EN blog | Advance B2B

Forget marketing goals. Set business goals marketing can drive

charlotte.jaakola@advanceb2b.fi (Charlotte Jaakola) — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:08:16 GMT

This article, in short

Too often, marketing is asked for “more leads” without a clear plan or context. This article breaks down how to set meaningful marketing goals by starting with business strategy, defining measurable outcomes, using milestones, and focusing on the right metrics. It shows how alignment across teams and realistic budgeting turn marketing from a cost center into a credible, revenue-driving growth engine.

Another year, another round of targets and sales quotas.

… and then, someone turns to marketing and says, "So... we need more leads from you!"

Here's the thing:

"More leads" isn't a goal. It's baseless wishful thinking.
Also, a goal without a plan is just a number.

Our mission is to help businesses develop marketing strategies that drive results. We've developed a framework that not only sets goals but also maps out exactly how you'll reach them.

With everything moving so fast (and getting faster with each passing minute), you need a strategic foundation. Of course, you'll adjust and refine as you go, but you need that direction first. Your team needs it. Your stakeholders need it. Hell, you need it so you can explain what you're doing and why it matters.

But before we talk marketing goals, let's talk business (shocking, I know).

Know your business goals inside out

You can't set meaningful marketing goals without understanding what the business is actually trying to achieve.

What kind of growth are we chasing this year?
How should marketing contribute to that goal?

But don't stop there. You need to understand the WHY(s) behind the numbers. How did leadership land on these targets?

Smart companies base their goals on actual market analysis:

competitor positioning,
market share data,
historical performance,
realistic projections.

In short, they've done the homework.

Unfortunately, we see too many companies pull numbers out of thin air over dinner and call it strategy.

What matters more is understanding how the C-suite plans to hit these targets.

New business or existing accounts?
Organic growth or acquisitions?

The clearer you are on the business strategy, the better equipped you are to build a marketing plan that actually supports it.

Setting marketing goals that actually mean something

If someone tells you setting marketing goals is easy ... they're probably missing something (or setting the wrong goals).

"More SQLs" sounds like a goal, but it's useless if you can't measure it properly.

You need to think deeply about what you're trying to achieve this year, based on the business objectives we just discussed.

Real goals are measurable and specific:

€200,000 in marketing-sourced revenue,
150 qualified opportunities,
30% conversion rate improvement.

But even that's not enough.

Break your goals into milestones

Great goals have checkpoints built in.

Let’s take an example.

“By end of Q1, we've generated €30,000 in revenue”

Why bother with milestones?

Because they tell you whether you're on the right path or heading off a cliff.

It's easy to look back after a year and declare victory or defeat. It's much harder (but more valuable) to check in quarterly and course-correct when you still have time to make adjustments.

Take that revenue goal example. If marketing is to generate €200,000 in revenue, how will we achieve this?

Healthier pipeline for sales?
Converting freemium users to paid?

You need to understand the mechanics behind the number.

Chase metrics that matter

Select one primary metric to track, then add a few supporting metrics.

To do this right, you need to understand your funnel and recognize that it likely doesn’t resemble any other.

This is why we typically choose a framework that fits your business as a foundation (like SaaS metrics 2.0, customer success journey, the pirate funnel (AAARRR), or any other that makes sense for your business).

Let’s illustrate this.

Let's say you're focused on converting freemium users to paid customers.

While your primary metric might be revenue from those conversions, it’s important to look beyond just the linear funnel.

Supporting metrics such as

the number of conversions needed,
the volume of activated users,
and upstream traffic

… are useful, but they don’t tell the full story.

Instead of only mapping drop-offs to find bottlenecks, combine funnel data with product usage insights, retention metrics, and user feedback. This helps you understand not just where users fall off, but why. You might find that improving onboarding, driving engagement, or increasing long-term retention has a greater impact on sustainable growth than simply nudging more users toward checkout.

From goals to actual plans

Now comes the fun part.

Figuring out how you'll actually achieve these goals.

