Full-funnel ABM for B2B brands with 5+ figure deals | Co-Founder @ FullFunnel.io

You need more pipeline that turns into revenue. But:
- Most marketing leads never convert to deals
- ⁠Outbound is in continuous decline 
- All the investments in trendy programs, agencies or tech didn’t move the needle. 

It’s time to try implementing full-funnel sales and marketing programs. 

Why? 

So you can:
- Accelerate this quarter’s revenue while building the future pipeline
- ⁠Convert 5-15% accounts to pipeline
- ⁠Bring marketing and sales teams together to drive the KPI that matters the most: sales velocity. 

We helped dozens of B2B tech companies implement full-funnel marketing and sales programs with 10%+ account-to-pipeline ratio. 

We will take your team by the hand and together, implement a scoped pilot program with clear milestones to prove the key KPIs, before investing in operationalization and scaling. 

To learn more or ask me anything, connect with me here or visit our website at fullfunnel.io



Vladimir Blagojević

Here's why so many good CMOs get fired. 

Leadership wants:
- faster results
- bigger numbers
- cheaper acquisition 

...all of that at once. 

This short-term ROI pressure pushes CMOs to do what gets measured: 

When forced to choose under pressure, CMOs are 5X likely to pick demand over brand. 
(recent study by Jon Miller, Ray Rike /Benchmarkit, Bill Macaitis and Carilu Dietrich). 

But this creates a structural problem.

- We put all our effort into meeting this quarter's number
- We don't invest in long term programs that build awareness and trust 

A few quarters later, the pipeline dries up. 

The numbers back this up: we're spending $2.00 to acquire $1.00 of net-new ARR. And the CAC payback time has been constantly increasing by 12.5% at median since 2022 (Pavilion).

Why is this happening? 

Leadership still believes that marketing is like a gumball machine: you put in $ and get $$ out (credit: Jon Miller). 

We know that reality is different: 
- Non-linear, complex buying journeys
- Early influence matters: more than 80% of buyers short list products they discovered before the buying process

But our attribution hides the early influence, and the "credit" goes to the last touch was before the deal, which reinforces the gumball machine thinking. 

So, without clear attribution to early and middle-funnel activities, leadership doubles down on short-term ROI.

And when the pressure doesn't bring results, CMOs get fired. 

The cycle repeats. 

--- 

As long as we stay in this loop, things won't change. 

But ripping out the entire infrastructure and starting from scratch is not an option either. No leadership will support it. 

The solution is an evolution, not a revolution. 

It all starts with a small-scoped pilot: 
- No new hires, a small cross-functional team 
- No extra budget, scoped down to a small set of accounts we have 'the right to win'
- Attribution: the team gets the credits for the pipeline created 
- The main goal is not volume, but effectiveness. By working together, from awareness to pipeline, that we can turn a higher % of high-value accounts into deals

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fullfunnelio

futurelab

trenches-b2b-marketing-community

full-funnel-b2b-marketing-summit

systemb2bmarketing

the-hour-a-day-linkedin-allbound-sales-machine

growth-labs-ltd.

6-week-abm

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

Here's the pattern every CMO recognizes.

You're pressured to pour everything into hitting this quarter's number. You squeeze every last drop from the existing pipeline and demand. 

By meeting this quarter's number, you've depleted next quarter's pipeline. You didn't get to invest in the activities that build awareness and trust six to nine months out.

And leadership happily raises the bar. 

We're trapped in a system that punishes long-term thinking but demands long-term results.

"I'll survive this quarter, show ROI, and next quarter will be better."

No, it won't. That's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The cost of non-strategic decisions compounds: 

1. ATTRIBUTION

65% of CMOs struggle proving marketing's revenue and pipeline contribution. This is the reality of last touch-attribution. 

Deals take months, sometimes years. Buyers might read your content, attend an event, see you on LinkedIn, talk to a partner, and only then reach out to sales.

But in the CRM, all that early influence disappears. The "credit" goes to the last touch before the deal.

Instead, consider a blend of self-attribution, account-based attribution, and customer interviews. Look for qualitative signals, not just quantitative ones.

