Global Demand Generation at GetAccept | Paid Ads & Growth Advisor | Prove the impact of running LinkedIn Ads by identifying influenced deals and revenue with Fibbler 🦁

Hey! 

I’m Adam. Dad, marketer, and full-time founder.

Right now, I’m building Fibbler, the future of Paid Ads Attribution for SMBs. We’ve grown to 400+ paying customers in our first 20 months, fully bootstrapped.

If you’re into LinkedIn Ads, founder-led growth, brand building, or just want to see me try to build this company without external capital while competing with VC giants, follow along here on LinkedIn.

Adam Holmgren

FIBBLER JUST HIT 500 CUSTOMERS

A year ago we had around 140.

Two regular guys from Sweden building an attribution tool for paid ads in the SMB segment.

Completely self-serve and 60% of our customer base is in the US at this point.

For a long time our entire go-to-market was me posting on LinkedIn and running thought leader ads.

And it worked.

But it also meant that every time a post flopped, I could see the numbers dip. 

Every week where I didn’t have a good content idea felt like I was letting the company down.

So late 2025 into early 2026 we started layering on new tactics. 

YouTube. SEO. Creator programs. Outbound emails.

For the first time growth isn’t just tied to me being in the feed every day. I can’t describe how much lighter that feels.

The other thing we didn’t expect: companies with 100-250 employees are now our fastest growing segment.

We built Fibbler for individual marketers like myself. The person who just wants to swipe their card and prove that paid ads actually work at their startup.

Turns out the same problem exists at larger SMBs too. They just didn’t have an alternative between “do it manually in spreadsheets” and “pay five to six figures for an enterprise tool.”

So now we’re at 500 paying customers.

Still two full-time employees.
Still fully bootstrapped.
Still working from a small town in Sweden.

We have a very clear vision of where we want to take this. 

To build the future of paid ads attribution for SMBs.

And honestly, this is the most fun I've ever had at work. 

P.S.

Fibbler shows you which companies actually view or engage with your LinkedIn and Google Ads, ties them to pipeline and revenue in your CRM, and alerts sales when it’s time to reach out. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/.

Co-founder & CEO at Fibbler | Building the future of Paid Ads Attribution for SMBs | 10+ years in B2B marketing

I’ve never sat in business class in my life.

When you’re bootstrapping a company you just don’t. You book the cheapest flight and move on.

But on our flight to New York yesterday, my co-founder surprised me with an upgrade.

We’ve grown MRR 30% since January 1st and have more than 500 customers now. 

His way of saying we should celebrate a little.

But here’s what I find interesting.

If I look at how those customers actually found us, almost none of them follow a clean attribution path.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀:

They see one of my posts while scrolling during lunch but don’t engage → A week later they catch an ad but don’t click → A peer mentions they use us for attribution → They check our company page on LinkedIn and leave → A month goes by, they see more ads, and then one day the pain gets real enough → They Google “fibbler,” land on our site, and sign up.

CRM says: organic search.

Reality: tons of touchpoints over weeks that we’ll never fully track. 

This is the part most B2B marketers still get wrong.

Buyers don’t move in a straight line, they bounce around, and slowly build trust until the timing is right.

So yes, CTR matters.

It’s a strong signal for how engaging and memorable your creative is.

But the real goal with LinkedIn Ads isn’t just engagement.

It's about reaching as many potential buyers as possible at a healthy frequency, and staying in front of them until the timing is right.

P.S.

Fibbler shows you which companies actually view or engage with your LinkedIn and Google Ads, ties them to pipeline and revenue in your CRM, and alerts sales when it’s time to reach out. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/.

I hit 30,000 followers yesterday and I still don’t fully know how, but I think it comes down to one early decision.

About 4 years ago I started posting on LinkedIn with no real plan, just sharing what I was learning in demand gen.

Over time, people actually started paying attention and it opened doors to interviewing some of the smartest marketers in the world on my own podcast.

And that’s when I made the decision that changed everything.

I decided what I wanted to be known for.

I had a deep passion for paid ads and I felt like so many people had the completely wrong idea about what advertising is actually for.

Everyone was obsessing over clicks and conversions when the real job of ads is to build really strong brands.

So that became my thing. 

I talked about it every single week and never stopped.

My narrative shifted over the years, but when I started building Fibbler, everything clicked. 

Suddenly I wasn’t just talking about it, I was building the product to prove it.

And now here I am, 30,000 followers later, sitting in a pool of pink lions because apparently that’s what my life has become.

If you’re trying to build a personal brand on this platform, here’s my biggest tip: find your narrative and talk about it every single week. 

That’s it.

I found the cheat code for being memorable at events, and it’s not caps, hoodies, plushies, or branded board games.

Look down at anyone’s feet at these things. 

It all looks the same.

So I reached out to this great shoe artist and got these made.

Custom Pink Lion Air Max 1s.

If you don’t know, the pink lion is Fibbler’s mascot. It’s on our clothes and ad creatives. 

Now it’s on my feet.

This afternoon I’m taking the stage at LinkedIn’s yearly Partner Connect.

Once a year LinkedIn brings together their official marketing partners. It’s the room I most want to be remembered in.

I’m talking about what I’m seeing from SMB marketers on buyer journeys, measurement and attribution.

But honestly? I want people to remember the shoes first. 😬

They’ll give me that extra bit of confidence up there.

And maybe, just maybe, a few more people will remember me after.

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It's 4:30am in a hotel room in San Francisco and jetlag has me wide awake. So I'm building a feature I can't believe I didn't think of myself.

Last week Patrick Cumming sent me a simple idea that hit me hard.

"You should build something where you can compare LinkedIn influenced deals versus deals that weren't touched by LinkedIn."

I just sat there.

We've been building Fibbler for almost two years. 

How did I not think of this before.

Because this is the one thing every marketer struggles with. 

You can show reach. 
You can show engagement. 
You can even show impact on pipeline.

But when your CEO asks "would these deals have closed without LinkedIn?" 

You have nothing.

So that's what I've been building these early mornings.

A lift analysis that compares deals touched by LinkedIn versus deals that weren't:
→ Close rates 
→ Sales cycle length 
→ Deal sizes

Side by side.

Is it proof that LinkedIn caused the deal? No. 

But when LinkedIn touched deals close 18% faster and are 30% larger? That's not something you just ignore.

Sometimes you're so deep in your own product that it takes one message from someone else to see the obvious.

P.S. 

Fibbler now lets you compare LinkedIn-touched deals vs. untouched ones, side by side, so you can finally show your CEO the real lift on close rates, deal size, and sales cycle length. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/

We spent $80,000 on LinkedIn Ads over the last 12 months. That’s roughly 10% of our ARR as a bootstrapped startup.

Not to chase form fills.
Not to distribute gated content.

But to become the brand people think of when they think LinkedIn Ads attribution.

Last year I shared what I learned spending $27k. We tripled that over the last 12 months.