Your plan doesn't need to be exhaustively detailed at this stage, but it should have clear focus areas and specific tactics or campaigns under each one.

Here's where wisdom separates itself from busy work: choose one to three focus areas and commit to them. You'll get better results concentrating your efforts than scattering them across a dozen half-baked initiatives.

The beauty of this framework is that you can experiment with different approaches while staying within your strategic boundaries. You have a structure with flexibility built in.

Tell the story internally

As marketers, we're good at storytelling. Use that skill internally. When you present one to three clear focus areas, you're giving your team a roadmap they can understand and operate within.

Under each focus area, you'll have multiple tactics. Just make sure those tactics genuinely serve the focus area and connect back to your goals.

Don’t plan in a vacuum

Don't just dream up a plan in isolation.

Work with sales.

Work with customer success.

And most importantly, talk to customers.

Debate with your team. Do the research. You need defensible reasons for why this particular approach will work.

For instance, with some of our SaaS customers, we may plan around three focus areas:

testing new pricing models,
repackaging products differently,
optimizing freemium-to-paid conversion.

Whatever your focus areas are, make them clear.

Then nest your tactics under those focus areas. This keeps everyone aligned on what each experiment or campaign is trying to improve. It makes the story easier to convey internally, which makes buy-in much easier to obtain.

CUSTOMER STORY

VAPAUS - Strategic marketing and ICP (re)definition

Together with Vapaus, we successfully developed a robust marketing strategy and refined their ideal customer base to support their overall business objectives.

The budget conversation

Marketing and finance are closely intertwined, whether we like it or not.

Sometimes you get to set your own budget. More often than not, it's handed to you with expectations attached. To understand what you can actually accomplish with any budget, you need to understand the numbers behind your tactics.

Map your commitments

Some spending is already locked in: martech stack, events, agency partnerships. That's your baseline.

Understanding these financial guardrails defines your "zone of possibility."

Of course, fitting everything into a budget is never easy. However, a budget is meaningless without goals, without knowing who you're targeting, and without those top three priorities we just discussed.

When you understand these unit economics, you can actually defend your budget requests. More importantly, you can push back on unrealistic expectations about what marketing can deliver with a given budget.

If your goal and budget are pre-set and non-negotiable, this analysis becomes your tool for honest conversation.

Where do things stand?
Is this achievable or not?
What would actually be required to hit the target?
And, if things get more challenging, what can you deprioritize?

However, here's the opportunity: when you have clearly defined goals and a compelling plan that you can articulate effectively, you may unlock more budget.

Turn it into a picture

The final piece of the puzzle: visualize your plan on a single page.

People understand and remember things better when they can see them.

For instance, when presenting AB2B's core services, we typically show a single slide that explains what we do.

Of course, we have ready material to dive into each and every one of those if and when relevant, but if you start too complicated, your audience may miss the big picture, thus damaging your entire proposal.

And so, my recommendation to you is to try to make everything more accessible, especially for C-suite executives who aren't bogged down in the monthly details.

Marketing doesn't exist to serve marketing

The more connected you are across the company, the easier it becomes to set and achieve your goals.

Marketing doesn't exist to serve marketing. Marketing is a tool in your stack to drive growth, and you can either use it ‘smart’ or let it become a cost center.

We believe that marketing exists to

make it easier to buy from you,
delight customers,
and drive the business forward.

The more aligned you are with sales, the better.

Join their meetings. Regularly communicate with product and customer success teams. Talk to your customers.

Lastly, communicate your plan to everyone, especially sales. You're both chasing revenue. Sales needs to understand your strategy and its origins.

And so, ensure you're aligned on who's responsible for what between marketing and sales, and ensure you speak the same language. Such clarity will prevent countless problems down the line.

The three areas where AI delivers immediate, measurable impact in B2B

mika.hyotylainen@valve.fi (Mika Hyötyläinen) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:29:05 GMT

This is an original blog article published on valve.fi.

Find it here.

From marketing to growth engine: how AI redefines the CMO role

clement@advanceb2b.fi (Clem) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:20:56 GMT

This is an original blog article published on valve.fi.

