Bardeen

Best of LinkedIn: AI in B2B Marketing What You Shouldn’t Miss (CW 13/14) Scanned. Curated. Summarized. We went through hundreds of LinkedIn posts and handpicked 61 and found 35 new voices worth following. Want the full summary across all trends, tools, and tactics? It’s all here – so you don’t have to scroll through your feed. Plus: We’ve linked the most relevant events around AI in B2B Marketing so you’re not missing where the real conversations happen. If this format keeps you sharp, stay close. We drop these weekly to help you stay ahead of the curve - not behind it :) Have a wonderful day! P.S. We’re a team of ~25 researchers, focused full-time on B2B Market Intelligence. If you're missing insights your competitors already act on, let's talk.

Most AI tools are STILL built for demos. They promise automation, but leave you staring at a lame UI. They promise onboarding, but give you a help doc and a video. They promise speed, but require a quarter to warm up. This week, I went on a little demo tour. A few popular, well-funded GTM automation tools: AI-forward. Free trials. Yada yada. I didn’t want to do demos, and I already know Clay as a former customer. So, I went with the rest. Every single one threw me into a blank UI with zero context. No onboarding. No humans. No value. Just a “start building” button and some credits. It was rough. In 2025, sales teams don’t need another playground. They need a quick, repeatable, revenue-driving product experience, live in days, not months. That’s why we built Bardeen’s AIgency team. You start a trial. You get a sales engineer on day one. They shadow your process. They build a workflow. You go live in under 48 hours. Example: SDR team came inbound saying “we need more leads. we have some money to spend on AI tools.” Nice. A LOT of discovery, plus 48 hours later, they were running a custom automation that pulled ICP accounts from Bardeen: • Enriched • Qualified for the biz with intent signals • Synced with HubSpot • Triggered LinkedIn outreach No theory. No blank canvas. A GTM motion that works.

Llama 4 models are now live in all Bardeen AI Agents!

We are just getting started! 📈 And Q2 has been a banger so far with the bell ringing every day! 🔔

Q1 at Bardeen = 🚀 mode. We started the year with a bold bet: AI works best with a human in the loop. So we reimagined the entire GTM experience with that in mind, and our Q1 results speak for themselves: - Repositioned the company as the "AI Copilot for GTM teams" - Launched AIgency, our hands-on, human-powered way to help teams automate faster - 10x'd lead volume (yep, really) - Wrote millions of words of content (SEO + Linkedin - you've seen us around :)) - Overhauled pricing and packaging: no more freemium, focused trials for qualified teams - Added 2 amazing sales engineers to build out AIgency (Joshua and Burak) - Activated 3 new demand channels: outbound, newsletters, and Linkedin (PLEASE LIKE THIS POST lol) - Oh, and we doubled revenue QoQ ‼️ The team is shipping fast, learning from our customers faster, and helping GTM teams make more money. And we will all be together in Portugal later this month! If you're tired of duct taping tools together just to run your motion... let's talk.

It's funny how competition works. At Bardeen, we overlap a lot with Clay. We automate similar workflows. We talk to similar buyers. Similar teams. And yeah, we hear "we're also looking at Clay" or "we tried this with Clay" every day. But the thing is: competition in startups is different than competition at scale. Startups are budget tight, bandwidth constrained, and focused on surviving. Tools get pitted against each other in this market becuase there's only room for one in the entire tool category. It's a zero-sum game by necessity, not by design. In the enterprise? Different story. Take Salesloft and Outreach. In SMB, they're head to head. In the enterprise, it's not uncommon to see both: SDRs use one, AEs the other. It's not about the logo choice, it's about workflow fit and org design. We already share enterprise customers with Clay. Deel is one very public example, but there are others. And what we're seeing is: When companies scale, they stop looking for one tool to rule them all. They start building efficient tool systems (James at Miro is especially good at this). Smart, cross-team workflows solving for all needs. That creates space for both of us to drive value. So yeah, we compete. But we also coexist. And in many ways, the future could be more of a partnership than a rivalry. Interesting take, huh? Q2 Colby having a moment. 😃 The VC-bubble arms race to sell into every startup isn't the market. It was a moment.

