“Let’s just test it” might sound proactive—but it’s not a strategy. It’s often a placeholder for uncertainty. And in B2B marketing, where stakes are high and budgets are scrutinized, guessing your way to success is not sustainable.
Real strategy means alignment across departments. It requires deliberate decisions about where to focus and where not to. It’s not about throwing out new campaign ideas every week. It’s about building a repeatable, data-informed system for growth.
The problem is most marketing teams are stuck in execution mode. You’re trying to get campaigns out the door, hit deadlines, and keep stakeholders happy. You’re jumping between ad formats, creative tweaks, and last-minute promotions.
And in the middle of all this activity, strategy gets ignored.
Why Most B2B Marketing Strategies Fail
Most B2B marketing teams don’t lack ideas—they lack prioritization. It’s easy to suggest a conversation ad campaign or a new landing page headline. It’s easy to promote an ebook just to “have something running.”
The hard part is asking whether those tactics support a larger strategy. The hardest part is saying no to the ones that don’t.
When you chase tactics without alignment on goals, targeting, or positioning, you end up with:
- Fragmented messaging
- Shallow performance data
- Channels that never fully mature
- Campaigns that feel reactive instead of purposeful
In other words, you’re playing marketing whack-a-mole.
To build a B2B marketing strategy that scales, you need to go deeper. That means examining your audience, refining your messaging, and aligning your efforts across product, sales, and customer success.
Step One: Refine Your Targeting Based on Real Data
Let’s start with targeting.
Most B2B companies build ICPs based on assumptions. They brainstorm who they think their best customers are. But the most effective teams start with what they know.
Take Gong, for example. They don’t target their audience based on gut feeling or generic personas. They start by analyzing their highest-value accounts in the CRM. This includes looking at:
- Lifetime value
- Churn rate
- Sales cycle length
- Expansion revenue
- Product usage data
From there, they look for patterns. For instance, their best-fit clients might:
- Be headquartered in the U.S.
- Be actively hiring new sales reps
- Regularly use four core product features
- Fall within a 250–500 employee size range
Once those patterns emerge, Gong doesn’t water them down. They build marketing around that specific segment. They customize messaging, landing pages, and ad creative around that audience. This focus leads to higher engagement and more efficient ad spend.
This is what strategic targeting looks like. It’s not chasing every possible opportunity. It’s about choosing a segment you can win and owning it fully.
Step Two: Align Messaging and Positioning to the Segment
Once you know who you’re targeting, the next step is crafting messaging that speaks directly to them.
This doesn’t mean listing features or using vague benefits like “scale faster.” It means aligning your product narrative with your segment’s pain points, goals, and language.
For example, if you’re targeting companies hiring new AEs, your messaging might focus on ramp time, onboarding quality, and sales productivity. You’d use job descriptions, hiring trends, and team enablement language—not general product statements.
Positioning is just as important. You need to clearly state why your solution is the best fit for this exact audience, not just why it’s “great” in general. This may mean deprioritizing use cases that appeal to other personas—at least temporarily.
By focusing your messaging on a narrow, high-fit audience, you make your content more relevant, your ads more clickable, and your funnel more efficient.
Step Three: Map Content and Campaigns to the Right Buyer Journey
Your B2B marketing strategy should be built around your buyer’s actual decision-making process—not your internal content calendar.
Start by mapping your content to each stage of the funnel:
- Awareness: problem education, industry trends, benchmark data
- Consideration: solution comparisons, use case deep dives, customer stories
- Decision: pricing guides, ROI calculators, implementation roadmaps
Once your content is mapped, distribute it through the channels your segment actually uses. If your audience is on LinkedIn but never checks email, prioritize paid social over nurture flows. If they’re frequent podcast listeners, consider sponsored placements or interviews.
Every campaign you launch should have a purpose: move the buyer closer to a decision. Random ebook promotions or webinar blasts without strategy waste resources and make performance harder to measure.
Step Four: Create a Focused Channel Strategy
Trying to do everything at once is one of the fastest ways to burn out a B2B marketing team. Especially when budget is limited, you need to pick your battles.
Rather than splitting spend across five different platforms, ask:
- Which channels align best with your audience’s behavior?
- Which channels have the highest ROI for your offer?
- Where can you confidently build repeatable, scalable campaigns?
Once you’ve owned one channel—whether it’s Google Ads, LinkedIn, or webinars—you can expand. But only after your performance is consistent and profitable.
This staged approach not only de-risks your marketing investment but also gives your team room to iterate and improve.
Step Five: Use Performance Data to Guide Expansion
After you’ve owned your core segment and built repeatable success in one channel, then it’s time to scale.
But scaling isn’t just about spending more. It’s about applying what you’ve learned to the next-best-fit segment.
Back to the Gong example. Once they’ve maximized performance with one audience, they look for the next pattern: maybe companies with a similar headcount in a different region or teams using a different set of product features.
Each expansion is grounded in observed success—not hypothetical value.
This method keeps CAC low, improves ROAS, and helps teams maintain clarity even as they grow.
Strategy Is a Discipline, Not a Deliverable
It’s easy to treat strategy as a document—a slide deck shared at the start of the year and then ignored.
But true strategy is lived every day. It’s how your team decides what to launch, what to skip, and how to evaluate results.
And most importantly, strategy is how you prove to your CEO and CFO that your marketing team isn’t wasting time or money. It’s how you build confidence in long-term programs that can drive sustainable growth.
Final Thoughts on Building a B2B Marketing Strategy
If your marketing team is stuck in tactical chaos, the way out isn’t “more ideas.” It’s better focus.
Effective B2B marketing strategy comes from slowing down, aligning deeply with your ideal customer, and making deliberate choices about what you invest in.
It means trading random campaigns for structured, data-backed sequences. It means testing within a framework—not throwing ideas against the wall. And it means knowing that depth will outperform breadth every time when you’re trying to break through.
You don’t need a bigger budget to get better results. You need a sharper strategy.
Hi there! I’m Scott, and I am the principal consultant and thought leader behind Stratus Analytics. I have a Master of Science degree in marketing analytics, and I’ve have been providing freelance digital marketing services for over 20 years. Additionally, I have written several books on marketing which you can find here on Amazon or this website.
DISCLAIMER: Due to my work in the packaging industry, I cannot take on freelance clients within the packaging manufacturing space. I do not want to provide disservice to your vision or my employer. Thank you for understanding.