Fullfunnel.io

At Fullfunnel.io we are growing B2B companies with long and complex sales cycles since 2006.

We were and still are “in trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, and bring to the table our 30+ years of combined experience and knowledge.

I've been selling and marketing B2B tech and services since 2006. 

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows.

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc).

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge.

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

Co-founder

Trenches - B2B marketing community

Trenches — a community created by B2B marketers for B2B marketers who are in the trenches every day getting their hands dirty in growing B2B companies with high ACV and long sales cycles.

We talk about ABM (account-based marketing), marketing-sourced pipeline, demand generation, lead nurturing, GTM strategy, buyer’s journey, and all other hot topics that are ignored in the sales communities.

Community is FOREVER FREE.

Co-Founder

6-Week ABM Playbook

An actionable account-based marketing playbook and training to consistently land sales opportunities with your dream clients in 6 weeks or faster. 

Cut through the noise and get busy decision makers to respond to your campaigns without spammy outreach, wasting money on enterprise tech stack or expensive ip-based advertising, and significant shifts in the company’s organization.

The account-based marketing strategy and campaigns we are sharing in this playbook can be executed by a team of 2 people (1 marketer + 1 sales) on a Ramen budget.

Author

Scale XL

Helping B2B entrepreneurs install a reliable process to predictably fill their pipeline with high-value clients. 

Scale XL process addresses the 4 critical challenges of client relationship building:

1. TARGETING: identify, target and engage with more of YOUR business’ ideal potential clients, not someone else’s. 
2. ATTRACTING: define, create and communicate compelling messages that cut through the noise and clearly establish your business as a natural answer to your ideal potential client’s problems.
3. QUALIFYING: qualifying which prospects are ideal for YOUR business and which of them are ready, and then applying different processes to sales-ready leads and those that need nurturing.
4. ROI: fix low return and underwhelming results of B2B marketing 

Scale XL relies on a process to build relationships with more key decision makers in your market by targeting, attracting and nurturing your ideal clients, not someone else’s.

And if your business is anything like 100+ niche B2B software and service companies I’ve helped before, it’s likely that my methodology could help you do just that.

To find out if this process can work for your business, feel free to get in touch here, or visit our website at scalexl.com.

Founder

Lean Startup Circle Brussels

We're a group of entrepreneurs taking lean startup and customer development techniques to practice in our startups. We're ready to talk implementation and share data from our experiments.

http://www.meetup.com/lean-brussels/

Every meetup addresses a different (lean) startup topic (minimum viable products, go to market, sales for startups, customer interviews...)

Most startups fail not because they fail to execute and build their product, but because they fail to build a viable business around it. Lean startup helps us validate our business model as fast as possible. Lean startup is a collection of techniques built around maximizing validated customer learning thought fast Build/Measure/Learn iteration loops.

*The Lean Startup is a trademark and service mark owned by Eric Ries.*

Co-Founder and Organizer

Growth Hacking Belgium

Your new business went online yesterday and you've got a marketing budget of zero. How are you supposed to create a movement around your product? How can you get to your first thousand - or million - customers? Starting from zero, it feels impossible. Enter the growth hacker. You may not have heard of growth hacking yet, but you've certainly used the billion dollar brands built by it: Hotmail, AirBnB, Facebook, Dropbox, amongst many others. This group is for people who want to adopt the growth hacker mindset. It is all about sharing hands-on tactics that bring you results.

Grant Snap

Grant Snap is an online service that helps you get your innovation funded by providing guidance in preparing winning R&D grant proposals.

€375 billion gets granted annually in the EU. Get your share.

Sirris

I help software companies in different phases of product development and innovation:
•	For entrepreneurs: to turn their ideas into viable product concepts by applying customer development and lean startup™ methodologies
•	For companies building product for early adopters: introduce flexibility needed to quickly respond to new opportunities and changing customer requests 
•	For companies shifting their focus from customer to market: to master product management
•	For companies established in a market: to deal with increasing product complexity and how to differentiate through innovation

Account Manager Software Industry

Development activities (middleware components of a distributed data storage system, test management system, framework and tools used for automation of system tests) 

Participating in introduction of agile methodologies in two R&amp;D teams and setting up test automation infrastructure

Senior Software Engineer

Sony

Participating in the transition of an R&amp;D team into a product development organization 

Development activities (several packages of DVB MHP standard for digital television, an integrated environment used for development, execution and automatic reporting of functional tests for digital television)

Setting up a test department (conceiving a test strategy and infrastructure, test specifications/reviews, recruiting, supervising and training of testing personnel)

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

Accounts that fit your ICP ≠ buying intent. Instead of wasting SDRs' time and ads budget, segment your accounts into three lists:

1. CLUSTER ICP
= Vendor unaware + Product need unknown

🎯 Goal: Build brand awareness at scale
📢 Marketing: Cluster-based demand gen
🤝 Sales: light touch, <10% of effort (e.g. connect with DMs and Champions)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: <5%

2. FUTURE PIPELINE
= Vendor aware + Product need unknown

🎯 Goal: Validate product need & nurture
📢 Marketing: Cluster-based demand gen, feature in content
🤝 Sales: multi-touch, 30% effort (progressive profiling, connect with buying committee, trigger-based engagement, invite to ABM events...)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: <30%

3. ACTIVE FOCUS 
= Vendor aware + Product need evidence strong

🎯 Goal: Sales opportunities
📢 Marketing: Personalized content, interviews, gifting
🤝 Sales: 1:1, 60% effort (multi-threaded engagement, personalized offers, strategy sessions...)
📊 Opportunity likelihood: High

----

The impact when you align your playbooks to this routing:
→ SDRs stop wasting time on unaware accounts
→ Stop irrelevant personalization 
→ Ad spend has higher returns
→ Marketing-sourced revenue increases
→ You build future pipeline while accelerating this quarter's deals

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

No VP of Sales ever said: "I expect marketing to orchestrate our engagement playbooks". 
Yet this is what often happens with ABM:

Marketing:

- Creates multiple sales playbooks & engagement sequences
- Designs timeline
- Add best practices

Then, marketing shares with sales 87-pages deck and asks to implement.
One month later: "Sales doesn't use our playbooks and content".

