Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands

Over the last 15+ years, I've worked for 4 VC backed SaaS companies, consulted with more than 100+, helped 1 get acquired, 1 reach unicorn status, and many more generate millions in net new revenue.

I've also seen a handful of those startups go out of business...including my own SaaS business so I know many of the mistakes. 

Over that time I've noticed that the buyer's journey has evolved. 

Today buyers have the power.

Yet, many SaaS businesses still continue to run the same programs that worked a decade ago. 

They continue to over-rely on lead gen and create friction in the buying process. 

This is pushing customer acquisition costs sky high and causing many to miss their targets. 

The way forward is to take a buyer-centric approach to creating and capturing demand. 

Buyer-centric demand gen is when your funnel aligns with how the buyer wants to learn about your company. 

It means you write in the language your buyer understands, you consider how they consume information, and when and how they want to buy. 

When you take a buyer-centric approach you generate more pipeline and revenue and an enduring brand. 

This is why we started Omni Lab.

------------------------------------------------------------

What we do for Series A to Series C SaaS startups:

→ Manage and optimize paid media across any digital channel
→ Distribute content/messaging via paid to grow pipeline and revenue
→ Build out engaging ad creative
→ Focus on optimizing the funnel based on pipeline and revenue. 

Results from SaaS companies we have worked with: 

→ Unicorn Status in 10 months
→ Grew pipeline 372% and lead > opp rate 266%
→ 1,300% increase in revenue Q3 > Q4
→ 20% increase in revenue Q over Q

If you are looking to create and capture demand via paid media, let's chat :) 

email: jonathan@omnilabconsulting.com or DM me

Jonathan Bland

🦄 A customer of ours, Upwind Security, just raised $250M at a $1.5B valuation!! 

Can you say uunnniiiicccoooorrrnnnnn. :) 

Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, bringing total funding up to $430 million! 

Wild for a company that was founded in 2022. 

Its core focus is helping organizations prioritize real risks over irrelevant alerts and streamline cloud security operations in complex environments.

Rinki Sethi, the CSO at Upwind, argues that cloud security has fundamentally changed: modern cloud, data, and AI environments are too dynamic and complex for traditional, static security tools to work effectively.

I just had to give a huge shoutout to the whole team and especially Chas Larios and Jeanette Stepanchuk, whom I've now had the pleasure of knowing at two different companies. 

Anyone looking for a great marketing leader to work for, they are it. 

It's going to be a fun year, ya'll! :)

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands (HIRING)

The future of agencies will move away from pure execution.

And agencies built solely to produce deliverables will struggle as AI takes over their creation.

Everything from ad copy and creative to campaign planning, budget recommendations, and even audits can be done with AI. 

That doesn’t kill agencies. It changes where the value lives.

The future role of agencies is not just make things; it’s to decide what matters, interpret outputs, and give brands direction.

I recently read an article from Marketing Week called "Why AI-powered agencies will be at the forefront of marketing’s next digital revolution."

The biggest takeaway is that the value exchange will start to shift to buyers looking for things like: 

- Diagnose the market and the buyer
- Segment and choose a target properly
- Position a brand in a way that is actually distinctive
- Decide the right balance between brand, activation, and channels.

Funnel found that 72% of agency marketers believe generative AI will replace some of the services they provide to clients.

And In-house marketers agree even more strongly at 88%.

At Omni Lab, we have invested significant resources in AI-based workflows over the last two years to streamline our services, improve consistency, increase quality, and ultimately enable our team to focus more on strategy and interpretation.

And very soon, we will be releasing Omni OS, which will power Omni Lab with budget pacing, bid management, audience creation, campaign planning, and more. 

That means more time to focus on deciding what matters, interpreting outputs, and giving brands direction.

It's already starting to happen, but if you're a CMO or VP of marketing, you should be asking how your agency is leveraging AI.

You don't only want to pay for deliverables and repetitive work. 

Check out this guide from Funnel below. 

#funnelpartner

We just wrapped 2026 planning, and we’re hiring two new roles at Omni Lab!

And it’s not because we want to do more of the same.

It’s because the way B2B paid media has been run for the last decade is broken.

Categories have become significantly more crowded and complex. 

And many SaaS brands are competing using the same channels, the same intent data, and increasingly similar messaging and tactics, making meaningful differentiation harder to achieve. 

In less competitive markets, it was rational to rely heavily on short-term demand capture.

Buyers were more responsive as there was less available information on the web, media was cheaper, and intent signals were scarce enough to provide a real advantage.

The core problem is not a lack of tools, data, or optimization sophistication. 

It is a mismatch between how paid media programs are designed and how modern B2B buyers behave. Buyers spend long periods out of the market, are highly risk-averse, and actively avoid friction. 

By the time intent is expressed, preferences are often already formed, leaving programs focused solely on in-market demand competing too late and on increasingly unfavorable terms. 

You don't need an "execution factory."

