Marketing, Apparently — B2B marketing lessons and career perspective from Kimberly Robbins

Marketing changes. Good judgment doesn't.

I've spent almost three decades building marketing programs, wrangling pipelines, launching products, changing strategies, learning new technology, sitting through meetings that could have been emails, and occasionally discovering that the thing everyone was absolutely certain would work...didn't.

Marketing, Apparently is where I write about what I've learned, what I'm still figuring out, and why experience is more valuable than ever.

Overhead flat lay of a closed laptop, sage and ink notebooks, an index card, a pen and a mug of coffee on a cream surface
Where most of the actual thinking happens.

Why this exists

Marketing has changed. People haven't changed nearly as much.

Platforms change. Algorithms change. Analytics change. AI is rewiring our jobs. This is reality. And it's exciting.

What has not changed is the need for experience in decision making. Judgment. Curiosity. Empathy. Creativity. Understanding needs and objections. Marketing, Apparently explores the fundamentals, nuances, and joy of marketing along with the good, the bad, and the ugly.

  • B2B marketing
  • Demand generation
  • Content
  • Positioning
  • AI
  • Marketing technology
  • Careers
  • Leadership
  • Job searching
  • What actually works
  • What supposedly works
  • Lessons learned the hard way

Latest blogs

A recurring feature

Professional Guesswork

Because sometimes the strategy is really a very educated guess.

The messy reality behind marketing decisions. Experiments, campaigns that worked, campaigns that absolutely did not, assumptions we never tested, and the things our industry pretends are far more scientific than they really are.

  • What If We Spent Less?

    We cut a $2 million programmatic advertising budget to $400,000. The result was not a retreat; it was a forced conversation about what actually created value.

  • The Website Started Producing Revenue

    A website redesign built around customer decisions instead of internal structure increased website-driven revenue by 40%. Design alone did not do that.

A recurring feature

50/25

Over 50. Twenty-five years of experience. And nowhere near done.

Career longevity, reinvention, job searching, staying current with technology, mentoring, and the case for experience in a workplace.

  • I Am Terrible at Job Interviews. But I Am Getting Better.

    I am very good at marketing. I am not naturally good at interviewing for marketing jobs. Here is how I am getting better.

  • Experience Is Valuable. It Is Not a Permission to Stop Learning.

    Experience gives us context and pattern recognition, but it does not exempt us from learning. On curiosity, reinvention, and why seasoned careers still require new skills.

Apparently, there's life outside marketing too.

My world also includes community work, volunteering, a stack of books I keep adding to faster than I read it, family, friends, and a good glass of wine on a Thursday. Those things show up here occasionally, because Marketing, Apparently is written by an actual person rather than a content engine.