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Saul Marquez talks with Jason Barnard about B2B Marketing mastery.
Saul Marquez is the founder and CEO of Outcomes Rocket, a global digital marketing agency serving healthcare clients exclusively. Saul shares his proven framework, which is built on four key pillars of marketing: strategy, owned, earned, and paid media.
He emphasizes the importance of starting with strategy, not tactics. Understanding your ideal client profiles (ICPs) and their pain points is essential because emotions drive action. Jason Barnard and Saul Marquez also explore how Google’s understanding of your brand impacts visibility, trust, and opportunities—from business growth to personal reputation.
Throughout the episode, Jason Barnard and Saul Marquez explore how a well-positioned brand with consistent messaging helps build trust, enhances visibility, and opens doors for business growth—a must-watch for founders, entrepreneurs, and marketers looking to build sustainable growth through strategic marketing implementation.
#B2BMarketing #HealthcareMarketing #MarketingStrategy #AIMarketing #DigitalMarketing
What you’ll learn from Saul Marquez
- 00:00 Saul Marquez and Jason Barnard
- 01:28 What Result Did Saul Marquez’s Brand SERP Show When Jason Barnard Googled His Name?
- 01:37 What Does Saul Marquez’s KGMID Reveal, According to Jason Barnard?
- 02:31 What Does Kalicube Do to Help People Appear More Authoritative When Someone Googles Their Name?
- 03:33 What Are the Best Marketing Processes for B2B?
- 04:21 What Are the Four Pillars of B2B Marketing?
- 04:45 Why Do the Four Pillars of Marketing Apply to Any Company, Regardless of its Size?
- 05:12 Strategy
- 05:28 Why is it Important to Start With Strategy Before Jumping Into Tactics in Marketing?
- 05:43 What Should You Focus On When Building Your Strategy?
- 06:29 What Mistake Did Kalicube Make in Terms of Their UCP, Based on Jason Barnard’s Explanation?
- 06:56 What Lesson Did Saul Marquez Emphasize to Jason Barnard Regarding Kalicube’s Proprietary Technology?
- 07:23 Why Does Changing Communication Later Become More Painful Than Getting it Right From the Start?
- 07:57 What Are the Key Pain Points of Jason Barnard’s Ideal Client?
- 08:33 What Are the Three Big Pain Points That Jason Barnard Identifies for Himself?
- 09:14 Why is it Important to Understand the Pain Points of Your Ideal Client Profiles?
- 09:51 Why is it Important for Marketers to Focus On the Client’s Problem Rather Than Just the Solution?
- 10:30 Owned Marketing
- 10:39 Earned Marketing
- 11:09 Paid Marketing
- 11:52 Why Do You Need to Define Your Message Before Worrying About AI, Search, and Google?
- 12:30 What Did the McKinsey Report Reveal About B2B Healthcare Companies and Their Marketing Strategies?
- 13:02 Why is Getting Your Strategy Right Important When It Comes to Staying Ahead of Competitors?
- 14:05 Why is it Important to Use AI Effectively in B2B Marketing?
- 14:23 Why Does Saul Marquez Believe AI Will Significantly Impact the Future of Their Agency?
- 15:19 What Are the Steps You Can Take Using ChatGPT to Develop Your Brand Strategy?
- 17:06 What is the Next Great Use of AI That Saul Marquez Suggests?
- 18:23 What Mindset Shift Helped Saul Marquez Grow His Agency and Leverage AI More Effectively?
- 20:03 What Tasks Can You Apply AI To?
This episode was recorded live on video April 8th 2025
Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:
Saul Marquez
Transcript from Saul Marquez with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. B2B Marketing Mastery
[00:00:00] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives, and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands at test of time and becomes their legacy?
[00:00:26] Narrator: A legacy we’re proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.
[00:00:32] Jason Barnard: Hi everybody and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me, Jason Barnard. I’m here today with, a quick hello and we’re good to go. Welcome to the show, Saul Marquez.