You need someone who can: 
- Build category presence before demand exists
- Earn attention in zero-click environments
- Allocate budget to make capture channels more efficient

Behind this approach is an AI platform we internally call "Omni OS" to automate repetitive work, so we can focus more on strategy, interpretation, developing creative campaigns, and making better optimization decisions. 

 If any of that sounds interesting and up your alley, we are hiring for two new roles: 

- Performance Marketing Manager ($70-90K base + variable comp) ; U.S. Based 
- Sr. Demand Gen Manager ($90-$120k base + variable comp); U.S. Based 

Please tag someone who's looking! Thank you. :) 

Go to https://buff.ly/FGtIIFp to find the recs.

Short-termism is killing good marketing. 

But it doesn't change the reality of what execs want: 

- Fast results
- Predictable returns
- Easy to measure channels

It then forces all product category competitors to optimize for:

- The same in-market keywords
- The same intent/signal audiences
- The same platforms
- At the same moment

That means: 

- Higher CPCs & CPMs
- Rising CAC
- Declining marginal returns

Even with “best-in-class” execution, you'll see prices increase and volume decline as you narrow down audiences. 

Meanwhile, 71% of buyers reported purchasing their first-choice product according to TrustRadius. 

And 9 out of 10 consumers name trust as a primary purchasing criterion, driving buyers to rely on familiar, trusted brands.

Keyword = "famiilar"

If you aren't a familiar, and have established brand preference BEFORE someone comes in-market, it will make it even harder to compete. 

And let's not forget how competitive product categories have become. Here's what the call recording space looks like: 

1.) Fireflies.ai
2.) Otter.ai
3.) Grain
4.) Avoma
5.) MeetGeek
6.) Read.ai
7.) Fathom
8.) Krisp
9.) Sembly AI
10.) Jamie
11.) Tactiq
12.) Supernormal
13.) Notta
14.) Fellow
15.) Nyota
16.) Airgram
17.) Gong
18.) Chorus
19.) Clari Wingman
20.) ExecVision
21.) Jiminny
22.) Modjo
23.) Observe.AI
24.) Dialpad
25.) RingCentral
26.) Aircall

Now let's go after the most obvious target, high-intent keyword "call recording software" = 880 monthly searches at $51/click (top bid)

The top three vendors will likely capture most of the demand, leaving the rest to fight over the scraps. 

And that's just one category. 

- This isn’t a tooling problem.
- It’s not a tactic problem.

It’s a misunderstanding of how B2B buyers actually make decisions.

Short-term optimization is necessary, but insufficient on its own.

Real leverage comes from shaping preferences before buyers ever show in-market signals. 

That means adjusting channel mix, objectives, budget allocation, and CTAs to focus on your narrative, what you do, your POV, proof of work, etc. before they come in-market. 

That will make your capture channels more efficient.

If your AI output feels ‘generic,’ that’s not an AI problem. That’s a brand problem.

Models trained on undifferentiated inputs produce undifferentiated outputs.

Many don’t like the results they get because they go to an LLM and, in broken English, ask it to write a blog post about "the difference between demand gen and lead gen."

When it has: 
- No context
- No idea your core POV
- No idea about your messaging
- No idea about your brand
- No idea about your tone
- No idea about your audience
- No idea what format you want the output in

Funnel released a report that showed 39% of agency marketers and 23% of brand marketers
say AI tools create repetitive, generic campaigns.

I honestly think there are even more people who think this. 

The reason they sound repetitive, generic, or use words that you’d never say to a friend is that you haven’t built AI workflows that pull from a store of data to provide guardrails and direction on exactly what you want. 

That store of data can hold your:
- POV
- Tone
- Messaging pillars
- Positioning
- Audience
- And more

Just like talking with a human, AI needs context. 

And the more input you give it (e.g. draft, transcript, sample blog post, etc.) the better it's going to be.

Check out the report from Funnel below. 👇

P.S. You can even program in grammatical mistakes.

#FunnelPartner

It should honestly be criminal to spend paid dollars promoting a message/content that has never been tested organically.

Yet I see teams do this all the time.

They use paid media to test messaging pillars, even though they already have more signal than they realize.

Think about how much information already exists:
- Sales calls
- Customer interviews
- Organic posts
- Events and conversations
- Comments, DMs, and replies

And if you’ve been close to your market long enough, you often know what resonates before you ever open a dashboard.

Remember, organic content is why people come to platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, and X in the first place. They’re there to learn, observe, and form opinions, not to be offered $100 giftcards. 

When something lands organically, it’s a signal, especially when engagement consistently clears that 3–4% range.

And I'm not just talking about thought leader ads (promoting organic posts on LI) 

I'm talking about posting the blog, guide, or short-form video BEFORE you decide to put paid dollars behind it. 

And bonus points if you can retain the same look and feel once it gets created. 

Using Rand Fishkin as an example looks like: 

1.) He posts message/content organically
2.) Looks for a high engagement rate + reviews comments (3-5%)
3.) He takes the same theme/message, builds new content pieces, and creates new ad formats
4.) Then he amplifies the messages with paid dollars that already resonate

This is how you earn attention in an increasingly crowded space where more people are tuning you out. 

