#201: Paid Spend | Mastering B2B Paid Spend: A 2025 Roadmap for Marketers with John Short, CEO of Compound Growth Marketing and Kym Parker, SVP of Media Strategy

When done right, paid spend is like throwing gasoline on the flames of what’s working in your marketing. Done wrong – it’s just a huge waste of time and money.In this episode, Dave Gerhardt hosts an live session with John Short, CEO of Compound Growth Marketing (CGM), and Kym Parker, SVP of Media Strategy at CGM, who walk through tried and true strategies they’ve built from managing over $50 million in paid spend.They also cover:How to choose which strategy is best for you and exactly how to target the right ICPThe three keys to successful paid media, like setting up actionable reportingHow to identify how much you can spend for leads/account at each stage of the sales and marketing funnelTimestamps(00:00) - - Intro to John and Kym (05:54) - - Choosing the Perfect Paid Media Strategy (10:22) - - The $100 CPL Myth (13:57) - - Three Keys to Successful Paid Media (16:35) - - Qualification Is Critical in ABM Success (18:13) - - How You Should Think About Bidding Algorithms (20:57) - - Prospect Experience: The Campaign Funnel (22:37) - - Using a Multi-Channel Approach (26:06) - - Mid-Intent Funnel Examples (29:38) - - Executing on a Paid Acquisition Strategy (35:47) - - Tailoring Your Messaging for Buying Committee Engagement (40:21) - - Balancing Funnel Strategies (43:02) - - Justifying Higher Costs (47:17) - - Channel Testing and Target Comparison (48:42) - - How to Master Paid Media in Enterprise Marketing Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. ***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more