[00:00:47] Saul Marquez: Thank you Jason.
[00:00:49] Jason Barnard: I actually for once, sang the name wrong. I usually sing it right and say it wrong. It’s Saul Marquez.
[00:00:56] Saul Marquez: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said it right. You’re good.
[00:00:58] Jason Barnard: I sung it wrong, said it right, and that’s, that’s the first. So you’re, you are a unique guest and that I got it the wrong way right. Or the right way
[00:01:07] Jason Barnard: wrong. And either way, today we’re talking about transforming healthcare marketing success and it’s really about B2B marketing with a focus in your case on healthcare. So anybody who’s into B2B marketing is gonna enjoy this episode. And if you’re into healthcare B2B marketing, you are really gonna enjoy this episode. Is that about correct?
[00:01:26] Saul Marquez: That is well said, Jason.
[00:01:28] Jason Barnard: Thank you. And as always, we’ll start with your Brand SERP. I googled your name and here you are, a bit of a mixture of Saul Marquez at the top there. And this is very typical of somebody who is an entrepreneur, who’s the CEO of a company. Google understands who you are, but obviously there are a lot of different people with your name. So it isn’t gonna show you dominating others.
[00:01:51] Jason Barnard: However, Google has this super duper thing called K-G-M-I-D and you can see it there in the top right hand corner. And when we dig down into our Kalicube Pro database, 3 billion data points, we find yours. And that’s Google’s understanding of you specifically. Which is why most of the photos are right and the websites are right and over there on the right hand side, it is all you.
[00:02:13] Jason Barnard: So Google has a unique identifier for you. And when we give it to the Google search results, it produces that. And when you are sufficiently well understood and confidently understood by Google, that would pop here with a description with potentially your age and other people search for.
[00:02:31] Jason Barnard: And that’s what we do at Kalicube. We build Knowledge Panels for people so that they look significantly more successful and more authoritative when somebody else Googles their name especially the clients who you’ve marketed to.
[00:02:44] Saul Marquez: That’s right. That’s right. I, I love that, by the way. I love how you open very, value packed and I, I think I need to hire you.
[00:02:53] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. I would be more than happy to help you. One of the things about this is I can educate and inform because all of this is a bit geeky.
[00:03:02] Saul Marquez: Yeah. It is awesome.
[00:03:02] Jason Barnard: But actually it’s pretty simple. It’s Google recognizes you. It just doesn’t recognize you as well as it should or as well as you deserve.
[00:03:12] Jason Barnard: Particularly, we’re gonna be looking at marketing in B2B and AI. And so my first question in B2B is, what are the best marketing processes for B2B? Because we’re B2B and we sometimes struggle to identify the best works.
[00:03:27] Saul Marquez: Yeah, Jason. Well, well first of all, just, what, what a privilege to be here with you. I wanna say thank you.
[00:03:33] Jason Barnard: Brilliant.
[00:03:33] Saul Marquez: On, on the, on the healthcare B2B side, look. I’ve been in it for, I’ve been in healthcare, but B2B for my whole career over 20 years. I was a corporate sales and marketing guy for a very long time, but I, it was that day I was in my office in San Diego looking out the window at the birds. We love birds.
[00:03:52] Saul Marquez: If you want to talk about birds, that’s a different discussion. And I was about to make that call after eight years of being where I was, a great career. I was gonna take the jump. My wife was all in and haven’t looked back since. And, and all the principles that I learned at a corporate business, billion, billion dollar businesses, million dollar businesses, I’ve taken them into our agency.
[00:04:16] Saul Marquez: And, and it really boils down to some of the most basic things, marketing. B2B marketing is basically four pillars. It’s strategy, it’s owned marketing, it’s earned marketing, and it’s paid marketing. Those are the, those are the four pillars of marketing. And what I tell everyone is that tactics. Oh, were you gonna say something?
[00:04:39] Jason Barnard: Yeah, I was gonna say, number one, does this apply to the company, however big or small it is? And number two, can you repeat them?
