The B2B Growth Playbook
You're thinking about growth the wrong way.
Most B2B companies say the same thing. "We need more leads." It sounds reasonable. It's also the problem.
Because when you say you want more leads, what you're really saying is that you want to talk to people who are ready to buy right now.
And that group is tiny. Roughly 3% of your market at any given time.
That means 97% of your future customers are not ready to buy. They're not checking you out on G2. They're not Googling you. They're not filling out your contact form.
So what happens is every company piles into that same 3%. Running ads and fighting over the same buyers.
You end up in a corporate knife fight. Same prospects having the same conversations. And suddenly your great product turns into price comparisons. Where every sales call ends with, "we're also talking to three other vendors."
You didn't lose because you weren't good. You lost because you're playing the same game as everyone else.
Reality Check
By the time someone is ready to buy, they've already defined the problem, researched the category, narrowed down their options, and built a shortlist. You're not shaping the decision. You're reacting to it.
That's the game most B2B companies are playing. And it's a hard way to grow.
Now let's look at the other 97%.
Big Picture
These are people who know something isn't working but haven't prioritized it. They feel the pain but haven't looked for solutions. Or they understand solutions exist but don't know who to trust.
They fall into buckets like problem-aware but not solution-aware, or solution-aware but not vendor-aware.
This is where the real opportunity is.
Because if you can reach buyers here. Before they search, before they compare, before they build a shortlist. You change the game completely.
Now you're not competing. You're educating. You're shaping how they think about the problem. You're defining what good looks like. You're positioning your approach as the obvious answer.
So when they do decide to buy, they're not looking at five vendors. They're looking at you.
The other creates it.
The first business builds a machine that captures demand. It generates leads, books calls, and closes deals. It's a good business.
The second builds a machine that creates demand. It finds the right audience early, educates them before they're ready, builds trust before competitors show up, and converts them when the timing is right.
That's a different league.
And once you create demand, you don't just get more leads. You get better-fit customers, shorter sales cycles, higher close rates, and less price sensitivity. Because by the time they talk to you, they already believe.
This playbook is about building that machine. Not just capturing demand, but creating it, shaping it, and turning it into revenue.
Here's something most B2B companies get wrong before they spend a single dollar on marketing. They describe their customer like this:
"We sell to mid-market companies in the professional services space."
That's not a buyer. That's a category. And a category doesn't feel pain.
They don't lose sleep on Sunday night thinking about their Monday morning board meeting. Most importantly, a category is not reading your email, watching your video, or clicking your ad.
A person is.
And if you want to create demand before they start searching, you need to know that person so well that it feels like you're living rent-free in their brain.
That moment of recognition can be engineered. And it starts here.
The Buying Spectrum
Before we talk about who your buyer is, let's talk about how they buy. Because not all B2B purchases are the same.
Some decisions happen fast. A business owner sees an ad, recognizes a problem, and signs up for your free trial. Low friction, low price, one decision-maker.
Some decisions happen slowly. Budget cycles. Multiple stakeholders. Legal review. And a 6-month bakeoff where you meet 5 different suits before anyone says yes. And they've got the best poker-faces you've ever seen.
Maybe your buyer is somewhere in the middle.
What matters isn't where you fall on that spectrum. You just need to understand it. Because the way you market to a solo founder is very different from how you market to a buying committee.
Know your buyer. That shapes everything that follows.
Build the Real ICP
Most companies have an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). And they look something like this:
- Industry: Professional services
- Company size: 50–500 employees
- Revenue: $5M–$50M
- Geography: North America
That works as a LinkedIn filter. Not a buyer profile.
A real ICP goes deeper. It answers questions like:
- What pain does your product solve and who at the target company is experiencing that pain?
- What does their day actually look like?
- What have they already tried, and why didn't it work?
- What does success look like to them, personally and professionally?
- What do they watch, read, and follow?
- What would make them feel stupid for not acting sooner?
When you can answer these questions, you stop talking about your product and start talking about their problems. That's when marketing starts to work.
The "That's Me" Moment
Here's the test for whether you actually know your buyer.
Take your best piece of marketing. Your homepage headline, your best-performing ad, your most-opened email. Read it out loud. Then ask: would the right person hear this and say "that's exactly me"?
