Advertise on podcast: Buffering

This week on Buffering, we’re live from ConneXions 2026 with Steve from GetFused to discuss why great broadband marketing starts with a strong brand, not a stack of ready made marketing assets. From avoiding cookie cutter campaigns to understanding your audience, differentiating your local brand, and refining AI generated content, we explore why the final 20% of marketing is often what separates providers that blend in from those that stand out.Join Zack and Steve as they break down how to connect brand positioning, marketing strategy, and website design into a cohesive customer experience. From reaching subscribers at different life stages to balancing seasonal campaigns with year round brand awareness, discover how broadband providers can make their marketing more relevant, build stronger connections with their communities, and turn marketing efforts into meaningful results.

This week on Buffering, we’re live from ConneXions 2026 with Jordan from Jade Communications to explore why the best broadband marketing isn’t about telling your story, it’s about solving your customers’ problems. From building a brand around real subscriber needs to simplifying website experiences, creating lifestyle based offers, and using data to personalize marketing, we discuss how broadband providers can move beyond speed and price to build stronger customer relationships. Join Zack and Jordan as they dig into what makes marketing memorable, why customers care more about outcomes than operator language, and how providers can use subscriber insights to deliver more relevant experiences. From connecting rural properties and ranches to making better use of customer data, discover how to stand out in a crowded market by solving the physical, emotional, and everyday problems that matter most to subscribers.

This week on Buffering, we’re live from ConneXions 2026, breaking down why broadband providers need to rethink how they market, sell, and deliver value to subscribers. From escaping the speed and price trap to building value based offers, creating seamless mobile first buying experiences, and turning websites into your best salesperson, we explore how providers can move beyond technical specifications and start selling the experiences customers actually care about. Join Zack and Gabe as they share practical takeaways on using AI to rethink website design, making broadband services easier to find and buy, and standing out as satellite providers like Starlink and Amazon Leo reshape the competitive landscape. From translating operator language into customer benefits to turning local presence and customer loyalty into real differentiators, discover how broadband providers can stop competing on speed alone and start selling the life their networks make possible.

This week on Buffering, we’re exploring the rise of the synthetic consumer and what happens when AI agents start acting on our behalf. From autonomously shopping and negotiating bills to managing subscriptions and planning travel, tools like Meta’s Muse are changing how consumers interact with businesses. But as AI takes on more responsibility, questions around trust, privacy, and customer loyalty are becoming harder for businesses to ignore.Join Zack and Gabe as they break down their real world experiences with AI agents, explore what happens when customers send AI to negotiate lower prices, and discuss the implications for broadband service providers. From rising unsubscribe rates to a new kind of customer interaction, discover why providers need to rethink retention, focus on delivering differentiated value, and prepare their teams for a world where the customer on the other side of the conversation might not be human.

This week on Buffering, Gabe sits down with Kyle Redman of ATC to talk about one of the biggest challenges facing broadband providers today: competing with Starlink. From its massive marketing presence and growing subscriber base to its simple buying experience and undeniable cool factor, Starlink is changing the competitive landscape and forcing providers to rethink how they win and retain customers.Join Kyle and Gabe as they explore why customers are not always making purely technical decisions, how providers can use data to identify customers at risk of churning, and why proactive outreach can make all the difference. Kyle shares how ATC is approaching retention, pricing, referrals, self install, customer experience, and the importance of understanding why customers leave. The conversation ultimately comes down to a simple question: if you want to compete, do you really understand what your customers value?

This week on Buffering, Gabe sits down with Melina Palmer, founder of The Brainy Business and a leading voice in behavioral economics, to explore the psychology behind why people buy. From the subtle power of how products are presented to the hidden fears and motivations that shape decisions, the conversation uncovers why small changes in marketing can have an outsized impact on customer behavior.Join Melina and Gabe as they explore how behavioral economics applies to broadband marketing, pricing strategies, and the customer experience. Melina shares practical insights on framing, pricing psychology, and asking better questions to uncover what customers really value. The conversation challenges traditional approaches to marketing and reveals how understanding the human brain can help broadband providers move beyond competing on price and create experiences that resonate.

This week on Buffering, Zack and Gabe take on one of broadband’s most debated terms: managed Wi-Fi. While operators know exactly what it means, customers may not see the same value in the language. From confusing product names to Wi-Fi being treated as an add on, the conversation explores what happens when industry terminology gets in the way of the customer experience. Join Zack and Gabe as they unpack why internet and Wi-Fi are increasingly inseparable, whether managed Wi Fi should be part of the core broadband experience, and how providers can shift from selling the technology to selling the outcome. They also get into pricing, packaging, generational differences, and why sometimes the best marketing strategy is simply saying what the customer actually gets.

This week on Buffering, Zack and Gabe explore how AI is changing the way websites are built, maintained, and personalized. From moving beyond rigid templates and drag and drop editors to creating custom websites in minutes, the conversation looks at why businesses may no longer need to settle for a website that looks like everyone else's. They also dig into AI assisted development, structured content, email templates, the case against embedding PDFs, and why your website should be more than a place to post pricing updates. Join Zack and Gabe as they discuss how AI is lowering the barrier to custom web development, helping smaller providers compete with larger companies, and turning the website into a continuously evolving digital storefront and salesperson. Plus, they revisit the future of platforms like Wix and Squarespace, the value of personalization, and whether websites will soon need to account for the strange new world of foldable phone screens.

