Whenever I tell someone I work in B2B marketing, there's a good chance they have no idea what that actually means. And I don't blame them. Marketing is already a broad discipline, and when you start throwing around acronyms like B2B, ABM, MQL, SQL, CAC, and ROAS, it can sound like marketers have invented their own language.
But B2B marketing isn't particularly complicated at its core. It's about helping businesses understand why they should choose your product or service over the alternatives. The challenge is that business purchasing decisions often involve multiple people, longer buying cycles, and considerably more consideration than buying a pair of shoes online.
I've spent more than a decade working in marketing across companies including Apple, Microsoft, Dovetail, and Smokeball, where I currently serve as Head of Growth Marketing. Throughout my career, one thing I've learned is that effective B2B marketing isn't simply about generating leads. It's about understanding customers, creating demand, building trust, and ultimately helping a business grow.
In this guide, I'll explain what B2B marketing is, how it differs from B2C marketing, the strategies and channels worth considering, and how to measure whether your marketing is actually working. I'll also explore three concepts I think every modern B2B marketer should understand: Professor John Dawes' 95:5 rule, mental availability, and zero-click marketing.
What is B2B marketing?
B2B marketing, short for business-to-business marketing, is the process of promoting products or services from one business to another. It involves understanding the needs of business buyers, building awareness and trust, generating demand, and helping organisations make informed purchasing decisions.
Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, where companies sell directly to individual consumers, B2B marketing typically involves multiple stakeholders, more complex purchasing decisions, and longer sales cycles. The goal isn't always to convince someone to buy immediately. Often, it's to make sure your business is remembered, trusted, and considered when a potential customer is ready to make a decision.
Examples of B2B marketing include a software company promoting its platform to law firms, a cybersecurity provider selling to enterprise IT teams, or a marketing agency helping businesses improve their customer acquisition. In each case, the customer is another business, even though the actual purchasing decision is made by people working within that organisation.
One of the biggest misconceptions about B2B marketing is that it needs to be boring or overly corporate. Businesses don't make purchasing decisions on their own. People do, and those people respond to clear messaging, useful content, credible recommendations, and creative marketing just like everyone else.
B2B marketing vs B2C marketing: What's the difference?
The most obvious difference between B2B and B2C marketing is the customer. B2B companies sell to other businesses, while B2C companies sell directly to consumers. However, the differences go much further than that, particularly when it comes to how purchasing decisions are made and how marketing contributes to the sales process.
B2B purchases often involve multiple decision-makers, larger financial commitments, and longer evaluation periods. A company purchasing new software might need approval from its finance team, IT department, senior management, and the employees who will actually use the product. By comparison, a consumer purchasing a new pair of headphones can often make that decision independently.
| Factor | B2B Marketing | B2C Marketing |
|---|---|---|
| Target audience | Businesses and professional buyers | Individual consumers |
| Buying decisions | Often involve multiple stakeholders | Often involve one person or household |
| Sales cycle | Frequently longer and more complex | Often shorter, depending on the product |
| Messaging | Business problems, outcomes, and value | Personal needs, benefits, and preferences |
| Relationships | Often involve ongoing account relationships | Varies from transactional to long-term |
| Marketing channels | LinkedIn, search, events, email, content | Search, social media, retail, influencers |
| Success metrics | Pipeline, revenue, acquisition cost, retention | Sales, conversion, revenue, repeat purchases |
These are general patterns rather than absolute rules. A small business might purchase a software subscription in minutes, while an individual consumer might spend months researching a new car. The distinction is less about how long someone takes to buy and more about the context in which the purchase happens.
Another misconception is that B2B marketing should always be rational, while B2C marketing should be emotional. In reality, business buyers care about more than pricing, functionality, and return on investment. They also care about trust, reputation, confidence, and whether a purchasing decision might create problems for them later.
Good B2B marketing needs to address both the business case and the human concerns behind it.
How does B2B marketing work?
B2B marketing works by reaching potential business customers, helping them recognise a problem or opportunity, building confidence in a solution, and supporting their journey towards a purchase. The process often involves multiple marketing channels and interactions over an extended period.
For example, someone might first discover your company through a LinkedIn post, read an educational article several months later, hear about your product from a colleague, and eventually visit your website to compare solutions. By the time they book a demonstration or contact your sales team, they may have already interacted with your brand numerous times.
This is why I think B2B marketers need to understand the entire buying journey rather than obsessing over whichever channel happens to generate the final click. A marketing campaign that doesn't immediately produce a lead might still play an important role in influencing a future purchase.
1. Building awareness
Before someone can consider buying from your business, they need to know it exists and understand what problems it solves. Awareness activities might include advertising, social media, public relations, events, partnerships, and thought leadership.
The objective is to introduce your business to the right audience and establish an association between your brand and the problems you help solve. Not everyone who encounters your marketing will be ready to purchase, but that doesn't make the interaction worthless.