The mistake isn’t spending on paid.

The mistake is failing to use internal data to derisk that investment. 

That way, you are already scaling winners vs. trying to figure out what works. 

The teams that win are paid to reinforce familiarity, not manufacture it.

I see a lot of teams frustrated with AI right now. 

They open an LLM, type something like “write a blog post on demand gen vs. lead gen,” and then feel disappointed when the result sounds… hollow. 

Not quite right. Not something they’d ever actually say.

But think about what you’ve given it.

- No real context.
- No point of view.
- No sense of your brand, your voice, or who you’re actually trying to reach.

So, of course, the output feels generic. That’s exactly what you asked for.

Not sure if you all saw this report, but Funnel released a report showing that 39% of agency marketers and 23% of brand marketers say AI tools produce repetitive, generic campaigns.

Sidebar: Honestly, surprised it's not more. 

That tracks with what I’m seeing. And it’s not because AI “doesn’t work.” It’s because most teams haven’t done the unsexy work of giving it something to work from.

AI needs a source of truth, just like a new hire would.

Your POV.
Your tone.
Your messaging pillars.
Your positioning.
Your audience.

When you build workflows that pull from those inputs and feed them real material like drafts, transcripts, and examples, the output changes completely.

Not because the AI got smarter.

But because you did a better job teaching who you are.

Context isn’t optional. It’s the whole game.

Worth reading the report from Funnel below, some interesting stuff there. 👇

#funnelpartner

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Omni Lab 

Snapdata, in the business of waste and recycling analytics, was selected to participate in NUMA's Smart City Program in Paris to connect with corporate leaders like Cisco, Suez, and City of Paris Government to discuss innovative solutions for cities. Out of 200 startups, we were one of 4 selected to participate. 

Google Exchange Program Finalist - NUMA; Paris

Ogilvy partnered with IE Business School to invite IE based startups to pitch their ideas to Ogilvy to compete in getting the chance to have Ogilvy support their branding & marketing needs as well as partnering with some of their clients to bring about new innovation. 

Ogilvy Competition, Top 3 Startups

Achieving outstanding performance during the IE Business School Startup Lab. Voted best Startup to invest in. 

Investors' Award

Small team of marketing professionals at IE Business School were tasked to develop a new marketing strategy for a SMB company called DriveGum. DriveGum distributes and manufactures CPG goods like gum, granola bars, and others in Europe. We:

•	Repositioned the key value proposition.
•	Created three new strategies to grow brand recognition and improve sales.
•	Made improvements and updates to current marketing material. 




IE Business School - Marketing Case Competition, Finalists

James Madison University Austin Alumni Chapter

Managing Director

Snapdata designs and develops a range of sensors and data analytics platforms for the Internet of Things.

Primarily responsible for European operations developing a go to market strategy and doing business development in the waste and recycling sector.

Confirmed 3 letter of intents with governments and corporate size clients to test our product. 

Developed pricing matrixes for products and services, ROI for our clients, and detailed process for proof of concepts. 

Managed Google AdWords campaigns and analyzed Google Analytics to improve our messaging and positioning. 

Won four separate competitions for leading innovative technology and startup in Spain:

Venture Day Finalist, IE Business School
Investors Award, IE Business School
Google Exchange Program Finalist, NUMA 
Top 3 Startups, Ogilvy


Snapdata

Learn how Omni Lab helps 100+ B2B SaaS brands create and capture demand with paid ads.

Book a Call

I’ve been writing on LinkedIn for around 5 years now, which is wild to think about. 

Contrary to what all the LI creators say, I had no plan, no goal, and no topic. 

I posted random Einstein quotes, random personal photos, and observations with no clear theme. 

I suppose my goal at the time was simply to build the habit of sharing publicly and get comfortable with the possibility of judgment.

After months of random posts, I started focusing on writing about sales and marketing, since it seemed easier given my background, and I wanted to get better at both. 

After a while, I started meeting a few people, including some who were looking for help. 

So I started doing a little consulting, and my writing started to center more on demand gen and paid media. 

I shared what I was learning, patterns I was seeing, and opinions on where brands could improve, basically anything that seemed like it might be interesting to others. 

Four years later, I have nearly 30,000 followers (if followers matter now at LI). More importantly, I’ve met a lot of great people, which is what social media is all about. 

I'm no Ernest Hemingway, but writing has been one of the most valuable disciplines I’ve developed over the years. 

It really forces you to think through ambiguity, clarify your stance, and better communicate your ideas 

And this is part of the reason I feel it's so important to stay close to the creative process rather than outsourcing everything to an LLM.

The more I delegate to an AI assistant:
- the less I wrestle with ideas
- the less I refine my own communication
- the less I strengthen my writing muscle

I mean, there are actual cognitive benefits of writing/thinking/doing.