2. PROGRAMS

Jon Miller's research: "when faced with budget cuts, marketing leaders are 5X more likely to protect demand gen budget than brand.

Odd, given 73% of companies agree that brand investment is a long-term investment that makes demand generation more efficient."

Instead, we need programs that balance long-term brand awareness, future pipeline development, and this quarter's goals

3. TEAMS

In most B2B orgs, there's a lack of cross-functional collaboration with sales.

Even with best intentions to work together, misaligned incentives get in the way. 

But without an orchestrated effort across GTM teams, it becomes impossible to influence the complete buyer journey. 

4. TECH/AI

Leadership hears "AI" and imagines instant pipeline at lower cost.

Yes, we can create more content than ever. Pull public data points and "personalize" at scale.

But all we're doing is scaling tactics that didn't work in the first place.  

Instead, AI should scale processes we have proven and refined through many iterations:
- Pilot → document & refine → train AI 
- Show AI what 'good looks like' with examples of high-quality output (quality benchmarks)
- Use deep insights and research about the target ICP segment as input for AI

---

The way out? 

1. Strong fundamentals (brand narrative, differentiation, positioning, ICP, buyer journey...)⠀
2. Full-funnel programs: awareness → demand capture → pipeline → Buyer enablement→ CS & expansion
3. Balanced time horizons 

- Long-term programs create brand and increase sales velocity
- Medium-term programs create future pipeline
- Short-term programs help to accelerate pipeline and capture the demand

Understand customers. Shape the journey. Build brands buyers choose.

B2B marketing plans often fail because of one reason:
Lack of clarity.

Bad plans include vague activities that are usually misunderstood by leadership and sales.

Brand awareness is not about running ads for ungated content.

ABM is not about making a wish list of accounts, running display ads, and automated emails.

Lead nurturing is not about setting up an automated sequence of emails to push the discovery call.

Yet most plans just mention these programs without any clarification.

If sales and leadership don't support these plans, it's not because they don't get marketing.

It's because they:

- Don't see the impact of these programs on the bottom line
- Don't expect it to be a cross-functional motion and expect marketing to run everything without sales involvement

Good marketing plans are:

1. BALANCED

- 80%: always-on programs that work historically
- 10%: short-term cross-functional campaigns co-created with sales
- 10%: experiments

2. DETAILED AND FOCUSED

All programs have clear:

- Detailed timeline
- Goals and expectations
- Success and failure criteria
- Resources involvement
- Leading and lagging indicators to track program efficiency
- Forecast
- Weekly planning and review meetings (see an example: https://lnkd.in/dN_hMyfQ)
- Campaign visual outline (or deck) to show how it impacts the pipeline and revenue

Our template: https://lnkd.in/dSmufFht

3. INTERCONNECTED AND CROSS-FUNCTIONAL

Every program impacts another, avoiding siloed execution.

Thought leadership ads to strategic accounts generate first-party engagement signals sales use for further engagement.

Webinars are tailored to a specific use case, buyer persona, and subset of accounts. They repurpose thought leadership content and are repurposed later as market research.

4. INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE BUYER JOURNEY

Marketing plans shouldn't be "brand awareness vs. demand capture" or "new pipeline vs. expansion."

If you focus on brand only, your sales process will struggle. We saw several MarTech companies generating buzz around them but struggling to convert brand into demand.

If you focus on demand capture, you'll miss the majority of the market.

Good marketing plans generate revenue while creating future pipeline, growing share of wallet, and preventing churn.

5. BACKED BY DATA

Marketing plans based on gut feelings or broad data always fail.

Plans that include revenue trends and sales pipeline velocity across markets, segments, and use cases (clusters) help make smart bets.

---

The reality is simple:

Our 2026 marketing plan won't fail because our CEO "doesn't get marketing". 

It will fail because we fail to clearly connect the dots between the activities and revenue.

Here's how to align ABM playbooks with long sales cycles and continuous nurturing. 

Our industry problem - engaging enterprise accounts the same way we sell $49 products. The mindset behind: if they are in the market, they will buy. We just need to hit them at the right time with the right message.