This is what our strategy looks like now:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1️⃣ Engagement benchmarks above everything

We hold ourselves to two numbers:
1%+ CTR on image ads
10%+ CTR on Thought Leader Ads

If we're below that, the creative is not good enough. These benchmarks force us to make ads that make people actually feel something.

2️⃣ 70% of our budget goes to Thought Leader Ads

TLAs let me amplify organic content that's already performing well and push it far outside my network. And when you're a founder building in public, TLAs are the closest thing to a cheat code on LinkedIn.

3️⃣ Build your retargeting pool like it's your most valuable asset

We now have around 10,000 people in our ICP retargeting pool. We keep ad penetration above 75%, so we’re reaching nearly everyone who’s already shown interest, with a frequency around 3-4 excluding text ads over a 30-day window.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

4️⃣ Brand compounds. And eventually the numbers prove it.

The hardest part of spending $80k on awareness is explaining it to yourself or your executive team. 

But here’s what happened over 12 months for us:

Branded search: 1,500 to 3,000 per month
Signups: 150 to 400+ per month
ARR: $120k to $660k

You can’t attribute this to a single campaign, but look at the trend and tell me it’s not working

What's next?

✅ We're building an outbound motion based on ad engagers (using Fibbler)
✅ We're also running more TLAs featuring customers and creators

And one last thing.

Last year I said we'd double our budget. We tripled it.

LinkedIn Ads work for all kinds of startups, included bootstrapped ones.

But only if you treat it as a long game, hold yourself to high creative standards, and be willing to put a decent sum of money on it.

P.S.

Fibbler shows you which companies actually view or engage with your LI Ads, ties them to pipeline and revenue in your CRM, and alerts sales when it’s time to reach out. Try it free for 30 days at https://www.fibbler.co/

Five years ago I attended my first SaaSiest event, and now we’re there as a vendor with Fibbler, a real full-circle moment.

Let me back up to that first event.

I was working in-house as a B2B marketer and honestly didn't know what to expect.

I'd been to plenty of events before where you sit through sessions that sound great on paper but turn out to be theoretical fluff. 

And then everyone awkwardly stands around during the breaks.

SaaSiest was different.

The sessions were actually practical and useful. 

But more importantly the vibe was just different.

People genuinely wanted to talk to each other. Not in a forced way but in a "hey, what are you working on?" kind of way.

And for someone like me who is a bit of an introvert, that was a big deal.

People actually came up to talk.

I've been to pretty much every SaaSiest since then.

And every time I left with new connections and that feeling of being around people who are building stuff and figuring it out as they go.

Fast forward to now. 

On May 5-6th we're joining our first ever event as a vendor at SaaSiest, and me and our pink lion Fibbs couldn't be more excited.

From 5x attendee to vendor with my own company. 

That's a full-circle moment I didn't see coming five years ago. 🥹

I spent the last 10 years in startup marketing and I've never seen things shift this fast. And most companies won't adapt fast enough.

We grew Fibbler to 400+ paying customers in 20 months. 

And almost everything I learned along the way goes against what most B2B companies are doing right now.

1. Brand is your only moat

There are 200,000+ SaaS companies right now. Features get copied overnight. The reason people pick Fibbler over tools with way more features than us? A pink lion they cant stop seeing in their feed.

2. Go deep on one channel before you try to be everywhere

We only focused on LinkedIn. One channel. Made it easy to see what was working and to do it really well.

3. Your CRM is lying to you

It says a deal came from "organic search" but in reality that company saw your content 500 times before they ever Googled you. You're giving credit to the wrong channels and killing the stuff that actually works.

4. Founder-led growth has a ceiling

I had 25,000 followers on LinkedIn before we even launched. Got us to 50 paying customers fast. But if your company brand don’t start growing you will eventually plateau.

I break all of this down way deeper in the full YouTube video including what to actually do about each one.👇

Teaching my son to ski while answering support tickets from the mountain. That’s my life right now and I love it so much.

I have two beautiful kids (4 and 2) who are finally sleeping through the night and actually listening to their parents (kind of..)

A partner who is my best friend and everything I could have wished for in someone to build a family with.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

And a co-founder who is also a true friend, building something in a space I’m so passionate about, seeing results we couldn’t have dreamed of when we started.

But all that aside, there are times that get really intense.

The last 3 weeks have been totally crazy.

1 week in San Francisco hanging out with some awesome people at LinkedIn’s HQ and meeting customers.

Then 1 week skiing with the family in Sweden.

And next week is another week away, this time NYC for LinkedIn’s yearly partner event and meeting customers.

At the same time, my day-to-day at Fibbler is busier than ever.

More support, more demos, more campaigns.

And naturally, this gets harder and harder when you’re moving through different timezones..

And we’re trying to launch our biggest feature to date, adding Google Ads as our second paid channel.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Living the startup dream right now. 

And it’s more intense than anything I’ve ever done.

𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗼 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Build a product for startup marketers who want to know if their LinkedIn Ads actually drive revenue.

I’d spent 10 years as an in-house B2B marketer and I knew the pain. 

Every month end was the same conversation: “We think LinkedIn is working but we can’t really prove it.” 

My friend Adam Hartsner said yes before I even finished the pitch. 

We split it 50/50 and started building from a small town in southern Sweden.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Population: not many.

The first version was bad. And it took us 8-10 months to get it out the door (this was before AI coding…)

But 50 people from my LinkedIn network signed up and paid anyway.

Fast forward to now and things look a little different.

We just got back from NYC where I was on stage at LinkedIn’s Partner Connect event. 

One guy from a small town in southern Sweden, sharing the stage with companies 15x our size, talking about B2B measurement and the future of attribution.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But honestly one of the best parts of that trip was hanging out with the teams from Dreamdata, Factors, and Channel99. 

And instead of it being weird or competitive we had a blast. 

Talking about where the market is going, comparing roadmaps, sharing what we’re learning.

Also, before NYC I was in San Francisco for a LinkedIn Live production about founder-led growth (check it out if you haven’t seen it).

Got to share our story of growing Fibbler without any funding, using primarily LinkedIn.

I keep having these moments where I look over at Adam and think… how is this actually our life?

We have 500+ customers at this point and get to travel the world with LinkedIn to meet marketers just like myself.

The thing nobody tells you about building a software company is that the early days feel mostly horrible. 

Everything breaks constantly and you need to literally put in all of your time fixing it.

But now we finally have a stable product and I can’t wait to see where we go in 2026 after launching additional ad channels, MCP servers and audience building capabilities.

One year ago I started putting our mascot into popular memes and running them as LinkedIn Ads. Still our best-performing creative format ever.

And I’m sharing our exact process because nobody else is doing this and they should be.

It started as a dumb experiment. 

I wanted to see if anyone would actually engage with something that felt more internet than LinkedIn and still remember our brand from it.

