Why do some marketing teams move fast and break things… while others want a spreadsheet, a process, and a risk assessment before lunch? 😅

In this episode, we’re joined by Michelle Hartley from People Sorted to unpack marketing personalities using the Insights Discovery framework (the one with the four colours). We’re talking team dynamics, communication, decision-making, and why “just be more collaborative” is not a strategy.

Plus: we do the personality reveal on Emma and Ruta (spoiler: it explains a lot).

We get into:
✅ What the four colour energies mean (red, yellow, green, blue)
✅ Why some people want speed and others want certainty
✅ How your “work self” vs “real self” shows up under pressure
✅ Why sales and marketing can feel like different species
✅ The hidden reason “nice culture” still ends in chaos
✅ How to work better with people who are the opposite of you
✅ What a “perfectionist profile” looks like in marketing (and why it’s a blessing + curse)

If you’ve ever thought “why is this person like this?” at work… this one’s for you.

#marketing #b2bmarketing #leadership #teamwork #careerdevelopment

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Your CRM is meant to be the backbone of marketing… so why does it feel like a haunted house? 👻
In this episode, we’re joined by Jack, a CRM and automation expert (marketing + recruitment), to unpack what actually goes wrong inside CRMs — and what to do when your “single source of truth” is anything but.

We talk messy data, broken integrations, Franken-stacks, and the classic problem: one marketer builds a beautiful system… then leaves… and nobody knows what anything does.

We get into:

✅ The most common ways teams wreck their CRM (and don’t realise)
✅ Data hygiene first: how to audit what’s broken before “fixing” anything
✅ Zombie contacts and old records: when to delete, when to downgrade, and why it matters
✅ Custom fields, forms, and lists: how to simplify before it becomes unreportable chaos
✅ Lead source is everything (so why does nobody capture it properly?)
✅ HubSpot + Salesforce together: the pain, the mismatched numbers, the “who changed that field?” drama
✅ Naming conventions and documentation: how to make your CRM survivable when people leave
✅ Automation that protects your data (alerts, required fields, and keeping things clean over time)
✅ AI and CRM ops: what’s worth learning now if you want to go full marketing-nerd

If your CRM is currently held together with hope, duct tape, and 400 undocumented workflows — this one’s for you.

Why is marketing the one industry where you can be “too young” and “too old” at the same time? 🤯

In this episode of Blame It On Marketing, we’re talking ageism in marketing (and yes… the sexism that comes with it). We’re joined by a mother-daughter duo: Justine, Marketing Director at The L Factor, and Lenna, award-winning business mentor and professional “nosy parker” (her words, not ours).

We get real about what ageism actually looks like in marketing, why it’s so baked into the industry, and how to handle those comments without losing your mind (or your professionalism).

We get into:
✅ Why ageism and sexism are basically inseparable for women at work
✅ The weird questions women get asked at events (and how to respond)
✅ Why marketing “experience” is misunderstood — and how to reframe it
✅ How to challenge ageist behaviour without going full confrontation mode
✅ Cross-generational lessons: what newer marketers miss, and what older teams miss too
✅ The AI hype problem: not everything needs to be “AI powered”
✅ Why “looking busy online” is just digital confetti (and what actually builds trust)
✅ Reddit honesty: how to show up without pretending you’re “one of the community”

If you’ve ever felt dismissed, underestimated, or boxed in because of your age — this one’s for you.

Subscribe for more B2B marketing truths, rants, and real talk. 💛

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Ah yes.
The three words that have launched a thousand unnecessary redesigns.

In this episode of Blame It On Marketing, we’re joined by the brilliant Juliana Germinio from Yellow Zest to unpack the most vague, infuriating, soul-crushing piece of feedback marketers hear on repeat:

“Can you just… make it pop?”

Pop how?
Pop why?
Pop for whom??
WHAT IS POP?!

From rogue email links sending restaurant guests to skincare masks (we’ve all been baptised) to websites 80% complete before someone decides it’s “not doing it for them” — we get into why bad feedback happens, why senior leaders default to aesthetics, and how marketers can stop drowning in subjective chaos.

But this isn’t just a rant. (Okay, it’s partly a rant.)

What you’ll actually learn:

🔥 How to turn “make it pop” into actionable feedback
🔥 The exact follow-up questions to ask when feedback is vague
🔥 How to coach senior leaders to give better input
🔥 Why defining the emotion and audience outcome changes everything
🔥 How to protect your process (and your sanity) with better expectation-setting
🔥 When to push back on AI-generated feedback — professionally
🔥 Why “it’s not for you, it’s for your audience” is your new favourite line

We also cover:

• The danger of skipping proper briefing stages
• Why visual feedback feels easier (even when it’s wrong)
• How to avoid 20 hours of unnecessary redesign
• And the legendary “hot pink website” story featuring a colourblind CEO

This one is for:
Designers.
In-house marketers.
Agency owners.
Fractionals.
Anyone who has ever been handed two words of feedback and expected to magically interpret them.

If you’ve ever stared at a screen thinking, “I literally cannot do anything with this” — welcome home.

