What B2B Marketers Can Learn from Restaurant Marketing (with Jessica Serrano, CMO at Bagel Brands)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Outro
Dave closes the episode with community invite, agency sponsor mention, and final sign‑off & Ad break.
#334 | Dave is joined by Jessica Serrano, CMO at Bagel Brands (Einstein Brothers, Noah's, Bruegger's, Manhattan Bagel), for a conversation about what B2B marketers can learn from consumer restaurant marketing. They discuss why consumer and B2B marketing are way more similar than people think, how she’s using AI across her marketing and sales process, and her philosophy that her job is to ‘build brand over time and drive sales overnight.’ Jessica shares how COVID forced Dig Inn to rebuild itself as an e-commerce business, how she built a B2B catering sales motion from scratch using HubSpot and buyer personas, and how filtering work emails out of a consumer list became a real customer acquisition tactic. Listen to this episode to learn tactics that work whether you're selling bagels or software.
Timestamps
- (00:00) - Why a consumer CMO listens to B2B marketers (and vice versa)
- (03:33) - How COVID forced Dig Inn to rebuild as an ecommerce business overnight
- (06:55) - The math behind going after $500 catering orders vs. $15 walk-ins
- (10:33) - Building buyer personas for office admins, sports nutritionists, and universities
- (16:05) - Why Jessica switched from ChatGPT to Claude (and the breakthrough moment)
- (22:54) - Using AI for rapid product testing on a budget that wouldn't cover traditional research
- (30:06) - "Build the brand over time, drive sales overnight" and what that looks like at Bagel Brands
- (32:59) - Why you can't just copy a playbook from Taco Bell to Burger King
- (37:18) - The biggest lesson from working at brands with nearly 1,000 locations
- (40:46) - Google reviews as a source of truth for aligning marketing and operations
- (47:49) - Why organic-first content matters more in the age of AI and dead internet theory
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
Convertr - The enterprise lead data management platform that sits between your lead sources and your CRM, automatically validating, enriching, and standardizing every lead before it touches your systems. Check them out at convertr.io/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand generation agency that helps high-growth cybersecurity, DevOps, and enterprise software companies drive more pipeline through AI SEO, paid media, and go-to-market engineering. Visit compoundgrowthmarketing.com and tell them Dave sent you.
***
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
The AI-powered Podcast Player
