Susan Gold is a B2B marketing strategist who helps professional-services firms clarify whom they serve, build a practical marketing plan, and make their positioning easier for clients and referral partners to understand.
5.3K followersPositioningBased on 13 posts · latest Sep 2026
Susan Gold is most useful for helping B2B professional-services firms clarify whom they serve and improve referral language.
Best for
This fits a B2B professional-services firm wanting sharper positioning and more referrals from its network.
Not for
This does not fit a consumer brand seeking sponsored posts, audience demographics, or measurable reach.
Key takeaways
Saying you can work with anyone makes it hard for the right client to find you.
A networking problem is usually a language problem.
Write a roughly 40-word introduction email referral partners can copy.
Check first: Confirm paid work scope and ask for audience and engagement data.
Main ideas
Saying you can work with anyone is why the right client cannot find you · A networking problem is usually a language problem · Networking works only when it is intentional
Audience
5,336 LinkedIn followers · Not documented in the posts Audience composition (job function, seniority, industry, company size, geography)
Susan Gold is a B2B marketing strategist whose posts focus on helping professional-services firms explain whom they serve and turn that clarity into more effective marketing and referrals.
Their examples show how a firm can be respected in person yet hard to recognize online, or spend years networking without attracting the right clients.
The posts make a practical case: name a specific buyer, build strategy before adding tactics, and give referral partners language they can use.
If buyers need to assess whether a signature book, show, business, or earlier body of work explains searches for Gold's name, they should ask for that context.
Gold makes positioning problems concrete by showing how they surface in a firm's business development.
One post describes a consulting firm that served technology companies but left that fact off its website, bio, and networking profiles; another turns a vague ideal-client description into a specific picture of target firms.
Gold also offers usable steps, such as writing a roughly 40-word introduction email that referral partners can copy.
Across the posts, networking is not dismissed: they argue that it works when firms know whom they want to reach and make it easy for others to describe and introduce them.
That combination of specific diagnosis and practical language helps readers understand why marketing activity may not be producing the right conversations.
Across Susan Gold's posts, they argue that B2B professional-services firms lose clients and referrals mostly because they describe who they serve too vaguely, and that fixing the description is strategy work, not copywriting.
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Two related convictions run through the posts: the fix must be specific enough for a buyer to recognize themselves and a referral partner to repeat it, and it must come from evidence about the firm's existing clients rather than a template. They also argue that firms hire a strategist for an outside reading of the problem and a short, prioritized plan, and that B2B selling, with its long cycles and multiple decision-makers, is a different discipline from consumer marketing.
Saying you can work with anyone is why the right client cannot find you
Gold's most repeated argument is that a vague buyer description removes the hook a prospect needs.
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"We're agnostic, we can work with anyone," gives the brain nowhere to go, so nobody recognizes themselves in the firm's materials. Gold treats a specific buyer statement — industry, size, and situation — as what makes a firm findable, and argues that naming a buyer feels like shrinking the business when it does the opposite.
Gold describes a consulting-firm chief executive respected for client results who had spent twelve years in networking groups.
The firm works with technology companies, and the executive said so within the first ten minutes of a conversation with Gold.
Yet that buyer appeared nowhere on the website, in the bio or in the firm's networking directory profiles.
Gold's closing test: would the people a website is actually for know that within five seconds?
A networking problem is usually a language problem
Gold separates the effort of networking from the wording a network needs to act.
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People cannot refer what they cannot articulate, and most professionals are surprisingly hard to describe, even to people who like them and want to help. The bottleneck is not goodwill: the person willing to make an introduction does not know how to describe the firm, so the introduction never happens.
Gold's proposed fix is a 40-word introduction email, written out word for word, so a referral partner can copy and paste it.
They note that it is one of seven sections in a networking one-pager, and the section most people skip.
Gold argues that the room and the amount of activity are rarely the problem; what’s missing is a strategy behind the activity.
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That means clarity about the ideal client, which strategic partners can actually reach them, and how to hold conversations that convert. Without those three, activity produces busyness rather than clients.
Gold contrasts two firms.