Let’s stop making things “pop.”
Let’s make feedback better.

🎧 Listen now. And maybe send it to the person who keeps saying it.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Why does “ABM” so often become a logo-swap landing page and a prayer? In this episode, Emma and Ruta sit down with Marta George (ex-Head of ABM, now Field & Channel Marketing) to get brutally honest about what real ABM takes—and when you shouldn’t do it at all.

We get into:
✅ Why “ABM Lite” isn’t real (and why it keeps getting sold anyway)
✅ The village ABM needs: sales, SDRs, CS, product marketing, brand, design
✅ Account selection done right (data > opinions, relationships matter)
✅ Start small: 2–4 accounts, bottom-of-funnel first, then scale
✅ Timelines & expectations: quarters to years—not weeks—and what to report
✅ What to track (and why MQLs are the wrong question for ABM)
✅ When to skip ABM and do personalised demand gen instead
✅ Tools & AI: faster personalisation ≠ ABM
✅ Spicy take: why growth teams deserve bonuses/commission

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Why do smart companies still treat marketing like the “content machine” or sales’ on-call design team? In this episode, Ruta and Emma sit down with Margaux Grasso and Sarah Mardle to unpack marketing’s perception problem—and how to fix it with influence, data, and better internal storytelling. Expect practical playbooks for building credibility, aligning with sales, and pushing back on bad habits without starting a turf war.

We get into:
✅ Why marketers accidentally fuel the “make it pretty” myth—and how to stop being the default Yes Team
✅ Building your internal brand: report like a strategist, not a task taker (show the link to business goals)
✅ Stakeholder personas: map power, pressures, and motivations so your message lands internally, not just with customers
✅ Alignment that sticks: shared goals, shared language, and moving from blame to ownership with sales
✅ Budget battles: make a business case, not an approval request—what to show the CFO and when
✅ Product-market fit reality checks: run shared experiments so “is it marketing or the product?” gets answered fast
✅ Career insurance: mentors, advocates, and relationship-building as a core marketing skill, not a nice-to-have

Who’s on mic:
• Margaux Grasso — Founder, Wripple. Helps marketing teams build internal credibility, align with sales, and set strategy.

• Sarah Mardle — Founder of Alma Business Consulting, Executive and business coach with a neuroscience PhD, supporting leaders and founders (especially in life sciences).

Perfect for: marketers tired of being seen as order-takers, leaders who want real sales-marketing alignment, and anyone who needs a clean, confident way to ask for more budget—and get it.

If you’re ready to swap “make it pretty” for “move the business,” this one’s for you.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Why do tiny marketing budgets come with sky-high expectations? 💸 In this episode, we’re joined by Lucy Blenkinsopp, marketing lead at Version 1, to talk about how to do more with less—without burning out or BS-ing the board. From choosing fewer, higher-ROI channels to proving marginal gains and building a real case for budget, we get practical about what actually moves the needle when cash is tight.

We get into:
✅ Fewer channels, done better: double down on what works and drop the FOMO
✅ Test–learn–report: micro-pilots, clear hypotheses, and sharing results every quarter
✅ Create 25%, distribute 75%: repurpose relentlessly and let AI speed production
✅ CRM hygiene: turn it every 12 weeks, go “intent fishing,” revive stalled opps
✅ Measure marginal ROI: track incremental wins instead of waiting on full-cycle proof
✅ Budget storytelling: pipeline-to-spend ratios, define your attribution terms, post-it metrics
✅ CFO as ally: model scenarios together and set expectations early (not in Q4)
✅ Sales x Marketing: capture anecdotes from the field to complete the data picture
✅ Spoof-video sanity check: memorable ≠ relevant—know your ICP and the line

If you’re being asked to deliver a miracle on a shoestring—or to “just get more pipeline” with lunch money—this one’s for you.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Why do leaders still want to “be on LinkedIn”… even when the content makes buyers cringe? 🤳 In this episode, we’re joined by Brad Zomick—executive content coach and host of LinkedIn Famous—to get real about getting senior leaders to create content that actually helps the business (and doesn’t read like buzzword soup). We dig into when a CEO should be the face, what they should post, and how to build an idea flywheel that never runs dry.

We get into:
✅ Should every exec post? How to decide (audience fit, proximity to customers, time, POV).

✅Content that works: start with audience pain, not product; find content–market fit; avoid the “jargon casserole.”

✅Pillars × funnel: top- and mid-funnel stories 80% of the time; when to dip into BOFU.

✅The podcast play: easier than talking-head videos, produces endless clips, and doubles as elite product-marketing research.

✅Idea pipeline: sales FAQs, customer calls, events, team-sourced prompts—and why thoughtful commenting now has real reach.

✅Coaching execs: make it easy, measure in quarters (not days), encourage smart risks, and help them find the fun so it sticks.

✅Gossip corner: AI makes us “bionic marketers”… and why that can help or hurt depending on how leaders use it.

If your exec wants to “get LinkedIn famous” by next week, play them this—and build something that actually moves pipeline, product, and trust.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing.

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.