Liam Moroney

Co-Founder, Storybook Marketing | Full-service demand generation agency

I lead Storybook Marketing, a consultancy that specializes in brand marketing strategy, to help companies become the brand that buyers think of, using an evidence-based approach to marketing.

We offer customized services, consulting, team workshops and training, to level up marketing programs so they are capturing market share and not just leads.

Founder

When we apply a performance marketing mindset to the top of the funnel, we can end up putting a lot of effort and expense into building an audience that often isn't big enough, and sometimes isn't even real.

In B2B tech I'm increasingly seeing this happening, especially with the new obsession to rank in AI search results. 

Where the effort is on trying to reach Goldilocks prospects who haven't been influenced by competitors yet, or even ones who haven't come to realize they need a solution yet, so we can come along and become their only solution.

While a very attractive concept, it's often an expensive effort to build an audience of unicorns. 

The research in B2B continuously shows that most buyers are experienced ones, or at least part of their buying group is. Kerry Cunningham frequently talks on the topic, and his research at 6sense continuously shows it.

Blank slate buyers who are problem aware but not solution aware are a fringe group, if they even exist at all. Most of our addressable market knows and has experience with the category, and have some form of a consideration set in mind.

The job in marketing isn't to find the undiscovered buyers, but to win the underserved ones. 

Our growth comes from people that exist in the big group in the middle, who have familiarity with the category and most of its players, have likely bought from at least one of them in the past, and don't need "educating".

They need a better alternative - and we have to show up often and relevantly to position ourselves in their consideration set.

Brand Marketer | Storybook Marketing | MarTech contributor

Brand gets underinvested in because it doesn't show up clearly enough in our attribution models, but should it?

Should attribution really be the central and core method for measuring marketing?

I'm not in any way anti-attribution, but I get incredibly frustrated at how much it's come to be how we, and especially leadership, believes that marketing works and gets measured.

What never gets measured in attribution is the underlying conditions that determine how well any of our efforts grow:

❓ How many potential buyers know we exist, and are we continuing to create awareness in new buyers over time?

❓ How effectively are we getting our brand to be thought of as an option to consider - something that becomes existential when purchase risk increases?

❓ How successfully are we being thought of by those buyers when they actually do come in market?

None of this shows up in attribution tools, and yet those conditions determine just how much of an upper limit there is in the effectiveness of our demand gen and performance marketing efforts.

Brand is very possible to measure in a growing variety of ways, and has been for a long time, but it requires leadership understanding and belief in how it works.

When we force it to show up in a measurement tool designed for something else entirely, we set it up to fail.

It's like trying to measure climate change with a thermometer - it will very easily miss the bigger and more existential trends because it's too narrow a view.

Brand is measurable. It's the leadership understanding that's lacking.

This race towards “AI visibility” is feeling like a gold rush without any guarantee of gold, but shovels of all shapes and sizes for sale. 

Everyone is obsessed with being mentioned or cited by LLMs, but it seems like those two things might not even be related - though you’d hardly know it from the confidence of those showing up as AI experts. 

Rand Fishkin has been raising some really important points and insights about how makes up the AI answer may not even necessarily be sourced from the citations. 

Rather it’s looking like citations are often post-hoc ways to support the answer and not what actually always informs it. 

Which, from a user standpoint is hardly reassuring, since AI might be using citations to make the answer look accurate as opposed to actually being accurate. 

And, from a brand point of view, this leaves a potentially massive delta between being part of the answer and beyond a supporting act to prop it up. 

We could easily be targeting metrics that don’t actually mean much, but the train is fully out of the station to try. 

And all of this is before we address whether being the true source of answer drives real brand value and exposure, or how much less value again a barnacle cited link might bring. 

Just like old-school SEO, more backlinks don’t guarantee more business, and not all search visibility is equal. 

All we know for sure is that none of us know for sure yet. 

It’s the Wild West out there - beware overconfident AI experts bringing their data and selling their shovel.

It's often said that "brand drives performance, and performance builds brand", but in many cases only the first half of that statement is true.

