To thrive in today’s digital arena, every brand needs an accelerator that helps it navigate the complexities of outbound marketing and generate high-impact demand.

Avani Media LLC, a B2B marketing and advertising agency based in Nashville, Tennessee, is that accelerator. Its tight-knit team of experts specialise in demand and lead generation; it focuses on planning, managing, and executing marketing programs that transform its customers’ businesses.

With deep roots in content syndication and outbound marketing, the company works with brands and venture capital firms of all shapes and sizes to accelerate their outbound marketing and drive new customers. It always aims to do things a little differently.

Rising Faith, Scaling Mountains

Avani Media was founded in 2007 as a publisher’s rep firm representing publishers based in Europe who wanted to sell media to the United States. In 2019/2020, the firm pivoted to becoming a demand gen agency that focuses primarily on B2B technology companies largely driven by customer requests.

The clients loved the campaign management and insights they were receiving from Avani Media. They were increasingly asking the company to expand its service offerings. It was their client’s faith that pushed Avani Media to move and grow in this new direction.

From NVIDIA, Sage, Khoros to LogMeIn, the Avani Media team has created complex, multi-vendor demand generation programs for some of the best brands around.

“We’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with and plan programs for a broad range of industries including fintech, automotive, healthcare, physical security, and artificial intelligence,” says Jason Gladu, the President of Avani Media.

An operator by nature, Jason has played a pivotal role in taking the company to where it is today. Prior to his current role at Avani Media, Jason built and scaled Spiceworks’ lead generation business and moved to Ziff Davis to run their B2B partnerships.

In addition to running Avani Media, Jason also speaks on podcasts and at conferences, usually on demand and lead generation, and invests in commercial real estate – but, if he had it his way, it might be more about wine, whiskey, or soccer – ideally Liverpool Football Club.

Jason mentions that for all of Avani’s clients, the company stays on top of the latest trends in B2B marketing, be it developing relationships with new publishers or leveraging previously unavailable data. Its job is to constantly innovate and accelerate outcomes by refining programs and executing tailor-made solutions. Its proprietary technology and dedicated client success team allow the company to sift through leads to deliver unparalleled quality assurance.

An Inspirational Compass

When asked Jason about his inspiration to venture into the advertising industry, he said that he had always enjoyed advertising – and Lead Gen was more or less an accident. He was introduced to demand gen at Mindshare, where he worked on the SAP account.

From there, he moved to Spiceworks. There, he ran multi-channel demand gen programs for some of the largest advertisers in the B2B space, such as Microsoft and Dell, and also built the lead gen product line, which encompassed everything from product management to building an intent model and a delivery and campaign management team.

The biggest draw to running the lead gen business at Spiceworks was being able to run a business unit that grew from under $1M annually to north of $20M in a short span of time.

Surmounting the Challenges

Jason believes that the media and demand gen agency space is very crowded. You’ve got very large holding companies that do billions of dollars a year of revenue, and then you’ve got a more recent push where brands are moving to more independent and smaller agencies.

There was no shortage of competition when Jason made this jump in 2020. He knew that based on Avani’s history of knowing how the lead gen and international media space, it could provide additional value to its customers and help them accelerate their growth.

Team-work is the Key

The quality of work is only as good as that of the team behind it. With decades of combined experience in the demand and lead generation space, Jason states that his team strategises and develops top-notch services and programs.

From complex, global media buys to lead generation programs spanning six continents, the team at Avani Media continues to increase its value to its clients, resulting in long-lasting, fruitful relationships.

While defining Avani Media’s uniqueness, Jason puts,“Our USP is our people, our ability to understand the industry, and our proprietary database of B2B publishers worldwide which contains the audiences they cater to, the media they offer, and how they perform for current and past clients.

Our team comprises folks who show up and want to help our clients succeed and want our clients to feel like we’re an extension of the team rather than just an agency or a vendor. No request from our clients is too small or too big of a burden because, at the end of the day, our job is to make their lives easier, save them money and time, and ultimately drive growth for their brand.

So when you combine the passion that our people have for helping our customers, our unique database of hundreds of B2B media publishers worldwide, and our team, we are able to plan and execute more efficiently. Those three things are what contribute to our growth and the growth of our customers.”

Success, A Journey of Relationships

Talking about the core values, Jason states that the people at Avani Media operate with below key values in mind:

• Being Agile
• Treating everyone with respect
• Being Transparent
• Putting people first
• Going the extra mile

These five values are reflected in everything Avani Media does. These values allow the company to get programs into the market very quickly as it focuses on ensuring that it has great relationships with its clients, the vendors who are important to execute programs for its customers, and its people who need to be in an environment that allows them to be fresh, be themselves and operate at the highest level for its clients.

Jason notes, “We understand that the B2B marketing and technology world moves very quickly, and we are here to ensure our clients feel supported every step of the way.”

The Future Digital Navigator

Jason firmly believes that the digital advertising landscape only intensified during the pandemic, and he doesn’t see that slowing down in the near future.

Talking about the roadmap ahead for Avani Media, Jason marks, “We are scaling up our team and spaces to meet the needs of our clients, which entails ensuring we have enough coverage in all of the timezones our clients operate in, building out a new office to ensure we have a space where clients can meet when they are in Nashville, and building out unique specialities to ensure our clients can take advantage of the increasingly complex digital media landscape.”

Valuable Wisdom

In his advice to the budding aspirants, Jason states, “Your career path will not be linear, and you’re in control of your career path. It is imperative that you take control of your growth and career path. Lean in and go solve problems for the business.

Don’t be complacent, and don’t wait for your business, boss or the world to hand you something. If you can find problems that need to be solved in the business (and you are already doing a great job in your current role), solve them!”

He concludes, “You’ll become invaluable to not only your current business but also to other businesses in the future. If you’re going to start your own business, you’ll certainly need the mindset of being able to solve multiple problems while keeping the business moving forward.”