A consulting-firm chief executive had attended networking groups, one-on-ones and coffee meetings for years, then tracked the results and found zero ideal clients.
Another firm gained two to four clients a quarter through networking but had no structured marketing or sales process to scale beyond that.
Gold concludes that activity was not the issue in either case.
Fix the strategy underneath the tactics before spending on the tactics
Gold targets mid-market firms that arrive with a complete list of individually sound marketing needs.
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Without a strategic foundation, each item consumes budget and produces little. The list is not the problem; it may be filling the space where strategy should be.
A senior advisor at a mid-market firm sent Gold a list of marketing needs — website, SEO, LinkedIn, email, content, sales enablement, events, brand consistency and reporting.
Gold judged that every item would likely produce nothing as executed.
The question to ask: do the strategic answers underneath the list actually exist?
What firms buy is clarity and an outside view, not marketing services
Gold's framing of the purchase is that a firm is not buying a menu of services; it is buying someone to identify the problem.
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Inside familiarity obscures what prospects see: you know too much, assume too much and miss what is obvious to an outsider. They describe the strategist's output as a short roadmap prioritized by impact, not a long report that sits on a shelf.
Three experienced marketing executives running a successful consulting practice told Gold they struggle to market their own firm because of time constraints and the difficulty of seeing it from the inside.
They repeat the point to show that even marketers need an outsider.
A marketing consulting firm made the same point directly to Gold: an outsider's perspective is essential, even for marketers.
A new client told them, "You explained our problems better than we could articulate them."
Pick the ideal client from your own client economics, not from a template
Gold argues that the buyer profile should come from analysis of the firm's actual client history — who pays well for value, who carries high margins and who is a strong fit — rather than guesswork or a generic worksheet.
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They say this is one of the five things firms buy when they hire a strategist.
Gold lists data-driven decisions as a distinct deliverable from recent discovery calls: an analysis of actual client history that identifies the clients worth pursuing, rather than guessing at an ideal-client profile.
B2B is a different discipline from B2C, and providers often do not know what they are missing
Gold treats B2B expertise as a qualification in its own right, not just a label.
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Its distinguishing features are complex sales processes, multiple decision-makers and relationship-based selling. Providers without B2B experience, Gold warns, do not know what they do not know and end up applying consumer tactics to a buying process they have not worked in.
Gold presents this as one of the five things a profitable B2B firm buys when it hires a marketing strategist, alongside clarity, outside perspective, data-driven decisions and a practical roadmap.
This is the clearest single answer to what Susan Gold changes for a firm.
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It shows the gap between a business that is well known in person and one that is findable on paper.
Gold describes a consulting firm chief executive who has spent twelve years in networking groups and is genuinely respected for client results.
The firm works with technology companies, and the executive says so within the first ten minutes of a conversation.
Yet that buyer is absent from the website, the bio, and the networking directory profiles.
Gold argues that buyers cannot recognize themselves in a description that never names them—and that naming a buyer feels like shrinking the business, when it does the opposite.
The closing test is blunt: Who is your website actually for, and would they know in five seconds?
For brands planning a campaign
A positioning or referral-networking engagement can start by auditing where the served buyer is named—and where they’re missing—from the site, bios, and directory profiles, rather than commissioning new content first.
Explains why the problem Gold solves is often described as a networking failure when it is really a language problem.
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Gold's diagnosis: a year of networking without results is rarely about the room.
People cannot refer what they cannot articulate, and most professionals are hard to describe even to people who like them because their positioning is not sharp enough to stick.
“We work with anyone” gives the brain nowhere to go.
The post sets out the specificity standard they work to: manufacturing and professional services companies with $10M to $30M in revenue whose leadership team knows it needs marketing help but has none in-house.
That sentence is a picture, they say; a description that covers everyone is not.
The networking one-pager is framed as a business-development discipline, not a document exercise.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for defining the deliverable of a positioning engagement: a description specific enough for a referral partner to repeat from memory.
The most concrete asset in the posts: a short piece of writing a network can copy and paste.
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Gold's simplest recommendation is a 40-word introduction email, written word for word so referral partners can reuse it.
