Liam Moroney

MarTech

Contributing Writer

Storybook Marketing

Owner

Revenue Collective

Member

Suas Marketing

Founder

RevGenius

Notarize

SVP Revenue Marketing

Vibes

VP Revenue Marketing

Rocketrip

VP, Marketing

Techstars

Mentor

Monetate 

Sr. Director, Growth Marketing

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.

Meaningful product differentiation is always a temporary thing as competitors inevitably catch up, but it's also what gives rise to brands and even categories in the first place.

And, more importantly, it's also often a matter of pure semantic classification.

The big debate in marketing about whether distinctiveness is what really matters over differentiation, in my opinion, has a blind spot that comes from looking from the perspective of large brands in established categories. 

In the earlier days of product and category lifecycles, there is often real differentiation. There has to be or we'd never see new products.

But when products deliver value in their differentiation and gain market traction, it doesn't just disappear through more competition - it also evolves the category classifications themselves, which eliminates differentiation far more and in permanent ways.

Take the simplistic example of the milk category, where the release of non-dairy options brings clearly differentiated options - so long as the buyer considers them all in the mental category of milk.

Some options gain more popularity than others, which gives rise to new category classifications as marketers think of them - suddenly there is dairy and plant-based, possibly narrower again in the form of nut milks, and thus there is less differentiation as we see them in new groups.

But that doesn't guarantee that buyers mentally classify that way, and when they stop thinking of them as one category is subjective and a condition of category maturity.

The pedantic point is that once categories mature, whether it's milk or enterprise ERP solutions, once we create new classifications and categories of COURSE it makes differentiation a moot point.

But it doesn't mean it doesn't matter on the path to growth. 

It's not unlike evolution, where subtle change is common until one day it's meaningful enough and widespread enough to become its own species. Then, suddenly and because of a classification, everyone in that species is more similar than they are different.

But, all things evolve, including markets.

Brand Marketer | Storybook Marketing | MarTech contributor

Much as we’d like it to be, marketing is not deterministic or meritocratic.

Great ideas and execution often fail, and mediocre ones can thrive - the common variable is the conditions in which the marketing happens. 

Yet so much of marketing advice and thinking, from downloadable playbooks to reputable marketing science bestsellers, talk about how to grow as though it will happen so long as you follow their advice.

We see discussions asking “what’s still working in marketing?” and books explaining how brands grow, but neither tends to include the critical addendums of “in these current conditions” or “under the right conditions”.

It’s become a lost persepctive in much of marketing to begin with an understanding of the market before getting tactical.

Instead, growth is attempted from the inside out. 

Rather than trying to understand how many people might be buying a tool like ours or solving a problems like we solve, we pay technology and ad vendors to simply find them by monitoring behavior that might resemble buying. 

Rather than trying to balance how much we advertise with the brand exposures that our audience are receiving from competing solutions, our attribution tools instead talk about how many days it will take or how many exposures we need in order to turn someone into a buyer. 

When we operate from this position, we end up seeing our CAC and ROI change but lack any context about what might be causing it.

We stare down the barrel of big quarterly targets, often without any clue if the conditions are favoring us getting there, instead being treated like we’re doing less effective work in which we hold all the cards and control all the variables.

None of this is to say that marketing is futile and growth impossible, but to say that growth is conditional and situational. 

If have have amazing conditions giving us a tailwind, we can see amazing things with relative ease, but we have to act very differently if the conditions aren’t as favorable. 

Great businesses closed during Covid, not because of their poor marketing but because extreme conditions came their way without warning. Similarly, many online businesses were overcome with demand they certainly didn’t generate.

Does it make one better than the other - of course not. In fact, both may well have been running identical plays.

This is the nature of markets.

We can’t control them, or even predict them, but we can better understand them. 

And I truly believe that those who see the world from that bigger market position are best set up to make effective decisions about marketing strategy.

If we accept that mental availability is what’s needed in order to grow a brand, then we also have to put that into the context of the zero-sum market it needs to happen in.

The main reason that brand awareness alone doesn’t guarantee growth is because that awareness needs to be connected to and recalled during buying situations.

Otherwise, it’s just a brand you’ve heard of but never think of, and that’s much of where mental availability has come to popularity. 

But because buyers typically only hold a few brands in their mental consideration set, being recalled during more situations also means someone else needs to be recalled less.

And that is a very non-trivial part of the equation, because it means the efficacy of our efforts are directly affected by the efforts or our competitors.

If, while we’re putting effort into reaching the broadest audience with our distinctive assets, creating associations with Category Entry Points (CEPs), then we also have to be balancing that with how much everyone else is doing the same. 

Because if everyone else is matching our reach efforts, then nothing is likely to change much. 

That’s where the thinking of Les Binet and Peter Field still has so much relevance - Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) is a major variable because we need to be upsetting the balance of things if we are to change the balance of things.

One of marketing’s biggest flaws, I believe, is in how often we forgot that our efforts are part of a complex system. 

Just because someone likes our ad and finds it funny doesn’t mean they’ll buy us over the competition they hear about much more often. Just because they come to recognize our brand assets doesn’t mean they’ll think of it more unless it’s more familiar AND more seen and experienced than before.

That’s a function of reach, but crucially in relation to the reach of alternatives.

It’s also why I’ve come to be much more partial to Dale W. Harrison’s Brand Recall at Purchase (BRaP) because it is a much more clear reminder that we’re trying to enter an exclusive and zero-sum position. 

