APAC's B2B Growth Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

See the results: https://xgrowth.com.au/reports/abm-pulse/

ABM is evolving fast in APAC, and xGrowth has the data to prove it. In this episode, Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell unpack the findings from xGrowth's latest ABM Pulse benchmark, based on responses from 93 B2B marketers actively running ABM programs across the region.

From a dramatic shift away from one-to-few programs to AI quietly expanding the scale of what a single budget can cover, this episode cuts through the noise and tells you exactly what is actually happening with ABM in 2025. If you are making investment decisions or defending the ABM line item to your CFO, this one is for you.

Key Topics

• Why one-to-few ABM dropped from 72% adoption in 2024 to around 38% in 2025, and what that signals about market maturity in APAC
• How strategic (one-to-one) ABM has held steady at around 50% as organisations focus on protecting and expanding existing customer relationships
• The AI effect on program scale: why nearly a third of respondents are now running programs targeting 100 or more accounts on the same budgets they used for far fewer
• ABM investment sentiment in 2025: 57% of respondents are holding or growing their ABM budgets, with only 5.2% cutting
• Why inbound is under pressure from zero-click search and LLM-driven traffic drops, and how this is pushing more organisations toward ABM as a primary pipeline channel
• Budget planning paralysis: why a significant portion of APAC marketing leaders still had not confirmed their 2026 budgets well into Q1, and what that says about market uncertainty
• How to use benchmark data like this as social proof when making the case for ABM investment to a CFO or board

Resources & Links

• xGrowth ABM Pulse Report - download the full benchmark findings
• xGrowth - APAC's B2B growth agency
• Shahin Hoda on LinkedIn
• Alexander Hipwell on LinkedIn

Contact & Credits

Hosts: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Produced by:  Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Running a global marketing function from APAC sounds like a logistical headache. For Jon Stona, VP of Global Marketing at Airwallex, it's a deliberate competitive advantage. In this episode, Jon unpacks how one of the world's fastest-growing fintechs has architected a marketing org that's globally consistent yet locally authentic - spanning Singapore, San Francisco, London, and regional hubs across Asia, Europe, and Australia.

From making the case for product marketing before performance spend, to using an F1 sponsorship to systematically close a trust gap against legacy financial institutions, Jon brings rare clarity to the strategic decisions that most B2B marketing leaders only talk about in theory. If you want to think bigger about brand, team design, and what marketing can actually own in a scaling business, this episode is worth your time.

Guest Introduction

Jon Stona is VP of Global Marketing at Airwallex, the Australian-founded global payments and financial platform supporting over 150,000 businesses worldwide. Before joining Airwallex, Jon held senior marketing roles at Stripe, Google, and Nike - giving him deep experience scaling marketing across global technology platforms and challenger brands at every stage of growth.

Key Topics

• Why Airwallex built its global marketing org out of APAC, and why the APAC talent pool - wired for fragmentation and global trade from day one - is a genuine strategic asset
• How the team is structured across Singapore, San Francisco, London, and regional markets, and why a flat, matrix model is essential when you're this geographically dispersed
• The case for investing in product marketing before growth marketing - and why getting your positioning, segmentation, and value prop right is the "root" everything else depends on
• The four truths Jon applies to any market expansion: brand truth, product truth, market truth, and user truth - and how product marketing is the function that calibrates where the variation sits
• How Airwallex uses its McLaren F1 partnership to build trust at scale, structured around the reliability-credibility-intimacy-low self-orientation framework - and how they actually measure the pipeline and employee sentiment impact
• Where AI is genuinely delivering efficiency gains in marketing (Writer, Jasper, Profound) and the paradox this creates: as AI levels the playing field on distribution, the non-technical facets of marketing - storytelling, positioning, insight - matter more than ever
• Jon's advice for B2B marketers who want to take bolder moves: return to first principles, and remember you're marketing to humans who happen to make business decisions

Resources & Links

Books

• Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

AI Tools

• Writer - AI content platform for brand voice consistency and marketing workflow efficiency
• Jasper - AI platform for end-to-end marketing content creation
• Profound - Tool for tracking how your brand appears across LLM platforms

Blogs & Publications

• HubSpot Blog

People Mentioned

• Reko Rennie - Internationally acclaimed Kamilaroi artist who collaborated with Airwallex and McLaren on the 'Shifted Perspectives' campaign at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix
• Dan Ariely - Behavioural economist and author

Companies & Platforms

• Airwallex
• McLaren Racing

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: Jon Stona

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

In this episode, Jon Lombardo, Co-Founder of Evidenza, unpacks the counterintuitive truth about B2B buying behaviour. Drawing on research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Jon reveals why most B2B marketers fundamentally misunderstand their audience. The 95-5 rule shows that 95% of potential buyers aren't in the market right now, which means the traditional focus on short-term lead generation is missing the bigger picture. 