Here’s how we build them for Fibbler: 

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟏 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Not just any meme. I’m specifically looking for scenarios that capture the relationship between a B2B marketer and their exec team. 

When you nail that dynamic in a meme format people stop scrolling because they see themselves in it.

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟐 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If people have to think about what they’re looking at you’ve already lost them. It needs to be something they’ve seen a hundred times. The familiarity is half the joke. 

But here’s the real win: they already know the meme, so now they attach our brand to that situation. That’s memorability you can’t buy with a standard ad format.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟑 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐫​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He uses a mix of AI tools to edit our pink lion mascot smoothly into the scene. We also tweak the meme enough that it’s not a direct copy of the original. It needs to feel native, not slapped on.

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟒 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Cold audience ads focus on proving your ads are actually working and how hard that can be to argue for.

Retargeting ads poke fun at spending a fortune on attribution tools when you don’t have to (by that point people already know who we are so we can just lean into the joke.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​).

The creative I’m attaching to this post might be our best one yet. 

Genuinely think it’s going to be our highest performer.

If you’re running LinkedIn Ads and you have a mascot, try this. 

You can thank me later.

I used to think outbound was just buying a list, blasting emails, and hoping someone replies. Turns out… there's a bit more to it 😅

With Fibbler, we've grown to 450+ customers through inbound. LinkedIn content, LinkedIn Ads, word of mouth, community.

But outbound? I've just avoided it.

Not because I didn't believe in it.

But because most outbound I've seen in B2B is terrible: "I noticed you breathe oxygen, thought we should connect."

I didn't want Fibbler to be that.

So when I finally decided to take outbound seriously, I wanted to do it differently.

We're now working with Kiin.co - Linkedin Ads Agency and Philip Ilic to build a real outbound engine. 

And the strategy already has me excited.

𝐖𝐞'𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞𝐬:

1. Cold outbound to companies running LinkedIn Ads

Marketing teams spending money on LinkedIn but most likely have zero visibility into how it connects to pipeline and revenue. We reach out, show them the gap, and make it hard to ignore. Subject lines like "[CEO name] thinks your ads don't work."

2. Warm outbound using Fibbler on ourselves

My favorite one (surprise...). We use our own product to find companies that have already engaged with our LinkedIn ads. Send them to Clay, enrich with ICP contacts, and email them. In the email, we tell them exactly how we found them. The outreach IS the product demo. They experience the value before they even reply.

3. Fully automated signals-based outbound
Someone visits our website. Likes one of my LinkedIn posts. Leaves a comment. That signal fires, the lead gets automatically enriched, and a personalized email goes out. 

The cool part is that angle 2 is powered by our own product.

So every outbound email we send is basically proof that Fibbler works.

The outreach itself becomes the case study.

That's what I always wanted outbound to feel like. Just showing people what's possible with their own data.

We're just getting started so I don't have results yet.

But I'll keep you posted on everything.

Open rates, reply rates, meetings booked. All of it.

Doing it all in public, as usual!

I’m not a positioning expert at all. But launching my own startup forced me to be ruthlessly clear about what we do and who it’s for.

And what a journey it has been.

Fibbler started out as a “Revenue Attribution platform for LinkedIn Ads.”

And honestly, it was pretty laughable to call what we had in the beginning a platform.

So we made it simpler.

It became a “LinkedIn Ads Attribution tool.”

Clear in terms of what we do. 
Clear in how we could help marketers.

But still very unclear on who we were doing this for.

Our pricing said SMB. But bigger companies kept knocking on our door with security assessments that took weeks for us to fill out.

So we got even clearer.

We became “LinkedIn Ads Attribution for SMBs.”

And that’s where the real unlock happened.

Inbound grew massively in the right segment. Activation numbers followed. Marketers could connect in seconds and get value in minutes.

Now it’s time for the next stage.

We’re adding multiple ad channels to Fibbler to support marketers across all their paid investments, starting with Google Ads.

It’s getting closer and closer to what I dreamt of having when I was an in-house marketer for 10 years.

And our positioning needs to shift slightly to reflect that (in reality, we’ve already been doing this quietly over the past few months).​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We’re building the future of Paid Ads Attribution for SMBs.

And I’ve never been more pumped for anything in my professional career than to see where we’ll be at the end of this year.

P.S. Just landed back home after a fantastic week in San Francisco. I’ve never seen so many AI billboards that say absolutely nothing!

I’ve looked at hundreds of LinkedIn Ad accounts over the last few years. The same mistakes show up almost every time.

Default bidding that burns through budget. Audience Expansion turned on.
Demo ads running to people in cold.

And then the conclusion is always: 

LinkedIn Ads are too expensive.

They’re not. They’re just unforgiving if you don’t know the settings that actually matter.

Here’s what I cover in the episode:

1️⃣ Structure your campaigns in layers

Your audience isn’t going to buy the first time they see you. I structure everything into three layers: cold (just get on their radar), retargeting (connect your product to the problem), and high-intent (the only place you earn the right to ask for the next step). Most companies skip straight to layer three and wonder why nobody converts.

2️⃣ LinkedIn’s default settings are designed to spend your money faster

Maximum delivery bidding, Audience Network, Audience Expansion… all on by default. All should be off. I recommend starting with manual bidding at one-third of LinkedIn’s recommended bid and usually get the same results at roughly 20% lower cost.

3️⃣ Small targeting mistakes quietly drain your budget

LinkedIn groups job titles loosely. You target marketing titles and suddenly office administrators are seeing your ads. I use three filters (company size, industry, job titles), and check demographics every week week to exclude titles that doesn’t fit.

4️⃣ Clicks only tell you 0.4% of the story

Someone sees your ad 20 times over a few months, Googles your brand, and books a demo. Last-click attribution gives LinkedIn zero credit for that. You end up cutting the campaigns that are actually filling your pipeline because you can’t see the full picture.

I just dropped a quick tutorial on YouTube walking through the full campaign setup from scratch. Targeting, bidding, formats, and how to measure what’s actually driving pipeline.

Whether you’re spending $20/day or $1000/day, this should save you a lot of wasted budget.

Most CMOs don’t cut paid ads because the channel failed. They do it because they never understood what advertising is for.

I keep seeing the same story play out. 

In surveys. In LinkedIn posts. In comments.

"We're cutting paid ads because it's not giving us results."

And it always goes the same way...

A marketing team launches ads. A few weeks go by. The team looks at the numbers and the leads aren't qualified enough. Or there aren't enough of them. Budget gets slashed.

But here's what nobody talks about.

If your main complaint is "we're not getting enough leads from our ads" that's rarely the channel's fault.

It's usually a combination of how you think about the purpose of advertising and how well you actually execute it.

Advertising builds familiarity. 

It makes your brand the obvious choice before a buying committee even starts to evaluate options.

Advertising isn't a gumball machine. 

You don't put a dollar in and get a qualified lead out.