Which is problematic when you have a program whose budget heavily favors performance marketing.

Brand definitely should drive performance, and should make existing performance work better, since it's ideally creating more and better awareness of the solution to a broader group of people with at least some of them in-market now or very soon.

And performance marketing is a critical part of a healthy program, activating on people who are in-market and ensuring those hard-build brand memories get activated.

But, performance marketing often has little brand benefit since it's so volatile and opportunistic.

An ad trying to get you to take action on something you're not currently looking for is usually either totally ignored or very temporarily remembered. Our brains simply don't waste valuable cognitive energy and space on things that aren't relevant to us.

Much of performance marketing is about a moment-in-time ask - sometimes it's a price discount, sometimes just a request to take a demo.

There is little about creative like that that is remembered, if it's ever even paid attention to at all by people who aren't in-market.

It's not to say performance marketing isn't valuable - it's a critical part of an efficient program - but on its own it frequently doesn't have any lasting memory value at all. 

And, when you have programs where 70-80% of the budget is trying to nudge people to take action, you can end up with a program that is failing to build any real brand value, no matter how many logo impressions get served.

Marketing does all work together in a complex and integrated way, but it doesn't mean one type of creative is a good substitute for the other.

And when that nuance is missed, we can end up with a very ineffective and inefficient program even with a very healthy budget.

There is still a big brand marketing gap in the industry and the massive push to use AI isn't solving it. 

Most of what's being done to attract business with AI right now is reactive marketing - showing up in answers being asked in LLMs, and being mentioned as a solution when people are seeking one.

While it's important to make sure we place our brand where interest and traffic is happening, this doesn't solve the much harder job of proactively making the brand more familiar and considered before people are even there.

A lot of the buying searches happening in AI search are comparisons, where consideration search is anchored around the brands who are known, and where buyers are comparing them against others.

In essence, AI is mostly helping to do the digital equivalent of merchandising. 

We're putting the brand on the new shelves, and betting rather big that those new shelves are where most of the future buying will happen, which remains to be seen. 

But, just like getting on the shelf in a physical store, it still doesn't guarantee that you get bought even when it exposes you to active buyers. Plenty of brands have spent a fortune to make the shelves of Walmart, Target, etc, only to find that they need to spend even more on discounts to make up for the lack of awareness.

Most of what grows brands happens before the browsing moment, especially when the good being sold requires some consideration. 

It's not enough to occupy a shelf space - you also have to occupy a market presence and usually at a much larger ratio.

The truth about promotion is that it's not efficient. 

We have to get the creative in front of as many people as we can, the majority of whom aren't actively buying, and we have to keep pushing the message to overcome the reality that most won't get seen. 

To quote Les Binet, "If I had to choose between having a great ad with no money behind it and a good ad with a massive budget – I’d probably go for the good ad with a really big budget because media spending and share of voice really matter."

And because it's inefficient, it's often unpalatable to much of leadership, and so marketers get pushed towards things that feel much direct response - and we find ourselves in the advertising "Doom Loop" that David Tiltman and WARC have so eloquently described.

So here we are, where getting placed in an AI overview is taking up massive attention and effort in tech companies, while the underlying problem of being known and remembered is still neglected.

We might end up much better at being found when people are looking, but no better at being sought out by whose who aren't.

B2B SEO & Web Design For Revenue Not Vanity | DM To Discuss | Host @ Business Growth Show (Top 10 B2B Marketing Podcast, Cognism)

Your website struggling to drive a steady flow of qualified demos/leads?
Tired of losing leads to competitors ranking higher on Google/AI?
Frustrated your SEO agency isn't delivering demos & revenue?

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STILL NOT CONVINCED?

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BOOK A CALL:

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📧: Connect & DM Me
✉️: sam@samdunning.org

CORE SERVICES:

→ B2B SEO strategy and execution
→ Content marketing
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WHY BREAKING B2B?

→ We focus on revenue, not vanity metrics
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About time your website became your best (24/7) salesperson?
Get in touch today, and let's start growing your business.

P.S.
Agencies: We offer white-label SEO to help you deliver results on time and within budget.