The "That's me" moment is when specificity meets truth. It's when someone reads your content and feels seen. Not targeted. Not marketed to. Seen.
This is what separates companies that grow from companies that grind. The grinders cast wide nets and wonder why nothing sticks. The growers pick a specific person, a specific problem, a specific moment. And they speak directly into it.
Case Study
Our client QSS sells point-of-sale software to small businesses. When they started working with us, they had a broad target of "retailers in New York City with $5M–$20M in sales." We narrowed that down to "grocery stores with $5M–$20M in sales."
The reason is simple. Marketing to a "grocery store" is just easier than marketing to a "retailer." Grocery store owners share the same floor layout problems, the same inventory pain, and the same seasonal cash flow pressures. We can speak directly to these realities. So the messaging hits harder and leaves a mark.
Where Buyers Actually Are
Here's the secret sauce to truly knowing your customer. If you know who they are, you also know where they hang out online.
So while all your competitors are crowding into LinkedIn because "that's where B2B buyers are," you don't need to!
Your buyers are probably also on Facebook. And Netflix. And TikTok. And Prime Video. Remember, these are real people!
The accountant you're trying to reach. The IT director. The marketing VP. The franchise owner. The clinic operator. They're all scrolling on the couch at 9pm. Or on Saturday morning while they're waiting for their kids at soccer practice.
The platforms don't determine the audience. Your message does. And we'll get to your message soon.
For now, do the work here. Lock in your buyer. Not the category. The person.
The social feed is where conversations happen at a massive scale. And if you know how to show up, it's the single most powerful demand creation tool available to you right now.
Organic First. Always.
Before you spend a dollar on ads, you need to know what works organically. Think of the organic social feeds as your focus group. The platforms have spent billions of dollars developing the greatest R&D technology possible. It's called the algorithm.
And they let you use it for free… what a deal!
Organic content is your testing ground. It costs nothing and it tells you everything.
When you post something and it gets shared, saved, and commented on, that's a signal. Your audience is reacting. When you post something and it falls flat, they don't care.
It's not just about what content "works." It runs deeper. You're finding out which problems resonate, which angles hit, which stories travel. And once you know that, you pour fuel on what's working with paid amplification.
But that comes later. Start here.
Meta Is Where the Action Is
LinkedIn has long been the default for B2B advertisers. And it can definitely be worth the investment. But at Influicity, we've driven much more ROAS via Meta. It's actually not even close.
Facebook and Instagram reach over 3.5 billion daily active users. Three. Point, Five. Billy. (That's not a typo.)
The IT director checking scores on Sunday morning. The franchise owner scrolling Reels after dinner. The procurement manager swiping through restaurant recommendations.
These people are on Meta. For longer, more often, and in a more receptive state of mind than they are on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, they're in work mode. Guard up. Armor on. On Meta, they're a human being.
Meta out-performs LinkedIn on cost per lead, volume of leads, and quality of pipeline. Not because LinkedIn is bad. But because the audience on Meta is deeper, the targeting is sharper, and the creative formats let you tell a real story.
Speaking of which…
Content That Creates the "That's Me" Moment
Remember what we said in Section 2. Your buyer needs to feel seen. And that means you need to be specific. Uncomfortably specific.
You're selling inventory management software to toy stores? Then your content should show the chaos of inventory during the holiday rush. The staff scheduling nightmare leading up to Christmas. The moment a system goes down on a Saturday afternoon and there's a line at the register.
You're selling to IT directors at mid-size companies? Talk about the 11pm alert that ruins their weekend. The board meeting where they have to explain a breach. The vendor who promised seamless integration and delivered 6 months of headaches.
That recognition is worth more than any feature list you've ever written.
Go Deep on One or Two Platforms
Pick one or two platforms and commit. Do it well enough that it actually builds something.
If your buyer is a business owner or operator, Meta is your first call. Facebook and Instagram together give you massive reach, sophisticated targeting, and the ability to run video, image, and story formats that build real connection.
If your buyer lives professionally on LinkedIn, add it to the list. You can also think about YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok.
But don't try to be everywhere on day one. One platform done well beats 5 platforms done poorly.