[00:04:45] Saul Marquez: Absolutely. It, it certainly does. Whether you’re, by the way this applies if you’re B2C too, B2B, B2B2C, B2C, like all of these. So, so essentially it’s, it’s strategy and that’s where you need to start. Then it’s owned. Earned and paid. And I could define them if you’d like.
[00:05:06] Jason Barnard: Yeah. Let’s start with strategy.
[00:05:07] Saul Marquez: Okay.
[00:05:08] Jason Barnard: Define that. Dig in a little bit, then move on. So strategy. That’s the thing we start with.
[00:05:12] Saul Marquez: So strategy and the, and, and here’s the challenge. Most people don’t start with strategy. They start with tactics. And the quote that I was about to share with you, Jason and everybody with us is, tactics are the noise you hear before the war is lost. It is from the art of war. And, and what you have there is, you know, you, when you do marketing, it’s very easy to get tactical because there’s so many things. There’s podcasts, there’s email, there’s voice, there’s so many, there’s ads.
[00:05:43] Saul Marquez: And so, the strategy boils down to just a few things. It’s what is your, what is your, your brand house? Your brand house is essentially your brand statement, your, your differentiators. What, what is, what is your messaging architecture? Who are your ICPs, your ideal client profiles? You wanna have those crystallized, understand their pain points, get that all done. That’s, that’s in a nutshell strategy. There’s more there but I’m just kind of tip of the ice bringing it for you. Then.
[00:06:12] Jason Barnard: So, know what you are offering, who you’re offering it to, what they’re looking for, and how you’re gonna say it.
[00:06:18] Saul Marquez: Yeah. And, and very, very importantly, what are their pain points and how are you different and how are your differences? Unique enough for them to solve their problems?
[00:06:28] Jason Barnard: Right. Okay. And I think one thing we’ve done at Kalicube is fail to focusing up on our UCP, which is we’ve got 3 billion data points, so we know exactly what to do to manage your personal brand or corporate brand. And we’ve got our proprietary tech that holds all of this information together in a format that machines can understand, digest, and reuse. Nobody else has that. That’s our USP.
[00:06:50] Saul Marquez: That, that’s right. I love that. Well.
[00:06:52] Jason Barnard: But I only, I only figured that out a few weeks ago.
[00:06:56] Saul Marquez: Hey, listen. But the, the point is you did, and that’s what matters, right? So it’s never too late. You know, you could, you could be, you know, it’s never too late. You know, we all learn lessons as entrepreneurs and maybe you didn’t figure it out on your last business and now you’re on your new one.
[00:07:13] Saul Marquez: Well, guess what? It’s not too late. You, you, you still have time and you gotta start with strategy. Jason did a brilliant job of, of talking about his and, yeah.
[00:07:22] Jason Barnard: No, I, I love that. And I, I also makes me think that, yeah, I, I did this too late or I figured that out too late, but nothing stops me now pivoting.
[00:07:29] Jason Barnard: But the thing we’re finding is changing that communication now is much more painful than it would’ve been if we’d rolled it out from the start. And I think that’s key.
[00:07:39] Saul Marquez: That for sure. But you know what, it’s totally doable. And, and look, I would go back to your example, just kind of like you did with me. Then, then, okay, what are, what are the key pain points? Of your ideal client, you know, what are their pain points?
[00:07:54] Jason Barnard: Yeah. Oh, you’re asking me the question now?
[00:07:56] Saul Marquez: I’m asking you. Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:57] Jason Barnard: Oh, it’s, some of it’s gonna be they’re misrepresented and some of it is about their own personal feeling about what they deserve.
