Podcasting as an Account Based Play to Reach a Super Hard Niche Audience (with Kathleen Booth) | Ep. 243

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.

ㅤ

👤 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.

ㅤ

📌 What We Cover

1. Facing a "difficult go-to-market scenario" where the audience was niche and "everyone knew everyone."
2. Creating Ad Ops All Stars as "persona research in the form of a podcast" to spotlight the buyer's career
3. Overcoming the "expertise myth": being curious and asking good questions instead of trying to be the subject matter expert
4. The "thread" for finding guests: starting with community leaders and asking "who else" should be interviewed at the end of every call
5. Turning interviews into relationships with a "thank you" package containing a branded baseball jersey and a handwritten note
6. The dinner strategy: splitting the guest list 50/50 between happy customers and podcast guests so customers do the selling
7. Focusing on the "habit" of consistency rather than high production value - using tools like Upwork and Canva to keep it scrappy

ㅤ

🔗 Resources Mentioned

1. Scrappy ABM
2. Mason Cosby on LinkedIn
3. Kathleen Booth on LinkedIn
4. Pavilion
5. clean.io (Kathleen's previous company)
6. Ad Ops All Stars (Kathleen's podcast)
7. Canva (Kathleen: "designed graphics in Canva")
8. Upwork (Kathleen: "used Upwork for video clips")
9. Scrappy ABM: Visit for more ABM tips and strategies.
10. Connect with Mason on LinkedIn for a conversation about ABM.

ㅤ

If you enjoyed today's episode and found valuable insights for your business, be sure to subscribe to the Scrappy ABM podcast for more expert discussions. Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your team or fellow marketers!