Not sure if ya'll listened to an episode with Steven Bartlett, Dr. Daniel Amen, and AI neuroscientist Dr. Terry Sejnowski, but they discussed the possibility that overreliance on AI tools like ChatGPT could contribute to cognitive decline over time. 

The argument is straightforward: the brain functions like a muscle. Without regular effort, it weakens.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't use AI to help think through things, find different angles, and help edit, but I still think taking a bit of extra time to really think through what you are writing is so important. 

To each is their own, but that's my story and perspective at this point.

For all marketers, what newsletters do you "actually" read?

And for those you read, why do you like them? 

Tag a company/person below that's creating awesome content. 

I want to subscribe.

Here's what I said to a Head of Demand Gen who wanted to 2x SQL volume on Google Ads. 

"Sure, but here's what we need to do first. 

- Analyze what keywords have the highest conversion rate + lowest cost per SQL
- Determine if there is enough in-market volume to capture
- Understand if we have enough budget based on established baselines (e.g., cost per SQL)."

After analyzing a mix of offline conversion data in Google, paired with Salesforce data, we identified ~10 keywords driving the majority of SQLs over the last 6 months. 

Then we reviewed the available impression share and whether we were losing impressions due to the budget. 

And then we reviewed baseline data from the last 6 months, which showed that: 

The ~600k in spend over the last 6 months resulted in a cost per SQL of around $3,500.

For context...SQL = demo request that meets ICP criteria

However, across all keywords, the baseline is closer to $4,700. 

The primary reason?

- Some keywords have a lower conversion rate
- Some have much higher costs due to competition

So then we had to make a decision...

1.) Stay live on all keywords, accepting a higher cost per SQL
2.) Narrow down on the 10 keywords with a more efficient cost per SQL

No surprises here... we are narrowing down for now, as we have more efficiency with these 10 keywords + available in-market impression share, since all keywords are high-intent. 

So to 2x the number of SQLs, here's the quick math: 

- $100k spend at $4,700 = 21 SQLs / month

Compared to the 10 keywords at a lower cost per SQL

- $100k spend at $3,500 = 28 SQLs /month

We're still a bit short on the same spend, so we'd have to increase the budget or find another lever to pull (e.g., improve the conversion rate or invest further in out-of-market buyers on social channels to increase awareness). 

I'll let you know in the next month or two once we get more data, but this is the high-level process to think through. 

A few caveats to be aware of:
- Avoid dramatic swings in budget
- As you scale budgets, be prepared for efficiency to fall
- We didn't analyze ACV/pipeline value for this (due to some data accuracy issues with sales), but is important as some keywords could be more valuable than others. 

P.S. While this is a performance marketing approach to scaling budgets, channels like Google Ads don't operate in isolation. 

Google Ads heavily favors last-touch models where CRMs single-source conversion points. 

It's important to understand the other trackable touchpoints across the buyer's journey to make capture channels like Google even more efficient. 

The efficiency of your capture channels is strongly correlated with your investments in out-of-market buyers, where brand preference is established.

We need to stop running marketing on sales math alone.

Marketing and sales serve the same outcome, revenue, but they operate differently.

Sales are primarily focused on converting in-market demand 

Marketing shapes preference before buyers come in-market and converts in-market demand. 

We know most buying decisions are influenced long before a form fill, a demo request, or a reply to an outbound email. By the time a prospect talks to sales, their shortlist is often already formed.

So when we reduce marketing to:
- MQL volume
- CPL targets
- “Marketing-sourced” pipeline
- Last-click attribution

We narrow its role to demand capture only, which changes the tactics and objectives marketing uses. 

Let me be clear, demand capture matters. It should be measured and optimized.

But it is not the full job of a marketing manager. 

Marketing’s broader responsibility is to:
- Position the company clearly within the category
- Establish a distinct narrative and point of view
- Build trust at scale before buyers are in-market
- Inform product and pricing with real market insight
- Create brand preference, so you enter deals already in the top three

If you’ve worked in sales at a strong brand, you feel the difference immediately.

Instead of:
“What do you guys do again?”

It’s:
“Our VP has been following you for a while.”

That familiarity lowers friction, shortens cycles, improves win rates, and protects pricing. It makes every outbound sequence, paid campaign, and sales conversation more efficient.

The tension between “sales-sourced” and “marketing-sourced” pipeline didn’t appear by accident. It’s a byproduct of how we chose to measure impact. Which means: 

- Over-reliance on last-click attribution
- Short-term pressure from leadership and boards
- Optimizing for immediate lead volume over long-term demand
- Treating marketing as a quota-carrying SDR team

None of this is about avoiding revenue accountability.

Marketing should be accountable for revenue.

But revenue accountability should include:
- Pipeline velocity
- Win rates
- Sales cycle length
- Brand search growth
- Direct traffic
- Share search
- Efficiencies gains in the bottom-of-the-funnel

Not just how many MQLs were sourced from marketing this quarter.

It’s solved by redesigning how we measure and compensate marketing teams. By establishing a shared number between sales and marketing and evaluating the impact not just on a single UTM-appended contact in the CRM, but on broader funnel efficiencies across all sources.