Sam Dunning

I ask the public: whats the point of linkedin?

Founder @ Breaking B2B | B2B SEO For Revenue Not Vanity | SaaS & B2B Teams Hire Us To Scale Organic Pipeline From Google & AI Search | DM To Discuss | Host @ Breaking B2B (Top 2.5% B2B Marketing Podcast)

Proud founder moment.

Breaking B2B is recommended more each week in communities like Exit Five and events across US and EU as a trusted SaaS SEO/AEO agency.

Showing up in our booked calls 'how did you hear about us'

2yrs ago when we started was just me cold calling marketing leaders to get discovery calls.

Blessed to now have an demand + inbound engine from SEO/AEO, linkedin, youtube and recommendations.

Onwards!

🙂

graphical user interface, text, application, email

I bootstrapped Breaking B2B to $200k/mo.

Alongside SEO and linkedin organic x paid...

YouTube has been a big growth driver for us, run by Samu Kovács.

Our YouTube videos are mentioned on almost every sales call we get.

Here’s how we did it:

DOMINATE SEARCH ON YOUTUBE.

We now consistently come up for the exact terms our ICP searches for "B2B SEO", "SaaS SEO", "SaaS Marketing" etc. We rank at the top for these YouTube searches and get in front of our dream clients (SaaS marketing leaders & founders) every single day.

GIVE AWAY THE SECRETS.

We share full SEO playbooks we run for SaaS founders like Adam Robinson and Adam Holmgren to drive organic sign-ups and demos, step by step so you can copy the blueprint...or just hire us to do it for your company.

FUEL OUR LINKEDIN.

Every time a new video goes live, we turn it the hook into LinkedIn posts. That drives early views and engagement, and my audience here on LinkedIn can go deeper and consume more of my content. Some we run as thought leader ads. All channels feed each other. Nobody wakes up ready to invest $5-20k+/mo on SEO. It takes time to build trust that we are the right team to deliver. 

EMBED TO BOOST SEO.

Most relevant blog posts and landing pages on our site have YouTube video embedded. More real estate on google and these can pull up in AI search. Our blog posts rank higher and the people who land on them get to consume the content in a format they actually enjoy.

SEND VIDEOS TO LEADS BEFORE SALES CALLS.

This is one of the biggest unlocks. Before every sales call, leads automatically get YouTube video break-downs sent to them. By the time they get on a call with us, they've already know our 90 days to pipeline/revenue process. They show up educated ready to talk next steps. That's why our videos get mentioned on almost every single call.

THE BEST PART?

Samu and his team handle everything. Ideation, scripting, editing, thumbnails, SEO, scheduling. All I do is share ideas and show up on camera for a couple hours a month. And in return, we get a machine that fuels our YouTube, our LinkedIn, helps SEO, and our sales process all at once.

We are on month 25 of growing Breaking B2B and have been truly blessed so far with clients, our team and growth. Onwards!

PS. did you check the Breaking B2B youtube yet? 👇

Just asked Nina Quist [CMO of Eletive] why she chose Breaking B2B to run SEO & AEO for her SaaS. Here’s what she said:

___

🎁 we've got 3 spots for new SaaS clients this month. Apply for 90 days to revenue SEO/AEO review here: https://lnkd.in/e_uAy6WR

Marketing: please don't rely on AI for SEO

CEO:


Watch full B2Backstreet Boys vid: https://lnkd.in/e9warMqW

I’m seeing SaaS execs burn time and cash on the AI prompt tracking goldrush…and it’s KILLING me. Do this instead if you wanna drive pipeline:

Rather than tracking every prompt under the sun that has a tiny bit of relevance to your brand that someone may or may not type into ChatGPT needing your solution…

…Just because it looks cool and gives a great looking chart on a LLM visibility tool.

It reminds me of SEO agencies that would push top funnel articles and content to get max traffic at all costs that drove little to no pipeline and revenue.

The better way?