Find it here.

AI didn’t kill SEO. It raised the standard for what earns attention

Serena Chan — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 06:29:59 GMT

This article, in short

AI has changed how people find and evaluate information. To keep showing up, treat SEO as an intelligence system: model intent, structure your knowledge, publish original proof, and measure influence as well as clicks. Build the muscle now, and your visibility will compound even as search evolves.

Search used to be ‘simple’.

People typed a bunch of keywords, scanned a list, and clicked a result. Now, a new layer of intelligence sits between your audience and your content. That layer doesn’t just find pages. It interprets intent, assembles answers, and, when it can, gives people what they need without a click.

Essentially, it is an editorial gatekeeper who reads every submission before deciding what readers will see. Except, the gatekeeper is now a machine that understands meaning and not just keywords.

If the search experience is improved, no-click search is becoming a significant problem for brands trying to gain visibility through organic sources.

When someone asks an assistant for the best vendor, the most reliable framework, or the quickest way to achieve a result, will your brand be included in the answer? Or will you be invisible because a machine could not understand or trust your content enough to reuse it?

And so, on the one hand, it’s getting more difficult to get visibility. And on the other, too many content teams are betting on the wrong horse to gain more visibility and only use AI to do the same old tasks faster, and with a lot less brain work.

As a result, they generate longer keyword lists, produce more outlines, and ship more pages.

The cost? Output goes up. Outcomes often do not as the surge of average content online suggests: everyone is starting to sound the same, relying on the same sources and AI-generated content gimmicks.

For you, reading this, now is an opportunity to turn this situation to your advantage.

This read should give you ideas to strengthen your SEO performance and use AI not just to increase efficiency, but to increase your chances to make it out on top.

Here's what I’ll cover (click to jump):

SEO still exists. It’s just become more difficult
Winning won’t just come from automation
The right way to implement AI in your content workflow

SEO still exists. It’s just become more difficult

Classic SEO treated keywords like the unit of value. AI parses entities, relationships, and context. That means a page is not evaluated as a pile of phrases. It is evaluated as a piece of a larger topic graph.

In other words, if your content is unique and tells a coherent story, you’ll increase your chances to appear in search results. However, if your content is shallow and/or is simply a sum of existing information that’s already out there, it will remain hidden in the depths of the internet.

The first impression belongs to the assistant

Generative answers now sit on top of results.

They can summarize the landscape, extract steps, and cite a handful of sources. Sometimes the answer is good enough that the search ends there.

Sometimes the summary acts like a guide and people still click. Either way, the first impression belongs to the assistant.

You are competing to be reused by the model, not only to be ranked by the index.

Structure matters more than ever

At this point, I need to mention that you don’t need to adopt new SEO best practices to hack your way in. Google even states that “specific optimization isn't required for AI Overviews” and recommends sticking to the SEO fundamental best practices.

Having said that, and considering the above-mentioned new challenges, you need to make it as easy as possible for Google bots to find and flag your content as relevant for specific search patterns.

That means clear metadata and headings, consistency, and relevant bridges between your pages. Think of it as removing as much friction as possible to make your original content easier to parse.

Which leads me to my next point. As great as AI can be to generate well-written pieces out of thin air, winning at SEO and GEO cannot come from automation alone.

Winning won’t just come from automation

Yes, it is tempting to celebrate efficiency.

For instance, things that used to take a couple of hours, like a thorough keyword research or outlining a blog article, can now be done in seconds.

As a content marketer, I call this progress. But, to paraphrase good ol’ Uncle Ben, with great(er) power comes great(er) responsibility, and if you go faster in the wrong direction, you’ll end up nowhere, faster.

My recommendation is simple. Don’t fall into the volume trap and don’t think AI can replace human content creation.

Even though you can literally generate content in seconds, it won’t bring any value to your readers if you don’t spend the time to make it yours. Instead, use AI to map the real questions people ask, categorize them, and work on unique answers only you can provide.