2. Creating demand
Demand generation involves helping potential customers recognise problems, understand possible solutions, and develop interest in your category or brand. This is particularly important in B2B marketing because many potential customers aren't actively looking to purchase at any given moment.
Educational content, research, webinars, expert commentary, and brand campaigns can all contribute to demand generation. The goal is to build familiarity and preference so that your business is considered when a purchasing need eventually arises.
3. Capturing existing demand
While demand generation helps build future interest, demand capture focuses on people who are already researching solutions. These buyers might be searching Google for a particular software category, comparing vendors, or looking for customer reviews.
SEO, paid search, comparison pages, product pages, and demonstration forms can all help capture this existing demand. In my experience, some of the most commercially valuable marketing opportunities come from understanding the difference between creating demand and capturing it.
4. Supporting evaluation
B2B buyers often need evidence before making a purchasing decision, especially when the product is expensive, complex, or important to their operations. They might want to understand pricing, integrations, security, implementation requirements, and how the product compares with alternatives.
Customer case studies, product demonstrations, comparison pages, reviews, and detailed product information can help buyers evaluate their options. Good marketing reduces uncertainty and makes it easier for customers to make confident decisions.
5. Converting and retaining customers
Marketing doesn't necessarily stop when a customer signs a contract. Onboarding, education, product adoption, customer communications, and advocacy can all contribute to long-term business growth.
For subscription businesses in particular, acquiring a customer is only part of the equation. Retention, expansion, and customer satisfaction can have a significant impact on the long-term economics of the business.
The 95:5 rule in B2B marketing: Why most customers aren't ready to buy
One of the most important concepts I've come across in B2B marketing is the 95:5 rule, developed by Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science and popularised through research published with LinkedIn's B2B Institute.
The principle is relatively simple. At any given time, the vast majority of potential B2B customers aren't actively looking to purchase your product or service. In categories with relatively infrequent purchases, approximately 95% of potential buyers might be out of market during a particular quarter, while only 5% are actively considering a purchase.
Importantly, Dawes explains that the 95:5 split is a useful rule of thumb rather than a universal statistic. The actual proportion depends on how frequently businesses purchase within a particular category. A company replacing its enterprise software every five years will have a very different buying cycle from a business purchasing office supplies every month.
This has significant implications for how we approach B2B marketing. If you're only investing in activities designed to capture customers who are ready to buy today, you're potentially ignoring the much larger audience that could become customers in the future.
Consider a B2B SaaS company running Google Ads targeting people searching for its software category. Those campaigns can be effective because they reach buyers demonstrating purchasing intent. However, they do relatively little to reach businesses that aren't actively researching software yet.
This is where brand marketing, thought leadership, content marketing, and LinkedIn advertising become particularly valuable. These activities can help build familiarity and establish associations between your brand and the problems it solves, even when potential customers aren't ready to purchase.
The key lesson I take from the 95:5 rule is that B2B marketing needs to balance short-term demand capture with long-term brand building. You still need to convert the customers who are ready to buy today, but you also need to give future customers a reason to remember your business when their circumstances change.
In other words, not every marketing interaction needs to result in an immediate conversion to be valuable.
How to build a B2B marketing strategy
One of the mistakes I see marketers make is confusing a channel plan with a marketing strategy. A strategy isn't simply deciding to run LinkedIn ads, publish four blog posts per month, and sponsor a conference. Those are activities, and while they might be useful, they don't explain why you're doing them or how they contribute to business objectives.
A proper B2B marketing strategy should explain who you're trying to reach, what you want them to believe, why they should choose you, and how marketing will contribute to business growth. It should also help you make decisions about what not to do, which is particularly important when budgets and resources are limited.
Here's the approach I recommend.
Step 1: Start with the business objective
Before choosing marketing channels, understand what the business actually needs to achieve. Are you trying to generate more qualified pipeline, enter a new market, increase average contract value, improve retention, or build awareness of a new product?
Different objectives require different approaches. A business entering a new market might need to invest heavily in awareness and education, while an established business with strong brand recognition but poor conversion rates might benefit more from improving its website and sales process.
This is why I prefer starting with commercial objectives rather than channel metrics. A marketing team can achieve excellent click-through rates and low cost-per-click figures without necessarily making a meaningful contribution to the business.
Step 2: Understand your ideal customer
Your ideal customer profile, or ICP, describes the types of businesses most likely to benefit from your product or service. This might include factors such as industry, company size, geography, existing technology, business challenges, and purchasing triggers.
However, firmographic information is only the beginning. You also need to understand the people involved in purchasing decisions and what matters to each of them.
A finance leader might care about cost and return on investment, while an IT manager might focus on security and integration requirements. The employees who will use the product every day might be more concerned about ease of use and whether it will make their jobs easier.
Effective B2B marketing recognises these different motivations and helps each stakeholder answer their own questions.
Step 3: Define your positioning
Positioning explains why customers should choose your business instead of doing nothing or selecting a competitor. It requires more than a list of product features or a generic statement about being innovative, customer-focused, or easy to use.