But this is fundamentally wrong when it comes to selling high ACV products. The low-ticket playbook simply doesn't work.

The enterprise sales cycle is long not because we send bad emails. It's long because corporates and mid-size companies operate in a completely different reality:

- Strategic initiatives
- Long-term planning
- Low velocity
- Complex buying centers with long decision cycles

Your solution should be a part of their current strategy. If it doesn't fit, nobody engages. But even if it does fit, enterprise buyers usually have their preferred vendors shortlist.

Sometimes you can break through, but it's more luck than a predictable motion.

WHAT YOU NEED INSTEAD

1. Always-on playbooks (continuous execution)

ABM Content 
- Thought leadership nurturing content
- Account love letters
- Paid & 1-1 content distribution
...

1-1 account development
- Account research
- Strategy sessions
- Multithreading
...

Ongoing social engagement 

3rd party signal tracking
- Hiring
- Stack changes
- Executive interviews
...

2. Program-based playbooks (planned initiatives)

E.g. 
Month 1: Content collabs
Month 2: Account-based webinar playbook 
Month 3: Follow-up workshops
...

3. Signal-based playbooks (reactive execution)

1 & 2 generate signals. 

Our job here: determine the level of intent and plan the right action aligned with it. 

TLDR;

To create future pipeline, you need to have continuos nurturing playbooks aligned with the length of enterprise buyer journey.

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands

Over the last 15+ years, I've worked for 4 VC backed SaaS companies, consulted with more than 100+, helped 1 get acquired, 1 reach unicorn status, and many more generate millions in net new revenue.

I've also seen a handful of those startups go out of business...including my own SaaS business so I know many of the mistakes. 

Over that time I've noticed that the buyer's journey has evolved. 

Today buyers have the power.

Yet, many SaaS businesses still continue to run the same programs that worked a decade ago. 

They continue to over-rely on lead gen and create friction in the buying process. 

This is pushing customer acquisition costs sky high and causing many to miss their targets. 

The way forward is to take a buyer-centric approach to creating and capturing demand. 

Buyer-centric demand gen is when your funnel aligns with how the buyer wants to learn about your company. 

It means you write in the language your buyer understands, you consider how they consume information, and when and how they want to buy. 

When you take a buyer-centric approach you generate more pipeline and revenue and an enduring brand. 

This is why we started Omni Lab.

------------------------------------------------------------

What we do for Series A to Series C SaaS startups:

→ Manage and optimize paid media across any digital channel
→ Distribute content/messaging via paid to grow pipeline and revenue
→ Build out engaging ad creative
→ Focus on optimizing the funnel based on pipeline and revenue. 

Results from SaaS companies we have worked with: 

→ Unicorn Status in 10 months
→ Grew pipeline 372% and lead > opp rate 266%
→ 1,300% increase in revenue Q3 > Q4
→ 20% increase in revenue Q over Q

If you are looking to create and capture demand via paid media, let's chat :) 

email: jonathan@omnilabconsulting.com or DM me

Jonathan Bland

🦄 A customer of ours, Upwind Security, just raised $250M at a $1.5B valuation!! 

Can you say uunnniiiicccoooorrrnnnnn. :) 

Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, bringing total funding up to $430 million! 

Wild for a company that was founded in 2022. 

Its core focus is helping organizations prioritize real risks over irrelevant alerts and streamline cloud security operations in complex environments.

Rinki Sethi, the CSO at Upwind, argues that cloud security has fundamentally changed: modern cloud, data, and AI environments are too dynamic and complex for traditional, static security tools to work effectively.

I just had to give a huge shoutout to the whole team and especially Chas Larios and Jeanette Stepanchuk, whom I've now had the pleasure of knowing at two different companies. 

Anyone looking for a great marketing leader to work for, they are it. 

It's going to be a fun year, ya'll! :)

Omni Lab 

Snapdata, in the business of waste and recycling analytics, was selected to participate in NUMA's Smart City Program in Paris to connect with corporate leaders like Cisco, Suez, and City of Paris Government to discuss innovative solutions for cities. Out of 200 startups, we were one of 4 selected to participate. 