The right way to implement AI in your content workflow

Instead of delegating everything to AI, from A to Z, and risking producing shallow content, feed AI with your original thoughts and work from it. We can break it down into 4 steps.

Want a concrete use case?

I wrote down how I use AI in my own workflow and asked AI to help me present it in a clearer and more intelligible way by splitting the next 4 steps into: what you should do yourself, and what you should delegate to AI.

Step 1: Understand demand and context

What you should do yourself

Start by mapping how your audience actually thinks about the problem you solve. Review sales calls, support tickets, product feedback, and other relevant information. All reveal how people express real intent. Better even, talk to your customers to establish and or refine your jobs-to-be-done.

Summarize and cluster what you find by meaning. You’ll start to see recurring themes like effort, risk, integration, timelines, trade-offs, and proof.

Need a bit of structure for it? Try our customer research templates!

Turn those patterns into a content blueprint:

What parent topics must you own to be seen as credible?

Which subtopics unlock trust?

Which questions appear early in research, and which show up during evaluation?

How do your answers vary by role, industry, or maturity?

What you should delegate to AI

Aggregating and clustering large volumes of qualitative data, such as call transcripts or feedback notes.

Detecting recurring phrases, themes, or sentiment.

Drafting a first version of your topic map based on your findings.

Visualizing the relationships between topics and questions.

Step 2: Differentiate with point of view

What you should do yourself

AI can draft, but it can’t decide what you believe or what you’ve learned. Your experience and point of view are what make your content worth reading.

That often means creating three types of assets:

Practical guides that teach people how to achieve outcomes without fluff. Use diagrams, checklists, and examples from real projects.

Original evidence that turns a claim into proof. Think benchmarks, teardowns, calculators, or data analyses that bring something new to the table.

Opinion pieces that make sense of change. Explain where a new approach works, where it doesn’t, and what it replaces. Be honest about trade-offs.

“If you have an unpopular opinion, AI isn’t going to be able to write that for you quite yet because it’s taking pre-written things it was trained on, and finding the next best word or sentence to say about it.”
— Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist Officer at Gong (Growth Hub Podcast, Ep. 110)

I repeat, do not outsource the judgment to AI. A human editor should always decide whether a piece says anything new, answers the real question, and reflects your brand’s way of thinking.

What you should delegate to AI

Structuring outlines or first drafts around your core argument.

Rewriting for clarity or tone once the idea is clear.

Turning your ideas into other formats such as summaries, snippets, or visuals.

Comparing your draft with competing content to identify originality gaps.

Step 3: Learn and document continuously

What you should do yourself

The traditional approach to optimization was to publish, wait, and then tweak title tags. The new way is to create learning loops.

After you publish something, watch how people interact with it. Where do they drop off? Which examples get quoted in social posts or sales calls? What content gets referenced internally? Update accordingly and keep a log of those edits so you can connect cause and effect over time.

What you should delegate to AI

Analyzing engagement metrics and surfacing insights about drop-off or high-interest sections.

Summarizing qualitative feedback from readers or colleagues.

Suggesting optimizations based on behavioral data.

Tracking and documenting revisions automatically.

Step 4: Protect trust and the brand

What you should do yourself

Speed without standards creates chaos. Protecting your brand means putting the right rules in place.

Define what “publishable” means across your team.

Ensure every piece has a named author or editor with subject expertise.

Source every claim and piece of data. Credibility compounds over time.

Write a clear “how we use AI” policy. Drafting with AI may be fine, but generating fake quotes or case studies is not. Make sure authors understand that their name on the page means accountability.

Keep your brand coherent. Define tone, terminology, and visual style. Consistency is not cosmetic. It strengthens the link between your ideas and your identity.

What you should delegate to AI

Checking tone and terminology consistency.

Spotting factual discrepancies or broken links.

Assisting with style guide enforcement.

Managing metadata and version control for content updates.

In short, AI can give your content workflow speed and reach, but you need to supply the insight, direction, and judgment.

Treat AI as your research assistant, not your replacement. The brands that win will be the ones that blend human expertise with smart automation, not the ones that hand the keyboard over completely.