This year we've interviewed two dozen enterprise B2B Saas VP of Sales to dive deeper into the challenges they want to solve with ABM and get marketing hands-on help.

Here are 5 core areas:

1. AWARENESS AMONG STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS

Awareness is not created by running more ads, drip personalized nurturing and outbound cadences.

Awareness is not created by creating more AI content nobody is going to read.

Awareness is created through the engagement with ICP ecocystem:

- High-quality thought leadership program with SMEs & execs
- Top-notch events
- Collaborations and direct engagement with the target accounts
- Constant engagement with the communities and thought leaders

2. CONTENT THAT CHALLENGES THE STATUS QUO

Modern B2B buyers don't need one more "How to cut your costs" whitepaper. Modern buyers want to see:

- Industry trends and stats
- Concrete practical examples and best practices: dashboards, workflows, templates
- How to challenge an internal inertia and status quo

In most cases, sales don't use marketing content because it doesn't fall in any of these categories. 

3. COMPLETE ACCOUNT ENGAGEMENT

Most organizations use lead handoff as a default function:

MQL generated -> assign to SDR.
Webinar signed up -> Assign to SDR

In 2026 to cut through the noise you need to have a holistic visibility:

- Who engaged with what content and ads
- What were historical interactions
- When was a spike in high-intent page visits
- Which events buying committee members has attended

This way sales move from desperate pitching to meaningful 1-1 account planning.

4. BUYER ENABLEMENT

You don't win deals with fancy pitch decks. You win when your Champion can sell your product at the next internal meeting.

Sales can create business cases showing challenges, cost of inaction, and recommended solutions.

But they need marketing's help with:

- Product screenshots that address specific buyer questions
- Relevant customer testimonials and references
- Data snapshots

5. CLEAR MESSAGING

Nothing frustrates sales more than prospects asking: "But what exactly does your product do?"

--- 

In many organization, sales ignore marketing, don't buy in for joint programs like ABM, and gate-keep access to customers. 

How to fix this:

- Make both functions revenue-responsible
- Get fundamental alignment on GTM strategy (ICP, buyer journey, value prop, metrics)
- Fix knowledge gaps through joint planning, involvement of SMEs
- Define a small pilot team on one market/vertical
- Run regular pipeline review meetings during the pilot
- Document and share results before scaling

Why Sales Ignore Marketing

What's marketing role in sales outreach and engagement?

A VP at Snowflake got this question at a sales summit:
"How can a rep get your attention with cold outreach?"

His answer: "You can't."

"I don't trust cold outreach. But if someone I trust vouches for the solution, I'll take a look."

This is the reality for most enterprise buyers.

They ignore cold outreach, skip your ads, filter out your nurture emails.

But they listen to their team, peers and trusted industry voices.

That's why your ABM team can't just target buyers.
(and why marketing needs to own part of the engagement)

Here's how to engage the entire ecosystem around your buyers:

1. Peer-to-peer multithreading

The other day I heard from a VP of Sales: "it's hard for a young SDR to get the attention from a senior executive".

Their solution? Their CEO and CMO regularly share thought leadership insight on LinkedIn, and book senior executives as guests on on their podcast.

2. Non-decision makers with influence

Back to the Snowflake VP: "The best way to get my attention is to have my team bring something to me."

Executives rarely care about the tactical problem your product solves.

Here's how it works: A power user experiences a problem daily (e.g. losing candidates to poor hiring experience). That problem impacts a business objective the executive does care about (e.g. slowing market expansion).

You engage the power user. They bring it to their boss when the problem comes up. 

3. Industry peers

People trust their peers more than they trust vendors.

Our buyers mention they discovered our content because someone from their network engaged or shared it. Often someone who will never buy from us.

The more you're present and connect to people from the industry, the more your brand or content get recommended.

4. Industry voices 

These can be leaders in renown companies, leaders from technology partners, or even local "micro-influencers" known in a city or a region.

We regularly host partner webinars, local partner events in target locations, and run an annual summit with people respected by our buyers. 

5. Niche media and communities

Event organizers, industry media companies, communities and podcasts. 

♜ Arthur Castillo shared: "The best community sponsorships weren't standard packages. They were custom programs: co-hosting research, integrated campaigns, or bringing community members to our dinners in key cities."

--- 

Cold sales outreach won't get you in the door with senior buyers.

But when the whole team builds relationships across the ecosystem, you become known, and increase the chance of ending up in their consideration set.  

That's the shift: marketing isn't just generating leads and providing air cover.

Marketing creates trust, presence, and recommendations in the networks your buyers already rely on.

P.S. Andrei Zinkevich and me are breaking down the role of marketing in ABM on our next Full-Funnel Live: 
https://bit.ly/48azQnB

ABM ≠ industry & persona personalization. This misses: 
- Actions matching buyer intent & awareness
- Progressive discovery & personalization 

Here's a framework that shows this more clearly. 

1. Level of intent (vertical axis)

- TAM*:  Any company that could potentially use your solution (e.g. My HR solution is used by companies 200+ employees)
- ICP*:  Companies matching your ideal profile (e.g. 200+ people tech companies who are actively hiring)
- Cluster: Priority segment with competitive advantage (e.g. SaaS companies with distributed dev teams, hiring remote developers)
- Need:  Validated problem that needs solving
- Buying: High-priority, can't postpone, actively looking for solutions

(* yes, I know that strictly speaking "TAM" and "ICP" are about fit, rather than intent - but look at my drawing skills, do you think I could draw a 3D diagram?)