The companies that understand this are seeing compounding returns.

Better win rates. 
Shorter sales cycles. 

Because their buyers already knew them before the first call.

The companies that don't will keep chasing the next channel hoping it's the magic gumball machine they've been looking for.

The problem was never the channel.

The problem is fundamentally misunderstanding what advertising is supposed to do for you.

P.S. Fibbs didn't take this post too well. Luckily, we're heading to SF today to take his mind off it... ✈️

Everyone who follows me knows I’m a LinkedIn Ads guy. What most people don’t know is that I’ve been just as deep in Google Ads.

Several years ago at a previous startup, I got Canberk Beker to audit our Google Ads accounts. 

If you don’t know him, he’s one of the best paid search minds in the B2B space. 

That audit was a proper education. 

I learned more in those sessions than in years of running it myself.

Main learning… 

Most B2B companies are wasting at least half their Google Ads budget.

The first place budget dies is default settings. 

As an example, when you create a new Google Ads campaign, Search Partners and Display Network are both turned on automatically. 

Your search budget quietly bleeds into banner ads and random third-party sites.

The second problem is structure. 

The best B2B accounts run distinct campaign layers, each with its own budget and intent level. And don’t even get me started on broad match…

The third problem is tracking. 

Most teams optimize for clicks, which just teaches Google to find volume. Feed it offline data from your CRM instead, and the whole platform starts working differently.

I put everything I know into a new YouTube episode. 

The full strategy I’d run today for Google Ads, from account setup to bidding phases to the tracking mistakes most teams never fix.

You know those outbound emails where someone spent 4 seconds on your LinkedIn before hitting send? When we launched ours, something weird happened. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺.

Let me back up.

Last year customers started using Fibbler's ad engagement as part of their intent data layer for outreach. A use case I never thought about.

And as a bootstrapped founder doing a little bit of everything, I didn't have time to explore it.

So I partnered with Philip Ilic and his agency Kiin.co - Linkedin Ads Agency to launch our own outbound motion 2 weeks ago.

They build the infrastructure and automations. 

I create the content.

Because that's the part most people skip. 

They obsess over the tech stack and the automation. 

I obsess over writing emails people actually want to read. 

Two weeks in, we've activated two layers:

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟭: Cold emails to ICP buyers with similar targeting as our LinkedIn Ads. Companies between 10-250 employees already spending some money on LinkedIn Ads.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟮: Warm emails to our own ad engagers using Fibbler to push engagement data from our Thought Leader Ads into Clay, then enriching for ICP contacts.

The best signal so far? The replies. 

People are writing back that even though they might not be interested they loved the content. And that warms a marketers heart. 🫶

And we've already seen a couple of direct signups too.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟯 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗼𝗼𝗻: warm emails triggered by website visits, organic post engagement, recently promoted marketing leaders, and other intent signals.

Turns out people don't hate outbound. 

They just hate lazy outbound.

A few months ago I searched for "best linkedin attribution tool" on ChatGPT and Google. Fibbler wasn't mentioned anywhere.

I'd spent 15 months growing Fibbler almost entirely through LinkedIn. 

My posts, our ads, building a community around what we do. And it worked really well. Branded search traffic had been growing 100% over the past year.

But non-branded organic traffic growth was basically zero.

And I realized that would become a real problem if we wanted to scale. 

Because more and more B2B buyers are asking LLMs things like "what are the best LinkedIn attribution tools" or "what are the alternatives to HockeyStack."

And if you're not showing up in those results, you're missing out on buyers that are already in-market.

So I reached out to Sam and the team at Breaking B2B to help us build an SEO and AI search program from scratch.

The whole approach was the opposite of what I expected. 

We ignored the big high-volume keywords completely. Instead we went after searches that barely have any volume but where the person searching is ready to buy right now.

We've been running this for about three months now and our content breaks down into three layers:

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟭: Owned listicle content. Alternatives pages, comparison articles. Honest breakdowns where we show where Fibbler wins and where we're not the right fit. I've used most of these tools myself over the years so I know where the real differences are. These pages started ranking within days.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟮: Integration and use-case content. Pages like "how to integrate LinkedIn Ads with HubSpot" or "LinkedIn Ads Clay integration." Tiny search volume but the people searching have a very specific problem that Fibbler solves.

𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟯: External placements and backlinks. Getting Fibbler mentioned in other people's comparison articles that already rank on Google or get cited by AI tools. Plus earning niche relevant backlinks to boost our own pages.

Three months in, non-branded traffic is up over 200%. Our listicle pages convert at around 9%. And most importantly, it's driving real signups and we're showing up on important topics in LLMs.

I spent 15 months convinced that LinkedIn was the only channel I needed.

Turns out you can build a brand that people love but still can't find in LLMs.

And that's a very expensive blind spot.

Generic GTM is dead → Go to my featured section for actionable GTM insights and elevate your marketing game 🔥| Co-Founder of TACK | Creating the category of People-first GTM 👥| 13+ Years in B2B Marketing 📈

I help B2B companies build go-to-market strategies that prioritize real connection because relationships, not just reach, drive growth.

After 14 years in B2B marketing, I’ve led field marketing, demand gen, community, and influencer programs. I know what works, what doesn’t, and what’s changed.

Too many companies still treat buyers like leads. That’s not how modern GTM works.

I’ve helped 35+ B2B brands shift from transactional tactics to connection-driven growth, building scalable strategies, launching communities, running 30+ webinars, and rolling out on-demand models that replaced bloated in-house teams.

Today, I work directly with brands, founders, and marketers to build go-to-market engines that scale—without the spam.

What I do:
→ Build integrated campaign strategies that drive pipeline
→ Coach creators and brands on influencer marketing
→ Design community-led and field programs that actually work
→ Speak on GTM, content, and creator-led growth
→ Act as a fractional marketing leader or advisor

📚 Author of B2B Influencer Marketing: Work With Creators to Generate Authentic and Effective Marketing (Kogan Page, 2025)

👋 Let’s work together: DM me or visit https://linktr.ee/NickBMarketing

Nick Bennett

2:30am. Just walked in the door.

Gone since Sunday for B2BMX. Long days on the conference floor. Speaking. Filming content. Conversations that ran late. And a time zone that had me waking up at 3:30am because my body was still on east coast time.

I wasn't expecting anything. Just wanted to get home and crash.

Then I saw this on the door.

A sign. Handmade. Markers. Drawings of a dog they want but don't have yet. A rainbow. Little hearts.

"Welcome Home Dada!"

My kids took time out of their day to make something for me. Even though I was gone for days. Even though they had every reason to be annoyed that dad was traveling…leaving the burden of 3 kids on my wife on top of her job. 

They weren't annoyed. They were excited this morning when they woke up and I was there. 

And that's when it hit me.

The late flights. The missed dinners. The early mornings. The constant juggle of work and family.

It's not easy. And honestly, some days I question if the tradeoff is worth it.

