New skills, new mindset: Leading marketing in an AI future
MARKET VIEW
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Linda Ronningen
Head of Integrated Campaigns at Azets
about
Linda Ronningen
Linda Ronningen is Group Head of Integrated Campaigns at Azets, an accounting and technology services firm. With extensive experience in B2B marketing across technology companies including Crayon and partner marketing roles with Public Cloud vendors like AWS, she specializes in campaign orchestration, AI implementation in marketing operations, and sales-marketing alignment.
Linda has developed expertise in prompt engineering and building systematic approaches that enable marketing teams to work more efficiently. She is passionate about leveraging AI to enhance marketing velocity while maintaining the human elements essential to effective B2B communication.
What approach to prompt engineering has proven most valuable, and what would you advise other marketing leaders?
The most valuable lesson is about specificity and building a reusable framework. I've seen prompts that are extremely lengthy, but you don't necessarily need to go that far. It's really about being specific with what you want, because otherwise you'll spend considerable time going back and forth with whichever AI instance you're using.
What works particularly well is giving the AI references of your previous work—actual writing samples, your natural cadences, the way you would naturally communicate. For content writers, I'd recommend providing three blog posts and an e-book as reference material. For me personally Claude tends to be strongest for writing that mirrors your authentic voice, producing less of that listicle style you sometimes get from other tools.
My goal has always been to create a library of prompts for the five critical tasks that consume the most time. Once you've developed effective prompts, they become a transferable skillset. You're essentially building expertise in how to communicate with these tools—understanding which platforms work best for different outputs, how much context to provide, and how to refine results efficiently. That knowledge compounds over time and applies across different roles and organisations.
How are you approaching collaboration between marketing and sales, particularly around attribution?
It's fundamentally about capturing all the touchpoints and using that data intelligently. There's always been the conversation about who generated a particular lead, and I think the real value lies in dissecting all those micro-moments so you can demonstrate that attribution is actually a handshake between marketing and sales.
There's invariably someone in sales who says they made a call on Tuesday, therefore sales should receive full credit. But there were likely fifteen other exposures from a marketing perspective that brought that prospect to the point where they were receptive to that call. Using AI to analyse which touchpoints correlate with the fastest pipeline velocity is where marketing becomes genuinely valuable to the sales conversation.
Sales cycles have extended significantly, and we all want to mitigate that. By consistently analysing touchpoints on behalf of the entire revenue team, I can help sales colleagues set up more effective sequences and follow-ups. When you can show that a prospect has had seven different touchpoints over the past month across five different topics, you can have much more strategic conversations about next steps and resource allocation.
With buyers increasingly using AI tools to research vendors, how are you adapting your content strategy?
We're heavily focused on optimising for AI-generated search results. This was one of the first priorities I raised—we need to ensure people can find us through the channels they're actually using now. You can even sponsor advertisements within AI platforms, so we need to think strategically about both organic and paid approaches.
The next logical step is building content specifically optimised for these AI search engines. What I’ve observed is that longer-form content performs exceptionally well, which makes sense because these systems are built around language processing. SEO has always rewarded comprehensive long-form content—I think somewhere along the way, some marketers forgot that fundamental principle.
I use AI constantly in my own research. When I want to understand an industry or evaluate potential partners, I'll ask it to benchmark a company against five competitors and outline the pros and cons. If you've maintained good SEO hygiene throughout, you're likely well-positioned already. You may need to add more FAQs and richer content to your site, but the fundamentals remain consistent.
What impact has AI had on productivity, and how are you addressing the skills gap?
The skills challenge stands out most significantly. I notice clear differences between folks who embrace AI and those who remain hesitant—particularly in time spent on tasks. There's often reluctance because people feel it compromises their authentic voice or produces content that doesn't sound genuine. However, with proper prompting, you can generate responses that sound exactly as intended.
My own content production has accelerated considerably. A comprehensive write-up that previously required two weeks now takes one week. That time saving compounds across multiple projects and team members. When training opportunities arise, I advocate strongly for prompt engineering courses and encourage the entire team to participate. I share effective prompts regularly, particularly those focused on maintaining a consistent tone of voice.
The pace difference becomes quite apparent across a team. In my experience those who've embraced these tools demonstrate noticeably greater adaptability and throughput, which naturally influences how work gets distributed and how quickly initiatives can move forward.
Where do you see the biggest opportunities for AI to transform marketing operations?
What I'm most keen to explore is agents—how to leverage them for day-to-day operational tasks. Despite all the sophisticated tools available to marketers, there's still considerable manual work involved. The integration challenge is particularly acute; systems frequently don't communicate with each other effectively, especially following acquisitions or during M&A activity.
We need AI to help mitigate the complexity of integrations. As long as businesses exist, mergers and acquisitions will continue, inevitably bringing together companies with incompatible systems. Agents designed to facilitate integration would be transformative, freeing teams to focus on customer experience, pipeline development, and other strategic priorities.
I'm also interested in exploring agents for lead scoring and triaging incoming leads for sales. The goal would be creating customised nurture flows and tailoring assets for prospects who've been engaging with similar content but haven't yet taken meaningful action. That middle-funnel engagement represents significant untapped opportunity for most organisations.
about
Azets
Azets is an international business advisory group, with 9,000 local experts in 190 locations across eight countries, backed by progressive technology. We are united by one clear purpose: to improve the lives of our clients, colleagues and communities, in a sustainable way.
100,000+ clients on unique journeys trust us to meet their immediate and evolving needs, remove barriers, and deliver sustained outcomes so they can move forward with confidence.
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.