Marketing needs to be grounded to the rules of the market, because it’s all to easy to see our jobs as to increase what we think of as a static and isolated thing, be it brand awareness, mental availability, created demand, or some other concept. 

In reality, we’re always trying to take up space and upset the status quo - in how often buyers hear about brands and in who they recall. 

We grow through disruption of the current order, and that only happens when our efforts are directly weighed against them.

It’s often said in B2B tech that marketing’s job is to make sales easier, and I see that as a deep-rooted problem. 

Not just because of how self-minimizing this perspective is, but how strategically limiting. 

In a world where marketing has been reduced to just promotion, this mindset of a sales support function is somehow even more narrow. 

And that narrowness affects our thinking, where we don’t even ask the kinds of questions we might with 4P thinking.

Questions like: 

❓ Do we actually need a sales team?

❓ Are we organised around how we want to sell instead of how customers want to buy?

Of course, the answer is very often yes to needing sales, but the question is something which should be possible to ask, if not essential. 

It is often exactly the kind of question that is needed to be asked when brands are trying to carve out a part of the market for themselves. 

The books are littered with these questions, too: 

Dyson asked “do vacuum cleaners even need a bag?” 

Apple asked if smartphones even needed physical keyboards. 

Netflix asked if rentals needed a store. 

Salesforce asked if software needed to be installed. 

Saturn asked if buying a car needed to be such a negotiation. 

And Carvana and Tesla, back to the core point, asked if it needed sales at all. 

For sure, these brands might not been the only people asking these questions, or even the first to answer it, but the decision to answer comes from thinking about how best to serve the customer. 

Not how best to serve sales.

Marketing strategy should ultimately start from the market-level, but the truth is we've pushed out much of that ability. 

With the reduction of marketing to just promotion, with the hyper-focus on performance, and with the way we judge marketing in measurement. 

We instead reward marketing that is doing the least amount possible to get a conversion, and for that marketing to be happening at a micro level. 

It's only further deepened with how much of marketing has become some form of "GTM Engineering", collecting data until we spot possible signs of buying and hoping that we can squeeze in at the last minute. 

But this type of marketing doesn't grow brands into market leaders, and it becomes very ineffective and inefficient when the market isn't booming. 

What changes markets is disruption at the macro level.

Brands who take up more space in the world, own more Share of Voice, and shift the balance of perception. 

The thinking and work of Les Binet and Peter Field on how Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) is every bit as relevant as it was when released a decade ago - maybe even more so when underlying growth has slowed in many categories.

Buyers choose the brands they think of, and they think of the brands they see and hear most about. 

The industry obsession with getting a placement in an LLM answer is assuming that buyers are blank slates and completely unaware of the category, which is not true, and completely the opposite to what research like Kerry Cunningham and the 6sense Buyer Experience Reports are showing. 

Most buyers form their consideration sets through their experience of being in the world and by how much those brands are present in them. 

That's the reality of the market, and why markets are slow to change.

Those who can't see and understand the full market picture are heavily disadvantaged in changing it.

Everybody likes a big swing ad campaign that draws huge views and social chatter, but what always matters is whether it changes buying behavior.

That's true for both the short-term and long-term effects.

One really interesting example of this is the now infamous "Snoop Goes Smokeless" campaign that resulted in the Solo Stove CEO stepping down.

In Adland it was celebrated, winning Cannes Lions, Clios, Webbys and more. It placed no 18 in Ad Age's 40 Best Ads of 2023, and it drove huge earned media metrics - 19.5 billion impressions.

What it didn't drive, however, were sales. 

In the financial reports, Q4 sales around the campaign ended up down 16.2%, a result that was bad enough to get the CEO to resign.

But, Adland didn't accept that it was a failure, talking about how it was a "top-of-the-funnel" awareness initiative, not designed for immediate, short-term sales conversions.

Except it didn't do that, either.

The Branded Search data tells a really clear picture here, and one that aligns with the company financials. 

That same quarter, where sales were down 16%, the brand search fell similar amounts compared to the year prior. And that didn't pick up as time went on. In fact, the picture is even worse now, with November 2024 down nearly 40%.

This is where brand marketing often gets into real trouble - if nothing positive happens in the short-term it probably won't in the long-term either.

When we measure big brand campaigns, looking at all the earned media and attention it got in the moment, we need to anchor that to something tangible in buying interest and behavior.

It's of course true that we put too much of the measurement value in how many sales happened in the immediate, but long-term brand impact still has to be rooted in something.

And, usually, short-term and long-term aren't anywhere near as divided as the Adland narratives make them out to be.

Category disruption is certainly not reserved for the tech industry alone. 

Real disruption - the kind that changes market share - is definitely not a common thing, but it does happen in young categories or ones experiencing strong underlying growth that ends up attracting competition.

But, the competition typically needs to be coming with either strong funding, reach, distribution, or all of the above for it to make real dents.

One really interesting category that shows how different kinds of brands can accomplish this, however, is non-alcoholic beer.

Below is a snapshot from the US market, using Share of Search and validated against real reported market share data. 

A fast growing category, the space has been steadily owned by Athletic Brewing, even against legacy beer brands, where it has owned about 20% of the market closely followed by Heineken 0.0 at about 18%.

This picture follows closely in the search data, despite it not being a product category that gets purchased online, which shows how well it acts as a brand proxy.

But, since late 2024, this category has been dramatically changed with two very different entrants.