Then you walk in at 2:30am to a homemade sign on the door.

And you remember why you do it.

Not for the conferences. Not for the pipeline. Not for the LinkedIn posts.

For them.

They're the reason. They've always been the reason.

To every parent out there grinding and traveling for work: they see you. They get it. More than you think.

Keep going.

B2B Marketing Operator | Sharing what works from 15 years of actually doing it | Field Marketing, Events, ABM, GTM

Wheels up to B2BMX.

I’m speaking Wednesday at 11:00am.

Session: “Moments That Move Buying Groups”

If you’re tired of marketing to one person and hoping your champion drags the deal across the finish line, this one’s for you.

I’m breaking down:

1.) how to map 6–8 roles before you ever outreach
why “safe” marketing disappears
2.) the G.I.F.T. framework we used to drive $9M+ pipeline
3.) plays you can steal (buying-group moments, not theory)

But here’s what I’m really after:

I’m filming a content series while I’m there.

If you’ve got a hot take, a story, or just want to riff on camera for a few minutes, DM me. We’ll make something good (fast).

Also: the Reachdesk team is unveiling something brand new at booth #209. First time anyone’s seeing it. Worth stopping by and I’ll show you it firsthand and you may get a little something. 

Now the real question:

Who’s going to be there?
Who wants to grab coffee?
Who’s down to create some content?

Drop a comment. Let’s make this happen.

Shoutout to Jared Robin and Katie Penner of Influ2 for the cool laser engraved trophy. 

Also one of the coolest designed booths I’ve seen in a long time! Shoutout to you Natalie Burt. 

LinkedIn legends 😂😂😂

I used to run monthly field marketing meetups.

80-100 field marketers would join virtually. We'd talk wins, losses, ideas. Same topic came up every single time.

Tracking.

Everyone had a CRM. Everyone had spreadsheets. Nobody had a simple way to show leadership what actually worked.

Event season is coming. I was lying in bed thinking about this problem again.

So I built something.

It's called Event Impact Tracker. Free. No login. Data stays in your browser.

Here's what it does:

→ Pipeline-first metrics (not badge scans)
→ Auto-calculates ROI and grades events A-F
→ Compares your results against industry benchmarks
→ Exports to PDF or CSV for leadership reports

I built this V1 in about 30 minutes laying in bed watching TV on Lovable last night. It's not perfect. But it solves the problem I kept hearing about for years.

Your CFO doesn't care about booth traffic. They care about pipeline and revenue. This helps you show them that.

No catch. No email capture. Just use it.

https://lnkd.in/eDQ7JirG

If you're heading into event season and need a better way to prove ROI, this might help.

Shoot me feedback! I want to improve this thing, and I'm also semi addicted now.

15+ Year B2B Marketing Leader Turned Founder | ABM, Field Marketing & Events, Influencer Marketing & More | DM Me to Learn More

Accounts don't buy. People do.

And most ABM programs forget that.

They roll everything up into an account score. Wait for a threshold. Then blast the same message to everyone on the list.

Meanwhile, the actual buyers are already forming a shortlist. Different stakeholders. Different priorities. Different timelines.

By the time your score triggers action, you're late.

Here's what Influ2 found when they analyzed 2M targets (full report in comments):

→ Contacts who engaged with ads booked meetings 74% more often than cold outbound alone
→ Accounts with buying group engagement converted to pipeline 118% better
→ 66% of buyers change priorities mid-deal
→ 92% of decisions involve up to 9 people
→ IT/Security blocks deals 38% of the time despite having only 10% of influence

That last one is critical. The person with the most objections isn't the person with the most weight. And if you're running one averaged journey for the whole account, you're missing the blocker entirely.

Here's how I'd operationalize this:

1) Map the buying group before outreach. Not just titles. Identify who influences, who blocks, and who signs. IT and Security need their own message track.

2) Track engagement at the contact level. When someone clicks, that's a signal. Follow up within 48 hours with context tied to what they engaged with. Not a generic sequence.

3) Don't wait for account scores. If one person in the buying group is active, that's your window. Act on individual signals, not rolled-up thresholds.

4) Align sales on who engaged, not just which account is "hot." Give reps the name, the topic, and the timestamp. That's what turns outreach into a conversation.

The 118% lift doesn't come from better targeting alone. It comes from treating buyers like people instead of logos.

If your ABM is still account-first, you're leaving pipeline on the table.

Full report in comments.

What's your current approach: account-level scoring or contact-level orchestration?

B2B Marketing Exchange is a wrap.

Spoke today. Reconnected with marketers I've known for years. Met a bunch of new ones. Filmed some content. Walked the floor. Had way too many good conversations to count.

And I missed my twin daughters' 3rd birthday to be here.

Poor planning on my part. 😂

But that's the tradeoff sometimes. You show up for the work, and you make it count. The energy in the room, the ideas exchanged, the people who actually get what we do it reminded me why I love this industry.

Now I'm sitting at the airport. Delayed. Because of course.

Boston eventually.

To everyone I got to spend time with this week: thank you. The conversations, the laughs, the quick hallway chats that turned into real strategy talk, that's the stuff that makes events worth it.

Already looking forward to the next one.

And to my girls: Daddy's bringing home some good stories, lots of free swag. And probably airport snacks.

Everyone's chasing scale. Bigger booths. Bigger audiences. Bigger budgets.

Deals move faster in a room of 7 than a crowd of 700.

I'm joining a virtual panel on March 17th to talk about what's actually working in B2B events right now.

The session: "Events That Actually Convert: What B2B Marketing Leaders Are Doubling Down on in 2026"

Hosted by ConvergeX Connections with a small group of North American marketing leaders who are done with vanity metrics and ready to talk real ROI.

We'll cover what's working, what's been cut, and the experiments shaping event strategy this year.

I'll be sharing my take on micro events. Highly curated. 7-10 people max.

Why I'm doubling down on them:

→ Decision-makers actually show up
→ Conversations go deeper than badge scans
→ Deals move faster because you're not competing for attention

This is a peer conversation, not a webinar. They're keeping it small and curated to make sure the discussion stays tactical.

If you're a B2B marketing leader building your 2026 event roadmap, you can request a spot here: https://lnkd.in/ecF3E-fm

Spots are almost gone, only a few seats are left. Drop a comment if you're applying. Would love to see some familiar faces in the room.

Spent 3 days at B2BMX in Carlsbad this week.

I went in expecting “new tactics.”

I left reminded that most teams don’t have a tactics problem.
They have a honesty problem.

Here are 15 things I can’t stop thinking about (and you won’t find in the recap blogs):

ABM and targeting

1) Most “ABM” is just retargeting with a nicer name.  
If you can’t describe your ICP in one sentence, you don’t have one.

2) Intent data is only valuable if you can act in 48 hours.  
If you can’t trigger a same-day Slack alert, don’t buy the data.