Every piece of content you put out is a data point. Every reaction, every share, every DM that says "this is exactly what I'm dealing with"… that's intelligence. It builds on itself. And over time, you just know what your buyer needs to hear. So you can say it on repeat until they're ready to act.
You've identified your buyer. You've created "that's me" content. You've figured out what lands. Now it's time to pour gas on the fire.
By the time you get to paid, you're not guessing. You already know which message makes your buyer lean in. You've seen it in the comments, the shares, and the DMs. Now you're just taking what already works and putting it in front of more of the right people, faster.
What Demand Creation Ads Actually Do
Let's be clear about what we're building here.
Demand creation is not designed to generate immediate sales. Because these people might not be ready to buy. After all, they're in the 97%.
This is the law firm partner who feels like her practice management software isn't working right. But she can't put her finger on it. Or the CFO who's frustrated with his audit firm. But hasn't built a business case to replace them just yet.
These are the people you're reaching with demand creation. You're not asking them to buy. You're not even asking them to book a call yet. You're showing up in their feed with something specific and useful.
This is how you get off the treadmill of fighting over the 3% who are already in market. You build a warm audience of people who know you, trust you, and think of you first when they're finally ready to act.
The Funnel
So what does "showing up with something useful" look like in practice?
It starts with your best-performing organic content. The ones that got the most engagement, the most shares, the most "this is exactly my problem" responses. These posts become your ads. Same format, same feel, same voice. You're just buying distribution.
Next you need a simple landing page. A single-purpose page built around one lead magnet.
The Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a piece of genuine value you give away in exchange for contact information. A guide, a diagnostic, a checklist, a mini-course, a benchmark report. Something your buyer actually wants.
It should be good enough that you could actually sell it. But we're going to give it away.
On the landing page, you need three things: a headline that speaks directly to the pain, a short explanation of what they'll get, and social proof. Something that tells the visitor they're in the right place and that you're the real deal.
The Qualifying Question
Now we get to your form. The user needs to fill this out to get your free thing. This is where you pre-qualify them.
Ask for the information that tells you whether this is a qualified buyer. Job title. Company revenue. Team size. Whatever signals matter for your ICP. Keep it brief. Every extra field costs you conversions.
Then, at the bottom of the form, add one optional checkbox that only appears for qualified buyers. If you're selling IT services, it could be something like: "Want us to show you how we can reduce your IT costs by 30%?"
That checkbox is a buying signal. It tells you that the lead isn't just qualified. They're actually interested. They've self-selected into a conversation. And that's who your sales team should be calling first.
The people who don't tick the box still get the lead magnet. And they go into your nurture sequence. You stay in front of them. You keep building trust. And when the timing shifts, you'll be there.
The Thank You Page
The person who just filled out your form is at peak engagement. So put a sales message on your thank you page.
Not an aggressive one. Just a low-friction next step. It can be a video sales letter, a case study, or something that moves the relationship forward for the small percentage who are ready to go further right now.
Most won't take it. But some will. And those are your highest-intent leads in the entire funnel.
What This Funnel Actually Builds
Step back and look at what you've created here.
You're identifying buyers before they're in market. You're earning their trust with something genuinely useful. You're building a database of people who have raised their hand for your category. You're surfacing the high-intent ones automatically. And you're delivering value to everyone else while you wait for their timing to be right.
This is a demand creation machine. We've built hundreds of these over the last decade and optimized these funnels pixel by pixel.
Build them right and they'll pay off for years.
Everything we've talked about so far is about reaching buyers before they're ready. Now let's talk about what happens when they are.
This is demand capture. And it's a completely different game from everything that came before it.
When a B2B buyer is ready to find a solution, they'll search online. They'll pull up a search bar and start typing. So let's get into SEO.
Modern SEO
Getting your website to rank organically is one of the highest-ROI investments a B2B company can make. It's also one of the most misunderstood. SEO is a trust signal above all else.
When your buyer searches for a solution and your company appears at the top of the results. Not as an ad, but as an organic result. Something happens psychologically. They assume you're credible. They assume you know what you're talking about. They assume you might be the answer.
There's a lot you can do to rank organically. But if you want to get 80% of the benefits with 20% of the work, you need two things working together.