The reasoning comes down to friction: introductions do not happen when the person willing to make one is unsure how to describe the other person.
That paragraph removes the last obstacle.
They note it is one of seven sections in a networking one-pager and the one most people skip, after more than 40 years in B2B marketing.
For brands planning a campaign
A referral-networking engagement can draft this early. It is cheap to produce, easy to test in the first month, and its results show in whether partners actually send the introduction.
Answers what a firm is buying in Gold's own framing—the fastest way to understand the service on offer.
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Drawing on recent discovery calls, Gold lists five things clients are actually buying: clarity about what the firm does; an outside perspective, which one marketing consulting firm described as essential even for marketers; decisions grounded in analysis of client history rather than guesswork, including which clients pay well for value and carry high margins; a practical roadmap prioritized by impact rather than a long report that sits on a shelf; and B2B expertise suited to complex sales, multiple decision-makers, and relationship-based selling.
They quote a new client: “You explained our problems better than we could articulate them.”
The post makes clear that the buyer is not purchasing marketing services.
For brands planning a campaign
Sets expectations for scope. A firm hiring on this basis should expect an outside reading of its client history and a short, prioritized plan—not a menu of separate marketing services.
The counterexample: what a marketing plan should not be, from a firm that had already written one.
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The advisor's list is thorough and correct on its own terms: website, SEO, LinkedIn, email, content, sales enablement, events, brand consistency, and reporting.
Gold's judgment is that executing every item without a strategic foundation would consume budget and likely produce nothing.
They call this the most expensive pattern in mid-market B2B marketing and point out that the gap between activity and results stays invisible until you are standing on the wrong side of it.
The question is whether the strategic answers underneath the list exist or whether the list is filling the space where strategy should be.
For brands planning a campaign
For a firm arriving with a completed tactic list, the engagement should start by testing the underlying strategy and sequencing the work, rather than executing the list as written.
Teaching through named client situations and concise diagnostic prompts4
Treat referral networking as a business-development discipline3
Define the ideal client in terms a referral partner can repeat2
Use an outside perspective to name the problem2
Build the strategic foundation before spending on channels1
Select clients using evidence about existing client economics1
Treat B2B expertise as a distinct qualification1
Define the ideal client in terms a referral partner can repeat
Gold focuses on positioning: firms lose referrals and inbound recognition when they say they can work with anyone.
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In one example, a consulting firm had worked with technology companies for years, yet that audience appeared nowhere on its website, in its bio, or in networking directories. A specific buyer description—industry, revenue band, and situation—helps the right client recognise themselves in a firm's materials.
Ask who the ideal client is, then push past “we can work with anyone” to a profile concrete enough to say out loud: for example, manufacturing and professional-services firms with $10M–$30M in revenue whose leadership knows they need marketing help but have none in-house.
For brands planning a campaign
Begin a positioning engagement by auditing how the firm describes its buyer across its website, bios, and networking materials. Then rewrite the description around one or two identifiable buyer segments.
Build the strategic foundation before spending on channels
Mid-market firms often arrive with a complete list of marketing needs: website, SEO, LinkedIn, email, content, sales enablement, events, brand consistency, and reporting.
Read more
Gold warns that executing each item without an underlying strategy consumes budget and produces little. The list itself is not the problem; the missing strategic answers beneath it are.
Use the needs list as a diagnostic starting point. Ask whether the strategic answers behind it exist before commissioning each item individually.
The advice targets mid-market B2B firms with internal decision-makers who already accept marketing as necessary—not businesses still debating whether to invest.
For brands planning a campaign
Position the engagement as foundation work completed before channel spend, with a short, prioritised plan ordered by expected impact rather than a long report.
Treat referral networking as a business-development discipline
Gold links weak networking results to unclear positioning, not to the room or the effort.
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One chief executive networked for years without closing any ideal clients; another firm gained two to four clients a quarter through networking but had no process to extend those results. Networking works, in this framing, only when it is intentional: the firm knows its ideal client, the strategic partners who can reach them, and how to hold conversations that convert.