The last day of the quarter SQUEEZE. Honestly, I love today. The hustle is always energizing. How many deals do you have left today? Give your manager (when they ask you today) a range. A tight range. This shows your accuracy, but also show your comfort putting more on the line for upside. Then finish the day higher.

Enterprise AI GTM tools: $7B invested, 60% unused after 90 days. The math doesn't math, folks. GTM automation tools are a dime a dozen these days. Every week, another Series A startup promising to "transform revenue operations" (aka compete with Clay) hits TechCrunch. $7B poured into GTM tech last year, a big wave of AI SDRs, copilots, etc. Results? Mostly short trials and disappointment. Limited repeatable revenue. Why? Most tools are purchased on a trial/POC, celebrated at all hands, then abandoned. The ROI pitch is compelling. The website is world class. The reality is going from bad to BAD: - Average enterprise deploys up to 90 tools. Uses 30% effectively. - GTM teams spend 10 hrs per week navigating tools, not selling. - 72% of automation trials don't convert. - Enterprise AI tools average 5 months to full implementation. So... we're confusing PURCHASING with TRANSFORMATION. Now this year: the market is splitting into two camps: 1. The educators: "Here's our platform. Watch these videos. Join our cohort. Become an expert." 2. The implementers: "Here's our platform. We'll build you what you need. You focus on revenue." Education-first might seem noble and scalable. Teach a man to fish, etc etc. But enterprise teams are drowning in "opportunities to learn and 'jump in' to the new tool" while quotas stay the same. The back of the envelope math: - CRO making ~$300k = $144/hr. - 40 hours to master a platform = $5,760 opportunity cost. - Now scale that across a team....... ouch. - Partial implementation = zero results. AI promised to eliminate this problem. It hasn't. It's made it worse. 60% of executives report that AI implementations haven't yielded substantial ROI. So, the next wave of GTM tech will be ALL about implementation velocity. The winners will combine: - Powerful automation tech - Human expertise - Fast time to value - No "you figure it out" handoffs and "priority Slack support" (does not work in Enterprise) TLDR: 2025 winners won't be the most powerful tools. They will be the tech that can expand upmarket with the fastest shipping velocity and minimal customer effort. What's your take? **source credit: Forrester, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Salesforce, McKinsey & Company

The word “experiment” is going away…. After using our research tool to analyze Q1 sales calls at Bardeen (h/t Jeff + Grain), we found the word use down 40% in sales conversations. Why? Enterprise won't tolerate the "learning journeys" anymore. The market demands tangible returns, not trying stuff out. As a revenue leader, I'm seeing this in real-time. Our outbound isn't an experiment, it's a CHANNEL driving 15% of our multimillion-dollar pipeline. In 2025, leaders can't hide behind A/B tests and "pilots." Leadership wants one thing: repeatable, scalable revenue engines. Two types of companies will emerge: those who deliver measurable results and those who become case studies in how to burn capital. Sales leaders: Are your customers demanding harder ROI? Any other trends?

We use our own product every hour of every day. Really. Here's the exact intel I have 10 minutes before a sales call, all delivered in one Slack message (and copied in HubSpot) with zero manual work: 1. Company revenue, headcount, funding, and growth trends (AI-categorized for relevance) 2. Decision-maker's complete LinkedIn profile with recent activity/posts (with key insights highlighted) 3. Team composition and reporting structure (especially helpful when a champion books) 4. All previous conversation history from our CRM (synthesized) 5. Recent company news and press releases (filtered for relevance) 6. Current job openings indicating growth opps 7. Technology stack analysis (flagged for competitive displacement or “better together” opportunities) 8. Recent earnings reports 9. Social mentions and sentiment analysis 10. Lead qualification score (dynamically calculated based on all data points) 11. Key organizational initiatives from public announcements 12. Recent executive changes or restructuring related to the team we are meeting with 13. Competitive intelligence (companies in the space partnering with new tools) Start every call fully armed. Sales teams can focus on selling, not searching. DM me “PREP” if you want us to build this Bardeen playbook for you, for free!