What to build first, what to measure, and what to ignore. Written from twenty years of running digital marketing for B2B companies, including a 730% increase in website traffic at Simio.
Most B2B digital marketing fails for a boring reason: the pieces are built in the wrong order. Companies buy ads before the website explains what they do, publish content before anyone can measure it, and add tools before they have a process. The channels are fine. The sequence is the problem.
A clear message, a fast website, accurate analytics and a CRM that sales actually uses. If a visitor cannot tell within a few seconds what you do and who it is for, nothing downstream works.
This is search, content, social, paid media and partnerships. For most B2B companies, organic search and helpful content carry the most weight over time, and paid media fills gaps while that builds. Today that includes being found in AI answers too. See AI, AEO and GEO.
Landing pages, offers, forms, email nurturing and marketing automation that turn interest into conversations. A small number of strong offers beats a large number of weak ones.
Report on pipeline and revenue, not activity. A scorecard your CEO will actually read beats a dashboard nobody opens.
B2B digital marketing is the use of your website, search, content, email, social, paid media and marketing technology to attract, qualify and convert business buyers, and to prove the impact on pipeline and revenue.
Start with the foundation: a clear message, a fast site that explains what you do, accurate tracking, and a way to capture and follow up on leads. Channels such as SEO, paid and email work much better once those are in place.
It varies by competition and starting point, but plan in quarters rather than weeks. Early gains usually come from fixing technical issues and improving pages that already have impressions.
Pipeline and revenue influenced, cost to acquire a customer, conversion rate from lead to opportunity, and the quality of leads, not raw traffic or follower counts.
AI Prompts for Marketing covers prompts for social, email, ads, SEO, copy and more.
See the book