Pillar Blogs
A pillar blog is a comprehensive, authoritative piece of content built around a specific topic your buyer is actively searching for. Think about the problems your buyer Googles when something isn't working. "How to reduce IT costs for mid-size companies." "Best inventory software for food distributors." A well-written pillar blog targeting that exact query puts you in front of that buyer at the exact moment they're looking for help.
Google's job is to give searchers the most useful answer to their question. Your job is to write that answer, for your buyer, in their language, better than anyone else has.
Backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Every credible backlink is a vote of confidence in Google's eyes. One website telling Google: this one is worth paying attention to.
You earn good backlinks by creating things worth linking to. Original research. A proprietary framework. A data study. You can also earn them through contributed articles, podcast appearances, and press coverage.
Pillar blogs get you found. Backlinks tell Google you deserve to be.
SEO Is an Investment
Neither happens overnight. That's why this is the long game. But companies that invest in it consistently find themselves in a position their competitors can't easily replicate. You can't buy your way to the top of organic search. You have to earn it.
The AI Search Layer
There's a new place buyers are increasingly looking. They're asking AI.
"What's the best project management software for construction companies?" "Which IT managed service providers are highly rated in Chicago?" "Who are the top B2B marketing agencies for SaaS companies?"
These queries are happening in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. And the answers don't come from paid ads. They come from what's been written about you across the internet. Third-party reviews, your website, your blogs, directory listings, press mentions, and anywhere else your name appears with context around it.
If you have a strong content footprint and a clean, consistent presence across the web, AI search surfaces you. If you don't, it surfaces your competitor.
This is called AI Engine Optimization (AEO). It's the newest frontier in demand capture and the rules are still being written. But the foundation is the same as it's always been: be credible, be consistent, and be findable.
Paid Search: Buying the Shortcut
While SEO and AEO build over time, paid search drives sales today.
I was going to write a whole section on paid search. But I really have nothing groundbreaking to say here. We do it for our clients. You should do it too.
Just remember that it's a tiny slice of your potential buyer market.
Search and Social Working Together
Here's something worth understanding about how demand capture and demand creation interact.
Your social content and your paid ads are warming up an audience. They're building familiarity with your brand, your thinking, your approach. So when that buyer eventually searches, they're not encountering you for the first time. They already know who you are.
That changes everything. A buyer who has seen your content, downloaded your lead magnet, got your emails, and now finds you at the top of Google for their search query doesn't experience that as three separate touchpoints. They experience it as confirmation. You're everywhere. You must be the real deal.
This is why the machine we're building works better as a whole than the sum of its parts. Demand creation fills the top. Demand capture converts the bottom. And the buyers who move through both are the easiest sales calls you'll ever have.
Getting value from this playbook?
We can offer a lot more help with a Marketing ROI Checkup. That's a 1:1 strategy session with an Influicity strategist to review what's working and where your biggest growth opportunities are. It's free, but spots are limited.
Schedule Your Marketing ROI CheckupEvery platform you post on is rented land. LinkedIn can change its algorithm tomorrow. Instagram can start prioritizing a new format. TikTok can decide your videos aren't hitting their retention benchmarks.
These things happen. Regularly.
Owned assets are different… because you own them. Think about your email list. Your podcast library. Your website. No platform can take these away from you. They're evergreen, they travel, and they compound over time.
A podcast episode you recorded 18 months ago can still get downloaded every week. An email subscriber will keep getting your newsletter for years, as long as you keep them interested. Even a YouTube video can have a very long shelf life. (And while I know you don't technically "own" your YouTube channel, I still consider this a long-term marketing asset.)
Your Website
Not everyone who encounters your brand will immediately visit your website. Many will click an ad and land on a dedicated landing page. Others will find your podcast, read your newsletter, or follow you on social for months before they go looking for more.
But when they do go looking, your website is where they go to verify you're the real deal.
Think of it less as a traffic destination and more as a reference hub. It's the place a serious buyer does their due diligence. They want to see who you are, who you've helped, and whether your thinking lines up with what they've been hearing from you everywhere else.
A high-performing B2B website does three things. It speaks directly to your ICP. It builds trust immediately through proof. And it makes the next step obvious.
The "that's me" moment you engineered in your content needs to continue when someone lands here. If the message shifts, the trust breaks. And a buyer who was 90% of the way there will quietly close the tab and move on.