You need to understand what problem your business solves particularly well, which customers benefit most, and what evidence supports your claims. Strong positioning should make it easier for potential customers to understand whether your product is right for them.
If your positioning is unclear, spending more on advertising usually won't solve the underlying problem. You might simply end up paying to introduce more people to a message that doesn't resonate.
Step 4: Understand how your customers buy
Map the journey from initial awareness through evaluation, purchase, and retention. Identify what information buyers need, which objections arise, and where they might encounter friction.
For some companies, the biggest challenge is generating awareness. For others, it's converting existing interest into sales opportunities. Understanding where the bottlenecks exist helps you prioritise the marketing activities most likely to make a difference.
I also recommend speaking directly with customers and sales teams rather than relying entirely on analytics dashboards. Quantitative data can show you what happened, but conversations often help explain why.
Step 5: Choose your marketing channels
Select channels based on your audience, budget, product, and objectives rather than simply following what other companies are doing. A B2B SaaS company targeting enterprise technology buyers might benefit from LinkedIn, industry events, and account-based marketing, while a company selling software to small businesses might find search advertising and SEO particularly effective.
You don't need to be everywhere. I'd rather see a company execute three channels exceptionally well than spread its budget across ten channels without a clear strategy.
It's also important to recognise that different channels serve different purposes. LinkedIn might help build awareness among a specific audience, while paid search captures people actively looking for a solution. Content marketing can support both, provided there's a clear distribution strategy.
Step 6: Measure commercial outcomes
Marketing needs to demonstrate how it contributes to the business, which means looking beyond impressions, clicks, and form submissions. Depending on your business model, useful metrics might include qualified pipeline, customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, sales velocity, customer lifetime value, and revenue.
Not every marketing activity can be attributed perfectly to an individual sale, particularly when buying cycles are long and multiple stakeholders are involved. However, that shouldn't prevent you from measuring marketing's contribution using a combination of attribution, customer research, sales feedback, and broader business performance.
The best B2B marketing channels
There's no universal best channel for B2B marketing. The right combination depends on where your buyers spend time, how they research solutions, and what you're trying to achieve.
I've worked across a range of marketing channels throughout my career, and one thing I've learned is that a channel's effectiveness depends heavily on the context. A channel that works exceptionally well for one company might deliver disappointing results for another, even within the same industry.
| Channel | Best Suited For | Main Consideration |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Capturing research and purchase intent | Requires sustained investment |
| Google Ads | Reaching active buyers | Competition and cost can be high |
| Reaching professional audiences | Audience quality matters more than cheap clicks | |
| Email marketing | Nurturing prospects and customers | Requires relevant, permission-based communication |
| Content marketing | Education and authority | Distribution is as important as creation |
| Webinars and events | Engagement and relationship building | Attendance doesn't automatically mean buying intent |
| Account-based marketing | Targeting valuable accounts | Requires sales and marketing coordination |
| Influencer marketing | Building trust through credible voices | Audience relevance and authenticity are essential |
| Partnerships | Reaching established communities | Success depends on mutual value |
SEO and organic search
Search engine optimisation helps your business appear when potential customers research problems, compare solutions, or look for vendors. For B2B companies, SEO shouldn't be limited to informational blog posts. Product pages, comparison pages, industry-specific landing pages, customer stories, and educational resources can all play important roles.
I think one of the biggest opportunities in B2B SEO is understanding search intent. Someone searching for "what is legal practice management software" is probably at a different stage of their buying journey from someone searching for "best legal practice management software" or comparing two specific vendors.
These different searches require different types of content. Rather than trying to make every article rank for every keyword, I prefer building connected topic clusters that help customers move naturally between education, evaluation, and purchasing.
AI-powered search is also changing how buyers discover information. Tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can help people research products and compare solutions without necessarily visiting every website themselves. This makes clear explanations, credible evidence, original insights, and a consistent brand identity increasingly important.
LinkedIn marketing
LinkedIn is one of the channels I've spent a significant amount of time working with, particularly within B2B SaaS. Its professional targeting capabilities make it useful for companies trying to reach specific industries, job roles, seniority levels, and organisations.
However, I don't think LinkedIn should be treated purely as a lead generation platform. It can also help businesses build familiarity, distribute educational content, amplify credible experts, and reach buying committees before they're actively researching solutions.
One area I'm particularly interested in is LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads, which allow companies to promote content from individuals rather than relying exclusively on traditional brand advertising. I've worked on campaigns that use content from company leaders and subject-matter experts to communicate ideas in a more personal and credible way.
The broader lesson is that people often want to hear from other people, not just corporate accounts. This doesn't mean brands are irrelevant, but it does mean B2B marketers should consider how employees, executives, customers, and industry experts can contribute to their marketing strategy.