The first was Bero, a brand owned by actor Tom Holland, and which has been getting heavy promotion through is celebrity along with advertising efforts on social media.

The initial surge in attention shows up clearly on the SoS view, and while the initial buzz has faded the brand has kept a presence with sales reaching $10m already (compared to Athletic Brewing's $100m 2024 revenue), making it a real player in the space and quickly.

The other brand was Michelob Ultra Zero, which came roaring into 2025 with all the distribution power that Anheuser-Busch has to offer, and it has reached 7% market share already by its own press release claims.

Two very different brands, but one common element - major reach ability at their disposal. 

How the category will look in 2026 is anyone's guess but, as a fan and consumer of Athletic, they are in for different competitive landscape, as their own search is trending down and new players are coming in strong, and with legacy beers all aiming for more of the market.

It is the very definition of disruption, and Share of Search data can paint a powerful picture that correlates with the financial reality.

And if you'd like to see how Storybook can build a view for your category, just send me a DM or fill out a form on the site.

Share of Voice (SOV) is not a concept you hear as often anymore, because performance marketing has shifted so much of our thinking towards precision. 

We think instead about how we can reach the exact right people at the exact right moments, but the space we take up in the world with our marketing is genuinely important. 

The reason that big brands tend to stay big is ultimately a structural one. 

The brand's share helps them to take up a lot of space in the world, both in the word of mouth generated by their existing share as well as the literal exposures caused by being there. And on top of that is their marketing spend to keep them visible and increase that visibility farther. 

This is why performance marketing hits very quick plateaus, too, since all of this structural advantage is what we would need to overcome in order to take share away from them.

That's what Share of Voice ultimately is - how much space we take up relative to competition, and how big that occupied space makes us seem when people are weighing options.

What makes it hard is that it need to be sustained - a one take LinkedIn takeover change the world much if most of those who see it won't be in-market for months or even years because it will be long forgotten. 

Share of Voice matters over the longer term, and to occupy a bigger SOV for any meaningful amount of time requires either healthy capital or a thoughtful segmentation approach to make budget go farther.

Markets are changed when they are disrupted, and that doesn't happen in hyper-targeted, last-minute message focused on conversion.

With the Semrush acquisition news, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the SEO competitor cohort from a Share of Search perspective.

What stuck out to me was how brand searches for the category leaders are down in 2025, despite all of the AEO/GEO conversation. 

Clearly, all of the brands are going all-in on the AI search future, but it seems plausible that brand search is going elsewhere to evaluate alternatives while these brands strengthen their positioning and capabilities around AI.

What's also been fascinating is just how stable the market share has been in the last few years in what is absolutely a competitive category (though I can hear Dale W. Harrison in my ear telling me I shouldn't be even the least bit shocked).

Semrush, Ahrefs, and Similarweb have all held its place as the leader with remarkable consistency, collectively owning nearly 85% of this cohort search.

The volatility, as it usually the case is in that 15%, where Moz has been declining in share while SE Rankings climbed up quickly this year.

It will be very interesting to see what being in the Adobe portfolio does for this category. History in tech tends to show that being owned by big tech isn't aways the advantage you'd expect, especially over the long-term.

For those deep in planning for 2026, I truly believe that one of the most valuable things you can bring in is research about the broader market.

There are a great many ways to get it, and of course Share of Search is my personal preference, but what we frequently lack is a picture of the conditions of the market and our place in it.

When we look at historical data in target setting, we're often making a bet that the conditions will remain as they were such that we'll see the same kind of outcomes, but the market has been much more volatile for many.

And there are a lot of conditions that can change:

Overall demand for our solution set can decline, especially if confidence about the economy changes or if there is category disruption like with AI in tech.

Competitors come into funding and get acquired, which can change the balance of the budgets they are able to work with, the reach they're able to have, and the share of voice they're able to command. 

New competitors can arrive, sometimes entering our category and often taking demand into adjacent ones.

That's a lot of ways to upend the conditions that were present in our historical data. 

Past, as they say, is not prologue.

Building category views and narratives with brand search data is highly accessible, and Storybook can deliver it in in a fully managed dashboard in as little as a week, with a view backwards of up to four full years across every brand and region.

We can't predict the future, but we can do better than looking only at the past in our internal metrics. 

It can provide a lot of context about what we should do, and allow us to track it as we go do it in 2026.

The challenge with marketing science and effectiveness research is that it tends to be anchored around large brands, but wants to deliver advice to both large and small ones. 

This is not a criticism of the work, which is always excellent, but the natural bias that comes from data availability and the missing perspective about contstraints that exist at the small end which make initial growth much more difficult.

For reasons that are totally understandable, most data that we see from institutes like Ehrenberg-Bass Institute or the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) come from large brands within stable or mature categories, or self-reported data from large category leaders.

Even research done explicitly on ‘tiny’ brands - commendable efforts all - still rely on brands for whom there is panel data enough to do research.

This in itself skews the definition of ‘tiny’ upwards, with some survivorship bias group selection. 

What the research gets incredibly right, especially EBI, is in the things that DON’T work to achieve growth - such as trying to grow through increased loyalty over penetration.

That insight matters and bears repeating, since I’ve personally seen in tech how many rallied around ‘bow-tie models’ that promised big return through customer expansion in a fictional mathematical growth model.

But pointing out what doesn’t work isn’t the same as advice on how to accomplish what does. 

Growth through penetration, reaching as many category buyers as possible misses very important nuance at very small scale. 