Google Exchange Program Finalist - NUMA; Paris

Ogilvy partnered with IE Business School to invite IE based startups to pitch their ideas to Ogilvy to compete in getting the chance to have Ogilvy support their branding & marketing needs as well as partnering with some of their clients to bring about new innovation. 

Ogilvy Competition, Top 3 Startups

Achieving outstanding performance during the IE Business School Startup Lab. Voted best Startup to invest in. 

Investors' Award

Small team of marketing professionals at IE Business School were tasked to develop a new marketing strategy for a SMB company called DriveGum. DriveGum distributes and manufactures CPG goods like gum, granola bars, and others in Europe. We:

•	Repositioned the key value proposition.
•	Created three new strategies to grow brand recognition and improve sales.
•	Made improvements and updates to current marketing material. 




IE Business School - Marketing Case Competition, Finalists

James Madison University Austin Alumni Chapter

Managing Director

Snapdata designs and develops a range of sensors and data analytics platforms for the Internet of Things.

Primarily responsible for European operations developing a go to market strategy and doing business development in the waste and recycling sector.

Confirmed 3 letter of intents with governments and corporate size clients to test our product. 

Developed pricing matrixes for products and services, ROI for our clients, and detailed process for proof of concepts. 

Managed Google AdWords campaigns and analyzed Google Analytics to improve our messaging and positioning. 

Won four separate competitions for leading innovative technology and startup in Spain:

Venture Day Finalist, IE Business School
Investors Award, IE Business School
Google Exchange Program Finalist, NUMA 
Top 3 Startups, Ogilvy


Snapdata

Learn how Omni Lab helps 100+ B2B SaaS brands create and capture demand with paid ads.

Book a Call

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands (HIRING)

Here's how most people promote webinars 👇

1.) Send out an email to your email list
2.) Promote via paid social (LI and FB)
3.) Run the webinar
4.) Send out the webinar to your email list
5.) Put webinar on your website and gate

This is where your content goes to 💀⚰️

Then you go back to the team and start brainstorming ideas for the next piece of content. 

When the reality is:

1.) 90% + of your ICP didn't even see the webinar
2.) It probably is still relevant months after you promoted it
3.) Many people won't ever take the time to watch the whole webinar

Here's how you extend reach, increase consumption, and drive more registrants post webinar. 

1.) Use Descript AI to identify 3-5 short clips from the webinar
2.) Use Descript or LLM to write some quick post text
3.) Add captions, but keep branding light, don't start with 5 sec brand logo
4.) Go to channel where you ICP hangs out and post there organically
5.) Then promote via paid directly to your ICP 

We did this with another SaaS brand and were were able to get 11,497 people to watch 100% of one of the clips for around $3k. 

Pre-webinar launch, they only had 67 registrants and 27 people live. 

Post-webinar launch, 11.4k people saw a portion of it and almost 100 more registered for on-demand webinar. 

For this brand, webinar attendance was a big part of the buying journey as many that requested demo had previously attended a webinar. 

You worked hard on creating content for the webinar, don't forget to continue distributing even after the event has ended. 

Ensure you have a budget for promotion and REDISTRIBUTION.

We just wrapped 2026 planning, and we’re hiring two new roles at Omni Lab!

And it’s not because we want to do more of the same.

It’s because the way B2B paid media has been run for the last decade is broken.

Categories have become significantly more crowded and complex. 

And many SaaS brands are competing using the same channels, the same intent data, and increasingly similar messaging and tactics, making meaningful differentiation harder to achieve. 

In less competitive markets, it was rational to rely heavily on short-term demand capture.

Buyers were more responsive as there was less available information on the web, media was cheaper, and intent signals were scarce enough to provide a real advantage.

The core problem is not a lack of tools, data, or optimization sophistication. 

It is a mismatch between how paid media programs are designed and how modern B2B buyers behave. Buyers spend long periods out of the market, are highly risk-averse, and actively avoid friction. 