[00:08:07] Jason Barnard: Some of it is going to be, how am I perceived by partners, and how often am I missing out on opportunities when Google or AI represents me Inadequately. And a third one, which I’d never thought of until somebody mentioned it to me, is people I’m close to. It could be important to them. And for example, if there’s some bad news about me, my child might be affected at school, and that’s gonna be very important. It’s a huge pain point for me. And I think those are the three big kind of buckets. My ego, my business, my, the people who are close to me. And also there’s another three. I love everything in threes. I’m also looking at my personal branding, AI and search from the perspective of my business today. Is it driving business for me today or not facilitating my career when I pivot and I sell my business and go and do something else and defining my legacy.
[00:09:01] Saul Marquez: I love that.
[00:09:02] Jason Barnard: But you need people to be aware of all that, and that’s the problem is they’re not always aware. So if you have a pain point and you’re not aware of it, or somebody has a pain point, they’re not aware of it. You need to educate. That’s huge.
[00:09:13] Saul Marquez: Exactly. Yeah. No, well, well said and, and look, the reason why I asked you about pain points, Jason, is because if you get anything out of our podcast today, get this. You gotta know your ICPs, your ideal client profiles,
[00:09:27] Jason Barnard: Right.
[00:09:27] Saul Marquez: personas, and you’ve got to know their pain points. You’ve got to know them because that is the emotion which triggers action. Whether it be filling out a form, whether it be watching the video all the way through, whether it be meeting with you for, for a consultation.
[00:09:45] Jason Barnard: Right.
[00:09:45] Saul Marquez: You’ve gotta know those and you’ve gotta be able to message to them specific to that ICP.
[00:09:51] Jason Barnard: And a lot of the time, those marketers, we tend to look at the solution and we’re pushing for that. And it’s quite difficult for us to turn around and say, well, I need to be much more empathetic. And I need to take a huge step back and swallow my own ego about what a wonderful solution I’ve got and focus on which problem we’re solving. Because the solution in and of itself is what we’re bringing to the table. But nobody cares about the solution as long as it works.
[00:10:18] Saul Marquez: A hundred percent. And, and look, and then that’s where the content comes in, right? And then.
[00:10:23] Jason Barnard: Brilliant.
[00:10:23] Saul Marquez: That’s where the, so content channels activation, right? And so owned, earned, paid. Owned is essentially everything that is, that is yours. Like your website, your social media, your email list. Earned, actually I would put what you do, Jason. It falls under earned. And it falls under, like earned is, is earned media opportunities like this. I’m on your stage right now, so this is earned.
[00:10:52] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Saul Marquez: But what people put out there about you is earned. And, and maybe, maybe, maybe you, you didn’t want what’s out there and that’s what you take care of. So in the earned category…
[00:11:04] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Saul Marquez: …we should think about working with Jason. And then finally there’s paid. Paid is all of the things that you do. Once, once everything, your messaging, your strategy is right, your ICPs are right, your messaging is good, you got your content on your website, you’re sending out your emails, you’ve got good stuff ’cause you’ve worked with Jason, not on the internet about you. The next thing you do now is you want more traffic because you know your closing ratios on, on conversions on your website. So then you pay for traffic.
[00:11:31] Saul Marquez: And so those are, those are the four pillars, when done right. And actually I, I placed them in that order very intentionally. You start with strategy. Then you gotta get your owned, right? And you gotta get some earned. And then you do start doing paid. ‘Cause if you start throwing money at ads, you’re not, and you don’t have the other stuff tight, you’re just gonna throw money away.
[00:11:50] Jason Barnard: Yeah, no, that makes absolutely total sense. I mean, a lot of clients when I was doing consultancy would come to me and say, we wanna pay, we wanna get Google ads or whatever. And you said, but you haven’t got the landing pages sort. You don’t even know what you’re saying to the people, you’re advertising too. And sitting down with our, with our clients saying, well, what are you trying to say?
[00:12:09] Jason Barnard: Because we can’t understand whether AI, Search, Google are misrepresenting you until we know what you it is you’re trying to say. And that first bit, the strategy part, almost everybody skips it.
[00:12:21] Saul Marquez: Yeah. I mean, it’s the truth. And guess what everyone. This is your wake up call.