Jon also explains how AI-powered synthetic research is transforming market intelligence, why B2B needs more brand building than B2C, and what marketers should do about it. 

If you're stuck chasing in-market buyers whilst your competitors build future demand, this conversation will change how you think about growth.

Guest Introduction

Jon Lombardo is Co-Founder of Evidenza, a synthetic AI market research platform that surveys AI-generated customer copies to build evidence-based marketing plans in hours rather than months. Previously, Jon was Head of Research at LinkedIn's B2B Institute, where he helped establish the 95-5 rule and commissioned pioneering research on how B2B brands grow.

Key Topics

• The 95-5 rule: why 95% of B2B buyers are out of market at any given time, and why that matters more than the 5% who are ready to buy
• The 11X rule: how B2B buying cycles are 11 times longer than B2C, making brand building even more critical in B2B than consumer categories
• The evolution from the 60-40 rule to 95-5: how research with John Dawes from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute challenged conventional wisdom about marketing budget allocation
• Mental and physical availability in B2B: creating brand-relevant memories that activate when buyers eventually come into the market
• AI and synthetic research: how Evidenza uses AI to interview synthetic customers, delivering market research in hours that would traditionally take months
• Bootstrapped growth: how Evidenza launched with paying customers from day one without venture capital, growing to over 100 clients
• The future of AI in marketing: why AI is underrated and will transform marketing beyond what most people imagine
• Practical applications: how to use AI for execution whilst keeping strategic thinking human

Resources & Links

People Mentioned:

• Mark Ritson - Marketing professor, columnist, and founder of Marketing Week Mini MBA
• John Dawes - Professor at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
• Les Binet - Marketing effectiveness researcher and econometrician
• Peter Field - Marketing consultant and author
• Peter Weinberg - Co-Founder of Evidenza
• Brian Watroba - Co-Founder of Evidenza
• Jenny Romaniuk - Professor at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
• Rachel Kennedy - Professor at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
• Nicole Hartnett - Professor at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
• Byron Sharp - Professor of Marketing Science at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

Companies & Organisations:

• Evidenza - Synthetic AI market research platform
• Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science - The World's largest centre for research into marketing
• LinkedIn B2B Institute - Marketing think tank (Jon's former employer)

Key Frameworks:

• The 95-5 Rule - Research on B2B buying behaviour shows that only 5% of buyers are in market
• The 11X Rule - How B2B buying cycles differ from B2C
• The 60-40 Rule - Les Binet and Peter Field's framework for balancing brand building and sales activation

Subscribe to the xG Weekly Newsletter for weekly insights on B2B growth across APAC:https://xgrowth.com.au/newsletter

Contact & Credits

Hosts: Shahin Hoda and Vinnie Romano

Guest Jon Lombardo

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth

Shahin chats with KP Unnikrishnan “Unni”, Vice President of Marketing (APJ), at Palo Alto Networks, about the basic fundamentals of how to drive growth strategy in your business.

Unni has worked in the technology sector for over 2.5 decades including management roles in marketing, strategy, partnership and sales. He has held senior leadership roles in high-growth environments in both multi-billion-dollar organisations and early-stage companies/ businesses.

Unni was named in the Future B2B CMO 100 in 2022 and the 100 Most Talented Global Marketing Leaders by the World Marketing Congress in 2014. He frequently speaks at industry forums and has been featured in leading publications on areas around marketing strategy, account-based marketing, technology trends, business, culture and leadership.

He holds an engineering and an MBA degree with leadership courses from Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Graduate Business School and Singapore Management University. In his free time, Unni enjoys cycling and yoga, and tries his hand in painting and photography.

The episode covers:

• Who are Palo Alto Networks?
• How to build competency.
• The importance of a growth mindset.
• The significance of disruption and innovation.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• A.I.SHA - My Virtual Girlfriend - Palo Alto Networks
• Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

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For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report (2022): https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Shahin chats with Dan Sutic, a seasoned marketing professional in B2B SaaS space about how to effectively run sales development across the APAC region while recognising the diversity of markets and cultures in the region.

Dan is a seasoned marketing professional with 13+ years of experience. He has worked across ANZ and APJ regions and has held a variety of roles, including individual contributor and leadership positions in people management.

Dan's passion lies in demand generation, and he enjoys working closely with sales teams to drive results.