Do not outsource the judgment. A credible human editor should decide whether the piece says anything new, whether it answers the real question, and whether it reflects your brand’s way of thinking.

Psst! We also shared thoughts on how to best approach new domains in the age of AI. More on this here.

AI did not kill SEO. It raised the standard for what earns attention.

Now that AI can use your content to provide answers your target audience seeks, clicks don’t tell the whole story. This means you need to ensure you are a frequently mentioned source of truth on the various topics you can have authority on.

What’s more, the companies that will win are not the ones that publish the most. They are the ones that publish the most useful, most legible, most reusable knowledge in their category, and they do it with a system that keeps learning.

We specialize in that. We have a fantastic track record for strategizing, shipping, and optimizing content that stands out and generates engagement.

If you seek a partner to do just that, reach out!

Why domain strategy matters in the age of AI

pirjo@advanceb2b.fi (Pirjo Sohlo) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 06:30:00 GMT

This article, in short

Domain strategy plays a key role in how organizations gain visibility in the age of AI. Hosting media content under the main domain strengthens credibility and helps large language models recognize and cite the brand, while separate domains can offer flexibility but require more effort to build authority.

A client asked me a very interesting question related to AI: Should an organization’s media site be hosted under its own domain, or even as a completely separate site that would function as a neutral information producer, if the goal is to gain visibility in large language models’ (LLMs) responses?

I dug into the topic and ended up reflecting on the differences between traditional search engine optimization and optimization for AI, as well as on how to measure LLM visibility. In addition to visibility, the question also involves aspects related to brand building and available resources – an excellent question indeed!

How to maximize visibility for your online media content

If you’re currently building a media site or knowledge hub for your organization, you need to consider not only traditional search engine optimization but also the discoverability of your content in large language models.

One of the main questions at this point is: How can you stand out from the ever-growing mass of online content and become a trusted source of information?

LLMs are changing how people find and trust information: they don’t rely solely on page indexing and keywords but utilize broad models, contextual knowledge, and signals related to source credibility.

That’s why the question of whether your new content site should be located at company.com/media, media.company.com, or even myownmedia.com is not merely a technical detail. This decision affects how both people and large language models perceive your brand.

From website to broader online visibility

The difference between traditional SEO and LLM optimization (or GEO – Generative Engine Optimization) can be summarized as a question of information discoverability. SEO aims for clicks, while GEO aims for citations, and from the perspective of a content-optimizing company, preferably with a brand mention attached.

Of course, both are about creating and optimizing your content to make it discoverable, but in LLM optimization, the importance of context (topic, author, organization) and information credibility is emphasized.

Improving the credibility of content is, in itself, a fascinating question. At present, we know that brand visibility on the web – beyond your own site – is extremely important in the age of AI. In addition to your website, LLMs gather information from your social media channels, directories, media outlets, and other forums where people talk about your brand.

And so, when someone asks an AI, “How to create a story for a B2B brand?”, the system does not list search results like Google, it looks for credible sources, reads their content, and builds an answer based on them. For this reason, for example, list-style articles easily appear in AI-generated answers.

The key here is credibility (in addition to technically optimizable factors (such as clear content structure and schema markup, including FAQPage, HowTo, and Organization and Person types).

In short, the domain your content lives on is one of the strongest credibility signals. LLMs do not evaluate domain-level authority in the same way search engines do, but they take into account the credibility and context of the source – that is, where the information originates and how it connects to other reliable sources.

Why company.com/media is usually the better option

Publishing under your main domain, for example company.com/media, can, according to SEO best practices, leverage the main domain’s existing authority and help content get indexed faster than on a separate subdomain.

This can also support better visibility in search engines – and logically, at the same time, improve the likelihood of being recognized as a reliable source when AI or LLM systems form their source networks.

Thus, faster visibility is likely both in Google search results and in large language model responses.

As an additional benefit, if an AI refers to your content, it will do so correctly when the content “lives” under your main domain. If the answer cites a source, it will read “According to Company…” instead of “According to media.company.com.”