Content marketing
Content marketing helps potential customers understand their problems, evaluate possible solutions, and develop confidence in a business. It can include educational articles, videos, webinars, newsletters, research reports, podcasts, customer case studies, and social media content.
One of my strongest beliefs about content marketing is that publishing is only half the job. You also need a distribution strategy, because even an excellent article won't accomplish much if nobody reads it.
For example, a single webinar might provide material for several short videos, a blog post, a newsletter, social media content, and follow-up sales resources. Rather than constantly creating new content from scratch, I prefer thinking about how useful ideas can be adapted and distributed across multiple channels.
This is particularly valuable for smaller B2B marketing teams that don't have unlimited budgets or production resources.
Paid search
Paid search can be particularly valuable when buyers already know what they're looking for. Someone searching for a specific software category or comparing vendors may be considerably closer to purchasing than someone casually scrolling through social media.
However, search advertising generally captures existing demand rather than creating all of it. If nobody knows your product category exists or understands why they need it, there may be relatively little search demand to capture in the first place.
That's why I prefer thinking about paid search as one component of a broader marketing system. Brand-building and educational activities can help create awareness and interest, while search campaigns help capture buyers when they actively start researching solutions.
Events and webinars
Events can be useful for building relationships, educating buyers, and creating opportunities for meaningful sales conversations. They can also provide valuable content that continues to support marketing efforts long after the event has finished.
However, event success shouldn't be measured exclusively by registrations or attendance. A webinar with hundreds of attendees isn't necessarily more valuable than a smaller event attended by the right decision-makers.
Consider the quality of the audience, engagement, follow-up conversations, and whether the event contributes to meaningful commercial opportunities. Events should be evaluated within the broader marketing strategy rather than treated as isolated activities.
Account-based marketing
Account-based marketing, commonly called ABM, focuses marketing and sales efforts on a defined set of target accounts rather than trying to reach the broadest possible audience.
This approach can be particularly useful for companies selling higher-value products or services to larger organisations. Instead of generating as many leads as possible, the objective is to build awareness, engagement, and relationships within accounts that are commercially important.
ABM can involve targeted LinkedIn advertising, personalised content, direct outreach, events, and close collaboration between marketing and sales. Its effectiveness depends heavily on selecting the right accounts and understanding the people involved in purchasing decisions.
B2B demand generation vs lead generation
Demand generation and lead generation are often used interchangeably, but I think the distinction matters because they serve different purposes within a marketing strategy.
Demand generation focuses on creating awareness, interest, and preference for a product or service, while lead generation focuses on identifying or capturing potential customers who have expressed interest.
For example, publishing educational videos about a business problem might help generate demand by introducing potential customers to a challenge they hadn't previously considered. Encouraging someone to register for a product demonstration is a form of lead capture because that person is taking an identifiable action that suggests interest in your solution.
Both activities are useful, but problems arise when every marketing initiative is judged exclusively on how many contact details it collects. A company might generate hundreds of leads that never convert into customers, while an educational campaign might influence purchasing decisions without receiving credit in a last-touch attribution report.
The goal should be to build a system that creates demand, captures existing interest, and converts the right opportunities into revenue. This requires marketing teams to balance short-term performance with longer-term brand building and customer education.
What is a B2B marketing funnel?
A B2B marketing funnel is a model that describes how potential business customers move from awareness of a problem or solution towards consideration, purchase, and retention. It helps marketers understand what buyers need at different stages and which activities might support their decisions.
Although the funnel is useful for planning, real B2B buying journeys rarely follow a perfectly linear sequence. Buyers might research solutions, pause their evaluation for several months, involve additional stakeholders, and revisit earlier decisions before making a purchase.
| Stage | Buyer Question | Marketing Objective |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | What is this problem? | Build recognition and understanding |
| Consideration | What solutions are available? | Educate and establish relevance |
| Evaluation | Which provider should we choose? | Build confidence and reduce risk |
| Purchase | Are we ready to commit? | Support conversion |
| Retention | Are we getting value? | Encourage adoption and loyalty |
For marketers, the value of the funnel is that it encourages us to think beyond the final conversion. Someone reading an educational article might not be ready to purchase, but that interaction could influence which vendors they consider later.
Likewise, someone comparing software providers may need very different information from someone who has only just discovered the problem your product solves. Your content, messaging, and marketing channels should reflect those different needs.
Mental availability: An alternative to the traditional B2B marketing funnel
While the traditional marketing funnel is useful for understanding the stages of a purchasing journey, I think it has an important limitation. It encourages marketers to focus on moving potential customers from awareness to consideration and eventually conversion, even though most potential customers aren't actively buying anything.
An alternative way to think about B2B marketing is through the concept of mental availability, developed through research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science.
Mental availability describes how easily a brand comes to mind when someone encounters a relevant buying situation. Rather than focusing exclusively on moving prospects through a funnel, the objective is to build strong associations between your brand and the situations in which customers might need your product or service.