The episode covers:

• Managing an SDR team as a Marketer.
• Approaching different geographies.
• Advice for expanding into different regions.
• The common mistakes when building an SDR team.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson

_________________

For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report (2022): https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Shahin chats with Matthew Robinson, Vice President of Marketing, APJ, at Contentsquare about how to humanise your digital customer experience in 2023.

Matthew Robinson is the Vice President of Marketing, APJ at Contentsquare, a leading digital experience analytics platform. He has over a decade of experience as a tech marketer and his out-of-office status rotates between 'away scuba diving' and 'on the beach' but what he'll rarely admit is most of this time is spent eating pizza.

The episode covers:

• The trends in digital customer behaviour
• The successful tactics
• The differences between small-market and enterprise
• How to build a customer journey

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Purple Cow - Seth Godin
• The Diary Of A CEO - Steven Bartlett
• High Performance Podcast
• Boring2Brave - Mark Choueke

_________________

For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report (2022): https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Shahin chats with Jenna Pipchuk, Chief Sales Officer at 3P Learning, about the Unified Commercial Engine (UCE) and how it can completely transform sales and marketing alignment.

Jenna’s commitment to excellence and innovation is turning heads for good reason. With a reputation for transparent leadership and building great teams, she is an influential force within the tech industry. 

Former CSO of SMART Technologies, her insights and management transformed the SMART organisation to one driven by customer-centric, data-driven decision-making.

Her relationship-driven approach to her role, and emphasis on building better ways of working, earned her the well-deserved title of 2022 Channel Chief by CRN and a feature in the Harvard Business Review.

The episode covers:

• What is the Unified Commercial Engine?
• How the budgeting works
• The proof points of UCE
• The mistakes made in approaching UCE

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Brené Brown
• Revenue Operations - Stephen Diorio & Chris K. Hummel
• Brent's Breakdown - Brent Adamson

You can access the extended show notes right here!

_________________

For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report: https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Producer, Lysa, chats with Shahin Hoda, Director of Growth at xGrowth, all about his experience of being made redundant and the current economic situation.

Shahin is the Founder of xGrowth, a B2B growth agency helping organisations close more mid-market and large enterprise deals. He's making that happen by popularising Account-Based Marketing (ABM) in Australia, working alongside B2B leaders implementing ABM strategies and building predictable revenue engines. 

When he's not busy building ABM campaigns, he's either playing a game of Tennis (which he usually loses) or looking up smoothie recipes (because let's be honest, who doesn't like a nice smoothie).

The episode covers:

• Advice for those made redundant
• The importance of a positive mindset
• Why these redundancies are taking place

If you do find yourself struggling mentally with this topic, please don't hesitate to contact:

• Directory of International Mental Health Helplines
• Lifeline: 13 11 14
• Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636

_________________

For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report (2022): https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Shahin chats with Andrea Clatworthy, former Global Head of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) at Fujitsu about how to approach pipeline acceleration and Deal-Based Marketing (DBM).

Andrea is B2B Tech marketing veteran, currently at Fujitsu leading the Account-Based Marketing and Deal-Based Marketing approach globally.

ABM at Fujitsu is mostly 1:1, some 1:few, and Andrea has been driving the approach across geographies since starting it originally in the UK in the last decade. 

A regular keynote speaker and occasional podcaster, Andrea has a wealth of experience which she generously shares.

The episode covers:

• How to implement DBM
• The importance of storytelling
• What ways DBM can go wrong
• How to personalise within DBM

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• A Practitioner's Guide to Account-Based Marketing

You can access the extended show notes right here!

_________________

For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report: https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Shahin chats with Mark McInnes, Outbound Sales Trainer and Founder of Sales Development Australia, about how to build a sales development sequence. They talk about calls, emails, LinkedIn, direct mail and how to leverage them in your sequences so you can grab the attention of your prospects. 

A sales trainer and coach with over 25 years of experience in B2B selling environments, Mark helps his clients start new conversations, find new customers and start that first part of the pipeline.

Mark is the author of Tactical Pipeline Growth, host of the Best of Social Selling podcast and was ranked Australia’s # 1 Social Seller by LinkedIn in 2016.

The episode covers:

• Thoughts on sales and engagement platforms
• How Mark approaches SDRs
• Examples of cadences
• The importance of quality over quantity

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Phil M Jones
• 30 Minutes to President's Club

_________________

For your copy of the State of ABM in APAC Report (2022): https://xgrowth.com.au/abm-report/

Miss out on our latest webinar? Listen here: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/programmatic-abm/

Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au