Mentions and citations – the new visibility metric

Now, like everything else you do, GEO only makes sense if you can measure it.

Visibility or lack thereof in LLMs can be measured with tools such as Peec.ai that track, for example:

Brand mentions in LLM responses

Content citations, meaning the use of your content as background material for an answer, even if your brand name is not explicitly mentioned

If you are quoted but not mentioned, your content is useful, but your brand does not yet have sufficient credibility for the LLM. If you are mentioned but not quoted, the AI recognizes your brand but does not consider your site a reliable source.

The ideal situation, of course, is both: you are mentioned and quoted. The domain decision directly affects this. When media content is hosted under the main domain, the AI can more easily link your name and site content into a single entity.

When a subdomain or separate domain may be the better choice

It’s never fully black or white. Sometimes, media.company.com or a completely separate domain is justified.

If the publication clearly functions as a separate brand, separating it from the main domain gives more freedom for visual identity and tone of voice. The publication can appear as an entity distinct from the company, which may be desirable, for example, for research published by the organization.

However, this freedom often comes at a cost. A subdomain needs its own (quality) content, authority, and visibility built separately from the main domain, which will likely require more time and effort than placing the content in the most logical place, i.e., company.com/media.

Of course, Generative SEO will evolve with time and how we users interact with it. And so, what we see as best practices today may be subject to change in the near future. However, for now, the classic SEO rules seem to apply to GEO.

In any case, keep asking great questions related to AI and marketing!

Create memorable experiences with immersive hybrid demos

jukka.kosunen@valve.fi (Jukka Kosunen) — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 10:01:34 GMT

This is an original blog article published on valve.fi.

Find it here.

What every buying committee member needs to say 'yes'

ella@advanceb2b.fi (Ella Tyrväinen) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 13:02:06 GMT

This article, in short

The hardest part of closing a B2B deal is not proving value, it is building consensus. In this quick read, we explore what every buying committee member needs to say yes.

Research from Gartner shows that a typical buying group for a complex purchase now includes six to ten stakeholders, each bringing their own research, perspectives, and concerns to the table.

Forrester pushes the number even higher, noting that the average B2B purchase involves 13 people spread across different departments.

That means the sales process is no longer about convincing one person. It is about aligning a group of people with different priorities, from the CFO concerned about financial justification, to the CIO looking for security risks, to the end user wondering how it will impact their day-to-day work.

One message will not resonate equally across this group. Deals are won or lost on the ability to orchestrate alignment. If even one key voice is unconvinced, the entire process can stall.

This article should help you ask the right questions to translate your value proposition into the different “languages” spoken at the decision-making table, so that every stakeholder hears the part of the story that matters to them.

When one message fails to fit all

Even if marketing, sales or product teams are aligned and are actively working together towards one common goal, we all have our personal targets and challenges.

And so, when a B2B deal involves six, ten, or even thirteen people, it should come as no surprise that they rarely share the same priorities.

And to complicate the equation, each stakeholder typically consults four to five pieces of content before joining group discussions. That means everyone arrives at the table armed with their own perspectives, shaped by their role and their research.

This creates a paradox.

More information is available than ever, but that abundance does not always produce clarity. Instead, it produces fragmentation. Each stakeholder comes with their own KPIs, pain points, and definitions of success.

When priorities clash

Let's take a quick example and consider a random enterprise software purchase.

The CFO is scanning for cost savings and a clear payback period.
The CIO is focused on security risks and integration with existing systems.
The end users want simplicity and speed, not another layer of complexity.
Operations or compliance leaders are asking whether regulations will be met.
Procurement is locked on terms, pricing structures, and risk exposure.

If one of these voices cannot connect your solution to their priorities, they have the power to slow or even block the decision.

And there's no way around this.

In fact, roughly 9 out of 10 B2B purchases require input from multiple departments. This means every deal is effectively a group project, and group projects often stall when even one member isn’t convinced.

40% of B2B deals stall because internal stakeholders fail to align

The consequences are serious.