For example, imagine you're responsible for choosing new software for a law firm. You might not think about legal practice management software for several years, particularly if your existing system is working reasonably well. However, when your firm grows, your current software becomes frustrating, or you decide to modernise your operations, certain brands might immediately come to mind.
Those brands have an advantage because they've already established associations with the problems you're trying to solve. You might still research competitors, compare features, and request demonstrations, but the brands you remember are more likely to be considered in the first place.
Understanding Category Entry Points
An important part of mental availability is the concept of Category Entry Points (CEPs), which Professor Jenni Romaniuk and researchers at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute have explored extensively.
Category Entry Points are the situations, needs, motivations, or circumstances that prompt someone to think about purchasing within a particular category. In B2B marketing, these might include a company expanding into a new market, experiencing problems with existing software, hiring more employees, facing new compliance requirements, or looking for ways to improve productivity.
For a legal practice management software company, relevant category entry points might include a law firm outgrowing its existing software, struggling with manual administrative work, wanting better visibility over billable time, needing more efficient collaboration, or exploring how AI could improve its workflows.
Rather than repeatedly telling customers that your product has the best features, you can create marketing that consistently connects your brand with these situations. Over time, the objective is to make your business easier to remember when a potential customer encounters one of those problems.
This is why I think understanding Category Entry Points can be more valuable than simply creating another list of product benefits. You're connecting your brand to the actual circumstances that might cause someone to enter the market.
Marketing funnel vs mental availability
| Traditional Marketing Funnel | Mental Availability Approach |
|---|---|
| Focuses on stages of the buying journey | Focuses on being remembered in buying situations |
| Often prioritises identifiable prospects | Considers both current and future buyers |
| Measures movement towards conversion | Measures brand associations and memory |
| Organises content by funnel stage | Connects brands with relevant Category Entry Points |
| Useful for conversion optimisation | Useful for long-term brand building |
I don't think marketers need to choose one model over the other. The funnel can help identify where potential customers are dropping out of the buying journey, while mental availability can help explain why some brands are considered before others.
In practice, I would use mental availability to guide brand positioning, messaging, and awareness campaigns, while using funnel-based measurement to understand how effectively existing demand converts into pipeline and revenue.
There's also a related concept called physical availability, which describes how easy a brand is to find and purchase. In B2B marketing, that might mean having a clear website, accessible pricing information, straightforward demonstration booking, responsive sales teams, and strong distribution.
Ultimately, being remembered is valuable, but customers also need to be able to find and buy from you when they're ready.
For more on this research, I'd recommend reading Category Entry Points in a B2B World, published by LinkedIn's B2B Institute in collaboration with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
B2B marketing examples
One of the easiest ways to understand B2B marketing is to look at how different types of companies might use marketing to achieve their business objectives. The following examples are illustrative scenarios rather than reported campaign results.
Example 1: A SaaS company using SEO to capture demand
Imagine a software company selling project management tools to architecture firms. Its potential customers might search Google for terms such as "project management software for architects" or compare several vendors before deciding which platform to purchase.
The company could create industry-specific landing pages, software comparisons, customer stories, and educational articles that address the challenges architecture firms face. It might also run Google Ads campaigns targeting people actively searching for relevant solutions.
The objective would be to capture existing demand and make it easier for buyers to understand why the product is worth considering. Success could be measured through qualified enquiries, demonstrations booked, pipeline generated, and revenue.
Example 2: A cybersecurity company building awareness on LinkedIn
A cybersecurity provider targeting large organisations might have a relatively small pool of potential customers, particularly if its product is designed for enterprise IT and security teams.
Rather than trying to generate thousands of inexpensive leads, the company could build a targeted LinkedIn campaign featuring educational content from its security experts. This might include short videos explaining emerging threats, practical advice for IT leaders, and research into common security challenges.
The objective would be to increase awareness and trust among relevant decision-makers before a formal purchasing process begins. Marketing could then support the evaluation stage with case studies, product demonstrations, and technical documentation.
Example 3: A professional services company using thought leadership
A consulting firm might publish original research, contribute articles to industry publications, host webinars, and encourage its partners to share practical insights on LinkedIn.
These activities help prospective customers become familiar with the firm's expertise before they need external assistance. When a business eventually decides to engage a consultant, it may already recognise the firm's people and understand the problems they specialise in solving.
This is an example of how B2B marketing can build credibility and preference over time rather than relying exclusively on immediate lead generation.
How do you measure B2B marketing success?
B2B marketers have access to more data than ever, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're measuring the right things. It's easy to become focused on metrics that are readily available in advertising platforms or analytics dashboards without considering whether they reflect meaningful business outcomes.
I generally recommend separating marketing measurement into three categories: awareness and engagement, demand and pipeline, and revenue and efficiency. Looking at these categories together provides a more complete picture of marketing performance.
Awareness and engagement metrics
Awareness metrics help you understand whether you're reaching and engaging the right audience. Examples include reach among target accounts, branded search interest, relevant website traffic, content engagement, and direct traffic trends.
