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



Not all types of intent are created equal: 

𝟏. 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 
"I want to be better at my job"

Buying intent: -/low.

Example journey:

1. I'm interested in up-skilling myself, learn the best practices and industry trends
2. I discover good content from a brand, and start following them 
3. I read something very relevant for our situation, and start binging on the related content
4. I get curious about your solution, and check it out
5. I may even reach out to you for a demo in order to understand how it works, and the potential benefits for our brand 
6. I might even try to sell it internally, but quickly realise this is not a priority 
7. I ignore your follow ups 

𝟐. 𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 
"We need a solution to a high priority problem"

Buying intent: +-/medium.

Example journey:

1. Something happens in our business that shifts our priorities to solving a specific challenge
2. I start exploring solutions, by searching, asking my network, in niche Sclak groups 
3. I discover your content our your brand (e.g. someone recommends it)
4. I explore your solution multiple times, and have internal discussions with my team 
5. Since it seems like it might be the right type of solution, I may reach out to you for a demo, so that I can uderstand it better
6. Meanwhile, we're exploring alternatives 
7. We decide we can solve it intenally, or to go for a different solution category 
8. I ignore your follow ups 

𝟑. 𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 
"We want a solution like yours"

Buying intent: +/high.

Example journey: 

1-6: same as for "2. THE SOLUTION INTENT"

7. I evaluate you as a vendor 

8.a) Bad fit: I remove you from a consideration set and start ghosting you
8.b) Good fit: you end up on the short list 

9. I try to build an internal consensus 
10. We review our needs and purchase criteria, and the available alternatives 
11. I introduce you to my colleagues and we dive deeper 

12.a) We decide a competitor is a good fit
12.b) We agree that we: 
- Understand the total cost , and we believe this investment would yield a significant return
- Expect impact Y within Z time 
- Have a clear plan, right people and infrastructure to implement the solution
- Understand the change management required and feel confident we will be able to do it
- Understand the main risks, and have a plan for a proof of concept to de-risk our decision. 

13. You are vetted by our procurement department 

--- 

Not every intent signal is the same. Not even all the hand raisers are ready to buy (from you). 

Study previous deals, and identify the red flags, and the real buying signals. 

Translate those into criteria and questions you need to ask throughout your buying process. 

But... the fact that someone was not ready to buy right now, doesn't mean they won't become ready in the coming quarters. 

Never. Stop. Nurturing.

Vladimir Blagojević

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

Here's something you don't hear a lot about: 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁.

A big win for lots of B2B companies is breaking functional siloes (or what a client once called "random acts of marketing"):

- Content pushing X SEO articles, white papers and case studies
- Field marketing running events and webinars on unrelated topics, without integrated promotion and follow up
- Product marketing creating product collateral and sales enablement tools that are not used or referenced by the content or demand gen teams.
- Demand gen team focusing on capturing the demand that was NOT generated by the assets and activities produced by other teams
...

If breaking the siloes seams like biting off more than you can chew, try this instead:
1. Create a simple shared spreadsheet "calendar" for the next quarter
2. Add all the initiatives by different teams planned for the next quarter
3. Bring the team together and look for small wins, activities that can be integrated, e.g.
- Synchronize social content leading to an upcoming webinar with the webinar topic
- Use relevant collateral and case studies in the webinar follow up
- Repurpose clips from the webinar as social posts
...
4. Pick a single strategic topic or messaging that has a high priority
5. Plan a small-scoped integrated pilot (where each team contributes, and they leverage each other's activities)
6. Document and share all the small (and big) wins and lessons learned
7. Plan the next quarter together to do more of what worked, and fix what didn't
8. This time, synch with sales around their priorities and lessons learned from recent won and lost deals, and plan to pilot small-scoped customer research
9. Keep doubling down on what works and gradually piloting better integrated programs

What you will soon realize is that:

- With rare exceptions, most people want the same thing: to make an impact on the business and help the company grow
- Most of them are struggling to get those results
- The more you’re working together, and driving your decisions based on insights from sales and customer research, the more wins you’re creating

Fully personalized 1:1 ABM program: a Replit + Claude workflow.
(How to deploy AI to generate pipeline, not just scale broken tactics)
 