[00:12:28] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:12:29] Saul Marquez: Like, honestly, yeah. There was a report and you know, I’m a healthcare guy, but this does apply to B2B in general. This report done by McKinsey showed that only 23% of healthcare companies, B2B healthcare companies had their, their marketing content documented. Like it was, it was documented and, and, and planned. Only 23%.
[00:12:54] Jason Barnard: Wow.
[00:12:54] Saul Marquez: And, and, and that goes back to the strategy pillar in having it together. So guess what? This is exciting for, for all of us. Because what that means for us is that if we’re walking away and we’re taking action about something that, that came out of Jason’s podcast today, it’s that if you get your strategy right, you’re gonna be ahead of 77% of the people.
[00:13:17] Saul Marquez: That means your competitors likely not doing this, and if they are, then you better do it too. But you’ll be well positioned against them. And, and so that’s, that, that would, that’s what is inspiring to me about that.
[00:13:31] Jason Barnard: Okay. Brilliant. I mean, I love that it’s really simple and it, it, it puts us back in the place we should be, which is what’s my message? What’s my strategy? Who am I talking to? What’s my ICP? What’s my USP? And doing that is quite painful. I think you’ve gotta go through that painful period. You’ve gotta push through it and get it right before you roll everything else out, because rolling back and rolling out again is timely, time consuming and costly.
[00:13:56] Jason Barnard: Next is AI. From what I understand, you are keen on AI. I think we all are, but I be using it very well or are we wasting a lot of resources?
[00:14:05] Saul Marquez: Look, I love AI. Our whole team is, is very much, we’re an AI forward shop. And so when you’re in a regulated industry like healthcare or finance or you know, out there, you, you, you have to be mindful about how you use it.
[00:14:23] Saul Marquez: However, that being said, you know, we leverage it in every aspect of our business because I know that within the next, I don’t even, I’m not even gonna say 10 years. In, in, in, in five years, half of what we do as an agency will evaporate to AI.
[00:14:45] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:14:45] Saul Marquez: And, and, and, and guess what? Everyone. It’s not going away.
[00:14:50] Saul Marquez: So, you know, you’ve probably heard this AI will not take your job, but a human using AI will take your job. So be a human that uses AI and find ways to apply the different tools that are out there. By the way, it’s painful. You said it’s painful to do the strategy piece. Guess what? Take transcript from Jason’s podcast today with me.
[00:15:17] Saul Marquez: I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you the, I’ll give you the prompt actually. So go to ChatGPT and say, this is my website. Paste your website. Say, give me my brand house, which includes my brand statement, my brand differentiator, my brand attributes, and my brand pillars. That’s, that’s your, your first query.
[00:15:35] Jason Barnard: Right.
[00:15:36] Saul Marquez: Then the next query, develop my ICPs, ideal client profiles and give me three of the top ones. And then give me my messaging architecture, which focuses on my three unique selling propositions and takes into consideration the pain points of my client. You literally now have like half of your strategy baked, but obviously AI is gonna spit it out for you. But then you fine tune it based off of your human intelligence and now you’re a step ahead. You know, and, and, and, and the thing is, AI is making these types of progress trends so accessible that it’s exciting and, and so you’ve gotta, you gotta jump on it.
[00:16:23] Jason Barnard: Right. And that’s a really good point is, I mean, AI is great for putting something on the blank sheet of paper. And my experience as a songwriter tells me the blank sheet of paper is the hardest thing to fill.
[00:16:35] Jason Barnard: Once it said something, you can say, well that’s really silly, or that’s not right, or I can do better than that.
[00:16:40] Saul Marquez: Exactly.
[00:16:41] Jason Barnard: So being the person who comes in and criticizes the AI for not being perfect is the easy part. So that’s a really, really good piece of advice. I think I’ll go away and do that right after the show.
[00:16:51] Saul Marquez: Everybody should. If you don’t, if you listen to this show and you don’t do that and you al already, you don’t already have that in place, then good luck.