And we aren't going to solve anything by simply ungating content or testing out the next trendy tactic. 

It is solved by addressing the systematic issues that cause these symptoms and ensuring we get marketing back to doing what marketing should have been doing.

For those who haven't heard, LinkedIn launched a new feature last year called Partnerships. 👇  

What is it?

Any time someone posts and mentions your brand, you will see it in the partnership section, allowing you to get approval to promote that post via thought leader ads. 

Discoverable posts in Partnerships include: 

- Employee posts from your organization
- LinkedIn articles authored by members
- Newsletter articles published by members
- Posts from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree+ connections
- Video content from vetted publishers available for in‑stream ad placement for select accounts 

For those not already using a brand monitoring tool, this is pretty cool. 

It's pretty straightforward: 

- Go to campaign manager
- Go to the partnerships section
- Click on the post that mentioned your brand
- Request to promote
- Promote

The biggest use case we've seen for Omni and other SaaS brands is creating dedicated influencer campaigns featuring customers, prospects, or people who give positive brand mentions. 

Instead of relying on organic reach, you pay for more reach, plus control who actually sees the post. 

Trust and authentic real stories are a top priority for many brands and this is one way to bring those stories to light.

Seeing what your competitors are bidding on is mostly a waste of time.

Yes, it’s “directionally interesting.”

But, at the end of the day: 

1.) You have no clue how that keyword is performing. 
2.) They may not even be intentionally bidding on those keywords. 
3.) They likely have a different strategy and ICP definition than you

Instead, you should focus more on your own customers to understand:

- The words your customers use to describe your product on sales calls.
- The problems and jobs they repeat in demos. 
- Then see what keyword themes have keyword volume and which ones have historical performance.

TL;DR Sure, you might get some keyword ideas from Ahrefs, Spyfu, Semrush, and others, but take anything you see with a grain of salt. 

Focus more on your customers and your own performance. 

It was awesome to finally meet Valerie Riley! Appreciate you having me on the Unbounce show. 

Want to watch the rest, just go to YouTube and type in: Paid media strategy 2026: Surviving rising CPCs and budget shifts in SaaS

Please be careful when interpreting these emails from Google. 

While the intentions behind this email, I'm sure, mean well. 

These can have serious consequences without additional thought. 

For example: 

1.) Does lower CPA mean better quality down-funnel to SQL/pipeline?
2.) Does this mean I'll have better coverage on key high-intent terms?
3.) As I scale, what control do I have over keywords I'm spending money on?

No doubt, you, me, your mom, and your 2nd-cousin-removed all want greater efficiency. 

But not at the cost of quality. 

Stay safe out there.

Full-funnel ABM for B2B brands with 5+ figure deals | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

You need more pipeline that turns into revenue. But:
- Most marketing leads never convert to deals
- ⁠Outbound is in continuous decline 
- All the investments in trendy programs, agencies or tech didn’t move the needle. 

It’s time to try implementing full-funnel sales and marketing programs. 

Why? 

So you can:
- Accelerate this quarter’s revenue while building the future pipeline
- ⁠Convert 5-15% accounts to pipeline
- ⁠Bring marketing and sales teams together to drive the KPI that matters the most: sales velocity. 

We helped dozens of B2B tech companies implement full-funnel marketing and sales programs with 10%+ account-to-pipeline ratio. 

We will take your team by the hand and together, implement a scoped pilot program with clear milestones to prove the key KPIs, before investing in operationalization and scaling. 

To learn more or ask me anything, connect with me here or visit our website at fullfunnel.io



Vladimir Blagojević

Here's why so many good CMOs get fired. 

Leadership wants:
- faster results
- bigger numbers
- cheaper acquisition 

...all of that at once. 

This short-term ROI pressure pushes CMOs to do what gets measured: 

When forced to choose under pressure, CMOs are 5X likely to pick demand over brand. 
(recent study by Jon Miller, Ray Rike /Benchmarkit, Bill Macaitis and Carilu Dietrich). 

But this creates a structural problem.

- We put all our effort into meeting this quarter's number
- We don't invest in long term programs that build awareness and trust 

A few quarters later, the pipeline dries up. 

The numbers back this up: we're spending $2.00 to acquire $1.00 of net-new ARR. And the CAC payback time has been constantly increasing by 12.5% at median since 2022 (Pavilion).

Why is this happening? 

Leadership still believes that marketing is like a gumball machine: you put in $ and get $$ out (credit: Jon Miller). 

We know that reality is different: 
- Non-linear, complex buying journeys
- Early influence matters: more than 80% of buyers short list products they discovered before the buying process

But our attribution hides the early influence, and the "credit" goes to the last touch was before the deal, which reinforces the gumball machine thinking. 

So, without clear attribution to early and middle-funnel activities, leadership doubles down on short-term ROI.

And when the pressure doesn't bring results, CMOs get fired. 

The cycle repeats. 

--- 

As long as we stay in this loop, things won't change. 

But ripping out the entire infrastructure and starting from scratch is not an option either. No leadership will support it. 

The solution is an evolution, not a revolution. 

It all starts with a small-scoped pilot: 
- No new hires, a small cross-functional team 
- No extra budget, scoped down to a small set of accounts we have 'the right to win'
- Attribution: the team gets the credits for the pipeline created 
- The main goal is not volume, but effectiveness. By working together, from awareness to pipeline, that we can turn a higher % of high-value accounts into deals

Full-Funnel ABM and Demand Gen For B2B Companies w/ High ACV | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

Here's the pattern every CMO recognizes.

You're pressured to pour everything into hitting this quarter's number. You squeeze every last drop from the existing pipeline and demand. 

By meeting this quarter's number, you've depleted next quarter's pipeline. You didn't get to invest in the activities that build awareness and trust six to nine months out.

And leadership happily raises the bar. 

We're trapped in a system that punishes long-term thinking but demands long-term results.

"I'll survive this quarter, show ROI, and next quarter will be better."

No, it won't. That's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The cost of non-strategic decisions compounds: 

1. ATTRIBUTION

65% of CMOs struggle proving marketing's revenue and pipeline contribution. This is the reality of last touch-attribution. 

Deals take months, sometimes years. Buyers might read your content, attend an event, see you on LinkedIn, talk to a partner, and only then reach out to sales.

But in the CRM, all that early influence disappears. The "credit" goes to the last touch before the deal.

Instead, consider a blend of self-attribution, account-based attribution, and customer interviews. Look for qualitative signals, not just quantitative ones.

2. PROGRAMS

Jon Miller's research: "when faced with budget cuts, marketing leaders are 5X more likely to protect demand gen budget than brand.

Odd, given 73% of companies agree that brand investment is a long-term investment that makes demand generation more efficient."

Instead, we need programs that balance long-term brand awareness, future pipeline development, and this quarter's goals

3. TEAMS

In most B2B orgs, there's a lack of cross-functional collaboration with sales.

Even with best intentions to work together, misaligned incentives get in the way. 

But without an orchestrated effort across GTM teams, it becomes impossible to influence the complete buyer journey. 

4. TECH/AI

Leadership hears "AI" and imagines instant pipeline at lower cost.

Yes, we can create more content than ever. Pull public data points and "personalize" at scale.

But all we're doing is scaling tactics that didn't work in the first place.  

Instead, AI should scale processes we have proven and refined through many iterations:
- Pilot → document & refine → train AI 
- Show AI what 'good looks like' with examples of high-quality output (quality benchmarks)
- Use deep insights and research about the target ICP segment as input for AI

---

The way out? 

1. Strong fundamentals (brand narrative, differentiation, positioning, ICP, buyer journey...)⠀
2. Full-funnel programs: awareness → demand capture → pipeline → Buyer enablement→ CS & expansion
3. Balanced time horizons 

- Long-term programs create brand and increase sales velocity
- Medium-term programs create future pipeline
- Short-term programs help to accelerate pipeline and capture the demand

Understand customers. Shape the journey. Build brands buyers choose.

Here's how most people promote webinars 👇

1) Email your list
2) Paid promotion
3) Run the webinar
4) Send the list of registrants to sales to follow up 
  (sales ignore it)
4) Email the webinar recording
5) Put webinar on your website and gate it 
  (visitors ignore it)
6) Plan the next one 

Here is how to make webinar sales' favorite playbook, not the most ignored. 

1) Co-create webinar narrative together with sales to address the interests and challenges of target buyer persona.

To avoid blatant product pitching, start by answering a question:

Imagine having a 60-min lunch with your target buyer persona who is not aware of our product and is not in the market. How would you highlight potential challenges, seed the grains of change and explain the solution?

2) Agree on promotional plan¹

Make sure sales actually want to invite their target accounts. 
Agree on:

Accounts and titles (how many?)
Touchpoints (e.g. sales - email + LinkedIn, marketing - newsletter + LinkedIn ads)

¹ attached the actual promotion plan we use. 

3) Develop post-event playbook based on account engagement history

What sales hate is when marketing marks all sign-ups as MQLs and asks to follow up. It's a waste of time because of misalignment with the intent:

Webinar sign-ups ≠ buying intent.

Instead, agree on post-webinar analysis:

- matching contact engagement to account engagement
- identifying tier 1 & tier 2 accounts that are already engaged
- identify new tier 1 & tier 2 accounts (first engagement) for account research
- define "bridge" activities (e.g. free strategy sessions) to book discovery calls instead of pitching a demo

4) Develop a post-webinar nurturing content hub

Content hubs are microsites with nurturing content:

- Recording
- Slides
- Useful resources
- Bridge activity 
- Case studies

The beauty of the process?

Your buyers will come to the hub multiple times, might share with your team, while you receive notifications about the content consumption and engagement. It creates a perfect opportunity for timely, fully personalized follow-ups.