3) Everyone’s still optimizing for MQLs while buyers are optimizing for safety.  
70% of the decision happens before a rep shows up.  
Start optimizing for preference, not form fills.

Events

4) The booth with the longest line didn’t have the best swag.  
They had the best conversation starter on the back wall.  
Your booth isn’t a billboard. It’s a filter.

5) The brands getting ROI aren’t “showing up.”  
They’re pre-booking meetings 3+ weeks out.  
If your first outreach is the week of, you already lost.

6) Field marketers are being asked to own pipeline without owning budget.  
That tension came up in every room.  
Want accountability? Give them the keys.

Execution gaps

7) “More pipeline” is not a strategy.  
Neither is “better content.”  
The gap is almost always execution.

8) Most nurture programs are newsletters with better subject lines.  
If it doesn’t change based on behavior, it’s not nurture. It’s broadcast.

9) Direct mail is back… only when it’s tied to a moment.  
Random sends are just expensive noise.

AI

10) AI is scaling mediocre content faster.  
Winning teams use it to buy time back for strategic work.  
Use AI for the reps. Save your brain for the decisions.

11) “Personalization at scale” is still mostly a keynote phrase.  
The best 1:1 is still done by hand by the best teams.

What actually wins

12) The fastest-scaling companies share one thing:  
Sales and marketing own **one number**. Not aligned numbers. One.

13) Community is the channel nobody budgets for but everyone benefits from.  
It’s not a line item. It’s a moat.

14) The best session I attended had no slides.  
Just a practitioner walking through what didn’t work and why.  
That’s the content people actually want.

15) The quiet theme underneath all of it:  
Buyers are tired of being marketed to.  
They want to be helped.

And not enough teams can feel the difference yet.

Which of these is your team actually solving for right now?

POV: Your Event Marketing Manager trying to calculate the ROI of the conference.

Conference ROI is one of the last socially acceptable black boxes in B2B.

You can spend:

 $30𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘩
 $10k flying the team out
 3 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘊 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦
 a month of planning

…and still get back to the office and ask:

"So what did we actually get?"

That's when the coping mechanisms kick in.

"We had a ton of great convos."
"Traffic was solid."
"People loved the swag."
"We think we met the right accounts."

Meanwhile the reality is messy:

Badge scans in one place.
Business cards in someone's backpack.
Notes in a rep's phone.
A spreadsheet called FINAL_final_V9.
And a CRM that's missing half the context.

So follow-up gets delayed.

Leads fall through cracks.

And when leadership asks for ROI, you're left trying to reverse-engineer pipeline from a bunch of partial breadcrumbs.

The problem isn't conferences.

It's that most teams don't have a clean way to connect:

who you met → what mattered → where it went → what it turned into.

That's why I like what Popl is doing.

Every time I show Popl to Event Marketers, the reaction is the same:

"Where have you guys been all this time?"

Here's why. With Popl, all you have to do is scan a conference badge or paper business card. That's it.

Then it automatically:

→ Enriches all contact & company data
→ Tags every lead to the event and rep who captured it
→ Pushes everything straight to your CRM with lead qualifiers and notes
→ Emails the prospects

All while you're still on the conference floor.

So when leadership asks "what did we get from that conference?"

You're not digging through spreadsheets and backpacks.

You've got full attribution. Every lead tied to the event. Every opportunity tracked to the source.

ROI stops being a debate.

It becomes a dashboard.

Start tracking the ROI from your conferences: https://hubs.la/Q046rbYn0

Brand partnership • B2B Marketing Operator | Sharing what works from 15 years of actually doing it | Field Marketing, Events, ABM, GTM

Event ROI doesn’t break at the booth.

It breaks on Monday.

Because by Monday, the context is gone.

The rep remembers:

- the company name
- a vague pain point
- and that the conversation “felt good”

So the follow-up turns into: “Great meeting you at the event…”

Which is basically saying: “I have nothing specific to say.”

Here’s the simplest post-event operating system I’ve found that actually produces pipeline.

The 48-hour event follow-up OS

1) Before anyone leaves the venue, capture context (15 minutes)

Do a debrief while it’s still fresh.

3 Rules:
1.) everyone stays
2.) no laptops
3.) no “we’ll do it later”

For each priority conversation, capture 5 things:

- What problem did they actually say out loud?
- What’s broken in their current process?
- What do they care about personally? (risk, time, reputation, budget)
- Who else is involved? (names and roles)
- What’s the next step they agreed to?

If you don’t have those 5, you don’t have a lead. You have a badge scan.

2) Turn that context into something delegatable (30 minutes)

This is the move most teams miss.

Have reps record a 30–60 second voice note per priority account. Raw. Ugly. Specific.

Now anyone can write the follow-up. Because the “why” is preserved.

3) 24 hours later: send the follow-up that proves you were listening

One email. Short. No fluff.

Structure:

1 line: what you heard
1 line: what you’re sending (resource / recap / next step)
1 line: the ask (calendar link or two times)

If the follow-up doesn’t reference their world, it’s spam.

4) 48 hours later: score the event like an operator, not a marketer
Don’t report “leads.”

Report:
1.) ICP accounts engaged
2.) meetings booked within 14 days
3.) influenced pipeline
4.) one thing to change next time

That’s it.

Everything else is whatever.

What’s your team’s biggest follow-up failure mode today: no context capture, no ownership, or no SLA?

I’ve watched teams rewrite sequences for 3 months…

…while 40% of their emails quietly went to spam.

The problem is you can’t copy your way into the inbox.

Here’s the simple triage tree I use before we touch messaging:

If opens are low
→ inbox placement, authentication, domain reputation

If opens are fine but replies are low
→ targeting, offer, ask, list quality

If replies are decent but meetings are low
→ qualification, next step clarity, handoff

Most teams skip the first step and jump straight to new subject lines.

If you want to stress-test inbox placement and warm-up without guessing, this is what I use:
https://lnkd.in/e4ZtDH_U

What are you seeing right now
low opens or low replies?

$150 gift to a CMO. $60 notebook for procurement. Both delivered the same day.

That's not random acts of gifting. That's a Buying Committee Play.

And when it's coordinated with what each stakeholder sees on your website and in their inbox, it can pull deals forward. I've seen it cut 23 days off cycles and push win rates to 68%.

On March 18, I'm running a hands-on workshop at "Websites That Think" where we build this play from scratch.

What we'll cover:

→ The 3 buying group stages and the signals that tell you when to act (and why stage 1 is usually the wrong time to send anything)
→ The Champion Activation Play: why a $40-60 book timed to arrive the day before a demo can drive 90-95% show rates vs ~65% average
→ How to build role-specific website experiences so your CMO, Marketing Ops, and CFO don't see the same generic page
→ The full Buying Committee Play: what to send, to who, what it costs (~$410 for 4 people), and the triggers that kick it off
→ How to measure what's working: leading indicators that show pipeline movement before the deal closes

Before the workshop, there's a panel with Oana Manolache (Sequel.io), Adam Kaiser (6sense), Matt Hammel (AirOps), Amanda Kahlow (1mind), and Guy Yalif (Webflow) on how AI powers intent-aware website experiences and what shifts when buyers arrive from LLMs like ChatGPT.