Focus on what your ICP search on Google and AI search when:

- needing your solution now
- comparing different vendors
- looking to move from the incumbent 
- having the crisp problem you solve

and starting with those 5% in market.

get your brand recommended in LLMs and rank on Google for these money terms first. 

often these have less search volume but high buying intent, can rank and get you cited on AI faster and often drive pipeline fast as 90 days with the right strategy.

PS. grab my 90 days to revenue SEO/AEO video guide: https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

I started Breaking B2B because I’m selfish as fudge.

Rewind a few years.

At my last agency.

Monthly cash flow was up and down

We’d sell a few projects and be on an up.

And the next month have low sales and be struggling.

A stressful life.

Then it clicked.

We had a steady flow of daily leads from our organic #1 money keywords on Google.

Why not offer the same for our clients 

Do something we can deliver well on.

Get organic search working to drive solid leads for them.

And secure us some monthly recurring revenue.

After some time…

I learnt B2B SaaS companies were the ones we got best results for 

They had the problems we solve around:

- lacking SEO resource in house
- competitors outranking them on Google & AI search
- relying too much on paid ads or outbound
- last agency delivering traffic but not pipeline 

So in Feb 2024 Breaking B2B began with one focus. 

B2B SaaS SEO & AI search for revenue NOT vanity.

Fire your $15k/mo SEO agency.

This prompt replaces everything.

JK.

Those posts kill me a little inside.

I've got something better for you.

Just finished a $1.5M SaaS SEO breakdown for Fibbler. 

Watch the breakdown here: https://lnkd.in/e5cjCeHY

30-minute video masterclass sharing:

- Setting a solid foundation 
- Quick SEO wins many ignore
- Why most tech SEO is bullsh*7
- How to craft pipeline driving content
- unusual strats to drive demos and revenue
- How to get pipeline within 90 days
- LLM visibility cheat codes
- Proving impact
- Tonnes more

Copy the blueprint and drive pipeline fast w/ SEO & AEO.

Backed by data working with 41+ active SaaS companies.

(yours for $0 before Adam Holmgren finds out I’m leaking this) 

Watch the breakdown: https://lnkd.in/e5cjCeHY

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This strategy is cooking demos for us weekly and I'm yet to find a more powerful SaaS marketing engine...but it's not one channel. It's a DEADLY TRIO:

- Linkedin (exec brand + paid)
- SEO & AI search
- Youtube

In 22 minutes you're gonna learn:

- The results they drive
- How they work together
- Exactly how to leverage each one
- Why these deadly 3 channels crush it

This playbook helped Breaking B2B go from 0-$2M ARR in 2yrs.

Watch the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/ejQkzPVR

RB2B just hit $7.8M ARR w/ 3 FTEs. We've ran their SEO/AEO engine since $5M ARR (7mos ago). Peek our exact strategy for Adam Robinson' SaaS this month:

BACKGROUND & RESULTS SO FAR.

Our focus driving sign-ups as quick as humanly possible from AI and google organic search. So far we have great coverage with top spots on google and consistent brand recommendations on LLMs for all major competitor alternative searches, visitor identification software searches, comparison searches and a bunch more use case and integration ones. Through a mix of customer research focused content, light technical works, link building and external listicle placements. Per below screenshot and Adams words...its paying off. Let's dive into the strategy this month.


NET NEW CONTENT

listicle articles:
- best lead intelligence software (400 searches/mo)
- opensend alternatives (90 searches/mo)
- lead qualification checklist (600 searches/mo)

comparison landing page:
- leadfeeder vs lead forensics (150 searches/mo)

3x bottom funnel pieces and 1x mid funnel piece. All manually crafted.

The first piece targets “lead intelligence software”, a keyword with solid search demand. A product listicle will allow RB2B to capture decision-stage traffic from buyers actively evaluating lead intelligence and visitor identification tools. Positioning us as the #1 backed by why customers choose us, pros and cons, pricing, showing our product in action + CTA...then a fair evaluation of other tools. Solid to control the narrative and these pages often get cited in AI search.

We'll also publish a competitor comparison page, sharing where RB2B is a stronger alternative across different use cases for users evaluating website visitor identification or intent data platforms. 