The named tool is a networking one-pager: a short document that includes a word-for-word introduction email referral partners can copy and paste, helping the network describe the firm accurately without improvising.
Gold distinguishes networking that produces nothing from networking that brings in small clients the firm does not want; the diagnosis and the fix differ.
For brands planning a campaign
Referral enablement offers concrete, commissionable deliverables: an introduction blurb, a one-pager, and a short internal process for using them.
Inside familiarity can obscure what prospects see.
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Marketing executives who run a successful consulting practice may struggle to market their own firm because of time constraints and the difficulty of seeing it from the outside. An outside strategist can articulate the firm's problem more clearly than the firm can.
Gold starts with discovery conversations, using a client quote or described symptom to reframe the firm's positioning.
For brands planning a campaign
Ask for a diagnostic phase in the brand brief, with a plain-language statement of the firm's problem and positioning as its output—not a proposal for a fixed set of services.
Select clients using evidence about existing client economics
Gold presents data-driven client selection as part of a strategist's work: analysing actual client history to identify who pays well for value, who carries high margins, and who is a strong fit.
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This offers an alternative to guessing at an ideal-client profile from a template.
For brands planning a campaign
Include research or analytics in the engagement scope so the buyer profile draws on the firm's own client record, not just workshop discussion.
Gold distinguishes B2B from B2C marketing by its complex sales processes, multiple decision-makers, and relationship-based selling.
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Providers without B2B experience may not know what they are missing when they apply consumer tactics.
For brands planning a campaign
Qualify the campaign as B2B professional services and treat demonstrated understanding of long, multi-stakeholder sales cycles as part of the value being bought.
Teaching through named client situations and concise diagnostic prompts
Posts pair a specific firm or conversation with a named pattern and a closing question or action for the reader.
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Frameworks take the form of short numbered lists, including the five things a firm is buying when it hires a marketing strategist. The tone is direct and diagnostic, not broadly inspirational.
For brands planning a campaign
Diagnostic posts, checklists, and templates with a clear next step suit this voice. Broad thought-leadership formats without an action are a weaker fit.
The seven LinkedIn posts on B2B positioning, marketing strategy, and referral networking name no company Susan Gold works for, owns, sponsors, or advises.
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The businesses described—a marketing consulting firm, a mid-market advisory firm, an unnamed consulting firm whose CEO spoke with Gold, and manufacturing and professional-services companies in the $10M–$30M revenue range—are all unnamed.
The posts promote a “networking one-pager” but do not name its publisher or explain Gold’s connection to it.
Ask Gold to disclose any brand relationships and clarify their connection to the one-pager.
Susan Gold writes short, diagnostic LinkedIn posts for owners and leaders of B2B professional-services firms.
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Most follow the same shape: a named situation—a consulting firm chief executive, a discovery call, a list of marketing needs—followed by the pattern it reveals and a question or small action for the reader.
Readers can explore the work along three tracks.
The first is positioning: how a firm defines the buyer it serves, and why “we can work with anyone” keeps the right clients from recognizing themselves.
The second is referral networking: why introductions stall when the person willing to make one doesn't know how to describe the firm, and how a written introduction blurb and networking one-pager remove that friction.
The third is the strategist's role: outside perspective, ideal-client selection based on a firm's own client history, and a short prioritized plan instead of a long report.
Posts are compact, rarely running past a few paragraphs; reading several in a row gives a clearer picture than any single one.
Also writes about live business-development conversations with professional-services firms, drawing lessons from specific client or prospect exchanges about relationship-driven selling.
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Both treat the buying relationship as something built in stages, not won in one pitch.
McMakin's posts focus on the sales conversation itself: asking about a client's priorities and what's blocking them, rather than pitching your own offer. Gold focuses on the step before that: whether a firm has defined its buyer clearly enough for others to act on, and whether its written wording gives referral partners something they can repeat.
Works in the same territory of B2B brand and positioning: mapping ideal customers, narrowing to one industry, rewriting vague messaging, and turning a positioning decision into a repeatable template for marketing, content, and sales.
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Vana leads with a bold, promotional voice and sells a productized template directly, putting client-growth numbers up front.