If you run ABM or field programs and want a repeatable system for moving buying groups faster, this is for you.

Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/emMK7KSQ

Websites that Think Webinar

Your outbound isn't a messaging problem. It's a deliverability problem.

I watched a team spend three months optimizing subject lines, rewriting sequences, and testing new CTAs. Open rates stayed flat. Reply rates kept dropping.

Turned out 40% of their emails were landing in spam. They had no idea.

Here's the thing. You can have the best copy in the world. If your emails aren't hitting the inbox, none of it matters.

Most operators never check this stuff until something breaks. By then you've already burned your domain.

Here's what to actually monitor:

1. Sender Reputation

Check Google Postmaster Tools weekly. If your domain reputation drops to "Low" or "Bad," you're already in trouble. Aim to stay in "High" consistently.

Microsoft SNDS gives you similar visibility for Outlook. If you're selling to enterprise, this matters.

2. Authentication Stack

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC aren't optional anymore. They're table stakes.

But "set up" isn't the same as "configured correctly." Most teams have partial implementations that still leak trust signals.

Run a check monthly. If any of these are failing or misconfigured, inbox placement tanks.

3. Domain Age and Warm-Up

New domains need 2-4 weeks of warm-up before you scale. Sending 500 cold emails from a fresh domain is a fast track to spam.

Volume ramp matters too. Start with 10-20 emails per day. Increase gradually. Jumping from 50 to 500 overnight triggers filters.

If you're running multiple campaigns, use subdomains for outbound. Protect your primary domain reputation.

4. Inbox Placement Testing

Open rates lie. Tracking pixels fire even in spam folders sometimes.

Run seed list tests before launching campaigns. Know where your emails actually land across Gmail, Outlook, and corporate domains.

This is where Warmy comes in.

It automates warm-up, monitors inbox placement, validates your authentication setup, and flags issues before they tank your campaigns.

I've been using it to stress-test deliverability for outbound programs. The visibility alone is worth it.

If you want to boost your deliverability, drop a comment and I'll send you the link.

If your outbound has been underperforming and you've already optimized the obvious stuff, check your deliverability first.

It might be the invisible thing killing your pipeline.

https://lnkd.in/eDAEH22K

Most marketers build lists the old way.

One tool for companies. Another for contacts. A third for emails. Maybe a fourth for phone numbers.

By the time you've pieced it together, half the data is stale and you've wasted hours.

I've been testing FullEnrich Search and it changes the workflow completely.

Here's the exact play I ran last week:

I had 32 target accounts attending an upcoming conference. Needed to find every VP and Director of Marketing with verified emails before our pre-event outreach.

Step 1: Uploaded my account list as a CSV

Step 2: Applied contact filters
→ Title contains "VP" or "Director"
→ Department: Marketing
→ Seniority: Senior, VP, Director

Step 3: Hit search

143 contacts across all 32 accounts. 95% coverage.

Step 4: One-click enrichment

Verified emails and mobile numbers added instantly. No switching tools. No manual cleanup.

Total time: 12 minutes.

Old workflow would've been 2-3 hours across ZoomInfo, Apollo, and a separate enrichment tool. Plus the inevitable data gaps.

The difference is the waterfall. FullEnrich pulls from 20+ sources so you're not limited to one database's coverage. Contacts that don't exist in Tool A get found in Tool B or C.

If you're building ABM lists, event prospect lists, or campaign segments, run a free search and compare it to your current stack.

FullEnrich just made list building a lot faster.

https://lnkd.in/e9g7Dfq9

#FullEnrichPartner

Badge scans. Booth traffic. "Great conversations."

None of that is ROI.

And if that's what your event report looks like, you're about to lose budget.

Here's the framework I use when I want the CFO to stop debating and start funding.

The 3-Layer Event ROI Framework

Layer 1: Strategic Fit
Was the right audience even there?

→ ICP accounts in the room
→ Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 breakdown
→ Which roles showed up (champion, decision maker, blocker)

If you can't answer this, everything below is noise.

Layer 2: Execution
Did we create next steps that sales can actually run?

→ Meetings booked (strict definition: on the calendar, owned by a rep, scheduled within 14 days, with a named next step)
→ "Follow up next week" is not a meeting
→ Net-new contacts from ICP accounts
→ Matched contacts already in CRM that were re-activated

Those are different outcomes. Report them separately.

Layer 3: Economic Impact
Did this create or move money?

→ New qualified pipeline: opps opened post-event that hit your bar (stage, fit, value)
→ Influenced pipeline: opps that existed pre-event where the event created movement (stage progression, timeline pulled forward, buying group expansion, deal re-engaged)
→ Closed-won revenue (when it matures)

This is where most event ROI is hiding. If you're not reporting influenced pipeline, you're undercounting events and overcounting everything else.

Two ratios that change the budget conversation:

Pipeline ROI = (New qualified + Influenced pipeline) ÷ Total event cost
ARR ROI = Closed-won ARR ÷ Total event cost

Event season is coming. Steal this before your next report.

We've built an entire industry around overcomplicating be helpful and stay in touch.

Think about it.

Lead scoring. Nurture tracks. Attribution models. Engagement platforms. Intent signals. Personalization engines.

All of it exists because we forgot how to just... be useful to people.

The best marketers I know don't need half of this.

They remember what you told them 6 months ago. They send you something useful without being asked. They show up when there's nothing to sell.

That's it. That's the whole playbook.

But most companies can't hire for that. And they definitely can't scale it.

So we build tools. And frameworks. And processes.

And somewhere along the way, the process becomes the point.

The nurture sequence matters more than whether anyone actually got nurtured.
The lead score matters more than whether someone's ready to buy.
The attribution model matters more than whether the relationship is real.

Here's what I've learned after 15 years:

The tools should enable the human stuff. Not replace it.

Your CRM should help you remember what someone told you 6 months ago. Not become a substitute for caring.

Your sequences should free up time for real conversations. Not become the only conversation.

Your frameworks should create space for judgment. Not eliminate it.

When the structure starts replacing the thing it was built to support, you've already lost.

Meanwhile we keep buying more tools to fix what tools broke in the first place.

Maybe the answer isn't another platform.

Maybe it's just picking up the phone.

3 years ago I wrote a post about driving G2 reviews.

500k views. 1,500+ likes. 500+ comments. Over 200 DMs. Remember that? Was wild!

All I did was share what worked.

I've run this playbook multiple times since then. Just ran it again. 100 reviews in 3 days. Pushed us to 1,031 total reviews. We're averaging 85 net new reviews per quarter.

Word of mouth is our #2 source of inbound at Reachdesk.