1. Fix account blindness & data silos
 
Many GTM teams struggle with account blindness:
- Sales are unaware of marketing touchpoints with target accounts (beyond "leads from gated PDFs/webinars")
- Marketing never gets sales’ insights to create relevant content and personalize campaigns
- Data sits in disconnected tools
 
I've been prototyping a solution with Replit’s Agent 3 + Connectors:
- Pull the target account & buyer list from HubSpot
- Connect all account data from siloed systems
 
With this 360° account view , Replit can now help me:
- Prioritize accounts deserving a 1:1 approach (Step 2)
- Run additional deep research of top accounts (via Claude)
- Prepare 1:1 personalized campaign (Step 3)
- Push all this info back to HubSpot so it's available to sales
 
2. Prioritize accounts based on signals and insights
 
We now have a custom Replit dashboard with a combined view of:
 
a) Engagement signals
- High-intent website visits from Dealfront
- Detailed webinar engagement from Goldcast
- Buyer contributions to content collabs
 
b) Account insights from our own and Claude's deep research
 
c) 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
 
d) Buying committee engagement & relationships. Individual buyers engaged via
- Social and email convos
- Webinars (incl. questions they asked, polls submitted)
- Newsletter
 
This makes it easy to prioritize accounts deserving a 1:1 approach.
 
3. Build the 1:1 campaign
 
Replit can use the collected data and additional research to prompt Claude assistants trained to draft:
 
- Account "love letters"
- 1:1 personalized solutions & business cases
- 1:1 Content hubs
- 1:1 personalized messages to use to reach out to buyers based on signals, and to distribute this account-specific content
 
---
 
There is no "magic AI agentic workflow" driving pipeline on an auto-pilot, despite the AI circus in our LinkedIn feeds.
 
This only works because we:
 
1. Use deep insights and research about the target ICP segment as input for AI
2. Always request quotes to prevent hallucination and preserve buyer language
3. Give AI detailed playbooks based on processes we have proven and refined through many iterations. Pilot → document & refine → prompt
4. Show AI what 'good looks like' with examples of high-quality output (quality benchmarks)
5. Build in human feedback loops and (AI + human) quality checks
 
Caveat: This is still POC with some manual plumbing & steps. But it shows how teams can stop using AI to scale broken tactics and mediocre content, and start building real pipeline with AI-powered workflows.
 
P.S. If not familiar, Replit lets non-coders build apps & automations on top of your data with connectors (https://replit.com)

Marketing to sales: Here is a list of webinar sign-ups, follow-up with them.
Sales:...Ignore... Here is how to make webinar sales' favorite playbook, not the most hated:

Step 1: Co-create webinar narrative together with sales to make sure it addresses 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?

Step 2: Agree on promotional plan. 

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)

Step 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 "brdige" activities (e.g. free strategy sessions) to book discovery calls instead of pitching a demo

Step 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.

For the last 2 years, our go-to tool for content hubs has been Aligned 

It allows us to create post-webinar content hubs in a few seconds and send content engagement to HubSpot by automatically matching buyers to accounts.

*See the example of the hub for the most recent webinar here: https://lnkd.in/ddSFQJ5y

Step 5. Track content engagement and develop personalized follow-ups with sales.

We used this process with top-performing sales reps in "conservative" markets: customs software, real estate, climate data, background checks and were always able to book discovery calls with strategic accounts (feat. Bowin, Raf Schroons , Peter Slater , Samuel Adu-Febiri, Jalynn Close , P.T. Vineburgh 
---

TLDR;

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.

#alignedpartner

Most CMOs are faced with an impossible choice: 

Choice 1: Status quo

Keep execitng a broken strategy they inherited. Optimize within constraints. Add AI to tactics that lost effectiveness years ago. Hope incremental improvements will be enough. 

They won't. 

Choice 2: Revolution

Complete overhaul leadership won't fund. New systems, metrics, team structures. Who has that runway? Who has a board accepting two quarters of "rebuilding"?

And get fired trying.

The solution is an EVOLUTION, not a revolution of your marketing mix and how your team works. Here's the framework we use. 