By the time intent is expressed, preferences are often already formed, leaving programs focused solely on in-market demand competing too late and on increasingly unfavorable terms. 

You don't need an "execution factory."

You need someone who can: 
- Build category presence before demand exists
- Earn attention in zero-click environments
- Allocate budget to make capture channels more efficient

Behind this approach is an AI platform we internally call "Omni OS" to automate repetitive work, so we can focus more on strategy, interpretation, developing creative campaigns, and making better optimization decisions. 

 If any of that sounds interesting and up your alley, we are hiring for two new roles: 

- Performance Marketing Manager ($70-100K base + variable comp) ; U.S. Based 
- Sr. Demand Gen Manager ($90-$120k base + variable comp); U.S. Based 

Please tag someone who's looking! Thank you. :) 

Go to https://buff.ly/FGtIIFp to find the recs.

If your AI output feels ‘generic,’ that’s not an AI problem. That’s a brand problem.

Models trained on undifferentiated inputs produce undifferentiated outputs.

Many don’t like the results they get because they go to an LLM and, in broken English, ask it to write a blog post about "the difference between demand gen and lead gen."

When it has: 
- No context
- No idea your core POV
- No idea about your messaging
- No idea about your brand
- No idea about your tone
- No idea about your audience
- No idea what format you want the output in

Funnel released a report that showed 39% of agency marketers and 23% of brand marketers
say AI tools create repetitive, generic campaigns.

I honestly think there are even more people who think this. 

The reason they sound repetitive, generic, or use words that you’d never say to a friend is that you haven’t built AI workflows that pull from a store of data to provide guardrails and direction on exactly what you want. 

That store of data can hold your:
- POV
- Tone
- Messaging pillars
- Positioning
- Audience
- And more

Just like talking with a human, AI needs context. 

And the more input you give it (e.g. draft, transcript, sample blog post, etc.) the better it's going to be.

Check out the report from Funnel below. 👇

P.S. You can even program in grammatical mistakes.

#FunnelPartner

The future of agencies will move away from pure execution.

And agencies built solely to produce deliverables will struggle as AI takes over their creation.

Everything from ad copy and creative to campaign planning, budget recommendations, and even audits can be done with AI. 

That doesn’t kill agencies. It changes where the value lives.

The future role of agencies is not just make things; it’s to decide what matters, interpret outputs, and give brands direction.

I recently read an article from Marketing Week called "Why AI-powered agencies will be at the forefront of marketing’s next digital revolution."

The biggest takeaway is that the value exchange will start to shift to buyers looking for things like: 

- Diagnose the market and the buyer
- Segment and choose a target properly
- Position a brand in a way that is actually distinctive
- Decide the right balance between brand, activation, and channels.

Funnel found that 72% of agency marketers believe generative AI will replace some of the services they provide to clients.

And In-house marketers agree even more strongly at 88%.

At Omni Lab, we have invested significant resources in AI-based workflows over the last two years to streamline our services, improve consistency, increase quality, and ultimately enable our team to focus more on strategy and interpretation.

And very soon, we will be releasing Omni OS, which will power Omni Lab with budget pacing, bid management, audience creation, campaign planning, and more. 

That means more time to focus on deciding what matters, interpreting outputs, and giving brands direction.

It's already starting to happen, but if you're a CMO or VP of marketing, you should be asking how your agency is leveraging AI.

You don't only want to pay for deliverables and repetitive work. 

Check out this guide from Funnel below. 

#funnelpartner

Everyone knows, buyers move linearly from TOFU to MOFU to BOFU. 


WRONG. 

It’s a comforting story. 

And one that sells well in a presentation. 

If I just build a paid media funnel that "moves" people from one stage to the next, I'll drive more conversions. 

It sounds good, but it’s not how buyers behave; most B2B buying is non-linear. 

Buyers loop, pause, restart, and revisit decisions based on internal priorities, risk, timing, and stakeholder alignment, not because your campaign calendar told them it’s “MOFU week.” 

Gartner describes the journey as a set of buying “jobs” that buyers revisit (not a straight line).  ￼

And even when someone is researching, the path between “trigger” and “purchase” is messy. 