---

If sales don't see a value in the webinar, they will never promote or follow-up with webinar "leads".

Educate -> engage -> create demand -> research and understand the buyer journey stage and current needs of your prospects -> create "bridge" activities / buyer enablement.

This is how you influence the buying process with webinars and generate pipeline TOGETHER.

B2B marketing plans often fail because of one reason:
Lack of clarity.

Bad plans include vague activities that are usually misunderstood by leadership and sales.

Brand awareness is not about running ads for ungated content.

ABM is not about making a wish list of accounts, running display ads, and automated emails.

Lead nurturing is not about setting up an automated sequence of emails to push the discovery call.

Yet most plans just mention these programs without any clarification.

If sales and leadership don't support these plans, it's not because they don't get marketing.

It's because they:

- Don't see the impact of these programs on the bottom line
- Don't expect it to be a cross-functional motion and expect marketing to run everything without sales involvement

Good marketing plans are:

1. BALANCED

- 80%: always-on programs that work historically
- 10%: short-term cross-functional campaigns co-created with sales
- 10%: experiments

2. DETAILED AND FOCUSED

All programs have clear:

- Detailed timeline
- Goals and expectations
- Success and failure criteria
- Resources involvement
- Leading and lagging indicators to track program efficiency
- Forecast
- Weekly planning and review meetings (see an example: https://lnkd.in/dN_hMyfQ)
- Campaign visual outline (or deck) to show how it impacts the pipeline and revenue

Our template: https://lnkd.in/dSmufFht

3. INTERCONNECTED AND CROSS-FUNCTIONAL

Every program impacts another, avoiding siloed execution.

Thought leadership ads to strategic accounts generate first-party engagement signals sales use for further engagement.

Webinars are tailored to a specific use case, buyer persona, and subset of accounts. They repurpose thought leadership content and are repurposed later as market research.

4. INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE BUYER JOURNEY

Marketing plans shouldn't be "brand awareness vs. demand capture" or "new pipeline vs. expansion."

If you focus on brand only, your sales process will struggle. We saw several MarTech companies generating buzz around them but struggling to convert brand into demand.

If you focus on demand capture, you'll miss the majority of the market.

Good marketing plans generate revenue while creating future pipeline, growing share of wallet, and preventing churn.

5. BACKED BY DATA

Marketing plans based on gut feelings or broad data always fail.

Plans that include revenue trends and sales pipeline velocity across markets, segments, and use cases (clusters) help make smart bets.

---

The reality is simple:

Our 2026 marketing plan won't fail because our CEO "doesn't get marketing". 

It will fail because we fail to clearly connect the dots between the activities and revenue.

Sales: We want to run ABM with you. We need to improve lead quality and pipeline coverage. But our BDR has only 5 hrs/week. Here is what happens next:

ABM WITHOUT DEDICATED SDR.

- Broad list-building. No prioritization based on awareness, engagement and intent signals. All accounts are assigned by territory and size.

- AI-based "research" pulling generic public information anybody can get in second from ChatGPT

- Marketing runs more targeted demand gen to generate MQLs and inbound inquiries with further handover to sales

- Sales sends the same outbound cadences personalized by title and the research pulled from ChatGPT

- All accounts are treated the same way

Pause for a second and guess:

Who is blamed when this program fails?

The right answer is.....

Marketing!

ABM WITH A DEDICATED SALES REP

- Joint program planning: from narrative and account selection to account development

- Clusters replace segments and verticals for targeting

- All accounts are prioritized based on revenue potential, vendor awareness, relationship, and product-need evidence

- In-depth desk and 1:1 research mapping product value to key initiatives and buyer JTBDs

- Detailed buying committee mapping including Champions, Decision-makers, Power Users, and Influencers

- Continuous nurturing and engagement playbooks aligned with intent level and vendor awareness

- Constant multi-threading

- Constant value-added touchpoints: personalized messages based on captured signals, thoughtful commenting, content sharing, event invites

- Joint weekly reviews and planning

TLDR;

To make ABM work you need to have a rep that is constantly researching and engaging with the buying committee groups of target accounts. Not via automated cadences, but via constant, personalized engagement.

No budget and technology will compensate it.

Some sales teams sometimes think that "not pitching all the time" is not prospecting. But they forget about the reality of enterprise B2B buyer journey.

First, you need to be known.

Second, you need to get into a shortlist.

Third, you need to have credibility.

Fourth, you need to help creating a compelling reason to change now and sell internally.

It's not possible with quarter air cover, marketing campaigns and outbound cadences. It's possible with a continuous relationship building with strategic accounts.

Here's how to align ABM playbooks with long sales cycles and continuous nurturing. 

Our industry problem - engaging enterprise accounts the same way we sell $49 products. The mindset behind: if they are in the market, they will buy. We just need to hit them at the right time with the right message.

But this is fundamentally wrong when it comes to selling high ACV products. The low-ticket playbook simply doesn't work.