Stage I: Seed the Grains of Change (1-2 months).

- Interview stakeholders about their actual buying experience
- Expose attribution gaps with CFO-level analysis
- Document how current playbooks are actually performing

Stage II: Human-Action Model (2-4 weeks)

- Run full-funnel GTM audit
- Identify change agents who'll support transformation (kudos to Magali Finet-Perdu and Renan Oliveira).
- Define pilot program scope with realistic constraints

Stage III: Plan the Pilot Program (2-4 weeks)

- Design proof-of-concept using structured 6A framework
- Define success criteria and leading indicators for 30/60/90 days
- Create personalized 1:1 activation plays for engaged accounts
- Build simple Excel dashboards to track real progress

Stage IV: Execute the Pilot (3 months).

- Run with existing resources—no budget increases or new tech
- Document what works with concrete examples
- Share wins constantly with leadership and teams

Stage V: Operationalize with Center of Excellence and AI (3 months).

- Turn pilot team into scaling engine
- Create documented playbooks and training materials
- Identify areas for AI automation based on proven processes

Stage VI: Scale.

- Deploy proven playbooks across business units/regions
- Use 80/20 approach for new playbook experiments
- Focus on coaching teams, not micromanaging execution

----
After talking to 50+ B2B CMOs in the last 2 months, I can say for sure:

We are solving wrong f..ng problem to prove marketing performace.

The real problem isn't in conversation rates, not deploying latest AI products, or not doing personalization and nurturing at scale.

It's because the leadership treats marketing as lead generation machine! And in AI era we are expected to deliver faster, better, stronger...

The brutal truth:

Marketing's job is to make your company the obvious choice when buyers are ready to purchase, create conditions for sales opportunities and help sales to accelerate the deals via buyer enablement.

But until we make this change, we are doomed.

How to implement CHANGE

How seasoned B2B leaders deploy AI to scale revenue instead of broken playbooks. 
Problems + solutions + the underlying framework. 

PROBLEMS

1. Tragedy of the commons

We can create more content than ever. Pull public data points and “personalize” at scale.

The result? 

Jon Miller said it best: "every prospect now receives content specifically IRRELEVANT to them" 

We're just teaching buyers to ignore us faster.

"Marketers will use and then abuse any tactic until it becomes ineffective", said Jon.

2. The expectation gap

Leadership hears “AI” and imagines instant pipeline at lower cost.

But reality's different: 

“AI still requires quality data, strategic direction, and human judgment. Without alignment to pipeline metrics, it becomes just another shiny object” - Hanna Kvamme.

3. Hidden taxes

Review Tax: “AI made content faster, but shifted the bottleneck to senior reviewers. Reviewing takes twice as long” - Giorgia Guantario. 

Learning Tax: "On top of everything marketing is responsible for, we are now also responsible for figuring out AI" - Briana (Manrique) Casey.

Raised Bar Tax: "I thought it would free up time for strategic, creative work. Instead, it's increased the pressure to deliver more, faster" (Tarek Fayed)

4. Strategy vacuum → more work, not less

Many companies are deploying AI without a clear strategy.

"If your ‘AI strategy’ is tossing prompts into an LLM, congrats you’ve just scaled mediocrity" (Sara Stella Lattanzio)

And this creates more work, not less: "Without a clear strategy, AI can feel like another demand instead of a time-saver" (Mindy Johnson)

SOLUTIONS

1. Tie AI to GTM outcomes, not output volume

"AI works best when tied to GTM outcomes like conversion rates, sales velocity, or deal size" (Kathleen Booth)

2. Scale what’s proven

Prompt AI with detailed playbooks based on processes you've proven: Pilot → refine → document → prompt.

Real processes augmented by AI: 
- Cluster accounts by pain points (Stuart Coulton)
- Research account insights & signals (Tim Rutten)
- Qualify & progress leads faster (Nicole Gates)
- Sales live coaching on active deals (Sam Kuehnle)
…

3. Use deep ICP research & transcripts as input

Request quotes to prevent hallucination and preserve buyer language. 

4. Show AI what good looks like with examples of high-quality output

5. Build detailed quality checklists

It's always fun to see AI evaluate its own results, back-paddle & fix its own work. 