Google’s research explicitly calls out that decision-making is not linear and looks more like a back-and-forth exploration/evaluation loop.  ￼

The biggest practical issue: your funnel drip assumes timing you don’t control. 

Even LinkedIn B2B Institute via EBB frames that ~95% of your category buyers aren’t in-market right now, so building an entire paid system to move people through stages is mostly you trying to “progress” people who simply aren’t shopping yet.  ￼

Or consider organic content on LinkedIn. 

You can't control what message people see on LinkedIn organically, so why would you with paid ads?

I've personally been distributing a mix of content across all stages on LinkedIn for 4+ years, with zero concern for where people are. 

While still driving huge growth for Omni Lab and the SaaS brand we support. 

Instead of creating complex funnels under the theory that you can "move" someone from here to there. 

Focus on building long-term mental availability and distributing content and messaging at any stage.

P.S. that doesn’t mean you don’t segment and try to ensure the right message gets to the right person. It just means you don’t programmatically push someone from one stage to another.

I've been embarking on creating more short-term videos this year and already getting great feedback. 👇

Right now, I have a pretty simple workflow:

- Post on LinkedIn
- Create a short 2-3min clip of that post
- Edit in Descript
- Schedule via Buffer
- Post across TikTok, Insta (personal/business), YouTube Shorts (personal/business)

I'm still really bullish on LinkedIn, but I think it's time to expand out to other channels to increase reach and produce different formats. 

Right now, I'm not too worried about high production and am going for a more authentic feel with selfie videos directly from my iPhone. 

Then I'll review engagement across different platforms to determine topics to go deeper on in our newsletter + adding Substack to the mix. 

Anyway, cheers to my first friend below. 

I hope she has a better day. :)

I couldn’t agree more with Justina Perro's post late last week. 

In her words, "one of the hardest marketing pills to swallow is that not everything is measurable."
 
What I said...

"On most ad platforms, CTR is sub-1%. Organic engagement is often 2–5%. 

That means 95%+ of people might be watching, reading, skimming, and absorbing without a single click, like, or comment.
 
And that’s normal behavior; we all do it. 
 
People don’t need to engage publicly to be influenced. How many times have you:

- Forwarded a video to someone
- Visited a brand later after seeing an ad
- Taken value from content without ever clicking a link
 
None of that shows up cleanly in UTMs.
 
This is where attribution can be dangerous if it’s treated as a rulebook rather than a guide. 

Buyers don’t follow the neat, linear funnel we design for them.
 
Instead:

- Use proxy metrics like brand traffic, share of search, brand mentions, and engagement to understand if you are headed in the right direction.
- Leverage quantitative data (in your CRM) with qualitative signals to go beyond last-touch reporting and understand what's resonating and what channels are being mentioned (sales calls, comments online, reactions on webinars, etc.) 
- And then compare harder to measure marketing programs to bottom of the funnel efficiency metrics like cost per SQL and cost per opportunity; over time, we want to see increased efficiency so we aren't just sharing vanity metrics. 
 
Attribution should inform judgment, not replace it.

The other day, a marketer I talked to said, "This year, we are going to ungate all of our content."

Here's what I said...

You don't have to ungate all of your content. 

You have to convert more of your gated content into short-form ungated content. 

That means: 

- Carousels
- Clips
- Text posts
- Templates
- Highlight reels
- Checklists

Remember, the brain evolved to sample information cheaply, prioritize novelty, and minimize cognitive and energetic cost before committing attention. 

The brain defaults to low-commitment information sampling to decide whether deeper processing (aka long-form content) is worth the energy. 

That's why it's so hard to get people to consume long-form content, especially if they don't know your brand. 

Prove to them that you are worth the attention. 

A distribution system could look like: 
- Create long-form content 
- Gate it on your website 
- Create 10x the number of short-form assets
- Get your employees to all reshare/post
- Direct traffic back to the asset if they want to learn more

This works organically or via paid. 

Gong did this for a while and still does this…

I did this for a LinkedIn Guide we created; gated on website, but I’ve dripped out 30-40 posts ungated about the guide. 