Gold's voice is quieter and diagnostic.
Their examples come from discovery calls and network conversations, and they recommend wording a firm's own network can repeat rather than a paid template.
Also analyzes how B2B professional-services firms define fit and become recognizable to buyers, including how firms selling risk avoidance may have a different appetite for growth investment than firms selling value creation.
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Both explore why buyers struggle to understand what a professional-services firm actually offers.
Luginbill pushes further into service design and packaging, arguing that services must be buyable before positioning can work.
Her posts read as open hypotheses she is still testing.
Gold focuses on buyer definition, referral wording, and networking execution, and tends to close with a direct action.
Placement read: Susan Gold’s posts speak directly to owners and senior leaders at B2B professional-services firms—consulting practices, marketing consultancies, and mid-market companies selling complex services.
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Use this as an audience hypothesis for positioning and referral-networking needs, not as a measured fact.
The only published audience number is a LinkedIn following of 5,336 as of 8 October 2026; no breakdown by job title, seniority, industry, company size, or country is available.
Who the work addresses.
Several posts name a buyer rather than a general business audience.
One describes professional-services and manufacturing companies with $10M–$30M in revenue whose leaders know they need marketing but have no in-house team.
Another addresses profitable B2B firms hiring their first marketing strategist.
Others speak to senior advisors at mid-market firms working from a long marketing wish list, consulting-firm CEOs who have networked for years without tracking results, and marketing executives who struggle to market their own practice.
This buyer appears in March posts and again in July and August posts, making the audience signal consistent across those months rather than confined to a single post.
Next step.
Ask for a follower breakdown covering seniority, function, company size, and country, plus engagement on posts closest to positioning and referral networking.
If an audience survey is available, request results on those same attributes.
Compare similar topics and formats, and use referral-networking engagement as the test case.
LinkedIn followers
5,336
Susan Gold's LinkedIn profile · 2026-10-08
Audience composition (job function, seniority, industry, company size, geography)
Susan Gold's posts describe a client-services practice, not sponsorships, sponsored-content placements, affiliate arrangements, or media-partner formats.
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A firm hires them to sharpen its positioning, build a prioritized marketing plan, and make its introduction and referral materials easier to use.
The closest thing to a distribution arrangement is referral networking: Gold writes about equipping referral partners with a short, copy-ready introduction so they can describe the firm accurately.
That is a recommendation a client acts on, not a partnership format a brand can buy.
For a campaign budget, ask whether sponsored placements, co-marketing, or referral arrangements are available, and get the scope, deliverables, and pricing in writing.
Strong fit for a client-services engagement. Gold’s posts link weak referral results to unclear descriptions of the ideal client—not simply a lack of networking activity. They offer a practical starting point: define a buyer by industry, revenue range, and situation, then use that description consistently across the website, bios, and networking materials. Suggested referral tools include a networking one-pager and a word-for-word introduction email partners can copy. Ask Gold directly about scope and availability; the posts don’t document sponsorship or other paid campaign formats.
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Brief
A B2B professional-services firm wants to sharpen its positioning and generate more referrals from its existing network.
Angle
Make it easier for the right people to recognize, describe, and refer the firm. Start with its client history and current materials, then develop a specific ideal-client description and a copy-ready referral introduction.
When to choose a specialist
Poor fit based on Gold’s posts, which focus on B2B marketing strategy, positioning, and referral networking. They don’t document sponsorship formats, audience demographics, sponsored-post results, or a media kit. The profile lists a LinkedIn follower count but no demographic breakdown. Don’t budget this as a creator placement without first asking whether Gold offers sponsored work and requesting audience and performance data relevant to the target.
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Brief
A consumer technology brand wants a paid influencer package: sponsored product posts, a guaranteed audience profile, and measurable reach among a specified consumer demographic.
A worked campaign example
Brief
A mid-market B2B advisory firm has been networking for a year without attracting its preferred clients. Its website and networking materials describe the firm broadly, and its leaders want more introductions to technology companies.