Another BOFU page will target OpenSend alternatives and competitors, helping intercept comparison-driven traffic.

Lastly, a listicle article around lead qualification checklists, aimed at attracting sales and RevOps teams looking to improve their lead qualification processes and naturally introducing RB2B as part of the workflow.


BACKLINKS.

We'll earn da50+ niche relevant links for:
- data enrichment tools
- 6sense alternatives
- 6sense competitors
- intent data types	


EXTERNAL LISTICLE PLACEMENTS

Huge for LLMs to cite. Top 3 placements. Great for classic SEO too with a solid backlink.

___

Wanna see if we can scale demos quick as 90 days for your B2B/SaaS?

Visit the Breaking B2B site to check our results, pricing and grab a call: https://lnkd.in/e7XuM6au

Watch my 34-minute SEO/AEO breakdown video for RB2B: https://lnkd.in/eiZfaXXq

I ask the public: does cold calling still work?

A $1.5M SaaS SEO/AEO strategy.
(copy the full blueprint for $0)

See the exact SEO and AI search battle-plan we're running for Fibbler to scale from $500K to $1.5M ARR. 

29 minutes of tactical advice to get recommended in LLMs and show top of Google organic for dream clients needing your software.

Get into the consideration set with ICPs and finally drive a steady stream of pipeline with organic search quick as 90 days.

Strategies backed by 41+ active SaaS clients at Breaking B2B.

(share with your CMO before Adam Holmgren makes me take it down)

Watch the masterclass: https://lnkd.in/e5cjCeHY

Old way of SEO: Traffic at all costs.

New way of SEO: Less traffic, more qualified pipeline.

Organic traffic is vanity for your B2B/SaaS unless its turning into opportunities for your sales team. 

Especially now LLMs send a tiny amount of traffic to websites as they wanna keep you on platform.

Money keywords/prompts are the foundation of a successful SEO & AI search strategy.

The high-intent bottom of the sales funnel search terms that indicate your prospect is actively in market for solutions like yours and likely keen to book a demo, sign-up or grab a call. 

Earn mindshare and get into the consideration set of your ICP.

Instead of wasting time on top funnel, information gathering keywords that bring traffic (many eaten by AI overviews & ChatGPT) but no conversions, focus on those that signal buying intent.

Identify what your customers search for when they’re ready to evaluate options or compare: 

Think:

“Best [software] for [niche you serve]”  “[competitor] alternative”
“[competitor] pricing”
 “[competitor 1] vs [competitor 2]” 
 "Best [niche] platform/tools/software"
 and many more

These long-tail keywords may not have the highest monthly traffic volume, but they drive conversions.

Many are also low difficulty and can drive demos fast as 90 days.

And a good chunk of these pages tend to get picked up well in LLMs right now to get citations and brand mentions.

PS. grab my 90 days to revenue SEO & AI search mini-guide and video: https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

If I was a SaaS CMO needing demos in 90 days from SEO/AEO…I’d forget vanity traffic and prompt tracking and triple down on these 7 plays:

1. Nail your blueprint.

Map out every way that a prospect could search for your offering, compare vendors/alternatives, look for use cases/integrations etc. when they are in buying mode for your solution. 

2. Update and build an epic moat (website).

Use a tool like ahrefs to see which bottom funnel commercial pages you have already ranking but not #1 on Google or being picked up in AI search. Prio these gems for updates, linkbuilding and brand mentions for quick inbound. ChatGPT pulls from google.

Craft net new pages for bottom funnel pages you lack. Look what type of page (article, listicle, landing page) ranks on google or gets cited on AI search and blow it out the water. Fuel your page copy with customer research, unique stats product visuals, proof points, or reporting and address tough questions from sales calls. Ensure each page goes into detail and has a quick summary on the topic upfront with why you (LLMs can pull from this).

3. Leverage these pages cooking demos.

Build your own listicle articles for each competitor alternative term, best X software term, etc. craft yours to blow current pages out the water. Positions your software too backed by customer research, where you are a good and poor fit and a fair comparison of other vendors. Hugely important pages to control the narrative in your niche.

Find external “Top X software” and similar articles ranking well. Reach out to the authors and offer them a sweetener to include your brand.

You could offer to have them on your own listicle, offer a podcast slot, service exchange, social shoutout, etc. Some are pay to play. Many are up for value trade.

4. Win from past media.

Find an exec from your team that’s done a lot of press, podcasts etc. Put their Linkedin profile url into an SEO tool. Reach out to all relevant sites citing them that did not give you a brand mention or backlink to amend article. This is a huge quick win.

5. Control the narrative.

Google & LLMs love to cite Reddit. Start being helpful on relevant threads. Only mention your brand where it’s relevant. Start guesting on the top podcasts in your industry. Focus on a useful show for your ICP. Ask hosts to mention your brand and a backlink in the published article. If you can do all this and have resources for your own YouTube channel and podcast great, if not, prioritize the above tasks.

6. Speed beats huge players.

Do the above with speed and you’ll chip away at giant slow-moving competitors. They have slow approval processes with layers of management, legal etc. Speed will be your unfair advantage.

7. At Breaking B2B we work with 41+ active SaaS orgs making SEO/AEO a top pipeline driver. From our learnings AI search is solid pipeline focused SEO + b2b ecosystem marketing. 

___

grab my 90 days to revenue SEO/AEO mini-guide & video: https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

Breaking B2B went from $50k/mo to $185k/mo last yr. George Coudounaris runs our LinkedIn Ads and most enquiries mention LinkedIn on calls. Here’s exactly what he did (and our plan to hit $400k/mo this year):

BACKGROUND.

With organic reach tanking like crazy I knew LinkedIn ads would be key to keep top of mind for our SEO/AEO services for B2B SaaS marketing leaders and to amplify my organic content. 

Plus, fixing our funnel of SEO/AEO and YouTube traffic who hit our site but didn't convert.

Getting the deadly trio: SEO, YouTube and LinkedIn cookin'


THE STRATEGY.

(1) George made me get brutally clear on ICP 

With a very limited budget to start (1.2k/mo), we weren’t going to rely on LinekdIn’s native filters. We wanted a TIGHT company list that matched his ICP of B2B SaaS companies he serves best. 

So he asked me:
Who are your best clients? 
Who gets the most value?
Which companies do you want more of? 

Turned that into firmographic filters, pulled a list, looked through it manually - so we knew we were getting in front of the right companies from Day 1. 


(2) Thought Leadership Ads became the growth engine

Thought Leadership Ads are winning right now for many b2b orgs with execs already organically posting with a following. Its high engagement rates mean you get better bang for your buck, and is a great place to start.

(my engagement rates are 8-15%) 

But we don’t just boost any content. 

Before we started,
We mapped best performing posts to the 5 Stages of Awareness

• Stages 1-3 → cold audiences
• Stages 3-5 → warm audiences

Then filled any content gaps.

Next step: every post needed a CTA.

Early-stage posts link to helpful resources.
Later-stage posts push toward booking a call.

Result?

Thought Leadership Ads consistently hit engagement rates as high as 15%, which meant Sam was everywhere his buyers looked.

Since then, we’ve layered in:

• Company page ads so Breaking B2B grows beyond my face
• Amplifying clients/partners getting results posting about Breaking B2B

So the brand scales, not just me.


(3) Constant Optimisation of Thought Leadership Ads

Judge the top performing Thought Leadership Ads by looking at:
Engagement rate
Cost per landing page click (a custom metric not available in platform)
New subscribers
High intent pages
Calls booked

And have a tight feedback loop on what’s landing to closed-won. 


(4) Acknowledge the reality of the buying journey 

Most prospects aren’t in-market today. Many have an SEO vendor they’re probably not seeing value from. 

Others are getting their business to the point where they can finally invest in SEO/AEO. 

The ads keep us top of mind. So when they’re ready, they come straight to Breaking B2B.

—

What’s next as we push toward our stretch goal?

• Upload a new company list to double audience size
• Increase spend to scale reach
• Scale top-performing ads into the expanded audience
• Grow company page ads so demand scales beyond me


Follow along as George and I share results!

VP Marketing: "how do we justify more investment in content, SEO, or AEO when traffic is less reliable, attribution is messy, and every tool promises charts that go up and to the right?"

Me: stop treating AI search like a vanity traffic game.

Treat it like a consideration set game.

Wynter asked 101 SaaS CMOs which channels they use to discover and research vendors.

84% said they use AI tools.

Instead of scaling content for the sake of volume, focus first on high-intent, bottom-of-funnel pages that earn mindshare and drive pipeline.

strong comparison and alternative pages.

industry pages, verticals pages, product listicles.

clear positioning on your own site.

external mentions on the sites LLMs are pulling from for pipeline driving prompts and keywords.

Control the narrative on your own site.

Build credibility on third-party sources.

Measure pipeline impact, not just visibility metrics.

and the best part?

done right, this playbook gets you ranked well on google organic

and mentions on AI search for high intent buyers.

a double win.

PS. grab my 90 days to revenue SEO/AEO mini-guide and video: https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

Here's the 7 top pipeline channels for SaaS marketers & founders....based on 24 months of data and 755 discovery calls:

(755 sales call transcripts analysed across 2 years).


1. Paid Ads (Google + LinkedIn): 28%

Most explicitly stated dominant channel.

Quotes:
“70% of our inbound comes from Google ads, LinkedIn…” 
“We’d kind of spent money on Google ads for a few years… last year we got two inbound inquiries qualified.” 

Often described as:
- Majority of inbound
- Primary measurable driver
- First lever to scale or cut


2. Outbound Sales: 24%

Extremely common among:
- Early-stage SaaS
- Bootstrapped companies
- Technical founders

Examples:
“Outbound, sort of outbound work.” 
Hiring AEs / BDRs to fill pipeline 

Many companies say:
- Inbound is low
- Sales team drives growth


3. Referrals / Word of Mouth: 18%

Example:
“Word of mouth, referrals, they trust way more…” 

Often described as:
- Best quality leads
- Hard to scale
- Relationship-driven


4. SEO/AEO: 14%

Rarely dominant, but often present.

Quotes:
“30% coming from direct or organic.” 
“It’s not doing that at the moment.” 
“I want it to be a big jumping off point for inbound… and it’s not doing that at the moment.” 

Common answers:
- A desired channel
- Underperforming
- “Trickle of leads" 

Organic search often described as:
- Secondary
- Under-optimized
- Desired but not yet performing


5. Partner / Ecosystem (marketplaces, integrations): 7%

Usually:
- Supplemental
- Not fully controlled


6. Social Content (LinkedIn, Podcast, YouTube): 6%

More common among:
- Founder-led brands

Organic linkedin posting and social selling is big here.

YouTube massively neglected still in B2B SaaS.


7. Events / PR / Community: 3%

Mentioned occasionally but rarely primary pipeline driver.

Often:
- Trade shows
- Speaking
- Industry PR
- Slack/Discord groups

____

PS. join 1,951+ b2b legends enjoying the Breaking B2B newsletter (instantly unlock 90 days to revenue SEO/AEO playbook): https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

RB2B (24mnth startup) are catching the 14 year old incumbent…7 months after starting SEO & AEO w/ Breaking B2B: 

Owning positioning for the niche.

Controlling the narrative.

Recommended in AI search.

Top of Google organic.

No vanity traffic.

Focused on high intent buyers.

Hunting for their software now.

Comparing options available.

Needing a specific integration.

Frustrated with current provider.

Having a crisp painful problem to solve.

Driving sign-ups and revenue.

___

Peek the full video breakdown we run for Adam Robinson’ SaaS: https://lnkd.in/eiZfaXXq

Grab my 90 days to revenue SEO & AEO playbook: https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

I ask the public: how to get #1 on google?

taplio

The Battle

Liam Moroney

Sam Dunning

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreLiam Moroney's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreSam Dunning's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Liam Moroney

Sam Dunning

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);}Liam Moroney's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreSam Dunning's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreLiam Moroney's LinkedIn Performance