These metrics are useful for understanding whether your marketing is building visibility, but they shouldn't automatically be treated as evidence of commercial success. A campaign generating millions of impressions isn't necessarily valuable if those impressions are reaching the wrong audience.
Demand and pipeline metrics
Demand and pipeline metrics help you understand whether marketing is contributing to commercial opportunities. Examples include qualified enquiries, demonstration requests, sales-accepted opportunities, pipeline created, pipeline influenced, and opportunity conversion rates.
For many B2B companies, these metrics provide a stronger connection between marketing activity and sales performance. However, they still require careful interpretation, particularly when multiple marketing and sales interactions contribute to an opportunity.
Revenue and efficiency metrics
Revenue and efficiency metrics help assess the financial contribution of marketing. Examples include customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, marketing-sourced revenue, sales cycle length, and customer acquisition payback period.
The important thing is to interpret these metrics together rather than relying on a single number. A campaign might generate significant awareness without immediately producing revenue, while another might deliver a small number of highly qualified opportunities that convert exceptionally well.
Neither should be judged on one metric in isolation.
Common B2B marketing mistakes
After working across technology and SaaS businesses, there are several mistakes I think B2B marketers should watch out for. Most of them aren't caused by a lack of marketing tools or technology, but by unclear priorities and a disconnect between marketing activity and business objectives.
Focusing on leads instead of customers
Generating more leads isn't automatically a good outcome. If those leads aren't qualified, don't convert, or aren't commercially valuable, you're simply creating more work for sales.
I think marketers should spend more time understanding what happens after a lead enters the CRM. Which opportunities convert? Which customers are most valuable? Where do prospects drop out of the sales process? These questions can be far more useful than celebrating an increase in form submissions.
Treating brand and performance as competing priorities
Brand and performance marketing are sometimes treated as competing disciplines, particularly when budgets are under pressure. In reality, they should complement each other.
Brand marketing helps people recognise, remember, and trust your business, while performance marketing can help capture and convert interest. Content marketing, thought leadership, and customer advocacy can contribute to both.
The challenge is finding the right balance for your business rather than assuming every dollar needs to generate an immediately attributable conversion.
Publishing content without distribution
Creating content doesn't guarantee anyone will see it. A company can publish dozens of articles, produce expensive videos, and host webinars without generating meaningful engagement if it doesn't have a clear plan for distribution.
I prefer thinking about distribution before investing heavily in production. Who needs to see this content? Where do they spend time? How can the content be adapted for different channels? These questions should influence what you create in the first place.
Copying competitors
Just because your competitor sponsors a conference, launches a podcast, or runs a particular advertising campaign doesn't mean it's the right strategy for your business.
Competitor research can be useful, but it should inform your decisions rather than dictate them. Your audience, positioning, budget, and commercial objectives might be completely different.
Relying entirely on attribution dashboards
Attribution is useful, but it doesn't capture every influence on a B2B purchasing decision. A customer might have seen your advertising, attended an event, read several articles, and spoken with colleagues before eventually converting through a branded Google search.
If you only look at the final interaction, you risk undervaluing the activities that helped create the demand in the first place.
I recommend combining attribution reporting with customer conversations, sales feedback, and broader business outcomes to develop a more balanced understanding of marketing performance.
How is AI changing B2B marketing?
Artificial intelligence is changing how marketers research, create content, analyse information, and reach potential customers. It's also changing how buyers discover products and evaluate potential solutions.
Traditionally, a buyer might search Google, visit several websites, read customer reviews, and compare vendors manually. Today, some buyers use AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to ask questions, summarise information, and research potential solutions.
This creates opportunities for companies producing useful, well-structured, and credible content. If your website clearly explains what your business does, who it serves, and how it compares with alternatives, that information can help both human readers and AI-powered discovery systems understand your offering.
However, I wouldn't approach AI search as a shortcut to visibility. There is no guarantee that publishing content in a particular format or adding structured data will cause an AI system to recommend your business.
Good SEO, clear positioning, original expertise, and a strong brand remain valuable. For B2B marketers, the opportunity is to create information that genuinely helps buyers make better decisions, regardless of whether they discover it through traditional search engines, social media, or AI assistants.
Zero-click marketing: A different model for B2B content
Another approach I think more B2B marketers should be paying attention to is zero-click marketing. It's particularly relevant as audiences increasingly consume content directly on LinkedIn, YouTube, social media, and AI-powered search platforms without necessarily visiting a company's website.
Traditionally, a lot of digital marketing has been designed around getting someone to click. You publish a LinkedIn post that links to a blog article, run an advertisement directing people to a landing page, or share a short video encouraging viewers to visit your website.
Zero-click marketing challenges the assumption that every interaction needs to result in a website visit. Instead, the objective is to deliver useful content directly where your audience already spends time, allowing people to receive value without needing to click through to another destination.
