Vincent Weberink (Founder, Pzaz.io), who shares expert insights and proven strategies on how a growth mindset drives B2B marketing success. Vincent talked about why design experiments are crucial in B2B marketing and highlighted the need for structured, data-driven growth experimentation.

199 – How a Growth Mindset Drives B2B Marketing Success | Vincent Weberink

How a Growth Mindset Drives B2B Marketing Success

In an increasingly competitive business environment inundated with digital noise, relying on “play it safe” tactics will only result in your brand drowning in a sea of sameness. The path to true differentiation, innovation, and standing out is not an easy one as it requires a significant mindset shift. For B2B marketing initiatives to succeed, you must create room for experimentation and data‑driven discovery. How can B2B marketers approach this effectively and secure internal buy‑in for it?

That’s why we’re talking to Vincent Weberink (Founder, Pzaz.io), who shares expert insights and proven strategies on how a growth mindset drives B2B marketing success. In this episode, Vincent talks about why design experiments are crucial in B2B marketing and highlights the need for structured, data‑driven growth experimentation. He shares his proven methodology consisting of ideation, ranking, and rapid prototyping designed to quickly and effectively validate concepts. Vincent also points out common B2B marketing pitfalls that teams should avoid and emphasizes the value of iterative testing and learning. He breaks down how teams can build an entrepreneurial mindset and get internal buy‑in for experimentation‑driven B2B marketing.

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Topics discussed in episode

• [2:09] The importance of running structured experiments in B2B marketing

• [5:21] Common challenges marketing teams face when designing and executing experiments

• [13:53] Key pitfalls marketing teams should avoid and some practical solutions

• [20:36] How to align internal teams and consistently generate strong experimental ideas

• [31:31] Actionable steps B2B marketers can take to run effective experiments:

  • Understand and acknowledge that what you know is probably wrong

  • Use ideation and designing experiments

  • Trust your team

  • Be creative in applying growth hacks

  • Get external help if stuck

Companies and links mentioned

• Vincent Weberink on LinkedIn

• Pzaz.io

• Cisco

• Airbnb

• ChatGPT

• 13 Failures Later What The Hack?! (book)

Transcript

Christian Klepp 00:00

In a B2B landscape that has become increasingly competitive and inundated with digital noise, using “play it safe” tactics will result in your brand drowning in a sea of sameness. That said, the path to differentiation, innovation and standing out is not an easy one, as it requires a change in mindset. You need to have room for experiments to truly create something that is relevant to customers. So how can B2B marketers do this, and how can they get internal buy‑in for it? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Vincent Weberink, who will be answering this question. He’s the founder of pzaz.io who specializes in developing business growth through creative, structured data‑driven growth experimentation. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is.

Christian Klepp 00:51

Vincent Weberink, welcome to the show.

Vincent Weberink 00:54

Hello Christian. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

Christian Klepp 00:59

Absolutely, I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation. I think we’re going to have a great time. We’re going to have a great discussion also about topics, and a main topic in particular that I think is going to be so relevant to B2B marketers and their teams in general. So you know, without further ado, let’s not keep the audience in suspense for too long. Let’s just jump straight into it. All right. So Vincent, you’re on a mission to drive business growth through creative, structured and data‑driven growth experimentation. For this conversation, let’s focus on the following topic, which is how B2B marketers can create a mindset and design experiments to understand what customers want. That kind of sounds like it’s very, I’m going to say pedestrian, but it’s incredible, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty of case studies to show that there’s a lot of people out there that don’t follow this process, and then they get into trouble. So I’m going to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them all right? The first question is: why do you think that design experiments are important for marketing teams? And based on that, where do you see a lot of marketing teams struggle?

Vincent Weberink 02:09

I think they’re very important because as human beings, we’re emotional when we make decisions. The problem is that, therefore, when we try to drive growth we have this idea about something, and then we tend to completely jump into it, build everything, spend a lot of time and money and resources on building that thing that we believe is going to be very, very successful, and that takes a lot of time. The reality is that most of the time you’re actually wrong, even though you think you know your customer, even though you think this is the best trick or marketing tactic you’re developing. This experimentation model forces you to go through a very structured, almost scientific process, because there are steps that help you remove that emotion from your decision‑making.

Vincent Weberink 03:12

An example of how decision‑making is often influenced: you’re in a small or large team, sitting around the table brainstorming a challenge—say, launching a new product or changing something and needing to communicate it to drive sales up. The people best equipped with sales capabilities tend to dominate the conversation, and we end up listening to them, while introverted team members who may have great ideas say less. In that scenario you collect all these thoughts, and the strong salesperson sells their idea, which you then take, even if it has nothing to do with reality. In the methodology I promote, you capture as many ideas as possible, rank and rate them according to several criteria, and let the democratic process surface the ideas most likely to lead to quicker success. Ideas that receive no votes can be discarded. That addresses the first question.

Christian Klepp 05:08

No problem, absolutely. That was a great way to set up the conversation. It segues to the next question: where do you see a lot of marketing teams struggling?

Vincent Weberink 05:21

I see them often struggling because they tend to spend money and time on the ordinary, “safe” things that everyone is accustomed to, which ultimately doesn’t help them grow. It’s usually the stuff you’d never expect to work. I’ll give you an example that might give you amazing growth overnight—or at least a successful campaign. Imagine you need people to sign up to obtain information, but your funnel isn’t working.

Vincent Weberink 06:15

In my experience, people say, “Okay, let’s build a landing page, a website, make it beautiful, make it perfect.” But at that early stage you have no clue if it will work. You’re wasting resources. It’s far better to design experiments quickly, run them, see what happens, and iterate on that specific experiment. Over time you can flesh out the experiment, refine it, maybe do A/B testing. With the rise of AI, speed is everything. In the early days of growth marketing—say 15 years ago—you could run an experiment that lasted weeks or months. Today, AI accelerates the cycle dramatically.

(The transcript continues in the same vein, covering the importance of rapid iteration, the role of AI in speeding up testing, how to secure internal buy‑in, common pitfalls such as over‑engineering solutions, and practical steps for teams to adopt a growth‑mindset.)