Take B2B categories or long inter-purchase period consideration products, where maximum reach to maximum audiences can easily result in most of the spend being seen once and long-forgotten before in-market moments.

There are very real constraints that make this advice hard to accomplish, not the least of which is sufficient capital.

Gaining initial momentum at truly small scales is messy, segmented, differentiated as well as distinctive, and gradual before it can adopt the advice of large brand research. 

It may very well find itself affected by the same laws as big ones in unfair quantity, but gaining escape velocity into bigger leagues is a world of study itself. 

The research being done is critical, and I’m thankful for it always, but I do think we need more acknowledgment about the challenge it takes for brands to make it past the early evolutionary stages at all.

As buyers, we base a lot of our perceptions about the landscape on how much we hear about brands relative to each other. 

Not just in terms of advertising, but in overall brand exposure, including how often we see brands out in the world, mentioned by peers and influencers, etc.

It's one of the reasons that market share is so hard to move, since a brand ten times bigger than you will create ten times more brand exposures than you simply by its current share.

So, when we focus so much of our advertising spend on showing up the least amount necessary to convince someone, we can end up showing much less in the world than is actually needed to maintain our place, much less grow it.

That's why it's so important for marketing think from a market-level perspective, factoring in all of the things that happen around our promotional efforts, and which play a huge role in how effective they are.

“Aside from the price, I actually like the idea.”

In a post I read recently detailing a failed product launch from a YouTube celebrity, this line stood out.

In this short sentence, there's a huge amount of insight into just why marketing needs to be a 4P endeavor, and the real costs when it's not part of our thinking.

Price is one of the most important and impactful levers in marketing strategy, and a change in price can impact demand more and more quickly than even huge amounts of promotion.

There's great evidence of this all around us on all sides of the equation.

Despite more promotion than most could ever dream of, the Apple Vision Pro simply couldn't overcome the price tag of $3,499, especially when compared to the anchor price of other headsets around $500, however technically superior it was. 

In the other direction, much of the early growth in big tech, from Uber to ChatGPT, comes because of deep price subsidies to gain users, which would be impossible if not for the VC funding model. These brands often lose huge sums in a bet that market share gains will create future profit.

In consumer electronics, some of the biggest reasons for products to become mainstream has been due to the lowering of cost through innovation. From desktops, to televisions, to cars, mass production and improved efficiency was the big driver in a niche idea becomes a household standard.

In all cases, price was a huge lever in the success or failure of the product as well as the rate of its adoption.

But, when marketing is reduced to Promotion, price often becomes a static force that we just have to accept and operate around, when we should be able to question it and understand its role in the strategy.

Because often, price is the whole problem.

New innovative products like technology are frequently expensive to start, and this reality impacts the level of demand materially.

We also see this play out in the FMCG world, where heavy discounting at point-of-sale can drive quick sales but usually only temporarily and often not larger than the sales discount, especially if pulling forward people who would have bought later at full price.

In all directions, and in all industries, price is a critical lever, and one that changes just about everything.

And it belongs in marketing thinking.

If you want to disrupt the market, it's pretty important to understand how markets work and what facilitates disruption.

The truth is market dynamics are not very intuitive, and real market share change is highly dependent on the right conditions while overcoming powerful forces.

And the harder truth is that a lot of what modern marketing is built and measured around doesn't account for any of these, nor do we train marketers in in how to.

Marketing hasn't just been reduced to a promotion function - it's also being poorly taught to new generations by confidently untrained marketers, which distorts the profession further into something less and less effective.

So we end up with prominent marketing voices describing marketing in ways that completely contradict theory and economic reality, or worse, where they actively disregard the theory itself in favor of their own.

Add to that the handover of audience understanding to tech vendors and ad platforms, who claim they'll serve up our ICP on a platter and all we need do is make our compelling case.

If their claims worked, then markets would be in a constant state of chaotic disruption, yet that's not at all what happens.

When you look at markets from a distance, the reality is that most of them are far more stable than they feel at ground level. 

All that activity, all those hard won deals and sales, the exhausting campaigns, the tediously crafted content and copy, those targets we fight tooth and nail to hit, can all bring in company revenue without ever changing the share that each competitor has. 

Market disruption rarely happens in the precision performance efforts, nor do they compound into market moving ones. Most brands grow inside of pockets of share that can be won, while big players continue to hold most of it safely so long as they keep their momentum.

But those pockets also become harder to win in weakening markets, as the market becomes more conservative - conditions we're seeing a lot of right now.

Marketing is not a naturally intuitive profession, and training in it is genuinely important. 

Many of those who are proudly boast that they're a better marketer because they came from a non-marketing background make the profession worse in their advice.

Many of the playbooks that came from their wins don't account for the conditions and levers that were in place for them to accomplish their well-earned wins.

There shouldn't be elitism around how people come into marketing, but there damn well should be sufficient training to make you a well-rounded on.

The accidental and natural marketing expert is fiction. 

This is trained profession, and all marketers deserve good training.

Growing market share is a disruptive effort, but what that disruption looks like in marketing practice is often now what we expect.

The word 'disruption' has been largely stripped of meaning by Silicon Valley, where every new VC-backed tool promises to change the way we {insert thing here}, and whose marketing is often about big viral moments.

True technological disruption, in reality, tends to only come along once a generation, and most of the time successful outcomes disrupt a very different way.