Newsletters
A newsletter is a direct line to your buyer with no algorithm standing in the way.
Done well, a it's something your buyers actually look forward to. That kind of newsletter builds a relationship that no ad campaign can replicate. The compounding effect here is significant. A list of 5,000 engaged, qualified subscribers who hear from you consistently is worth more than 50,000 social followers who see your stuff when the algorithm feels like showing it.
You own the list. You control the timing. And every send is a touchpoint that keeps you front of mind until the buyer is ready to act.
Podcasts
Audio is the most intimate mass medium there is. People listen while they drive, while they work out, while they cook dinner. A podcast puts your voice in someone's ear for 30-60 minutes at a time.
That's a relationship-building format unlike anything else.
You don't need millions of downloads. You don't even need thousands. You need the right people listening consistently. A podcast with 800 listeners who are all CTOs at mid-market manufacturing companies can be dangerously effective. Depth of relevance beats breadth of reach every time.
Podcasts also have a compounding library effect. Every episode you publish adds to your binge bank. Someone who discovers your podcast today and works through 30 back episodes has spent 15 or 20 hours with you before they ever get on a sales call. Those are the hottest leads you can get.
YouTube and Long-Form Video
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And unlike social video, which disappears into the feed after a day or two, YouTube content surfaces in search results for years.
That's why I consider it part of your "owned" assets. Even though it's on rented land.
A well-produced video answering a question your buyer is actively searching for can generate leads for years after you filmed it. That's the compounding nature of owned media at its best.
Video also builds trust fast. Seeing a face, hearing a voice, watching someone think through a problem. It collapses the distance between brand and buyer in a way that text simply can't. They're warmer, more educated, and much easier to close.
Pick One and Go Deep
The temptation is to do all of this at once. Newsletter, podcast, YouTube, blog, website overhaul. All in the same quarter.
That's how you do all of it badly.
Pick the format that most fits your strengths and your buyer's habits. Start there. One format done with consistency and genuine quality will outperform four formats done halfheartedly.
The best time to start was 2 years ago. The second best time is now. Because the competitor who started building these assets while you were focused on short-term lead gen is already compounding.
Here's an uncomfortable truth about marketing. Nothing you say about yourself is as powerful as what your customers say about you.
When a B2B buyer is evaluating vendors, they move through an invisible trust hierarchy.
Reviews, testimonials, case studies, referrals. This is the highest-trust content in existence.
Press mentions, industry recognition, third-party content. More credible, but still somewhat abstract.
Ads, website, social content, sales decks. Necessary, but lowest trust.
Build It Into the Journey
The biggest mistake companies make with social proof is treating it as a one-time project. "Let's do a round of case studies this quarter." They collect a few testimonials, put them on the website, and move on.
Social proof needs to be a systematic part of your client journey. Something you collect consistently, automatically, as a natural byproduct of doing good work.
The best moment to ask a customer for a testimonial or review is at peak satisfaction. At the moment when they've just experienced a win. When the result is fresh and the feeling is real.
For most B2B companies, that moment comes within the first 30 to 60 days. Hopefully the onboarding went well and you've delivered some quick wins. That's your window. Miss it and you're chasing cold customers for quotes they'll write reluctantly if at all.
The Formats That Work
Written Testimonials
A specific, outcome-focused quote from a named customer with a real title and a real company. Not "Great to work with, highly recommend." Something that speaks to a specific problem and a specific result: "Before working with [company], we were spending 12 hours a week on manual reporting. Now it takes 40 minutes." That's a testimonial that converts.
Video Testimonials
The gold standard. A 90-second video of a real customer talking about their experience. Make it real and raw. It should look like a Zoom call. Use these everywhere. A good video testimonial is one of the highest-leverage assets you can own.
Case Studies
They tell the full story. The problem, the process, and the result, in a format that gives a skeptical buyer everything they need to believe. Layer in the written testimonial and video testimonial from that same client. A well-written case study that mirrors your prospect's exact situation is one of the most powerful sales tools in existence.
Third-Party Reviews
Platforms like G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, or industry-specific directories carry weight precisely because you don't control them. A buyer who finds 50 positive reviews on G2 from real users experiences that very differently than 50 testimonials on your own website. Both matter. But third-party reviews have an independence that makes them uniquely credible.