This week on Buffering, we are counting down ten broadband marketing taglines that might be ready for retirement. From “blazing fast” and “future proof” to “powers every device in your home,” we break down why generic claims fall flat and how we can replace them with experiences customers can actually see, understand, and trust. Join Zack and Gabe as we rethink how we market speed, reliability, local service, and value based offers. We explore how transparency and real proof can help us differentiate the experience we deliver, plus a simple challenge: remove the adjectives from your website and see what is left.

This week on Buffering, we’re retiring six customer experience mantras that may have helped build businesses but won’t necessarily help them grow. Inspired by Customer Experience expert Jon Picoult, we explore “the customer is always right” to “every interaction should delight,” Zack and Gabe challenge the CX absolutisms that oversimplify increasingly complex customer journeys. They explore why not all friction is bad, why NPS can’t tell the whole story, why more personalization isn’t always better, and why giving customers more support channels can actually create a worse experience. Join Zack and Gabe as they unpack what it means to move beyond the legacy playbook and become a true experience provider. They discuss empowering frontline teams to become trusted advisors, curating the right customer journey, using data with permission, and designing personalized offers around real customer needs and life stages. Because the playbooks that built your business may not be the ones that grow it.

This week on Buffering, we’re going beyond the AI slop problem and asking a bigger question: how can organizations actually enable their employees to use AI well? Zack and Gabe break down the training gap, why simply handing employees powerful AI tools isn’t enough, and how organizations can create clear standards for what good AI use looks like. From prompt libraries and AI labs to forklifts and ski slopes, they explore practical ways to build AI skills across an entire organization. Join Zack and Gabe as they explore an AI enablement playbook built around progressive levels of adoption, shared knowledge, guardrails, and empowering internal AI champions. They discuss why AI is ultimately a change management problem, how leaders can give employees the space to experiment and learn from failure, and why the goal isn’t to turn everyone into an AI expert overnight, but to help the entire crew move forward together.

This week on Buffering, we dive into the AI slop problem and the growing debate over whether AI is making people dumber. From cringy LinkedIn posts to low effort AI generated content, Zack and Gabe explore why bad AI is creating skepticism around the technology and why writing off AI because of its worst use cases may be a mistake. Join Zack and Gabe as they unpack how to use AI as a strategic partner rather than an answer machine. They discuss critical thinking, foundational knowledge, AI as a debate partner, lowering the cost of experimentation, and why the best AI users think, research, challenge, verify, and refine instead of simply asking, copying, and moving on. They also explore how AI can make sophisticated thinking more accessible and expand what people are capable of doing.

This week on Buffering, Zack and Gabe take a deep dive into Starlink's latest moves and what they could mean for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). With Starlink reaching 12 million subscribers, expanding beyond broadband, and making its ambitions in mobile increasingly clear, the competition is no longer limited to rural and unserved markets. Zack and Gabe explore why Starlink is becoming a broader connectivity threat, why technical superiority does not guarantee market immunity, and how its growing ecosystem could change the way customers think about connectivity. Join Zack and Gabe as they break down Starlink's strategy, the potential impact of Starlink Mobile, and Amazon Leo's emerging threat to both satellite and fiber providers. They also discuss what CSPs can do now, from making pricing transparent and simplifying the purchase experience to embracing self install and focusing on the customer experience rather than relying on technical specifications alone.

This week on Buffering, Zack is joined by Kristin and Christina for a conversation about one of the biggest challenges facing Communication Service Providers (CSPs): standing out in a market where speed and price have become commodities. Using Simon Sinek's Golden Circle framework, they explore why subscribers don't choose providers because of gig speeds alone, and how leading with purpose, customer experience, and meaningful value creates stronger differentiation than another speed tier. Join Zack, Kristin, and Christina as they discuss why customer experience has become the new competitive advantage, how local providers can avoid the race to the bottom, and practical ways to reframe messaging around the outcomes subscribers actually care about. From self-installation and proactive support to real-world brand examples like Apple, Costco, Chick-fil-A, and LEGO, this episode offers actionable ideas for CSPs looking to compete on more than speed alone.

This week on Buffering, Zack and Gabe explore what it really means to become AI-native—and why simply using ChatGPT is no longer enough. They discuss how Communication Service Providers (CSPs) can move beyond basic prompting to embed AI into existing workflows, improve websites, automate repetitive tasks, accelerate development, and unlock new levels of productivity. Along the way, they tackle why AI fluency is becoming a competitive advantage and share a thought-provoking challenge: would your most junior employee with AI outperform your most experienced employee without it? Join Zack and Gabe as they break down practical ways CSPs can start applying AI today, from optimizing websites for SEO and AI search to streamlining marketing, data analysis, and internal processes. They also discuss why pairing experienced industry veterans with AI-native employees may be one of the most valuable investments organizations can make as they prepare for the future of work.