Stop making this a "do we ungate ALL our content" or "do we keep our content gated" decision. 

Do BOTH.

Increase reach and consumption.

Capturing demand works best when it's the second act, not the opening scene.

However, short-term growth goals and the need for perfect attribution push more budget to demand campaigns (in-market audiences).

Bill Macaitis released a long report earlier this week, surveying 168 B2B tech brands to better understand how resources were allocated to brand marketing campaigns for demand gen campaigns. 

The most interesting data points?

1.) 70% of the marketing budget is allocated to demand, just 25% to brand
2.) But, marketer leaders would prefer the brand to be 50% (2x) of the budget
3.) With 73% of companies reporting that demand gen efficiency is the top result of brand investments

The biggest issues holding back marketing leaders from investing in brand are: 

- Using website traffic is a key brand metric
- The difficulty in connecting brand investments to pipeline

The other problem is that categories have gotten significantly more crowded over the last decade. 

Back in 2010, the Martech space represented just ~150 brands; now it represents 15k across 49 product categories. 

That's 306 brands in the same category, according to chiefmartec

That means that, with 70% of budget targeting in-market audiences, more brands are competing for the SAME exact keywords and audiences, using the SAME intent/signal-based data that everyone has access to. 

The more competition, the smaller the audience, the more expensive, and therefore CAC rises (Pavilion backed this up in another survey)

It's clear that we need to reallocate more of our budget and objective mix to focus more on people not yet "in-market".

As we know from Gartner, Forrester, B2B Institute, and the EBB, building mental availability earlier puts you on the short-list and improves the efficiency of demand programs. 

That means you need to: 
- Focus on comprehensive audience reach vs. over-indexing on narrow targeting signal-based audiences
- Increase the amount of valuable content to build awareness and attract attention vs. increasing the amount of gift cards you offer
- Make more content/messaging consumable in-channel (short-form) vs. making it harder to consume your content

And start shifting the discussion on how brands improve efficiency with reallocating more budget/objectives to out-of-market buyers by: 

- Using brand traffic and share of voice as leading indicators
- And track improvements in efficiency metrics like conv rate, cost per SQL/opp

I don't think any of this is easy, and I know everyone struggles with this at some level. 

But remember...

Brand is what demand draws from. 

Demand is where the brand cashes out.

LinkedIn is not a high-intent channel.

People don’t open LinkedIn thinking, “What software should I buy today?”

They open it to connect with colleagues, learn something new, share opinions, or simply waste time between meetings. 

Compare that to Google or even an LLM.

When someone searches “best cybersecurity training software,” they are explicitly signaling intent. They’re evaluating. They’re buying. Search captures demand that already exists.

Social doesn’t work that way (with the exception of TikTok)

You don’t go to the LinkedIn search bar asking, “What are the best cybersecurity training companies?”

That’s not the job the channel is doing.

Your strategy on any social channel should really accomplish one of three things: 

- Teach someone something
- Entertain them with something
- Or some combination of both

While scrolling, people get exposed to ideas, brands, and messages. If something resonates, they may engage. 

There are in-market buyers on LinkedIn, and you should have some campaigns/content focused on offers or hard CTAs, but they represent a small percentage at any given moment. 

Adjust your strategy accordingly.

For those who haven't heard, LinkedIn launched a new feature last year called Partnerships. 👇  

What is it?

Any time someone posts and mentions your brand, you will see it in the partnership section, allowing you to get approval to promote that post via thought leader ads. 

Discoverable posts in Partnerships include: 

- Employee posts from your organization
- LinkedIn articles authored by members
- Newsletter articles published by members
- Posts from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree+ connections
- Video content from vetted publishers available for in‑stream ad placement for select accounts 

For those not already using a brand monitoring tool, this is pretty cool. 

It's pretty straightforward: 

- Go to campaign manager
- Go to the partnerships section
- Click on the post that mentioned your brand
- Request to promote
- Promote

The biggest use case we've seen for Omni and other SaaS brands is creating dedicated influencer campaigns featuring customers, prospects, or people who give positive brand mentions. 