Where brands increase their share of voice in the market for a prolonged period through well-planned media and distinctive creative. An effort that's no less expensive than big flashy moments in time, often much more, but which upset the balance of a market that likes equilibrium. 

It can happen through injected capital investments in marketing or achieved the decline of an incumbent's. Major shifts usually enjoy a mix of both.

The trouble is, that tech disruption thinking has embedded itself in a lot of marketing thinking, and those big moments now win over the more true kind of disruption that changes categories.

I saw just this thinking today, given as explicit advice to produce "a single, concentrated burst of story, POV, and firepower that the entire category must pay attention to", if one desires to be a market leader.

While there's truth in there somewhere, this so-called "lightning strike" marketing only creates disruption in the moment, and moments pass quickly as far as the market is concerned. 

In fact, when you're dealing with solutions people might buy once a year, or even once every 3 years, that week of viral attention is usually lost to the sands of time.

Real disruption can be much less obvious, and can feel much less exciting since it often involves sticking to a consistent look and message for the long haul.

But, just as the consistent lapping of waves can erode a cliff, so too can consistently holding a bigger presence in the market and minds of buyers erode market share.

Big moments absolutely have their place, especially in activating on better brand awareness and recall, but they are not usually the movers of markets.

The brands people think of first tend to win, and changing that order doesn't happen in moments but steadily and consistently over time.

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Sam Dunning

Breaking B2B hit $138k MRR in 21 months. Here’s my 7 bets to break $200k ASAP in 2026:

1. Improve time to value.

One thing I hate about the SEO industry is pointless month long technical audits to collect cash.

We’ve just shrunk our onboarding flow to start executing on a game-plan one week from sign up.

Then we work on audits / reviews if needed whilst making progress to drive pipeline.

I still wanna speed this up.

2. SEO/AEO.

Gotta keep practising what we preach.

Showing top when high intent prospects search on Google and LLMs looking for a SaaS SEO agency.

3. Niche influencer partnerships.

Working with founders who have our ICP (SaaS marketing leaders and founders) to run their SEO engine.

Right now working with Adam Robinson @ RB2B and Adam Holmgren @ Fibbler.

We all share the full roadmap ups and downs here in public.

The trust this builds is unbeaten.

Looking to bring another founder with a strong following in our ICP onboard.

4. YouTube and podcast. 

Hardly any b2b companies are nailing YT.

We share our full playbooks weekly on SaaS SEO & AI search.

With top notch production from Samu and team.

Not only are this vids evergreen and searchable but we cut them up to publish here.

More and more prospects now mention they’ve seen our videos on sales calls.

Also interviewing SaaS mktg leaders on the Breaking B2B podcast to share how they drive growth today.

5. Founder brand.

I try to do the opposite of most SEO agencies. 

Memes.
Music videos.
SEO man skits.
Ask the public series.
Share our full SEO playbooks.

And a tonne more.

Get attention first then link back to our offer.

6. LinkedIn ads.

Making top organic posts thought leader ads and serving them to site traffic from all above activity.

Also targeting cold ICP.

Shout-out to George for running this engine for us. 

7. Deliver 5% extra.

We’re working to systematise an at least weekly value-add on top of our usual monthly works for every client.

Could be a loom video with CRO ideas, some free web dev, blog reccos or anything else to help drive growth.

My theory is this keep churn down and increases word of mouth recommendations.

Recently been blessed with folks mentioning we are recommended in Exit Five and other communities and wanna keep that building.

Cheers to an epic 2026!

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)

Last weekend I blew $6.5k on 33hrs in Budapest and failed to hit our goal.

We aimed for 8 long-form videos.

Ended up recording 7:

- How a 19 yr old hit $50k MRR
- SaaS SEO explained in 5 minutes
- The b2budapest adventure (vlog)
- 5 yrs of SaaS SEO knowledge for free
- YouTube marketing strategy for SaaS
- I interviewed 466 SaaS marketing leaders…here’s what I learnt
- Crafting a SaaS SEO strategy live for a founder

All dropping on the Breaking B2B youtube and podcast over the next 2 months.

Saw some epic sights of the city.

Walked a tonne.

Great to meet our YT producer Samu

and cheers to Ben for filming everything.

Look forward to the next one!

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RB2B and dozens more SaaS orgs drive signups & demos fast as 30 days with this simple SEO/AEO play: 

List out every competitor you have.

Make a dedicated page for each variation of:

competitor 1 vs competitor 2 vs you
competitor alternatives
competitor pricing
competitor reviews
 
Leverage customer research to share:

Why you
Where you’re a good fit
Where you’re not
Show product in action
Leverage customer results
A fair comparison of others

Why?

These pages are super low difficulty.

They rank FAST.

Plus the listicle articles get cited on AI overviews and ChatGPT.

Helping you control the narrative for your org.

Just like this example for Leadfeeder alternatives for Adam Robinson of RB2B.

Nobody searches this for fun.

They do it because they’re annoyed with their current vendors pricing, support, lack of features or they are comparing software to invest in.

Often low traffic keywords…

But super high sales intent to get those all important organic demos and signups flowing.

Watch and copy our full 34-minute SEO strategy for RB2B: https://lnkd.in/eiZfaXXq

Apply to work with us: https://lnkd.in/e7XuM6au

graphical user interface, text, application, email

Flew 1000+ miles to Budapest
(8 solid videos is the goal)

Met our YT producer Samu today.

Recorded some solid SaaS SEO video breakdowns at cool landmarks.

Went to a rooftop spa.

Had some great food.

Saw some great sights.

Now onto some podcast eps.

Blessed to be able to grow Breaking B2B and enjoy the process and partnerships. 

Great weekend!

Fibbler just broke $500k ARR. Next stop $1.5M+ ARR in 2026. Adam engaged Breaking B2B to fire-up their SEO/AEO inbound engine. Here's our exact strategy for December:

THE GAME-PLAN.

Drive sign-ups quick as humanly possible from dream clients searching for linkedin revenue attribution tools, comparing vendors, frustrated with their current vendor or struggling with a problem Fibbler solve.
 
We are focusing on bottom funnel articles and high-DR link building. The pages we’re recommending target high-value competitors or category terms where Fibbler should be mentioned.

NET NEW CONTENT.

We'll craft net new listicle based articles for:

- dreamdata alternatives (70 searches/mo)
- factorsai alternatives (10 searches/mo)
- linkedin marketing tools (600 searches/mo)
- linkedin ads [analytics] tools (10 searches/mo)

All long form 2-2.5k+ words.

Listicles are SUPER powerful to show up in AI overviews, ChatGPT and google organic.

Most are low difficulty and can drive pipeline within 90 days.

Plus they help you control the narrative and are solid assets for your website (and AI search results).

We position Fibbler as #1 backed by why customers choose them, where they are a good fit, where they aren't,  show the product in action, leverage social proof + clear CTA. Then a fair comparison on other vendors.

LINK BUILDING.

DA50+ links earnt from niche relevant sites and external listicles going back to our homepage and our own listicle articles.

linkedin ads attribution tools x1
linkedin revenue attribution tools x2
linkedin ads attribution x1
fibbler x3

WANNA SCALE ORGANIC PIPELINE FOR YOUR B2B/SAAS?

Check our results, pricing and book a call: https://lnkd.in/e7XuM6au

Fibbler ranked on AI & search in 5 days.
(12 months for SEO $$$ is a myth).

Yes, competitive category based keywords can take that 6-12 months+

But.

There's money to be made in 90 days.  

Competitor content is one of many winner for quick sign-ups and demos.

They are low difficulty and can rank super fast.

List out the competitors your customers often evaluate, or move over to you from.

Then look at terms like:

[competitor] alternatives
[competitor] reviews
[competitor] pricing
[competitor 1] vs [competitor 2] vs [you]

Right now, listicle based articles rank exceptionally well on google and AI search.

Position your solution as the top choice (backed by customer research), showing your product in action + social proof along with where you're a strong/poor fit. 

Then a fair comparison of other vendors.

Working a treat already for Adam Holmgren and Fibbler.

Not sure why our screenshot looks like an old newspaper haha.

___

I just recorded an ultimate guide to drive pipeline in 90 days w/ SEO & AEO.

Grab the 34-minute video course & playbook: https://lnkd.in/et7yce7s

I started Breaking B2B because I’m selfish as f**k.

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 for revenue NOT vanity.

https://lnkd.in/e7XuM6au

I’m spending $6.5k on 48hrs in Budapest this Sunday…all in to fuel the media engine for Breaking B2B. Here’s why: 

THE THINKING.

I am all in on attention first from ICPs then linking back to our offer.

Most b2b and SaaS marketing is boring. 

Especially SEO.

After 21 months building this company in my home office…

It’s time to get out, meet more partners and customers and ramp up our mktg engine.

This will give us a tonne of footage plus we get to experience good sights and times in Hungary.

Originally planned around $3k 

But:

Flights
Hotels 
Transport 
Videographer (Ben) 
YouTube production (Samu)

And food, drinks & sights add up.

I’d much rather invest in these evergreen assets than chuck more in ads.

THE PLAN.

Fuel our media engine for the next 2 months.

AKA Breaking B2B YouTube and podcast.

Record 8 different videos in different spots.

4x solo episodes around what works today in SaaS SEO/AEO to drive pipeline.

3x live interviews with b2b marketers and founders. 

1X vlog of the whole journey and to see if we can fit it all in plus have fun at the same time and see Budapest.

All of which are sales assets to build awareness and proof we can deliver. 

Plus we can chop up for posts here.

WANNA FOLLOW ALONG?

Follow Breaking B2B YouTube and podcast over the next couple months too see the good, bad and ugly!

Where should we go next? 👇

29 SaaS companies invest $5-20k monthly with Breaking B2B for SEO/AEO. You don’t need to. I share everything for free:

I’d rather you checked this first.

Everything I know about driving pipeline with SEO and AI search is available to watch.

- When to start
- SaaS orgs it’s a good fit for
- Crafting a pipeline driving strategy
- Building best in class pages and content 
- Earning backlinks & mentions for free
- Why most technical SEO is BS
- What and how to measure
- Quick 90 day wins

See real examples that we run for our clients like RB2B, Proposify, EventsAir and dozens more along with our own site.

All focused on driving demos, calls and sign-ups for b2b software orgs.

Copy it an do it in-house, as many do.

Or a small percentage eventually reach out to have us run everything for them.

Wanna see if I’m all hot air?

Search: Breaking B2B on YouTube.
Or listen on Apple & Spotify.

Proud founder moment: Breaking B2B is actively getting recommended in Exit Five as a solid SaaS SEO/AEO agency 🙂

Check our results, pricing or book a call: https://lnkd.in/eT_F8zZB

graphical user interface, text, application

RIP LinkedIn organic 2026....This DEADLY TRIO feels unfair for driving highly qualified pipeline. SEO, YouTube and TL ads. Copy our exact playbook driving MRR growth at Breaking B2B:

The trust you build when these 3 work together feels unmatched. All before prospects jump on a call with your team.

1. SEO/AEO.

Work out what dream clients search when:

- needing your solution now
- frustrated with incumbent
- wanting to solve problems
- evaluating vendors

Prioritise high sales-intent and low difficulty.

Craft best in class articles, landing pages and product listicles depending on what ranks well for the search term.

Leverage customer research and social proof to make each a sales page for your solution.

Secure rankings in google and LLM visibility by earning backlinks and brand mentions on other sites talking about your niche/products.

e.g. we rank well for 'saas seo agency' 'b2b saas seo agency' 'best saas seo agencies' etc

This gets you mindshare and help you collect demand from high-sales intent buyers across Google organic and LLMs. 

2. YouTube.

Massively mis-used and neglected by B2B/SaaS orgs.

Work out your money keywords then craft solid videos for each that share the full strategy and show real proof of results of your product as the painkiller.

We share our full playbooks weekly on SaaS SEO & AI search.

As well as interviewing marketing leaders.

All with a YT first approach.

Vids are evergreen and searchable and we cut them up to cross-promote on here.

You can embed relevant vids onto landing pages, articles etc (can give an SEO boost).

Many folks we have come inbound mention seeing us on YT.

3. LINKEDIN TL ADS.

This needs someone from your org who's posting organically with a following of your ICP.

This piece of the puzzle links all the above together.

Organic posts sharing:

- how to's
- your pov
- why your org
- edutainement
- playbooks and guides
- proof you can deliver 

Adding a CTA l*nk into the post then running them as thought leader ads to ICPs from the traffic you get from the above channels.

AND.

Running these to other clients/customers/partners posting about your org.

This keeps you top of mind and drives trust with existing pipeline and colder prospects.

___

I've just finished recording my best SaaS marketing strategies for 2026 (there's some weird ones in there we're seeing work).

Backed by working with RB2B, Adam Robinson and dozens more fast growth tech companies to fuel organic pipeline.

Wanna watch it?

Comment "SaaS" below 

and I'll send over as soon as its ready.

No gates, you'll get the video to watch right away.

I’m doubling down on going 5% beyond expectations for Breaking B2B clients.

We’re working to systematise weekly value-adds on top of our usual monthly works for every client.

Could be a loom video with CRO ideas, some free web dev, blog reccos or anything else to help drive growth.

My theory is this keeps churn down and increases word of mouth recommendations.

And shows we want every client to win.

I've interviewed 466+ SaaS marketing leaders in 6 yrs and helped RB2B, Proposify, EventsAir & dozens more drive millions in pipeline. Here's my 6 best SaaS marketing strategies for 2026 (backed by data).

Just some of what I cover:

1. How to resonate with dream clients (skip this at your peril)
2. Build an SEO/AEO engine (with examples for Adam & RB2B)
3. Influencer b2b partnerships are killer (copy our process)
4. Exactly how to win on YouTube
5. Founder brand (do the opposite of competitors)
6. Amplifying organic winners w/ linkedin ads

All plays I run for Breaking B2B helping us hit $1.8M+ ARR in 22 months. 

Watch the full 25-minute video: https://lnkd.in/eiryuXrF

CMO: “I ain't waiting 12 months. How long til SEO/AEO drives pipeline”
Me: “It depends. Just kidding…most clients see demos in 90 days. Here’s how…”

Drive revenue from EXISTING bottom funnel content.

Start with the highest commercial value pages most likely to drive leads that are closest to top 3 organic spots (ahrefs > keyword opportunities > filter to commercial intent)

Look at competitor pages ranking top 3 organic right now for your money keywords, note down gaps on the page topic you can double down on that will make your page more helpful, trustworthy, useful and convincing to dream clients.

Update meta title w/ hook. Here’s one we use: SaaS SEO Agency [Crush 2026 MRR Goals]

Embed a YouTube video breakdown on the topic.

Add POV insights from expert on your team.

Weave in product screenshots/demo/GIFs examples.

Add relevant customer quotes, testimonials, reviews.

Add FAQs that address real harsh customer Qs and objections from sales & CS calls.

Add internal links from other relevant pages on the topic to and from the page.

Many of these pages updates can rank top of google organic and get AI visibility as quick as 1-2 months with the right approach.

Then once that's nailed...

Craft a net new MONEY keyword matrix.

Get with your sales and CS team.

Fire up a google sheet with 4 columns

- Our core offers
- Industries we serve best
- Competitors
- ICPs jobs to be done

Then you can build out long-tail niche keywords with solid buying intent behind them.

"best X software"
"X for [industry]"
"[competitor] alternatives/pricing/reviews"
"[competitor ] vs [competitor] vs [you]
"how to [crisp and expensive problem for ICP]"

Prioritise the low difficulty, high sales-intent ones to craft best in class pages for:

"[competitor] alternatives/pricing/reviews"
"[competitor ] vs [competitor] vs [you]

These can start driving demos and sign-ups 90 days from being published on both google organic and LLMs.

___

I just recorded an ultimate guide to drive pipeline in 90 days w/ SEO & AEO.

Grab the 34-minute video course & playbook below 👇

The new way to do SEO.
(AI and classic organic)

Work out your money keyword.

Example here for B2B SaaS "best [category] software"

Understand what type of page you need to craft.

Usually a listicle based article for this type of keyword.

Leverage customer research in your content:

Why you.
Where you exceed.
Where you aren't a fit.
Plenty of social proof.
Show the product.
Clear CTAs.

Simple technical SEO:

Money keyword in URL, H1, meta data.
Internal links to and from relevant pages.
Clean UX, fixed CTA side bar for articles.

Earn brand mentions and placements:

Get featured top 3 placements in articles comparing your software:

This is huge for AI overviews mentions.
Mentions in ChatGPT.
Plus backlinks for classic Google organic.

Rinse and repeat for every way a dream client can search when:

Needing your solution today.
Wanting to solve a problem.
Frustrated with incumbent.
Comparing vendors.

This drives mindshare, demos and sign-ups for B2B SaaS.

___

Recent win here for RB2B and Adam Robinson.

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

Book a call with us: https://lnkd.in/eCqF7VCP

Organic demos in 6 weeks.
(SaaS SEO shouldn't take 12 months)

- We doubled down on what their ICP cared about
- Focused on high sales intent keywords/prompts
- Crafted articles and listicles using our research
- Showed how their product was the solution
- Built authority w/ mentions and backlinks

And as a results started driving inbounds in 6 weeks from ChatGPT and Google organic.

Watch dozens more client review videos and apply to work with us: https://lnkd.in/e7XuM6au

ChatGPT made tracking SEO hard as f**k.

Marketers, here’s what we recommend tracking:

LEADING INDICATORS.

- Organic rankings up for money keywords (buying intent keywords) on Google 
- Click throughs upping for money keywords
- Organic qualified traffic up
- Session times up
- Visits to high intent pages (product pages/pricing/demo/results)
- Traffic from ChatGPT and other LLMs
- Citations in LLMs 
- Money prompts brand mentions in LLMs (bottom funnel searches around your software, problems you solve, competitor reviews etc)
- Share of search against competitors 
- Branded traffic (now many folks will find brands in AI search then go direct to search for your brand or even your homepage) or AI search > Google > your site.

LAGGING INDICATORS.

- Top funnel: asset downloads, email sign-ups, checking your podcast
- Bottom funnel: booked demos, product sign-up, booked calls
- Organic leads moving forward in deal stages
- Leads turning into revenue

___

Report on all these wins (screenshots FTW) as soon as you see them to leadership in slack or internal comms to show progress at it flows. 

___

Make sure you get data from a mix of sources...

Adding “how did you hear about us?” on booking calendar/forms.

Asking "what was your full journey to booking time with us today?" again on sales calls.

Getting these notifications to flag up into slack.

Checking website analytics tools info.

Put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

And remember SEO/AEO works best as part of the b2b marketing ecosystem to build mindshare, brand and capture demand.

___

I just recorded an ultimate guide to drive pipeline in 90 days w/ SEO & AEO.

Grab the 34-minute video course & playbook below 👇

b2b marketing jargon explained:

Lead: someone who looked at sales
MQL: put down gmail for playbook 
SQL: put work email for playbook
Hot lead: turned up to zoom call
CAC: good if under ads spend
Pipeline: 3+ MQLs this month 
Founder brand: ceo pls post
Brand: lets redesign the site
CPC: some bots hit our ads 
PR: post the funding round
Paid media: 99% of budget
Outbound: buy ai SDRs 
Inbound: need please
ACV: whale paid once 
ICP: buyer with pulse 
Quota: pipe dream 
SEO: dead innit?
AEO: alive? 

Any to add? 👇

I flew 927 miles from London to Budapest...all to share how to drive pipeline with SEO/AEO in 8 minutes.

Well, we did see some epic sights too.

The first of the 7 videos from our Hungary tour.

In 8 mins you'll learn how to:

- Build a solid foundation
- Win with the the 95/5 rule
- Craft a money keyword matrix
- Use customer research to crush 
- Rank top on Google & AI searches

Watch the full video: https://lnkd.in/eXBEGp9e

PS. can you guess where this was shot?

A CMO's 5 golden rules to driving pipeline from SEO & AEO in 2026:

1. The 95/5 rule.

Nail exactly what the 5% of your market search for when in buying mode for your solution, weighing up competitors or struggling with a problem you solve.

2. Get the quick wins.

Look what bottom funnel content you already on your site have that could use a refresh to rank to of google or gain LLM visibility (ahrefs > low hanging fruit keywords). Start here for fast organic pipeline.

3. Build an epic moat.

Ensure you have dedicated pages on your site for:

- Product
- Pricing
- Features
- Use cases
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Case studies
- Technical docs
- Best X software articles
- Industries & ICPs you serve

Each addressing all the pain points, goals, why you, jobs to be done your ICP can be searching for.

With plenty of relevant social proof and positioning your solution as the painkiller. 

4. Control the narrative.

You don't want an angry reddit user publishing about your pricing because you hide it on your website.

Brand mentions + your category are big for LLM visibility. 

Features on external listicles talking about your software, podcast appearances, review sites and more are all great for this (outside of point 3 work on your own site).

5. Have the right mindset.

Realise SEO is gonna be less and less about traffic and more about being the brand of choice in answer engines and on google organic when dream clients need your solution or have issues you solve.

___

I just recorded an ultimate guide to drive pipeline in 90 days w/ SEO & AEO.

Grab the 34-minute video course & playbook below 👇

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The Battle

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