For example, imagine a B2B marketer sharing five practical lessons from a successful campaign on LinkedIn. A traditional approach might involve writing a short teaser and encouraging readers to visit a blog post for the full explanation. A zero-click approach would share the actual lessons within the LinkedIn post itself, including enough context and examples for the content to be useful on its own.
The same principle can apply to short-form videos, carousels, newsletters, webinars, and other content formats. Rather than withholding useful information to generate traffic, you're building trust and demonstrating expertise directly within the platforms where your audience is already active.
Why zero-click marketing matters for B2B
I think zero-click marketing makes particular sense when you consider the 95:5 rule and the importance of mental availability. If most potential customers aren't ready to buy, expecting every marketing interaction to produce a website visit or lead is unrealistic.
However, that doesn't mean those interactions are worthless. Someone might regularly see your company's content on LinkedIn, watch videos from your executives, or read useful insights shared by your employees without ever visiting your website.
Over time, those interactions can contribute to familiarity and brand recognition. When that person eventually needs a product or service in your category, your business may already be one of the brands they remember.
This is one reason I'm particularly interested in B2B creator marketing and LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads. Instead of relying exclusively on corporate messaging that directs audiences towards a landing page, businesses can distribute useful ideas through credible individuals who already have expertise and relationships with their audiences.
Does zero-click marketing mean website traffic doesn't matter?
Not at all. I still think websites, SEO, and conversion-focused marketing are essential, particularly when potential customers are actively researching solutions or comparing vendors.
The difference is that I wouldn't expect every piece of content to generate traffic directly. Some content should be designed to build awareness, establish credibility, and help potential customers remember your brand. Other content should help buyers evaluate solutions and take the next step towards purchasing.
For example, a LinkedIn video explaining a common industry problem might be valuable even if viewers never click through to your website. Meanwhile, a detailed software comparison page could be extremely important for someone who is actively evaluating vendors.
These activities serve different purposes, and both can contribute to business growth.
How do you measure zero-click marketing?
One of the challenges with zero-click marketing is that traditional website analytics won't capture every meaningful interaction. If someone watches your LinkedIn videos for several months before eventually searching for your brand on Google, the original content might not receive attribution for influencing that decision.
This doesn't mean measurement should be abandoned. Instead, marketers should consider a broader combination of metrics, including relevant audience reach, content engagement, branded search trends, direct traffic, customer-reported discovery sources, and commercial outcomes.
I would also pay attention to whether content is reaching the right people rather than simply generating large numbers of impressions. A video reaching 5,000 relevant B2B decision-makers might be more valuable than one reaching 100,000 people who are unlikely to become customers.
For me, the most useful way to think about zero-click marketing is that you're not necessarily optimising for an immediate click. You're trying to earn attention, communicate something valuable, and build a stronger association between your brand and the problems your customers care about.
Bringing it together: A modern B2B marketing model
When I think about how B2B marketing is evolving, I find it useful to connect the 95:5 rule, mental availability, and zero-click marketing into a single approach.
The 95:5 rule reminds us that most potential customers aren't actively looking to buy at any given moment. Mental availability explains why building brand associations before someone enters the market matters. Zero-click marketing provides one practical approach to reaching and educating those future customers without requiring every interaction to generate a website visit.
Together, these concepts suggest that B2B marketers should spend more time thinking about how to become remembered and trusted, rather than measuring success exclusively through immediate conversions.
For example, a B2B SaaS company might publish educational LinkedIn videos featuring its leadership team, distribute original research, share customer stories, and create useful content around the situations that commonly trigger purchasing decisions. Those activities can build familiarity among potential customers who aren't currently evaluating software.
When those customers eventually enter the market, the company still needs effective demand capture. This is where SEO, paid search, comparison pages, product demonstrations, and a well-designed website become particularly important.
I think the most effective B2B marketing strategies combine these approaches rather than treating brand building and performance marketing as separate activities. You need to reach tomorrow's customers while making it easy for today's customers to find and choose you.
Frequently asked questions about B2B marketing
What does B2B stand for in marketing?
B2B stands for business-to-business. B2B marketing refers to the strategies and activities businesses use to promote products or services to other businesses rather than individual consumers. It commonly involves building awareness, generating demand, supporting purchasing decisions, and developing long-term customer relationships.
What is an example of B2B marketing?
An example of B2B marketing is a software company advertising its practice management platform to law firms through Google Ads, LinkedIn, webinars, and educational content. The company is marketing to another business rather than an individual consumer, even though individual employees and business owners ultimately make the purchasing decision.
What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing?
B2B marketing targets business customers, while B2C marketing targets individual consumers. B2B purchases often involve more stakeholders, longer evaluation periods, and a greater emphasis on organisational requirements, although both rely on building trust, understanding customer needs, and communicating value.
What are the best B2B marketing channels?