--- 

Most B2B leaders aren’t struggling with AI.

They're asked for faster results and bigger numbers... with growing cycles, lower budgets, higher CACs & a deafening noise. 

It’s an impossible choice: keep running the broken playbook, or attempt a full overhaul leadership won’t fund.

We're wrapping up an 11k-word deep dive with a third path: a 6-stage framework proven by dozens of B2B companies to win executive trust, and rebuild pipeline without massive overhauls.

Coming soon to fullfunnel . substack.

AI that scales revenue - not broken playbooks

Here is our entire cheat sheet to prove marketing ROI, achieve alignment with sales, and fix attribution gaps 👇

We've interviewed 50+ B2B CMOs over past 2 months for the State of Full-Funnel Marketing report. The most common challenge everybody has shared:

There's constant pressure to hit short-term pipeline targets while building programs that pay off long term. The result is reactive work that makes it impossible to execute a GTM strategy as intended.

When targets get tough, there's a temptation to go broad. Sales pushes Marketing to do the same, but chasing "everyone" dilutes messaging and weakens pipeline quality.

Attribution makes this even trickier.

B2B customer journeys aren’t linear, but in the CRM, all that early influence tends to disappear, and the “credit” goes to whatever the last touch was before the deal.

That creates a gap in understanding and undervalues marketing’s role in creating the conditions for a sale/deal.

This quarter, we worked on the framework for how to address this challenge. 

Here is a list of resources to address these challenges.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT: GETTING BUY-IN FROM LEADERSHIP & SALES

- How to go from siloed sales and marketing to full-funnel cross-functional teams: https://lnkd.in/dxD7khrW

- How to get buy-in from leadership for new programs or GTM change: https://lnkd.in/d63uPqcC

- The honest essay about B2B lead generation for leadership: https://lnkd.in/dThh8gCh

- What real revenue marketing means: https://lnkd.in/d-Qydfxc

FIXING MARKETING & SALES MISALIGNMENT

- Marketing and sales alignment framework: https://lnkd.in/d3quZVUK

- Marketing & Sales Planning: https://lnkd.in/dGat8GDE

- How to refine your lead handoff process: https://lnkd.in/dqXi7E5U

ADDRESSING ATTRIBUTION GAPS

- A framework we use to end the "prove it's marketing-sourced" debates and build true CFO alignment: https://lnkd.in/dxS3GukX

- How to shift from marketing and sales silos to Allbound strategy: https://lnkd.in/dxFs744T

BALANCING SHORT-TERM & LONG-TERM MARKETING

- How to balance the short-term ROI with long-term brand building: https://lnkd.in/dxS3GukX

- How to do a holistic overview of full-funnel marketing strategy: https://lnkd.in/dAvncbEg

- How to plan long-term marketing programs: https://lnkd.in/dFBZGJZF

This photo is hiding two invisible buying journeys. 

What you can see: Our prospect's marketing team watching our video together, one year before they became a customer.

What you cannot see:

Journey 1️⃣ The invisible buying journey 

Jon Miller talks about three layers of invisibility

1. Anonymous research: 70% of the buyer journey happens anonymously, untracked, and by the time buyers reach out, 81% already have a preferred vendor (6sense) 

2. Dark social: 77.5% of B2B buyers discover vendors and influence decisions through private channels (messaging apps, DMs and internal meetings like the one on the photo) (Social Media Today)

3. Buying group fragmentation: The average buying group includes 6-10 people, sometimes as many as 16 (Gartner), and most  never appear in your CRM.

So how do you become a part of those private conversations? How do you create the awareness that adds you to their consideration set? 

Peep Laja mentioned that winning B2B brands often: 

1. Are all in with content as a brand moat - across a variety of mediums. 

But in a world of infinite AI content, we also need

- Specificity - tight ICP, buyer language
- Relevance - top of mind challenges, before they start buying
- A trusted source - e.g. strong personal brand, collabs with industry leaders, their peers 

2. Create a community around the problem and/or identity of the target audience.

This can be an actual community like Pavilion, or a strong network of relationships and collaborations with people your buyers already trust: peers, thought leaders, partners. 

