The challenge: selling to a "tight-knit" and "insular" group of ad operations leaders who already have solutions and rarely talk to vendors. Kathleen Booth explains how she broke through this "fortress" audience at clean.io by launching a podcast focused entirely on the buyer's career journey.
She shares why she didn't need to be an expert to build trust, how she used a simple referral loop to fill her guest list without cold outreach, and the "scrappy" tactics - like branded baseball jerseys and intimate dinners - that turned listeners into pipeline. Kathleen proves that consistency and curiosity matter more than a massive budget or a complex tech stack.
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👤 Guest Bio
Kathleen Booth is the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Growth at Pavilion, a global community for high-growth commercial executives. A veteran marketer with experience at Sequel.io and clean.io, Kathleen is a long-time podcaster and vocal advocate for Community-Led Growth. She specializes in helping brands build owned media assets to navigate the changing digital world.
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📌 What We Cover
- Facing a "difficult go-to-market scenario" where the audience was niche and "everyone knew everyone."
- Creating Ad Ops All Stars as "persona research in the form of a podcast" to spotlight the buyer's career
- Overcoming the "expertise myth": being curious and asking good questions instead of trying to be the subject matter expert
- The "thread" for finding guests: starting with community leaders and asking "who else" should be interviewed at the end of every call
- Turning interviews into relationships with a "thank you" package containing a branded baseball jersey and a handwritten note
- The dinner strategy: splitting the guest list 50/50 between happy customers and podcast guests so customers do the selling
- Focusing on the "habit" of consistency rather than high production value - using tools like Upwork and Canva to keep it scrappy
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- Mason Cosby on LinkedIn
- Kathleen Booth on LinkedIn
- Pavilion
- clean.io (Kathleen's previous company)
- Ad Ops All Stars (Kathleen's podcast)
- Canva (Kathleen: "designed graphics in Canva")
- Upwork (Kathleen: "used Upwork for video clips")
- Connect with Mason Cosby on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM.
- Want more ABM content? Check out these resources.
- Want to nail ABM in a Day? Register for this workshop.
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