2. Level of awareness (horizontal axis)

- Cold: No awareness of your solution
- Aware: Know what you do, no relationship yet
- Relationship: Active back & forth conversation
- Meeting: Discovery calls with buying committee members


3. Aligning actions w/ level of intent and awareness

ANY + TAM → Qualify. Do they fit our ICP?
COLD + ICP → Create awareness
AWARE + ICP → Research to uncover cluster and account insights
AWARE + Cluster → Build relationships, start progressive discovery
RELATIONSHIP + ICP or Cluster → Validate the need through progressive discovery
RELATIONSHIP + Need → Book discovery calls
MEETINGS BOOKED → Discover needs, priorities, stakeholders. Create the opportunity.

(In practice, we use a simpler framework with three lists:
- Cluster ICP: Researched accounts, unaware, unknown need. Goal: create awareness.
- Future Pipeline: Vendor aware, need unknown. Goal: validate need and build relationships.
- Active Focus: Validated need, established relationship. Goal: book discovery calls and create opportunities.)


4. Progressive discovery and personalization 

By progressive discovery, I mean: 
- Account research 
- Progressively gathering insider information, challenges and priorities shared by target buyers via
→ Content collabs
→ Webinar polls/Q&As/registration forms
→ Social and email conversations
→ Transcribed interviews and calls

With each new insight, personalization becomes better. 

--- 

The mistake? Assuming that industry and persona personalization is enough. 

In reality
- Same industry ≠ same challenges. Relevant personalization requires deeper insight 
- Most relevant insights come from buyer conversations 
- Outreach by unknown people gets ignored even when relevant

Industry-based ABM v.s. Use Case-Based ABM. 

If your product has multiple use cases, stop targeting industry verticals, and start targeting clusters.

VERTICAL-BASED ABM 

Most ABM programs create vertical-based list, messaging and content. 

But if those accounts have different use-cases and challenges, you risk ending with content and messaging that's either: 
- Irrelevant to the majority of accounts you target
- Generic, “common denominator” messaging that doesn’t differentiate you and doesn’t address the highest priority need

CLUSTER-BASED ABM

Cluster: group of companies with a similar challenge/use-case, despite their tier or vertical.

With cluster targeting you can:

- Cut through the generic noise with messaging, content and case studies that address the highest priority need that's top of their mind
- Differentiate in a way that matters to them (by showing how you're supporting that use-case better than competitors)
- Focus on accounts with a high probability to become a sales opportunity instead of just chasing vertical Tier 1 accounts

EXAMPLE 

As an ABM lead for Hubspot, I might create an ABM program for B2B SaaS companies. After all, they all need sales and marketing tools. It’s also helpful to have industry related assets, case studies and messaging. 

But different SaaS companies have different buying triggers: 

- Switching from a legacy system, because they lack functionality and integrations
- Companies that want to start ABM but their CRM/marketing platform don’t support it
- Startups that outgrew their separate siloed tools

You can already see how each of these use-cases deserves completely different messaging. 

---

Once you've defined the clusters, the next step is mapping accounts to them.

Here is how.

1. Export all your won deals and segment them by use-case

2. Group all accounts by use-case and compare revenue metrics 

- Revenue
- Average deal size 
- Sales cycle length
- Lifetime value 
- # of successful case studies 

You'll be able to make an unbiased decision which clusters have a higher priority.

3. Select a top cluster aligned with your goals and run deal analysis 
- Top 5 clients by LTV/ACV
- Top 5 fastest deals
- Recent 5 lost deals

4. Extract patterns

- Firmographics
- Technographics
- Buying committee structure
- Won and lost reasons
- Signals and account insights that signal the specific use-case

5. Develop a cluster ICP with qualification & disqualification criteria

--- 

Now you can build a highly targeted list of accounts that are more likely to convert into pipeline and be a good fit, and align your program with their high priority needs. 

We recently published results and a breakdown of four programs where a switch to cluster-based ABM generated $7 million in pipeline: 
https://lnkd.in/dZWKNAbC

You have one quarter. 20% of content marketer's time. And you need to generate pipeline.

What do you do? 

1. Place smart bets

Look at your best recent deals and figure out WHY they purchased.

What was the underlying business objective? Why now? Why you?

Drill down to specific attributes, needs, pain points, events and situations so you can:

- Find other accounts with similar needs and priorities (=account cluster)
- Understand what will attract their attention

2. Plan an educational event 6-8 weeks into the quarter

The event (webinar, field event) should address a key challenge or transformation that accounts from the target cluster need to solve.

Why events work:

- Focuses the team on a concrete deliverable 
- Forces them to break down generic challenges into specific jobs to be done, problems, solutions and root causes — then connect them into a narrative
- Each element of the event narrative becomes a LinkedIn post
- Creates a natural milestone with a hard deadline
- Genuinely useful to target accounts

3. Turn the event into LinkedIn content for sales

Sales shares content directly from their profiles because
- They connect daily with buyers
- It creates opportunities to start conversations 

This also shortens the feedback loop: you see which content resonates and leads to conversations. 

4. Break content into three streams 

#1 Expert content (Goal: Nurturing). 
Infographics, templates, proprietary data, how-tos
→ positions sales as trusted advisors
→ each post becomes input for the event deck

#2 Curated content (Goal: Engagement). 
Collaborations, roundups, co-created posts
→ pulls in voices of buyers, peers, partners
→ lets sales use collaborations to start conversations and get insight from target buyers

#3 1:1 account content (Goal: Awareness). 
"Account love letters" and personalized content hubs tailored to specific high-potential accounts
→ guaranteed awareness at target accounts
→ works incredibly well to start conversations with buyers

5. Repurpose outputs

Each piece of content feeds into the next:

LinkedIn --> Event Deck --> Content Hub 
Content collabs (& webinar polls) --> LinkedIn --> Event --> Market research report 

--- 

This is the process we use with clients and for FullFunnel.

In Q4, we did it for a cluster of B2B companies struggling to prove marketing attribution to pipeline while juggling executive pressure to do more with AI.

Results:
- 12 new posts
- 1072 webinar signups 
- 160 people shared their top priorities and challenges with us 
- 52 accounts with deeper back&forth conversations 
- 2 new closed-won deals 

The step most companies struggle with?

Selecting a cluster where they have a highest chance to win, and linking it to a content strategy that will cut through the noise, and help sales start conversations. 

Andrei and me are  breaking this down in detail on the next Full-Funnel Live: 
https://bit.ly/4pSSPZN

Do reps even matter, if 80% B2B buyers buy from vendors they preferred BEFORE contact with sales? 

Here's what Jon Miller says (quoting Kerry Cunningham's update of 6sense's B2B Buyer Experience Report for 2025):  

1. SALES RELATIONSHIPS AS BRAND AWARENESS 

Reps are a critical part of building your brand preference and awareness. 68% of buyers *personally knew a seller* from the winning company before the buying process began (Kerry’s research).

We see this over and over again. The teams who involve salespeople early in the buying process always see way better results from their programs. 

2. PREVIOUS VENDOR EXPERIENCE > BRAND AWARENESS

95% of net-new wins came from *existing vendor relationships* - not just brand awareness. 

For new business deals: 
- 48% already bought from that vendor
- 13% used the vendor at a prior company
- 34% evaluated the vendor (but didn't buy)

And get this: less than 5% had no direct experience but were familiar with the brand.

The disheartening conclusion here: our efforts to build a brand have a very small effect (5%). 

Category leaders - companies with the biggest market share - have an enormous advantage. 

But what should the rest of us do? 

Jon's advice: 
✅ Hire sellers with experience selling to your core ICP
✅ Give them time and air cover to build relationships outside active buying cycles
✅ When you lose a deal, make sure you have complete notes, named champions, mapped stakeholders, and a clear path to reconsideration. Because that "loss" might be the reason you win the next opportunity

I'd add: 

☑ Double down on expansion and renewal programs 

And practically, in your net-new programs: 

PRIORITIZE accounts with: 
☑ Buyers who are a former customer 
☑ Existing relationships 

INCREASE "RELATIONSHIPS AS BRAND AWARENESS" by:
☑ Letting sellers work on future pipeline and relationships, too
☑ Increasing the footprint in target accounts by multithreading 
☑ Involve non-sellers (your subject-matter experts, executives...) with industry connections 

MEASURE:
☑ Don't only measure revenue from won deals, but also relationships, target account footprint, and ALL qualified net-new opportunities (remember: lost opportunities account for 34% of future won deals). 

Because, as Jon puts it, the deals you win next quarter were decided 6 months ago.

"Can you give examples of 1:1 content? And the format you deliver it in?"

Here are three examples, along with a step-by-step how-to. 

EXAMPLE 1. Account Love Letter 

Example: "Here is how I'd optimize the new enterprise pipeline ABM strategy for multi-regional B2B tech company like Agicap."
(https://lnkd.in/ebUxaR6w)

Format: LinkedIn post + content hub + 1:1 messages. 

How to: 

1. Every week, check new engagement and intent signals for your target accounts 

2. Identify accounts that reach criteria to be promoted 
- From Cluster ICP to Future Pipeline list (e.g. repeated visits to high intent pages + 1+ named buyer engaged via social or newsletter or webinar)
- From Future Pipeline to Active Focus (e.g. provided insight about priority problem via progressive profiling)

3. Run account research and define blind spots 

- Map the buying committee, their responsibility and KPIs 
- Research information we need to know about the target account to create relevant content and a personalised offer (e.g. they started an expansion to a new region, challenges: lack of brand awareness in target regions, stronger local competition...)
- Plan touchpoints to get insider information (=progressive profiling)

4. Plan the activities you will use 

In this example, Andrei Zinkevich created the "account love letter" LinkedIn post, and used it to connect to the members of the buying committee. He also created a personalized content hub and used in in follow up (see below). 

EXAMPLE 2. Personalized Solution 

Example: "What do cycling and complex B2B SaaS have in common?"

Format: 1:1 letter sent in a parcel with a book about the prospect's hoby (Alpine cycling). 

How to (continued): 

5. Start mapping your value proposition with the identified KPIs, goals, and challenges of every buying committee member.
6. Write a 1-page personalized solution for target buying committee members. Include:
- Context
- How exactly your product helps to achieve their goals or solve the challenges
- Relevant social proof

EXAMPLE 3. Personalized Content Hub 

Example: in both examples from above, we created a personalized content hub. 

Format: deal room tools (e.g. we use Aligned), to quickly spin up 1:1 content hubs. 

How to (continued): 

7. Map content that can help demonstrate how you can solve the challenges identified in research, along with any relevant social proof, product information and answers to questions frequently asked by buyers 

8. 1:1 distribution of the content you've created to the buying committee members. 

---

BONUS EXAMPLE: Answer to Buyer's Question 

The first line of this post was actually a question we got during our last week's Full-Funnel Live. 

I decided to create this LinkedIn post as an answer, and use it to "show, not just tell". 

Next step: I'm going to share it with the person who asked.

"We struggle with 1:1 and 1:Few ABM. We just can't figure out personalization at scale" - VP of Marketing shared on a call (and was laid off a week after). 

Here's the brutal reality in many B2B orgs:

- Teams pressured to "personalize at scale"
- Any "non-scalable" approach is disregarded
- Teams deploy AI research and/or AI SDRs
- Every prospect receives a "uniquely irrelevant message" (Jon Miller)

Teams get blamed. Leaders let go.

Why? 

Because they MISUNDERSTAND what personalization is.

Personalization ≠ "{first}, {some unique insight / signal}" followed by a pitch asking for a call. 

ABM personalization = matching account insights with individual buyer needs across the buying journey.

Here's how we go from manual personalization to personalization at scale.

1. Pick an engaged strategic account

Together with an experienced AE, define:
- Key questions and information you need to know about this account 
- Sources and platforms where you can find that information 
- Run an actual research on that account 

Save as an example of high-quality output.

2. Train AI with proper input

- Deep insights and research about the target ICP segment
- Always request quotes to prevent hallucination and preserve buyer language
- Give AI detailed prompt describing the research questions and sources 
- Show it what 'good looks like' with the example of high-quality output to use as a quality benchmark

3. Make account research a joint responsibility

AI research is complemented by:
- RevOps input on buying signals, engagement and intent data
- Marketing research of industry trends and competitive landscape
- SDRs research of the buying committee, and recent role changes

4. Include insider information 

The deepest insights you gain only from 1-1 conversations.

SDRs and AEs run regular 1-1 engagements with buyers to build relationships, understand where they are in the buyer journey, and their current needs.

5. Create a 360° account view

Create a holistic account dashboard with all collected insights.

6. Create account-specific content, not "personalized templates"

Match content with the buyer journey stages, buyer persona, and current needs.

Sales distributes it manually to target buyers and listen to their feedback.

Save successful examples validated by the buyers (with responses, engagement and calls). 

7. Feed the proven formats to your AI model to replicate them in the future. 

You'll then only need to polish and customize it.

Same principles: deep insight + playbook as prompt + quotes + quality benchmark. 
---
Personalization at scale is only possible when there is a proven playbook in place.

The only way to create the process and quality output benchmarks is MANUAL first. When you see what works, you can scale it with AI.

But it requires JOINT marketing and sales work, not just pushing your VP of marketing to find a solution to "personalization at scale".

Customer interviews are overrated. 
Use progressive discovery instead. 


1. Turn natural touchpoints into progressive discovery

Customer interviews = conversations you have with your customers, from the moment they are prospect through the whole lifecycle. 

→ First sales calls with prospects
→ Business case building with your champion 
→ Demos & discussions with other buyers 
→ The moment someone signs 
→ Onboarding sessions with new customers
→ Quarterly business reviews with existing accounts
→ Support tickets and feature requests

Even: conversations you have with prospects and customers on industry events. 

Where you make a difference: 

2. Ask the right questions at the right time

Good conversations always focus on their world, and ask the right question at the right time. 

E.g. 

- Business triggers, problems, how did they discover you → initial discovery 
- Cost of doing nothing → business case building
- Purchase criteria → consensus building & demos with users and buyers 
- Why us → when they sign 
- Value → post onboarding, reviews 
- General "out of buying cycle" topics → buyer research, customer events, social... 

3. Systematically process and develop customer insights

Interviews ≠ Insights. 

Record, transcribe, structure and process the input to get to real insight. 

Regularly review the insight and updates with the team. 

4. Turn the insight into action

Insights ≠ Actions. 

Lots of teams collect insight, and only use it to update their copy. 

You can do much more. Refine targeting, qualification and disqualification criteria, account research process, content strategy, buyer enablement... 

5. Voice of customer

Use their actual words. 

Not your positioning deck. Their language. Their pain points. Their priorities. 

--- 

Thank you Patrick Cumming  for starting this discussion. 

Patrick's workflow is brilliant: mine first sales call transcripts, extract the top 5-7 pains/gains, use their exact words in your ads.
He saw a 40% lift in SQLs with the SAME budget. Just "using their exact words to build ad content". 

Bottom line: customer research is not a project.

It's an essential, evergreen process that includes progressive discovery, structured insight collection and review, and continuously refining your GTM as the market and your understanding of it evolves.

Andrei Zinkevich

I live and breathe B2B marketing since 2006. 

Before launching Fullfunnel.io, I spent 8 years in the enterprise segment working for Kimberly Clark and Biosphere Corporation.

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows. 

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc). 

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge. 

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

Trenches — a community created by B2B marketers for B2B marketers who are in the trenches every day getting their hands dirty in growing B2B companies with high ACV and long sales cycles. 

We talk about ABM (account-based marketing), marketing-sourced pipeline, demand generation, lead nurturing, GTM strategy, buyer’s journey, and all other hot topics that are ignored in the sales communities. 

Community is FOREVER FREE.

Split Tech City

Split Tech City is a community for tech companies that operate, live, plan to launch a business or simply love the Mediterranean seaside. 

Whether you want to find a local tech partner, access the tech talent pool, relocate to Split, or find a job in the tech space, Split Tech City is for you. 

Learn more and sign up for upcoming events here: https://en.split-techcity.com

Strategic Advisor

Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Podcast

The System B2B Marketing Show is a weekly podcast hosted by Andrei Zinkevich. 

Every week with B2B marketing professionals we dive deeply into topics as a B2B marketing strategy, full-funnel marketing, inbound lead generation, lead nurturing, sales and marketing alignment, sales and marketing automation, content marketing and account-based marketing (ABM). 

Our goal is to help B2B marketers, founders, CMO, and head of growth teams implement system B2B marketing and increase their sales pipeline, scale revenue, and customer growth.

Visit our podcast page: https://getleado.com/the-system-b2b-marketing-show/ and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes (for iOS users) or on Stitcher (for Android).

Host

ROIplan

ROIPlan's mission is to empower B2B marketing teams and help them to create revenue-driven marketing plans. 

I started my career as a sales rep and, after five years in sales, switched to marketing. Another eight years, I worked as a CMO and B2B marketing consultant with 50+ B2B Companies from Europe and North America.

Every company I joined, I saw the same problem: 

Stakeholders and B2B sales teams didn't believe marketing and didn't believe in marketing. They didn't see the marketing impact on revenue.

One of the biggest problems is that marketers don't know how to present a marketing plan for executives and sales teams. Board members don't see a direct positive impact on revenue and decline plan and budget.

Besides this, there are lots of challenges that marketers face when working on marketing plans:

- Find history and the reports of the experiments in the past
- Allocate marketing budget in the most efficient way
- Prepare executive reports that show the ROI of the campaigns
- Orchestrate and align marketing campaigns with the sales team
- Prioritize experiments and focus on those that might generate the highest possible ROI
- Align non-lead generation campaigns with business goals and evaluate success criteria
- Managing lots of Google Sheets and project management tools to plan, present and execute a marketing plan

All this led to the idea of creating a marketing planning software that will simplify marketers preparing revenue-driving plans and get executive approval.

-> Create revenue-driving marketing plans and get executive approval in ROIplan:
-> Identify the top priority campaigns and experiments
-> Allocate your marketing budget most efficiently by channels and experiments
-> See what experiments generated the highest ROI in the past and what performed poorly
-> Get your campaigns and budget approved by the supervisor or your client 

Try ROIplan for free by clicking the image below.

B2B Marketers & Founders

Are you skilled B2B marketer or Founder? Do you agree with 2 principles

1) Quality over quantity
2) Strategy and process before tactics and growth hacks?

If you've answered "Yes" to all 2 questions, you’ve got into the right place. 

WHOM YOU'LL GET ACQUAINTED WITH?

You'll get acquainted with other awesome and skilled B2B Marketers & Founders from the whole world who love to learn, share and grow. 

Amongst them Sujan Patel, Ben lee, Gilles De Clerck, Stapho Thienpont, Guillaume Moubeche, Juraj Zamborsky, and many others.

There are no "internet marketing" and "funnel gurus" who teach you about "money making machine" or "get rich quick" schemes. Only real business.

Ad.Wize

I help middle&enterprise businesses to launch my flagship consulting methodology called "Integrated marketing system". This system consists of 7 phases, creates steady streams of target leads and helps to retain existing customers. 

As well I help FMCG manufacturers with distribution development, entering new markets and increasing sales.

My background:

+ 11 years in marketing&sales 
+ Working with customers from 13 countries
+ My consulting methodology is working in 19 different markets
+ I've worked and helped with distribution development 12 FMCG manufacturers from whole Europe 

My Specialities:

• Integrated Marketing
• Business Growth
• Lead Generation
• Inbound marketing
• Distribution development

Want to work with me? Shoot me an email at andrei@getleado.com.

Founder & CEO

Biosphere Corporation

In 2012 I became a national key account manager and was responsible for increasing sales and customer growth.

Key Account Manager (National Chains)

Via GmbH

I became a marketing director of VIA GmbH company and was responsible for account-based marketing and acquiring big distributors and the biggest supermarket chains of Ukraine. As well, I was responsible for helping European manufacturers to enter the Ukrainian market and increase sales there.

Marketing Director

Kimberly-Clark

I’ve started my marketing career in 2006 as a sales rep at Kimberly Clark Corporation. I was promoted to area sales manager, regional sales manager, and regional trade marketing coordinator and then switched to marketing in 2011

Area Sales Manager and trade marketing coordinator

Co-founder @Fullfunnel.io| ABM & full-funnel marketing for B2B tech companies with high ACV and long sales cycle

We transform B2B Tech and Service-based companies from siloed sales and marketing to full-funnel account-based marketing and demand generation. 

We help your team develop an ABM strategy, launch pilot programs, operationalize and scale the programs without ramping up budget or depending on external agencies.

Here is how.

1. ABM STRATEGY.

We go together through a 3-week initial strategy sprint that includes: 

- Deep assessment of current marketing and sales processes
- Challenges both teams face and the root reasons behind them
- Revenue and channel analysis to identify focus markets and ICP for the ABM campaigns
- Custom ABM strategy development including detailed:
- Marketing and sales alignment with ICP, strategy and playbooks

2. LAUNCH PILOT ABM PROGRAM.

Within a single quarter, we’ll work with a pilot team to implement a minimal viable full-funnel program, without pausing existing processes. The pilot team usually consists of one marketer and one sales development rep.  

When we hit the target KPIs, we move to the operationalization and scaling stage.

3.DEVELOPING FULL-FUNNEL ABM FUNCTION.

At this stage we combine ABM with demand generation function to create a holistic model that creates awareness, generates demand and activates accounts that are already engaged across the full funnel.

SPRINTS INCLUDE:

-> Account-Based Marketing

-> LinkedIn demand generation and social selling

-> GTM strategy

-> Sales enablement

-> Demand generation and accounts warm-up

Why Work With FullFunnel.io?

1. 30+ years of niche experience

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge.

2. Knowledge transfer.

Your team gets consistent support and training, including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack, and process maps.

3. Revenue alignment.

We align marketing and sales teams around revenue, ideal customer profile, target accounts and lead scoring criteria which helps to consistently hit your revenue quota and operate as one Revenue Operations team.

OUR CASE STUDIES INCLUDE

- $300k from a pilot ABM campaign with a software development company

- 9 qualified sales opportunities and 3 new contracts, 10x ACV from an account-based demand generation campaign with AdTech development company

- 7 sales-qualified opportunities from a pilot ABM campaign in the Nordics region with a cloud solutions vendor

- 76% response rate, 36% accounts engaged, 5 opportunities from a pilot ABM campaign

At Fullfunnel.io we are growing B2B companies with long and complex sales cycles since 2006.

We were and still are “in trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, and bring to the table our 30+ years of combined experience and knowledge. 

I live and breathe B2B marketing since 2006. 

Before launching Fullfunnel.io, I spent 8 years in the enterprise segment working for Kimberly Clark and Biosphere Corporation.

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows. 

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc). 

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge. 

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

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.

But 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 1st-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", "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, use cases (clusters) help to make smart bets.
---
This Wednesday, we've invited to Full-Funnel Live the head of marketing at Aligned, Ashley Lewin, to share her approach to marketing planning with GTM focus cycles.

Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/dCS6t6MK

Here is our buyer enablement cheat sheet:
https://lnkd.in/dVhSwK5i

GUIDES

-Account-based content: How to influence accounts at different stages of their buyer journey
-Buyer Enablement: How to help your B2B buyers to BUY from you
-How to match touchpoints with different buyer journey stages and use personalization to nurture target accounts
-How to Use a Mutual Action Plan
-How to Write, Think, and Talk like an Executive (to Get Big Deals Done)

TEMPLATES

-Business case template (feat. Nate Nasralla)
-Mutual action plan (feat. Gal Aga)

STACK

- Aligned: digital rooms & content hubs: https://lnkd.in/d9g84yq9
- Granola: AI-notetaking and summaries of the calls without joining the calls
- Claude: Extracting customer quotes and anecdotes about the challenges, goals and needs

Let me know which resource was the most helpful and which one you'd like us to add.

AI agents are the new Tamagotchi of 2025. Everybody talks about it. Some cool kids show sophisticated dashboards. And rarely a B2B enterprise organization really adopt it.

We've interviewed 46 enterprise B2B marketing leaders about how they use AI (swipe the deck), and what challenges they face. And, boy, it seems that all that glitters is not gold.

Here is the reality of adopting AI outside the LinkedIn bubble, with quotes from CMOs.

1. LACK OF AI STRATEGY.

There's pressure to bolt on AI everywhere, but often no clarity on why or what success looks like. Without that, AI risks becoming a shiny toy that creates more noise than results. But AI is only effective when plugged into a clear revenue strategy - otherwise it just fuels the hamster wheel, and you end up flaunting the toy for the sake of not being accused of lagging behind your peers.

2. EXPECTATION GAPS.

C-suite often hears 'AI' and assumes instant results/lower costs, but in reality, it still requires quality data, strategic direction, and human judgment. 

3. DATA QUALITY & CRM READINESS.

Hands down, data readiness. We've got a messy CRM. This includes weak labeling of wins, losses, and revenue. We've also got too many disconnected systems. It's a challenge getting info pulled into our MAP and CRM.

4. SILOED IMPLEMENTATION.

Beyond technical and security limitations that restrict integrations and data flow, the bigger challenge I've seen is the siloed approach to AI. Different teams are running their own AI initiatives without connecting them across the full funnel — marketing, SDRs, sales, and post-sales. Instead of improving alignment, we risk creating more disconnect, with teams moving at different speeds and on disconnected systems."

5. QUALITY CONTROL & REVIEWS.

AI has made it easier to produce content, but that just shifts the pressure to senior reviewers - myself included.  Reviewing the output takes twice as long. Ultimately, I still don't think what LLMs are producing is good enough in terms of tone of voice, angle, and approach.

6. TRUST & ACCURACY.

The biggest challenge with AI is trust. It is hard to trust how secure it is, but I have also found in many scenarios that incorrect information finds its way into the responses.

7. LEARNING CURVE & INTEGRATION.

The biggest challenge is learning tools, integrating them into workflows, and choosing what's worth our time to implement with so many tools and resources available. All while pipeline and revenue targets remain unchanged. 

TLDR;

Before you'll buy in the next shiny AI object, think about these challenges, and look at real examples of how AI is used.

Big thanks to everybody who contributed to the research:

Sam, ♜ Arthur, Elena, Hanna, Briana, 🌱 Allison, Aurelien, Giorgia, Samantha, Mindy, Sara, Stuart, 👨🏻‍💻 Dipak, Jamie, Rafael, Amelia, Holly, Holly, Kathleen, Justin, Nick, Connie, Jonathan, Tim, Tarek, Sophie, Kayleigh, Sheri, Nicole and many more whom I can't tag due to the limit of characters :)

46 AI practices in enterprise B2B marketing

I was genuinely interested to discover the root reasons why marketing faces pushback from sales, and interviewed 20+ Enterprise AEs, SDRs and VPs of sales. Here are 5 reasons they've shared:

1. THE PROTECTIVE MINDSET.

You know the story. You ask to interview a strategic account for a case study. Sales immediately says: "No, these are my contacts. We don't need to bother them."

The root cause is usually the "credit issue" - sales wants to prove they're the irreplaceable relationship owner, that deals happen purely because of them.

This is a part of a way bigger problem, where you have two choices: immediately trigger the change management and conversations with your leadership or find a new job.

2. THE DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE GAP.

One team I worked with had a marketer creating programs for technical buyers (software engineers) without any technical background. The content and messaging completely missed the mark.

You can’t gain the sales trust until you fix the domain knowledge gap and start involving (or working closely) with subject-matter experts. Here is an example: https://lnkd.in/dsUf7RFM

3. MISUNDERSTANDING SALES CHALLENGES.

You present a solution to sales that solves a problem you think they have. They push back. Why? Because you never actually asked what their real priorities and challenges are.

If you don't understand their day-to-day reality, you're solving imaginary problems.

Ashley Lewin shared her case last week: https://lnkd.in/dSQ4eT_d

When she started at Aligned, she heard a recurring complaint: the lead handoff process between marketing and sales was broken. She sat down with a sales leader, defined how the broken handoff process impacts revenue, and co-created a simple battle plan.

This approach immediately demonstrated marketing’s commitment to solving sales problems, and building the necessary relationship to run bigger initiatives together.

4. DIFFERENT INCENTIVES.

Sales is measured on revenue. Marketing is often measured on... MQLs? Traffic? Brand awareness metrics that don't connect to revenue?

I've heard multiple times about this case: Marketing comes to the board meeting celebrating improved traffic, better LLM visibility, hitting MQL targets. Meanwhile, sales is missing revenue targets.

From the sales perspective: "These guys are getting celebrated while we're drowning. And now they want to tell us what to do?"

5. NAIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT.

You create a playbook and tell sales: "This is what you should do." You expect them to follow it.

People don't change just because you ask them to. Change requires understanding their motivations, addressing their concerns, showing early wins, and getting their buy-in during the creation process - not after.
---
The good news?

There are quick tactical fixes to go from misaligned, siloed functions to revenue teams. Read tomorrow on our Substack: https://lnkd.in/dSje9cKc

What does marketing own in ABM?
Spoiler: it's not air cover + personalized landing pages.

In low ACV and short transactional sales, marketing runs the conventional ABM playbook: 

- tracks the search intent
- ad clicks
- alerts sales on the account engagement

and doesn't help with further account development because it's often enough. 

But in an enterprise environment with 12-18 month sales cycles and more than 250+ nurturing touchpoints required to generate a discovery call, it simply doesn't move the needle. Not to say that sales disengagement happens really fast because of lack of a meaningful progress.