The best B2B marketing channels depend on the target audience, product, budget, and business objectives. Common options include SEO, paid search, LinkedIn, email marketing, content marketing, industry events, partnerships, and account-based marketing. Businesses should prioritise channels based on their customers' buying behaviour rather than simply following industry trends.
What is the 95:5 rule in B2B marketing?
The 95:5 rule, developed by Professor John Dawes, suggests that approximately 95% of potential buyers in many B2B categories are not actively purchasing at a given time, while a much smaller proportion are in market. The figures are illustrative rather than universal. The principle highlights why B2B marketing should invest in building brand awareness and memory among future buyers, not just capturing immediate demand.
What is mental availability in B2B marketing?
Mental availability describes how easily a brand comes to mind when a potential customer encounters a relevant buying situation. It involves building associations between a brand and the problems, needs, or circumstances that might trigger a purchase. Brands with stronger mental availability are more likely to be remembered and considered when buyers enter the market.
What are Category Entry Points in B2B marketing?
Category Entry Points are the situations, needs, or circumstances that prompt buyers to think about purchasing a particular type of product or service. In B2B marketing, examples might include business growth, operational inefficiencies, changing compliance requirements, or dissatisfaction with existing technology. Building associations between a brand and relevant Category Entry Points can help improve mental availability.
What is zero-click marketing?
Zero-click marketing is an approach that delivers useful content directly on platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube, social media, and other discovery environments without requiring audiences to visit a separate website. Its objective is to create value, build familiarity, and strengthen brand associations even when users don't click through to a company's website.
Is the B2B marketing funnel still relevant?
Yes, the B2B marketing funnel remains useful for understanding customer journeys, identifying conversion problems, and measuring commercial performance. However, mental availability offers a complementary perspective by focusing on how brands become remembered before customers are actively considering a purchase. Both approaches can help marketers understand different aspects of B2B buying behaviour.
How do you create a B2B marketing strategy?
Start by defining business objectives, identifying ideal customers, understanding the buying journey, establishing positioning, selecting appropriate channels, and deciding how success will be measured. A strong strategy should connect marketing activity to commercial outcomes and be reviewed regularly based on customer feedback and performance data.
Is LinkedIn effective for B2B marketing?
LinkedIn can be effective for B2B marketing because it allows companies to reach professional audiences using criteria such as job role, industry, company, and seniority. It can support brand awareness, thought leadership, content distribution, account-based marketing, and lead generation. Results depend on audience relevance, creative quality, campaign objectives, and the wider marketing strategy.
How do you measure B2B marketing ROI?
B2B marketing ROI can be assessed by comparing marketing investment with attributable financial returns, while also considering pipeline contribution, customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, and longer-term business outcomes. Because B2B buying journeys often involve multiple interactions, marketers should avoid relying entirely on a single attribution model.
Final thoughts
I think B2B marketing is at its best when it combines commercial thinking with genuinely useful creativity. It's not just about generating leads, producing content, or improving advertising performance. It's about understanding customers, building trust, creating demand, and helping businesses grow.
Throughout my career, I've seen how easy it is for marketers to become distracted by new channels, tools, platforms, and tactics. There's always another trend to follow or another metric to optimise, but the fundamentals of effective marketing haven't changed nearly as much as the technology we use to deliver it.
The 95:5 rule, mental availability, and zero-click marketing have reinforced something I increasingly believe: B2B marketers need to spend less time obsessing over immediate clicks and conversions, and more time thinking about how their brands become remembered and considered.
That doesn't mean performance marketing, SEO, or lead generation are becoming irrelevant. Quite the opposite. These activities remain essential when potential customers are actively looking for solutions. But they're much more effective when they're supported by a brand that customers already recognise and trust.
If you're building a B2B marketing strategy, my advice is to start with your customers and your business objectives. Understand who you're trying to reach, what problems you're helping them solve, and why they should choose you. Then build a marketing approach that reaches both today's buyers and tomorrow's customers.
And remember, good B2B marketing doesn't have to be boring. You're still marketing to people, even if those people happen to be making purchasing decisions on behalf of a business.
Further reading
For marketers interested in exploring the research and ideas discussed in this article, I'd recommend the following resources:
The 95:5 Rule by Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science.
Category Entry Points in a B2B World, by Professor Jenni Romaniuk, published through LinkedIn's B2B Institute.
How B2B Brands Grow, LinkedIn's B2B Institute and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
Growth Marketing vs Performance Marketing: What's the Difference?, Chris Chow.
Digital Marketing Strategy: How to Build a Strategy That Actually Drives Growth, Chris Chow.
About the author
Chris Chow is an Australian B2B growth marketing leader, speaker, and content creator with more than a decade of experience across technology companies including Apple, Microsoft, Dovetail, and Smokeball. He currently serves as Head of Growth Marketing at Smokeball and has been recognised as a LinkedIn Top Voice.
Chris writes about B2B marketing, growth strategy, content marketing, and AI-powered discovery. You can learn more about Chris Chow or explore his growth marketing consulting services.