The enterprise sales cycle is long not because we send bad emails. It's long because corporates and mid-size companies operate in a completely different reality:

- Strategic initiatives
- Long-term planning
- Low velocity
- Complex buying centers with long decision cycles

Your solution should be a part of their current strategy. If it doesn't fit, nobody engages. But even if it does fit, enterprise buyers usually have their preferred vendors shortlist.

Sometimes you can break through, but it's more luck than a predictable motion.

WHAT YOU NEED INSTEAD

1. Always-on playbooks (continuous execution)

ABM Content 
- Thought leadership nurturing content
- Account love letters
- Paid & 1-1 content distribution
...

1-1 account development
- Account research
- Strategy sessions
- Multithreading
...

Ongoing social engagement 

3rd party signal tracking
- Hiring
- Stack changes
- Executive interviews
...

2. Program-based playbooks (planned initiatives)

E.g. 
Month 1: Content collabs
Month 2: Account-based webinar playbook 
Month 3: Follow-up workshops
...

3. Signal-based playbooks (reactive execution)

1 & 2 generate signals. 

Our job here: determine the level of intent and plan the right action aligned with it. 

TLDR;

To create future pipeline, you need to have continuos nurturing playbooks aligned with the length of enterprise buyer journey.

Here's a key B2B metric that no one tracks. 

It measures the impact that matters the most when you sell 6+ figure deals: 

Account-to-pipeline ratio.


WHAT IS IT? 

Percentage of target ICP accounts that turn into sales accepted pipeline. 

Effectiveness > volume. 


WHY IT MATTERS? 

When selling to enterprise accounts, you don't need a lot of them, you need the right ones. This sales director of $300M B2B SaaS Company said it best: 

"We need to focus on sweet-spot accounts, to close them quicker, deliver value quicker, expand quicker” 

ICP ≠ TAM (and the math sucks)

If you take a sober look, how many strategic target accounts that "you have the right to win" this year are there in the market? 

For many B2B companies selling 6+ figure deals, that's maybe a few hundred accounts.

And when a team is playing a volume game, their account-to-pipeline ratio is often not larger than 1%. 

On a few hundred accounts, that's a few customers. 


NOBODY TRACKS THIS NUMBER 

Ask your team. Ask sales. Ask revenue ops.

Nobody has this number. No one is looking at effectiveness. 

Last-touch attribution is the easiest to measure. Most tools were built for it—LinkedIn, Google, HubSpot. They show you metrics that make them money, not those that that tell you whether your GTM is working.


WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN YOU FOCUS ON THE NUMBER 

"Over a six month period out of 130 target accounts, we managed to engage 35 accounts in multiple meetings and project discussions. 

There is a stronger perception that we are peers to our clients, that we are part of the community. As a result'
- We receive more strategic and early 'of the record information'
- We speak directly to directors and top executives.
- We are at the right level, and we know earlier if there is a budget or buying intention"

This is what Magali shared during the interview she gave at Full-Funnel Live. 

Context: she was a sole BDR in the ABM team selling to global-1000 enterprises, with deal sizes of $500,000+ and budgets set far in advance (sometimes three years at the time).


HOW THIS NUMBER IMPACTS YOUR CAREER

Many teams are under short-term ROI pressure, and are forced to play the volume game. 

There is no optimizing your way out of that situation. 

But ripping out the entire infrastructure and starting from scratch is not an option either. No leadership will support it. 

The solution is an evolution, not a revolution. 

It all starts with a small-scoped pilot, where goal is not volume, but effectiveness. By working together, from awareness to pipeline, that we can turn a higher % of high-value accounts into deals. 

When this ratio moves, the conversation shifts from "prove it works" to "how do we do more of this"?

And when results are that visible, nobody asks for attribution proof.

Misalignment despite the best intent.  

The broken B2B playbook leads to horizontal misalignment on all levels, and moves marketing away from revenue. 

Here is how horizontal GTM misalignment leads to missed revenue targets.

Different marketing and sales functions receive their own KPIs that are not aligned with the revenue target: 

❌ Content - traffic
❌ Demand gen - MQLs
❌ Field marketing - Sign ups
❌ Client success - NPS
❌ SDRs - # of lead gen touches & meetings booked
✔️ AEs - pipeline won

Each function develops their own programs and pursue their own KPIs instead of a joint GTM strategy. In most cases, different units are not aware of the programs executed by others. 

Instead of joint planning, the system runs on handoffs:

- Marketing passes leads to SDRs. 
- SDRs pass meetings to AEs. 
- AEs are the only ones responsible for revenue targets.

No one is responsible for influencing the full buyer journey end to end and creating sales opportunities.

As long as the company is hitting their revenue targets, nobody questions the broken model. But when the targets are missed, all the fingers are pointing to marketing.

The truth we ignore: it’s impossible to create a robust and scalable GTM strategy without cross-functional work of GTM teams: sales, marketing, content, demand generation, client success and product.

Without coordinated effort across GTM teams, it's impossible to influence the complete buyer journey.

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