In ABM programs that performed really well (see Customs4Trade: https://lnkd.in/dKVE2bnF, CrossKnowledge: https://lnkd.in/dBKymbaT , Benchprep: https://lnkd.in/d-rSjKeT), marketing was actively involved in the execution.

Here are 5 areas that marketing owns in ABM to make it work:

1.ACCOUNT-BASED CONTENT.

Not your blog articles or PDFs, but the content that is optimized for a specific:

-Use case (1:many)
-Buyer persona (1:few)
-Buying committee of a specific account (1:1)

2.RELEVANT ACCOUNT SIGNALS, ENGAGEMENT AND INTENT DATA.

Often, besides the obvious signals (money raised, new executive hired), neither marketing nor sales holistically track all the engagement with their strategic accounts. 

But fixing account blindness and making a cohesive overview of all engagement touchpoints helps:

a) to prioritize all accounts
b) plan the next meaningful steps besides the standard outreach email

3.MEASURING AND REPORTING.

In long sales cycles, you can't measure your program efficiency just by revenue because of the revenue delay. 

You need to have a simple but holistic dashboard that presents weekly progress:

-Account velocity 
-Leading indicators
-Lagging indicators
-Discovery calls, pipeline, revenue

4.DOCUMENTATION.

Often, the early success of an ABM program can't be replicated because of:

- Lack of structured and documented playbooks aligned with a specific timeline
- Internal examples and benchmarks (how the "good" looks like)
- Planning principles (account qualification, prioritization, reseach, etc)

To scale ABM and avoid it being another random act of marketing, marketing needs to work on documentation from Day 1.

5.ENGAGE THE ACCOUNT ECOSYSTEM FOR AWARENESS AND NURTURING.

While sales owns buying committee engagement, in our best ABM programs, marketing team engaged with:

- Marketing peers from the target accounts
- Industry media and thought leaders the buyers are following
- Communities where the buyer personas are consuming content
---
There are 2 more areas we are going to share and present practical examples with Vladimir Blagojević this Wed, 9.30am EST - 3.30pm CET. 

Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/d6eKARvH

We don't create awareness through ads and outreach. We create awareness through marketing & sales playbooks and ecosystem:

MARKETING AND SALES PLAYBOOKS

1. Thought leadership.

- Guides, case studies, best practices shared by leadership and sales
- Thought leadership ads targeting strategic accounts
- Detailed case studies

2. Social engagement with the target buyers.

- Peers connections 
- Commenting
- Content distribution

3. Content collaboration.

Co-creation with the strategic buyers:

- Market research
- Best practices / trends
- Roundtables
- Interviews 

4. Events.

Value-added, educational events designed for strategic buyer personas about specific use cases or challenges:

- Webinars
- Summits
- Workshops

ECOSYSTEM

Ecosystem = channels where target buyers look for content or engage with their peers. Marketing owns awareness creation in 4 major areas:

1. Communities and associations:

- Involving SMEs into valuable threads
- Co-creation with community admins and members 
- Sponsored value-added events, not a product pitching

2. Industry PR.

- Constant engagement with industry podcasters to get opportunities for the leadership to be a guest

- Guest posts in industry media: blogs and newsletters 

- Content promotion through sponsorships

3. Engagement with industry thought leaders and analysts.

- Value-added commenting 
- Video and audio interviews / quotes
- Sponsored thought leadership: best practices mentioning your product

4. Partners.

- Joint events and promotion
- Constant engagement
- Content co-creation and distribution
---
My biggest bet: only the companies that know how to engage their buyers will win. 

Not through ads or personalized outreach, but through meaningful connections, value-added nurturing, constant engagement, and influence through the ecosystem.

Sales often complain about lack of awareness among strategic accounts. Here is how marketing can help (our example):

While writing our first book about Full-Funnel Marketing, we saw B2B marketing leaders under pressure to deploy AI and deliver more without any strategy. We decided to uncover the challenges and best practices.

THE MARKETING & SALES PLAYBOOK

We interviewed VPs of marketing at B2B SaaS companies about how they use AI and the challenges they face. The goal was to uncover best practices while building relationships.

THE ECOSYSTEM PLAYBOOK

We invited industry thought leaders to participate. Knowing our target buyers are Pavilion community members, and they trust Pavilion research, we reached out to Kathleen Booth, SVP of Marketing at Pavilion. 

We created a comprehensive research featuring VPs of marketing and thought leaders, plus multiple assets:

- A report: "How B2B Leaders Deploy AI to Scale Revenue" feat. Kathleen, Jon Miller, Jonathan Bland, Sam Kuehnle, Sara Stella Lattanzio and others: https://lnkd.in/d549sMYB

- "How AI is used in enterprise B2B SaaS: 46 CMOs best practices": https://lnkd.in/dEJ-Dguj

- Newsletter breaking down best practices in detail: https://lnkd.in/dq6QMTzY 

THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT 

Participants engaged back by commenting, sharing these assets from their profiles and with colleagues—giving us exposure among strategic buyers through dark social.

MARKETING-TO-MARKETING ENGAGEMENT

We reached out to marketing counterparts at featured companies: "Hey, we featured your VP of marketing in our AI research. Thought you might enjoy it. We can do co-promotion, or here's a quote you can share on your LinkedIn page."

RESULTS:

- Created awareness through peers and thought leaders, not vendor messaging
- Generated 1,100 webinar signups for "How to survive as B2B CMO in AI era"
- Built relationships with marketing teams of our ICP accounts

The Bottom Line: 

Don't just hand sales a playbook to engage accounts. But actively help create awareness through the buyer ecosystem. Sales teams love it—I've never heard negative feedback about helping create awareness or getting inside accounts.
---
We as marketers often lean toward passive brand awareness through ads, SEO, and blog content, assuming target accounts will notice and engage. 

The problem is competition, where budgets win. If we're not HubSpot or Salesforce, we need proactive playbooks alongside conventional programs.

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The Battle

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