Close the Loop
Here's what makes social proof truly powerful in this system. It doesn't just live on your website. It feeds back into every other part of the machine.
Your best video testimonial becomes a demand creation ad. Your most compelling case study becomes a lead magnet. Your G2 reviews improve your SEO and your AI search visibility. Your customer quotes appear on your landing pages and lift conversion rates. The stories your customers tell get woven into your newsletter and your podcast.
Collect it systematically, deploy it everywhere, and watch every other part of your growth machine get a little bit better.
The companies that do this well don't just have happy customers. They have a compounding asset that gets more valuable every time someone new says yes.
Every section of this playbook has been about bringing new buyers into your universe. Now let's talk about the people who already said yes.
It costs 5–10X more to acquire a new customer than it does to grow an existing one. And yet most B2B companies spend most of their marketing budget chasing new logos. You also need to grow the existing ones.
But there's a second problem. Your database is decaying right now.
Every month you're not actively working your CRM, contacts are going cold. Warm leads are forgetting who you are. Past customers are getting picked off by competitors. People who were almost ready to buy 4 months ago have now bought from someone else.
So you need to keep every relationship warm, at every stage, all the time. Here's how to do that.
Paid Media Retargeting
Connect your customer and prospect lists to Meta and Google. Create custom audiences and serve ads directly to people who already know you. Then create lookalike audiences so the platforms can find others that are similar.
This changes the economics of paid media dramatically. Your cost per lead drops. Your close rate goes up. And you're spending money on people who are already halfway there.
Use retargeting to stay in front of warm prospects who haven't converted yet. Use it to cross-sell existing customers on adjacent products or services. Use it to re-engage people who went quiet six months ago with a new offer or a new angle.
There are two types of email that belong in your CRM strategy.
The first is nurture. A steady cadence of useful, relevant content that keeps you front of mind for prospects who aren't ready yet. Emails that speak directly to a problem your buyer is dealing with right now. The goal is to be the most useful thing in their inbox until the timing shifts.
And I'm not talking about those icky sales messages disguised as useful insights. In fact, your emails should avoid talking about your product entirely until the very end. Maybe 1–2 lines as a final call to action. If your emails turn into product brochures, they wind up in the trash bin. Which is where they belong.
The second is reactivation. These are direct emails sent to prospects who went quiet a while ago. If you have an enterprise sales team, make these one to one. Not mass. Someone buying an $8K/month subscription deserves an email from an actual person. None of that "Hi {{first_name}}" nonsense.
If your price point is lower, you can automate this. But use smart segmentation to keep it personal.
SMS
Open rates on SMS hover around 95%, compared to 20–30% for email. For the right message at the right moment, nothing cuts through faster.
SMS works best for high-value, high-timing moments. A follow-up after a sales call. A nudge when a proposal has been sitting unopened for five days. A direct outreach to a warm lead who hasn't responded to email.
Keep it short, keep it human, and keep it rare enough that it actually means something when it arrives. A text from a vendor feels personal in a way that an email never quite does. Use that wisely.
Expansion and Referrals
Your existing customers are your fastest path to more revenue. New divisions within the same company. Adjacent products they haven't bought. An upgraded tier that solves a problem they've mentioned in passing. Expansion revenue from a happy customer costs almost nothing to close. And it's sitting right there in your CRM, waiting for someone to have the conversation.
And you can go further. The best salespeople are your happiest customers. You just need to ask for referrals. At a moment of high satisfaction, someone on your team should be having a conversation that includes: "Who else in your network might be dealing with this problem?"
Most happy customers are delighted to make an introduction. They just need to be asked at the right moment by the right person.
It All Works Together
Your CRM is a revenue engine. It powers your retargeting, email, SMS, expansion, and referrals.
Keep it clean, use it actively, and build sequences to consistently outgrow your competitors. The revenue is already there. You just have to build the machine to unlock it.
I hope this playbook helps you break through to the next level of growth. I'm rooting for you.
If we can help you further, get in touch here.
— Jon Davids
Want More?
Tune into the podcast Making It with Jon Davids every week on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to stream.
Grab JD's best-selling book Marketing Superpowers here.
Follow JD across social: