Marketing Over Coffee: How to Blend Creativity and Tech Like a Pro

Foreign. That's good. Hey guys, it's another new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and I'm your host, Brett Dystra. And if you guys ever wanted to understand how to create great marketing tactics that is an intersection of creativity and and technology, utilizing AI for your marketing strategies and utilizing it well without sounding too AI ish or AI slop, because we all have that.

Well, with me, I have Brandy Starr and she is the CEO of Integra and she is just bringing a wealth of knowledge for you guys to just dive in and create great marketing tactics through creativity and technology. Well, well, welcome to the show, Brandi. Thank you for having me. Yes.

The first question asks all my guests is are you a coffee or tea drinker? I am tea. I never acquired the taste for coffee. Have any like specific teas you like?

Do you like green tea, black tea, jasmine pearls? Yeah, I tend to like the flavored green teas. My favorite is pomegranate. And then I also like to do the peach mint.

Are those caffeinated or those like the herbal? Non caffeinated ones. I add the green so that it's got the caffeine because the pomegranate and the peach are non caffeinated and I definitely need the caffeine. No worries.

I gave a brief some of your expertise. Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do? Yeah. So at Tegreta, we are marketing automation or marketing operations consultants, should I say.

And so we really help companies to orchestrate their journey. So the strategy technology people process all of it to help them to drive revenue and do so really efficiently. So in my role as CEO, I lead operations and marketing and I do some of the strategic consulting for our larger clients. So the B2B landscape, it's one of those things where people, well, they might miss opportunities for reputation.

Specifically, they're untapped opportunities. Can you walk us through your process identifying innovative growth opportunity and maybe on specific customer journey hack or market gap you've exploited and how you convince shareholders to take the leap? Yeah, so one thing that I see quite often that is a gap in the journey is there's a lot of focus on driving that initial interest. So marketing is running all sorts of plays trying to generate demand.

Then you often have a BDR or SDR team that is also trying to get some of that top of funnel traction. And then you always have your sales team that is ready to progress opportunities. And so there's a lot that happens in that middle. And most companies, they have a nurture that they've got running and they're expecting a miracle from a few emails.

And so this is a place where we've really been able to lean in with a lot of clients and to figure out what are ways that we get more conversion. So of all those net new people, companies we're driving awareness with, how do we get more of them to actually be opportunities that sales can work? In some cases it does still leverage email. So not that email's not effective, it just, it can't be the only thing.

And so really figuring out how do we improve those conversion rates in the middle to actually generate more opportunities in pipeline? And it becomes pretty easy to get buy in from stakeholders once you show them the numbers and looking at what they spend on top of funnel activity and what comes out in terms of pipeline and revenue on the bottom. Some cases just even a 1% conversion in the middle can actually yield millions, depending on the average deal size and those sorts of things.

So how do you find those hidden gems or those 1%? Because it feels at least for B2B, they're always looking for the high ticket and big contracts and everything. And it's cool if you get it, but I don't feel like it's feasible every single day to get the monstrous contract. So how do you get that sweet spot and how do you have that communication between the marketing and the sales?

Because I feel like a lot of times there's this disconnect between both of them because they're not really talking to each other a lot of times. Yeah. So we start by understanding what are they doing today and what does their sales cycle look like? Because obviously a company with a $10,000 product and a three month sales cycle is gonna look very different than someone that's got a hundred thousand dollar product and a 12 month sales cycle.

So we first aim to understand like what does the journey look like, what stakeholders are involved in the conversation, whether they are actually a part of the opportunity or not. And what does a company already have in place for generating and closing revenue. And so we start with where they are and looking at those conversion points. And I like to talk about the micro conversions because people look at the big ones.

How many people saw us, how many people gave us their contact information, how many, how many of those became an opportunity, how many of those opportunities were actually won? There's a lot that happens in between. And so if we think about once we have engaged and we obviously like the best place to lean in is people whose contact information we do have but there are ways, even with our unknown audience, because so much of the journey happens air quotes in the dark. Now there's ways to engage those people as well.

And so really looking at what is actually happening, what are we doing today and what are the gaps. And so in some cases, they may have a generic nurture running and we will get more sophisticated with that nurture, also trying to engage more members of the buying committee. So one thing that's really common now is you are often in tech purchases, you're often seeing someone from it, and even the CFO is a part of the buying committee. Neither of them is ever going to fill out a form on your website.

However, there are ways that in our ad targeting and things like that, that we can target those people who are a part of the buying committee as a part of that middle of the funnel. While you are nurturing, say your main stakeholder or the actual decision maker, who we do have the contact information, we may nurture them via email, but do some targeting for the others in the buying committee or we may leverage our SDRs or BDRs to actually try and get in front of more of those stakeholders.

So it really depends on typical consultant answer is it depends. But it really does depend on what the sales cycle looks like and what they're doing today. And we really focus in on where is the biggest opportunity to just get that incremental growth. And then where we see clients or companies with a really strong overall funnel, that's where we start to look at how can marketing help to increase deal size and get those bigger deals that you were talking about and increase velocity so that we can shorten the amount of time to revenue.

And so there's lots of levers that we can pull that working alongside the sales team to really help those buyers move through and actually become revenue. And talking about the buying committee, how do you figure that part out? Is it usually historically like a specific, like title that you have to do because you said target them. So how do you figure that out to target the right ones?

Because I'm pretty sure sometimes you're like, that was not the right person for the buying committee. And of course it happens. But this is where knowledge of the market comes in and where that knowledge lives can vary. So in a lot of cases, your customer success team is a great resource as well as your sales team in understanding when they're going through opportunities.

You may not talk directly to them, but clients will drop hints. I can think about supporting someone that was one of our prospects and she Actually said, hey, I've got a meeting coming up. I'm going to present you guys as a potential vendor. Is there anything you can give me to help with that presentation?

And so I just asked what roles are going to be in the conversation so that I can give you the right information to help to give them what they need. And, and so little conversations like that that you can get from prospects help you understand what that buying committee looks like. Is every single one going to be the same? No.

But we always have to make some educated assumptions. That's always going to be the best that we have. It's never going to be exact. It's getting more complex.

And so based on what we're selling and who we're selling to, those that really understand the market and the customer base can provide some of those safe assumptions as to who's involved. And then there's all sorts of technology for being able to target them and identify who are people in those roles at your target companies. And speaking of B2B, have you seen the AI kind of infiltrate a little bit more to help with those issues? And how do you utilize AI to help you get those sales goals or at least have the person aware of you?

Because I'm pretty. Awareness is the first part of all this. Yeah, there is. There.

We could talk all day about the ways that AI is changing this. But I will give you a couple of easy examples with during orchestration. Some people with AI are now starting to call it go to market engineering. But essentially figuring that out with all the different technologies we have that there are ways that we can map certain things.

So there's ways that we can have AI do some company research and help us understand better what's going on in the organization, how buyers buy, et cetera. That information can be used for personalization and targeting. And this is where you get into where AI agents can come in because they can actually think more autonomously based on the way that they are programmed. And so there's ways that we can have that research happen.

Have AI do the research. Have AI actually parse out. How can we personalize our outreach? Whether that outreach is coming from sales through one of the sales tools, or via marketing through a marketing automation platform, or working with demand base or zoom info or any of those technologies that identify who the people are.

We can actually leverage AI and AI agents to build out workflows. And the ultimate is event. Eventually we'll just string together a bunch of AI agents who will be able to work together. But at this stage, it is a mix of human involvement with some workflows that are planned out with some agents that can do certain pieces of it autonomously.

And so even where you're not even getting into automating, there's simple ways that just using generative AI, we can do that competitive research so that our messaging is more targeted, we can do industry research. So even if we are not getting down to the account level, there's ways we can research our Persona within particular industries. Leveraging AI in a way that's going to give us so much more insight into how we should be targeting and communicating to those buyers and what their problems may actually be.

There's so many connections. I just did one for a prospect where AI looked at their annual report, it looked at their press releases, and it looked at several other like social things that have been posted on social by the organization. And it made some connections between those data points that I don't know that my human brain would have comprehended without a significant amount of time investment. So even just being able to surface those things now, if my salesperson is putting together a sequence or personalizing a sequence, they've got some really tangible things they can say.

And they're like, yeah, based on your annual report and this press release, it seems like you are focusing your effort on this. And here's how we can help with that. That kind of message gets responded to more so than the hey, I know you're a this title. And we help that title in this way that goes straight to the, the trash box or the spam box.

And so even with just using some human interacting with AI, we can get better. And then for those companies that are a little more mature, a little more sophisticated, this is where we can start to orchestrate things. Leveraging AI and our various technologies to really put this together. And so what are some of the pitfalls of using it?

Because I've heard from different guests, one loves it ones don't trust the data. Sometimes it's like fooling you. Like, there are some pitfalls to using it. So how do you avoid those pitfalls?

Because I'm pretty sure there's times where AI goes a ride and you're like, that doesn't even make any sense. Yes, that is always. And this is why, this is why you can't yet make everything fully automated. Some people believe that you can.

I don't believe that we are there yet. I believe that our processes and how we are leveraging AI has to have some form of checks and balances in there. And so honestly, it really depends on what you are doing with AI, because there are certain activities that are a lot lower of a risk. Like for example, the research that I just talked about.

I asked it to make sure that it cited every single source that it was using so I could see, I could click their annual report and it shows me, okay, they pulled this number from this annual report. So before I just totally take it blindly, I do a bit of validation. There are also ways in your AI workflows to get AI to check itself. So I have done something where I host a podcast and I often leverage those recordings to create additional content.

I did some research, found some additional statistics to support the point, gave AI all of those research points and the transcript, and I said, write me a new article that leans on the guest's expertise but pulls in some of this industry research. I let it run that draft before I started editing for tone and all those sorts of things. And I then gave that article to another AI conversation and said, hey, I had my writer. And I didn't tell it the writer was AI, but I gave my writer this research and this transcript and they gave me this article.

Can you validate that? They did not fabricate or misstate or misrepresent anything in this article. And so there are ways you can build those steps into a workflow. In that example, I was doing it manually because my goal is to set up an actual workflow to automate this, but I like to do it human to machine first.

And in that is when it went through. And it was like, here are the places where it's not exact, but based on X, Y and Z. It seems like this is a valid point, but it's not directly pulled from the source. And I'm like, okay, that's fine.

It gave me one place where it's, I can't find anywhere that the guest or the research is referencing that. And I said, okay, rewrite that without that statement. And now we've got something that I just need to edit for tone. And so there are definitely ways that you can help to mitigate the risk of leveraging AI in the journey and still be able to tap into the power and even automating certain things.

And then as AI gets more sophisticated, this is where I'm saying we'll have agents that'll be cross checking each other and eventually we'll get to a point where it could be fully automated. But even for organizations that are not yet ready to go all in on AI use, there are definitely ways that we can get better and again move that needle in terms of conversions to help drive pipeline leveraging the tools that are really taking our all industries by storm, but especially go to market.

And so is that the biggest transformation we're going to see in B2B? Because I know B2B is a little slower behind than B2C because B2C has to be like up to date with everything. Is that the biggest transformation we're going to be seeing the next 5, 10 years with B2B? Marketing is the more automation and the AI being implemented more gradually.

Because I feel like gradually is probably the best answer for B2B because everything moves at a little bit of a slower rate. Yeah. So I would say yes and no. I would say that the changes that we are going to see in B2B are going to be as a result.

But I don't know that it's just the workflows because there's a lot of companies that really have some internal work to do before they can automate things and workflows. There's a lot of companies where their systems and things are. They're not integrated, they're too much of a mess, they're not standardized. So there are definitely some challenges.

And I think the larger organizations, as always are going to be a bit of the laggards in adopting more automated and streamlined processes. However, I think we are going to see changes across everything in b2b.AI is changing org structures and how people are aligned. It is changing the roles that we hire for and the experience that we are expecting.

It is changing the pace at which we work because AI is moving so fast. There is so much in business that is expected to move faster so that companies can keep up. And so I think everything in B2B is, I want, I'm not going to say will change. It is changing.

I just saw a quote where somebody said we've never been a insert role here in 2026. And it. And the sentiment behind that is we've done so many things historically, but things are changing so fast that whatever your role is, that role in 2026 is not going to be the same as that role in 2025. And so I really think AI is going to change the B2B landscape according across the board and workflows and automations are going to be a component of that.

Very similarly to when marketing automation first became a thing. I GUESS it's been 15, 20 years now or makes me feel old at that point. That was where we started seeing a lot more marketing be automated and have workflows to figure out the right communications at the right time to the right people. We're going to see more of that on a much more expanded scale.

With marketing automation, it was just communications. With AI, it is literally everything that we do and the approach that we take to do it is going to change. How do the marketers stay ahead of this curve? Because everybody's still trying to figure out AI.

No one really knows exactly how it's going to change marketing. They just know it is going to change marketing. So how do you stay on top of this and become a good prompt engineer or at least understand how the inner workings of AI work? It's really just embracing it and giving it a shot because.

And trying things because it's moving so fast, because it's changing. You have to embrace it and you have to try things and you have to find what you are comfortable with and what works for your organization. Right now, in our business, there's a lot of places where we are not yet comfortable automating. We're tinkering with how it could be possible, but we're not yet comfortable with letting certain things just run on their own.

But we are making sure that we are figuring out could it. It's like we don't have to do it, but can we figure out what that would look like and if we tried to do that, what are the risks? Because there may be things that we need to unpack of. Oh, if AI were doing this, how would it know the right information or the right approach?

Maybe we need to be tracking that or documenting that, or it starts to identify holes in your organization and your approach and that's the best way to at least kind of stay on pace and not completely get left behind. And when it comes to. And I don't want to get too stuck on just AI, but when it comes to AI, one of the things I advise people to do is just try stuff. Even if you're not trying stuff at work, try use cases at home.

You know, I've done things like I'm leveraging ChatGPT for my personal trainer. I have used it for helping me figure out how to plan my meals for the week. There's all sorts of simple ways that you in your personal life can try it out with low risk. You know, if ChatGPT tells me make this meal and we don't like it, okay, we don't like it.

And it's like a no harm, no foul, it is what it is. But it's a way to get comfortable with how AI works because you can even work through automating like things at home. Can I take a picture of what's in my fridge, have AI catalog what's there, scrub it against a list of what's usually there and tell me what I need to buy. That's a simple one that you can test something out to figure out how does a workflow work?

What inputs do I need to give it? And so that is really the biggest opportunity for everyone, not just marketers is just really embrace it and try to leverage it and try to try new things. And that will at least keep you current and give you some AI competency. But really I would encourage everyone to really lean in, take classes, follow people who are experts, et cetera, so that you can keep up.

What do you think is going to be the next trend for the next 5, 10 years in B2B besides the AI stuff? Because we all know that's obviously. But what other trends that people marketers may not be aware of? Because AI is the talk of the town right now.

One thing that I seem to be seeing is a bit of what's old is new again. And I think about like at one point direct mail was super hot. Everybody was mailing. Then email marketing became a thing and people really stopped direct mailing.

Now when you get something in the mail, you're excited about it. So it's, we've got gifting platforms and other ways that people are strategically using direct mail. So it's like that's a thing that came around again. What I'm seeing now is, you know, we had made this shift to so much being automated.

AI is going to automate even more human to human. Connection is becoming new again. And so companies do just LinkedIn inbox messages, people are doing voice messages or LinkedIn videos and there's more of these smaller in person events. And so I don't know that, you know, I am, I'd say one of the things I'm not always great at, reading the tea leaves, so to speak in terms of what trends are coming.

But the things that I'm consistently seeing is some of the stuff that we stopped doing because we're able to automate so much. Some of those things are coming back around. And so that is one of the things like going back to some of the foundations and fundamentals of, of relationship building and actually creating real connection human to human and not just for the brand is becoming really big. That is true.

Everything that's old becomes new again. Look at fashion, look at Music. Look at all of it. I'm like, I feel like we're back in the 90s in, like, fashion a lot of times.

And I'm like, this is weird. Oh, yeah. And there is so much of the fashions that I wish would stay in the night. That's fair.

So people listening to this episode, they're wondering where can they find you online to learn more about you? I am on LinkedIn. You can always find me there. Brandy Star, you will see my smiling face.

And I also host a podcast as well, Revenue Rehab. And so you can find me on Revenue Rehab live. Revenue Rehab is therapy, but for your funnel. And so definitely, if anyone reaches out, let me know that you heard me here and we can connect then.

Any final thoughts for the listeners? I appreciate you having me on and one of the things my advice right now to everyone is while so much is changing, really focus on the fundamentals. Peel back all of the hype and the buzzwords and all of the things and look at how do we do the basics really well, because that actually matters and it really moves the needle and in a way that most people don't realize. And it's not always sexy.

A lot of times the hot thing is what everybody wants to focus on, but just focusing on getting the fundamentals right is huge. Hey, they wouldn't be fundamentals if they weren't the basics of whatever it is. This is so true. Thank you, Brandy, for joining Digital Coffee Marketing bringing sharing knowledge on B2B.

I appreciate you having me and and. That is the episode. We had a great time and I really hope that you just enjoyed this episode and got a wealth of knowledge. Comment below on what was your favorite part about it and what did you learn?

And we'll post it up on the next episode for you if you do that as well. So I hope you understand what it takes to be a great marketer through creativity and technology. And I hope to see you next week as I talk to another great thought leader in the PR marketing industry. All right, guys, don't forget to subscribe and see you next week.

Later.