms placed later in the demo had a 10 - 15% increase in engagement rate.

The full report is full of other stats and gems on how marketers are using interactive demos based on data from 28,000 demos.

It’s not public yet, but we’ve got a sneak peek for you 👀

Check out a preview of the full report here.

😵 Should You Kill Direct Response Ads?

Direct response ads are a pretty standard part of any marketing playbook.

So it'd be completely wild to ditch them, right? Maybe not.

Taylor Udell did exactly that at Champify. Why?

They were expensive, yielded diminishing returns, and didn’t align with their sales-led motion. Instead, Taylor doubled down on thought leadership ads – targeted, high-value content that helped prospects do their jobs better.

The results were pretty jaw dropping: 51% of their open opportunities engaged with these ads before entering the funnel.

And it makes sense... in a world where B2B buyers increasingly tune out hard-sell tactics, delivering genuine value builds trust and drives results.

Let’s break down why Taylor's approach works and how you can try it:

1. Find Internal Thought Leaders

It’s much easier to build a following for the actual people on your team than it is to get traction with your company’s profile.

At Champify, they have 3 main thought leaders:

1. Taylor (Head of Growth)
2. Todd Busler (CEO)
3. Will Falkenborg (SDR Lead)

Finding the thought leaders in your org will depend on your product, but the leadership team (especially your CEO) is a great place to start. At least 1 person in Marketing should be involved, too.

2. Deliver High Value Content on LinkedIn

Then, it’s all about your thought leaders sharing helpful content people actually care about.

The Champify team focuses on everything from:

• How they’re doing their jobs (For example, “How I booked 14 meetings this week.”)
• Lessons they’re learning (Think: “The most consistent AEs are MANIACALLY focused the “best” accounts.”)
• Recaps of the conversations they’re having (Like, “Last month I spoke with a global SDR leader at a $9B company…”)

Taylor leads with information. Todd leans on his background and shares tons of valuable insights. Will shows his personality with humor.

They focus on delivering value (rather than selling or promoting) first.

3. Run Thought Leadership Ads

Take the team’s best-performing posts and put thought leadership ads behind them.

Something like this:

Chamipify has a small target account list (only ~200 accounts), so they target the relevant personas at those accounts with these ads.

And it's pretty dang successful: 51% of their open opportunities have engaged with those thought leadership ads.

About 90% of Taylor’s ad strategy is this thought leadership playbook. So what does she do the rest of the time?

4. Ungate, Ungate, Ungate

She drives people to playbooks, like “How to build an outbound culture.”

It’s packed with advice from people like Justin Geller at Gong and Doug May at Harness. And it's super tactical and helpful, whether readers are using Champify or not.

Again, the focus is on value. Which means the page is ungated and accessible to anyone.

Yes, there are forms on the page to join their newsletter, but Taylor firmly believes in earning the right to build a relationship over time, which starts with trust.

5. Measure Success

If you’re ditching the traditional ad playbook, you’ll need a testing strategy to prove what works.

For Taylor, this looks like tracking which ICPs are engaging with their content using tools like Clearbit or Koala (and cross-referencing that with engagement data from their LinkedIn Ads).

From there, she can get insights like whether those accounts close faster, which opportunities have re-opened, and which new accounts she’s getting in front of.

An extra tip: Focus on one experiment or stage of the funnel at a time.

For example, if you’re testing a strategy to boost awareness and you see all your awareness metrics grow, you know it has to be working because it’s the only play that’s changed.

P.S. Do you still run direct response ads or have you ditched them? Thoughts? Maybe targeted to someone deeper in the funnel? Would love to know.

Let me know if you want me to send over the full interview with Taylor – just reply here and I'll get it to you :)

📺 UPCOMING EVENTS

🎤 The Role of Product Marketing in B2B: Strategies, Tools, and Metrics for Success

Product Marketers are no strangers to change.

Whether it’s navigating new responsibilities, proving impact to leadership, or balancing short-term wins with long-term strategy, the role is constantly evolving.

And in 2025, that evolution is only speeding up.

This Exit Five Live session is designed to help you stay ahead of the curve. We’re bringing together top product marketing leaders for a tactical, no-fluff discussion on how to sharpen your skills, adapt to the changing landscape, and deliver measurable impact.

Exit Five Founder Dave Gerhardt will host a panel of expert Product Marketers, including:

• Natalie Marcotullio; Head of Growth and Operations at Navattic
• Jason Oakley; Founder, Productive PMM
• Eric Holland; Co-Founder, DemoDash

You’ll learn:

• What a successful product marketing function looks like in B2B
• Tools, frameworks, and metrics that matter
• How to align with sales and customer success teams
• Balancing short-term priorities with long-term strategies
• Trends to watch for 2025 and beyond

Plus, there will be plenty of time for live Q&A so you can get your burning questions answered by our panel of Product Marketing Pros.

Join us live

📰 LATEST CONTENT

Here's the latest from the Exit Five content library:

• [ARTICLE] The B2B Positioning Trap: Why Companies Go Broad
• [ARTICLE] Inside a 100 Person Marketing Org
• [ARTICLE] What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Account Based Marketing
• [PODCAST] How To Build A B2B Community with Dan Cmejla, B2B Community Expert
• [PODCAST] Why Cookie Cutter Marketing Doesn’t Work with Gurdeep Dhillon, CMO at ContentStack

🏢 OPEN ROLES

Who's Hiring Right Now?

HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: New North is hiring a Growth Marketing Strategist. You'll build marketing strategies based on business outcomes, connecting the dots across content, paid, ABM, and marketing ops initiatives. $100k annual salary.

Interested? Apply here.

Other open roles on the Exit Five job board this week:

• Neuron7 is hiring a Content Marketing Director. Fully remote, US Only.
• Databox is hiring a Lifecycle Marketing Manager
• Mutiny is hiring a Content Lead
• Drivepoint is hiring a Content Marketing Manager
• Global Payments is hiring a Principal Content Strategist, SMB Professional Services
• Global Payments is hiring a Principal Content Strategist, Higher Education
• Opus Training is hiring a B2B Growth Marketing Manager
• Paramark is hiring a Head of Marketing, Founding Marketer

See All Open Roles >>

Have an open role and want to make sure the best B2B marketing talent sees it?

Just reply to this email and we'll send over more info on how you can post it on our job board + get it in front of 25k+ marketers.

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We have a 7 day free trial so you can join 100% risk free.

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