Campaign angle
Turn a hard-to-repeat pitch into a ready-to-use introduction for referral partners. Review the firm’s client history to identify which clients are a strong fit, then write a plain-language description that names the target company and its situation. Use it consistently across the website, bios, and directories. Draft a short introduction email partners can copy and test it with a small group of existing referral partners. Judge the first test by whether partners can accurately explain whom to introduce and whether relevant introductions follow—not by counting general networking activity.
Decision
Good fit for a positioning and referral-networking engagement, subject to confirming scope directly with Gold. Their posts describe a similar disconnect: one consulting firm worked with technology companies but didn’t name them on its website, bio, or networking profiles. Gold also argues that partners struggle to make referrals when the ideal client is hard to describe.
Next step
Ask Gold whether they would lead this work as a client engagement, what discovery and client-history inputs they need, and what deliverables and measures they recommend. Don’t assume a sponsorship or fixed package is available.
Consider Tom McMakin when the firm already has live relationships but referrals stall in the conversation itself.
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The post describes a training proposal sent to an account lead at a private-equity-backed healthcare consulting firm, followed by a second call where McMakin set the proposal aside and asked how the quarter had gone and what would be hardest to pull off.
That question surfaced the firm's actual constraint—getting practice professionals to write thought leadership—and made the next offer natural.
For a firm whose partners know the right people but keep talking about their own services, this questioning approach targets the moment the referral is usually lost.
The posts do not include a written positioning artifact.
Gold's approach produces a named ideal-client description and a copy-ready introduction email partners can use when the firm is not in the room; McMakin's post centers on the account lead's discipline of asking about the other person's priorities before pitching.
Only one post is a firsthand account; the other shares another consultant's workshop promotion.
Ask for more firsthand examples before treating the method as established.
Choose Jason Vana when the problem is larger than referrals and the firm wants to rebuild its market position.
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The reviewed case post describes mapping ideal customers, narrowing to one industry, creating standard products, rewriting messaging, launching an SEO website, building a client acquisition system, producing case studies, and listing the company in industry directories, with print and digital ads continuing afterward.
A second post reduces brand strategy to one fill-in sentence—"We are the only {category} that provides {unique value} by {differentiated method} for {ideal customer label} unlike {competitor label}"—and notes that the template was used across 145 brand strategies.
This is the stronger fit when the firm needs a new position and the demand-generation machinery to carry it, not just sharper language for existing referral partners.
This is a broader, longer program with a paid template product attached, and it may be more than the firm needs to help referral partners describe its services.
If that is the immediate problem, helping partners describe the firm is only a small piece of a full repositioning and acquisition build.
The growth figures in the case post are Vana's own account of the work.
Ask for client-verified results and how they were measured.
Consider Kerrie Luginbill when the firm should first test whether "we are not getting referrals" is really "our service is hard to buy."
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One post argues that buyers now diagnose problems with AI, research options, compare approaches, and ask trusted contacts who they know, which makes vague, heavily customized services that need three sales calls before the buyer understands the purchase especially costly.
The goal, in that post, is to design and package a service so a buyer can recognize their problem, the solution, how it works, and what they will get.
A second post offers a qualification lens: professional-services firms split between those that help clients avoid risk and those that help clients build value, and the two can look identical on paper while having very different appetites for investing in their own growth.
This fits a firm willing to examine the offer itself rather than only its description and introduction email.
Luginbill frames the posts as ideas to test, not deliverables.
They explicitly call the risk-versus-value orientation a hypothesis rather than a universal truth, so the firm gets a diagnostic frame to validate against its own client history.
A firm that needs something concrete to hand partners this quarter gets more usable output from Gold's one-pager and introduction email.
Ask Luginbill whether they offer a copy-ready referral tool or a stated engagement.
Gold has seven LinkedIn posts covering positioning and ideal-client definition, referral networking, marketing strategy foundations, outside-perspective consulting, client-selection analysis, and B2B-specific expertise.
Gold's posts return to repeatable arguments and concrete client examples.
Gold's posts carry no publication dates and mention no longer-form work such as a book, show, or published one-pager, so they provide no chronology or signature-work claim.
Whether a book, show, business, or earlier body of work also explains searches for this name remains unknown.