This stuff compounds.

Here's the playbook:

1. Build your list with intent

Use your CRM to filter by customers who actually use the product, not one-off senders. The goal isn't to cherry-pick positive reviews. It's to get feedback from people with enough experience to give you something useful.

2. Write the email like a human

No corporate speak. Keep it simple: thank them, ask for the review, offer a gift when it's live.

3. Make confirmation easy

Instead of screenshots, I added a form where they drop their review link. Less friction. Easier to verify.

4. Send real gifts

Not gift cards. Actual things. The Amazon integration within Reachdesk lets me send stuff that feels personal, not transactional.

Conversion rate this time: ~40%.

But collecting reviews is only half the job.

Most teams let reviews sit on G2. That's a waste.

Here's how to activate them:

→ Tag by use case. Sales, marketing, CS, events. Now you have proof for every vertical conversation.
→ Mine for language. Customers describe your value better than you will. Use their words in ads, decks, and outbound.
→ Route feedback to product. Complaints are free research.
→ Identify champions. Detailed reviewers are case study and reference candidates.
→ Build a proof bank by objection. Sales should have reviews organized by the concerns they answer.

Reviews on G2 are social proof. Reviews organized and activated are a sales weapon.

Word of mouth being our #2 inbound source isn't just G2. It's the team doing great work across CS, product, and marketing. But reviews are one piece of the flywheel that compounds when you stay consistent.

The biggest mistake I made going fractional wasn't pricing.

It was saying yes too fast.

When you're solo, every "maybe" feels like revenue. So you take the call. You scope it live. You promise speed. You think you'll "figure it out."

And then 3 weeks later you're stuck in:

→ vague goals
→ 6 stakeholders
→ 0 decisions
→ "can you just…" requests at 9:47pm

So I built a filter.

Not a vibe check. A decision check.

Here are the 3 things I look for before I take on a fractional client.

1) A real owner (not a sponsor)

I don't mean "the CEO likes marketing." I mean a single person who:

→ owns the outcome
→ shows up every week
→ can say yes/no without a committee
→ will actually ship with you

If they can't point to an owner in the first conversation, here's what happens:

You become the owner.

You're chasing feedback. You're herding calendars. You're translating marketing into English for six different people.

Fractional doesn't fail because you didn't do enough.

It fails because no one inside the company is accountable for decisions.

Question I ask:
"Who is the person that will make the call when there are tradeoffs?"

If they hesitate, that's the answer.

2) A decision they're trying to make (not a hope)

"Grow awareness" is not a decision. "Do more demand gen" is not a decision.

A decision has a fork in the road.

Examples:

→ "We're choosing one ICP and building the Q2 plan around it."
→ "We're picking one primary channel for 90 days and committing."
→ "We're fixing activation or we're fixing pipeline, not both."
→ "We're repositioning the offer and changing the site copy."

If there's no decision, the engagement turns into activity: posts, decks, tweaks, random campaigns, busywork.

And you can't create leverage from busywork.

Question I ask:
"What's the decision you want to be able to confidently make 30 days from now?"

If they can't answer, you'll end up writing strategy that no one uses.

3) Protection for your time (constraints that make fractional work)

Fractional works when everyone respects the constraint.

Because your leverage is not "being available." It's making the right calls with limited time.

So I look for evidence they can operate like adults:

→ one Slack channel, not 12
→ weekly working session on the calendar
→ async updates in one place
→ a turnaround SLA (ex: feedback within 48 hours)
→ no "urgent" requests unless revenue is on fire

If they want full-time responsiveness on a part-time engagement, they don't want fractional.

They want an employee they can't afford.

Question I ask:
"How do you want to handle requests between meetings: async doc, Slack, or a weekly queue?"

If they say "we're pretty ad hoc," what they mean is: "You'll be on call."

I still lose deals because of this.

Good.

The goal isn't to be booked. The goal is to be booked on terms that let you do great work.

If you're solo/fractional right now, which part breaks most often: ownership, decisions, or time protection?

Most teams use AI to write the email.

Wrong use case.

Use it to QA the email.

The fastest way to kill conversion is a mismatch you can't see anymore:

→ Email promise says one thing
→ Landing page delivers another
→ CTA is a vibe
→ You ship it anyway

Here's the exact prompt I use before I send anything to a list. Takes 5 minutes. Catches the dumb stuff that costs you pipeline.

👇 Copy this

GTM PREFLIGHT PROMPT

You are a B2B conversion editor. Your job: find mismatch, friction, and marketing fluff before I ship. Be direct. Be specific. Quote the exact line that triggered each issue.

PASTE YOUR ASSETS BELOW:
- ICP description:
- Offer (what they get, terms, price):
- Email draft:
- Landing page copy:

RULES:
- Assume the buyer is senior, skeptical, and skimming
- No generic feedback. Every suggestion includes the exact replacement copy
- If something works, say nothing. Only flag problems.

OUTPUT:

1. PROMISE ALIGNMENT
What does the email promise? What does the landing page promise? Score alignment 1-10. If under 8, write one revised email sentence that matches the page.

2. FIRST 10-SECOND OBJECTIONS
List the 5 reasons a skeptical VP would bounce before scrolling. For each: the triggering line → the objection → one rewrite.

3. FLUFF DETECTOR
Flag up to 4 lines that sound like marketing. Rewrite each to sound like an operator wrote it.

4. CTA CHECK
Is the current CTA a clear next step or a vague ask? Rewrite the CTA 3 ways. Each should name a specific action and timeframe (e.g., 'Book 15 min this week', not 'Let's chat soon').

5. TRUST KILLERS
Flag anything that feels exaggerated or salesy. Give the safer version.

6. PRIORITY FIXES
The 5 edits that will move conversion most, ranked.

---

If you try this, what did it catch that you would have shipped anyway?

Most teams pick gifts by guessing.

Scroll through a catalog. Hope it lands. Cross fingers it feels personal enough.

That's not strategy. That's wishful thinking.

Personalized gifting works. We know this. The problem has always been the tradeoff: do it right and it takes forever, or do it fast and it feels generic.

Gifty removes that tradeoff.

It's an AI assistant built into Reachdesk that handles the research, matches gifts to role, region, budget, and goal, and drafts a note that actually sounds like you thought about it.

What used to take 15-20 minutes per send now takes a few.

That changes the math on when gifting makes sense.

You can use it for the high-value T1 plays you're already doing. But now you can also use it for the moments you'd normally skip because they weren't worth the time. The no-show follow-up. The deal that went dark. The post-event touch that usually gets deprioritized.

More personalized sends. Same bandwidth.

That's the unlock.

DM me if you want to see it in action.

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The Battle

Adam Holmgren

Nick Bennett

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taplio

The Battle

Adam Holmgren

Nick Bennett

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Adam Holmgren's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNick Bennett's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAdam Holmgren's LinkedIn Performance