Instead of relying on organic reach, you pay for more reach, plus control who actually sees the post. 

Trust and authentic real stories are a top priority for many brands and this is one way to bring those stories to light.

For all marketers, what newsletters do you "actually" read?

And for those you read, why do you like them? 

Tag a company/person below that's creating awesome content. 

I want to subscribe.

Here's what I said to a Head of Demand Gen who wanted to 2x SQL volume on Google Ads. 

"Sure, but here's what we need to do first. 

- Analyze what keywords have the highest conversion rate + lowest cost per SQL
- Determine if there is enough in-market volume to capture
- Understand if we have enough budget based on established baselines (e.g., cost per SQL)."

After analyzing a mix of offline conversion data in Google, paired with Salesforce data, we identified ~10 keywords driving the majority of SQLs over the last 6 months. 

Then we reviewed the available impression share and whether we were losing impressions due to the budget. 

And then we reviewed baseline data from the last 6 months, which showed that: 

The ~600k in spend over the last 6 months resulted in a cost per SQL of around $3,500.

For context...SQL = demo request that meets ICP criteria

However, across all keywords, the baseline is closer to $4,700. 

The primary reason?

- Some keywords have a lower conversion rate
- Some have much higher costs due to competition

So then we had to make a decision...

1.) Stay live on all keywords, accepting a higher cost per SQL
2.) Narrow down on the 10 keywords with a more efficient cost per SQL

No surprises here... we are narrowing down for now, as we have more efficiency with these 10 keywords + available in-market impression share, since all keywords are high-intent. 

So to 2x the number of SQLs, here's the quick math: 

- $100k spend at $4,700 = 21 SQLs / month

Compared to the 10 keywords at a lower cost per SQL

- $100k spend at $3,500 = 28 SQLs /month

We're still a bit short on the same spend, so we'd have to increase the budget or find another lever to pull (e.g., improve the conversion rate or invest further in out-of-market buyers on social channels to increase awareness). 

I'll let you know in the next month or two once we get more data, but this is the high-level process to think through. 

A few caveats to be aware of:
- Avoid dramatic swings in budget
- As you scale budgets, be prepared for efficiency to fall
- We didn't analyze ACV/pipeline value for this (due to some data accuracy issues with sales), but is important as some keywords could be more valuable than others. 

P.S. While this is a performance marketing approach to scaling budgets, channels like Google Ads don't operate in isolation. 

Google Ads heavily favors last-touch models where CRMs single-source conversion points. 

It's important to understand the other trackable touchpoints across the buyer's journey to make capture channels like Google even more efficient. 

The efficiency of your capture channels is strongly correlated with your investments in out-of-market buyers, where brand preference is established.

Seeing what your competitors are bidding on is mostly a waste of time.

Yes, it’s “directionally interesting.”

But, at the end of the day: 

1.) You have no clue how that keyword is performing. 
2.) They may not even be intentionally bidding on those keywords. 
3.) They likely have a different strategy and ICP definition than you

Instead, you should focus more on your own customers to understand:

- The words your customers use to describe your product on sales calls.
- The problems and jobs they repeat in demos. 
- Then see what keyword themes have keyword volume and which ones have historical performance.

TL;DR Sure, you might get some keyword ideas from Ahrefs, Spyfu, Semrush, and others, but take anything you see with a grain of salt. 

Focus more on your customers and your own performance. 

It was awesome to finally meet Valerie Riley! Appreciate you having me on the Unbounce show. 

Want to watch the rest, just go to YouTube and type in: Paid media strategy 2026: Surviving rising CPCs and budget shifts in SaaS

Dear 100s of Agentic AI Brands, 

While I do appreciate the broad and encompassing headlines, as you plan to take over the world. 

Would you mind focusing on the core use cases so I can wrap my head around what agent AI can do for my sales team?

I have no imagination, and I need you to spell it out for me. 

Thanks,

Jonathan

P.S. Nothing against Jeeva, I'm sure they have an amazing platform. Just some constructive ideas that I'd like to see tested.

taplio

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