[00:16:59] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And well, and if you do, you’re in the 23% turning that 23% into 23.1%.
[00:17:06] Saul Marquez: Yes.
[00:17:06] Jason Barnard: So what’s the, what’s the next great use of AI that you can suggest?
[00:17:11] Saul Marquez: Look, there’s a website called, There’s an AI for that. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that one, Jason or not.
[00:17:17] Jason Barnard: Yeah, I have. Somebody’s mentioned it to me but, I’ve never been there.
[00:17:21] Saul Marquez: So, so here’s the deal, like that, that that’s one website of many that you could go to, to figure out all the different tools. I, I like that one. But the point is this, think about what you can do. There’s a, there’s a book that I love, it’s called Who, not How. And, and, and, and you know what I, I grew up like, and, and I found out one of my primary questions was, how can I make this happen?
[00:17:50] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:17:50] Saul Marquez: That question got me really far in my corporate career. When I, when I got into entrepreneurship, that question was sabotaging me.
[00:18:01] Saul Marquez: And it, it was because, because how can I make this happen really puts it all on me. And who can I work with to make this happen transformed me as an entrepreneur. It helped me being stuck at six figures to get to seven figures and, and grow the agency.
[00:18:21] Jason Barnard: Right.
[00:18:21] Saul Marquez: And, and this is really powerful. And the reason why I’m bringing this up is to, to answer your question around AI and how can I use it as a business owner?
[00:18:31] Saul Marquez: And, and, and, and that is, when you think about that question, who, not how? It’s a great book by the way. I, I, you know, maybe I’ll share the link with you. We could share with everyone that. You, you, you then find out, you go beyond your capabilities and your skills, and you tap into what is out there, who is out there, and what their networks and skills are.
[00:18:52] Saul Marquez: Then you’re able to multiply yourself. Well, guess what guys? We are in an age right now where digital, who’s are available. And, and you could create profiles inside of ChatGPT that are Elon Musk, that that is, you name whoever thought leader you like and put them in a, a brainstorming session with yourself.
[00:19:18] Saul Marquez: And now you have a crazy who circle that you’re discussing things with. So the reason, you know, so that’s why I am talking about who not how, because Agentic AI. And the difference between Gen AI and Agentic AI, Gen AI is you put a query in and you, and you get information.
[00:19:40] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Saul Marquez: Agentic AI gets things done for you. It will set appointments for you, follow up with people and, and it doesn’t need your guidance. You just set it and it and it, and it does it for you. It’s not all the way there, but it’s getting there and it’s gonna get there fast. And this is where I’m saying in five years, half of what we do will be Agentic AI that we’re training, that we own.
[00:20:00] Saul Marquez: And it’s making it happen. So, so anyway, where can you apply AI? Think about the things that you don’t wanna do, think about the things that you’re not good at, and, and see if the AI could do it better. And that’s a good place to start.
[00:20:15] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. I think that’s a really great place to end the conversation because AI is the who that will, is able to turn you into something much bigger. So AI is the who. Thank you so much, Saul. That was brilliant. And that’s a wise, wise piece of advice, right? For the end of the show. So, so brilliant, wonderful, great conversation. Tell everybody where they can reach out if they want to talk to you.
[00:20:40] Saul Marquez: Look Jason, really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun. For any businesses, business owners out there that , either have revenue more than 2 million or they’ve raised venture capital, 5 million or above. I know 100%. We can help you accelerate your growth. Just wanna invite you to go to our website. There’s easy ways to get in touch with us. outcomesrocket.com. If you wanna email me directly, it’s [email protected].
[00:21:08] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Wonderful. I could actually say the same thing for Kalicube.
[00:21:12] Jason Barnard: Thank you so much, Saul. That was brilliant. You get the outro song. A quick goodbye to end the show. Thank you, Saul.
[00:21:21] Narrator: Your corporate and personal brands are what Google and AI say they are. We can give you back control. Kalicube.
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