AI cannot summarize or generate relationships and experiences. 

Most marketers get this. 

They know WHAT they should be doing. They just don't get the buy-in, time, and resources to build long-term programs that create awareness and trust.

That's the second lesson behind that photo. 

Journey 2️⃣ Organizational change = internal buyer journey

What you see in that photo is their champion seeding the grains of change. He didn't send a formal proposal. He shared our content in team meetings. Asked pointed questions about why their current approach wasn't working. Built awareness gradually over months before asking for a buy in.

He treated organizational change as an internal buyer journey:
- Map internal buyers (stakeholders)
- Interview them and recruit change agents
- Build internal awareness around three pillars of change: 
1) PROBLEM: People have to acknowledge the problem.
2) PRIORITY: They need to believe that the problem is worth solving. 
3) SOLUTION: They need to see a clear, achievable path forward.

He knew the path forward was evolution, not revolution of their marketing mix and how the team works.

--- 

Winning in B2B requires two parallel buyer journeys: 
1. The external one: building trust with target accounts
2. The internal one: building consensus with your own stakeholders

The best marketing leaders master both.

The 3-pillar Dark Social Playbook we used to drive pipeline at FullFunnel and Chili Piper.

Chili Piper sponsored 10+ communities since 2020, investing over $500k. 
FullFunnel runs it's own community of 3K+ B2B marketers. 

Here's our playbook. 

PILLAR 1: FINDING THE RIGHT COMMUNITY

Before writing a check, evaluate:

1. Engagement quality: 

- popular channels and activity patterns
- # responses per thread (vs. admin-driven posts)
- Unique daily/weekly logins
- Member posts vs. admin posts

If engagement is primarily admin-driven, you're buying ads—not accessing a real community.

2. ICP fit:

- Mentions of your company in last 90/120/180 days
- Competitor mentions in same timeframe
- Keywords your product addresses (be specific)

3. Awareness channels:

- Newsletter with high open rates?
- Events with strong registration vs. show-up rates?
- Can you negotiate custom programs?

♜ Arthur Castillo's biggest insight: "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."


PILLAR 2: REGULAR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Community members must feel you're one of them.

How? Regular engagement in threads, attending events, involving your SMEs. 
Your sponsored activities willl get far more traction if both admins and members know you.

PILLAR 3: VALUE-ADDED NURTURING

Stop blasting generic follow-ups. Here's our framework:

1. Qualification and Segmentation

Remove non-ICP buyers. Segment ICP by three tiers. Define buying committee roles: Champion, Decision-maker, or Influencer.

2. Content Hubs Post-Event

Create dedicated content hubs (we use Aligned) with recording, deck, case studies, frameworks. Track consumption—this reveals actual interest.

Track who consumes what content—this reveals actual interest

3. Progressive Profiling

Instead of: "Thanks for attending! Want a demo?"

Try this: “Did we cover the questions you had? My marketing team is working on ABM strategy for 2026 guide—curious what’s the # 1 thing you’d love us to cover?”

Based on their answer, route them to relevant nurturing content sequences—not demo-begging sequences.

4. Add to Retargeting Layers

Match the current level of demand.

5. Tier 1 & 2 → Personalized ABM

Graduate highest-potential accounts to fully personalized ABM programs.

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TL;DR


Dark social and community engagement strategy often fails because companies treat community engagement as linear funnel. Stop treating community members like MQLs. 

Treat them as peers and watch what happens when you actually help instead of pitch.

Key rules:
- Community engagement is awareness, not a buying signal
- Event sign-ups mean "I want to learn," not "I want to buy"
- Scalability comes from non-scalable operations with best accounts
- You need 3-12 months of nurture before most accounts convert

Taplio

Vladimir Blagojević's Linkedin Analytics

Vladimir Blagojević

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Taplio

.css-1jgreyo{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39,43,72,1) 0%, rgba(33,47,183,1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Vladimir Blagojević's Linkedin Analytics

Vladimir Blagojević

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Vladimir Blagojević's LinkedIn Performance

What is Vladimir talking about?

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Vladimir Blagojević's Linkedin Analytics

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Vladimir Blagojević's Best Posts (last 30 days)