More than 40% of B2B deals stall because internal stakeholders fail to align.
Over half of lost opportunities are attributed not to competitors but to “no decision” outcomes, where committees simply could not move forward.

That means most opportunities slip away not because the solution lacked value, but because the committee never reached the confidence to commit. In group dynamics, even a single unresolved objection can derail months of progress.

Without a story that brings those perspectives together, deals are delayed, dragged through endless loops of debate, or abandoned entirely.

Create your own message map

Download our template to define your core messages based on the:

Job titles and roles in the buying process
Maturity of your audience.
Various use cases your audience has.
Unique features you offer

Get it now

Alignment for the win

The good news is that alignment is achievable, and it pays off.

When every stakeholder hears the value framed in their terms, the conversation shifts from internal conflict to collective momentum.

Finance can see the return.
IT trusts the technical stability.
Users feel confident that adoption will be smooth.
Procurement understands the terms.
Champions have the credibility to advocate.

When all of these voices converge on a shared understanding of value, friction disappears and decision velocity increases. Deals move faster, not because buyers are pressured, but because they are aligned.

Speak every stakeholder’s language

A single value proposition is not enough to close a complex deal.

The challenge and opportunity is to translate that value into messages that resonate with every voice at the decision-making table.

Here is how to align the most common buying committee members.

The CFO

Priorities: Return on investment, cost efficiency, compliance, risk reduction.

The CFO wants proof that the numbers add up. They are less concerned with features than with financial outcomes. If they cannot clearly see how the solution reduces cost, increases efficiency, or protects against risk, they will hesitate.

What to provide: ROI calculators that show payback periods, case studies with quantified savings, total cost of ownership models, and compliance documentation. A strong financial narrative helps them see the investment as a responsible decision.

The CIO or CTO (IT lead)

Priorities: Security, integration, scalability, vendor stability.

Technical leaders are tasked with safeguarding the company’s infrastructure. They need reassurance that your solution will not introduce risk or disrupt existing workflows. They also care about whether your company will be a stable, long-term partner.

What to provide: Security certifications (ISO, SOC 2), architecture diagrams, integration guides, and technical validation sessions with your engineers. Third-party analyst reports can add credibility to your claims.

The end users

Priorities: Ease of use, productivity, impact on daily workflows.

If end-users perceive your solution as complicated, they will resist adoption, even if leadership approves the budget. They need to believe that your solution will make their jobs easier, not add another layer of work.

What to provide: Hands-on demos, trial access, role-based training previews, and customer testimonials from peers in similar roles. Showing “a day in the life” with your product helps make the benefits tangible.

Operations

Priorities: Process fit, regulatory compliance, smooth implementation.

For operations and compliance teams, the concern is not “what does it do?” but “will it fit without breaking something we already rely on?” They are gatekeepers for efficiency and risk mitigation.

What to provide: Compliance checklists, implementation roadmaps, and change management guides. Stories from customers in regulated industries can reassure them that your solution will not trigger audit issues or operational disruptions.

Procurement

Priorities: Cost certainty, contract clarity, vendor reliability.

Procurement’s role is to protect the business by negotiating fair terms and reducing risk. They are not interested in features. They want transparency and consistency. Ambiguity around pricing or SLAs can stall progress.

What to provide: Clear pricing models, procurement FAQs, SLA templates, and vendor risk assessments. Providing this early signals that you are a partner who values transparency.

The internal champion

Priorities: Building consensus, personal credibility, career growth.

Champions are your most important allies. They believe in your solution and want to bring it forward, but they need tools to persuade others inside the organization. They are taking a career risk by backing you, so your job is to make them look credible.

What to provide: Executive-ready decks, one-page explainers, third-party validation like analyst coverage, and easy-to-share success stories. The easier you make it for them to advocate internally, the more likely they are to carry your deal across the finish line.

Don't forget hidden influencers

Of course, not every stakeholder is visible on an org chart.

Advisors, consultants, or board members often shape opinions behind the scenes. They may never sit in a vendor meeting, but their word carries weight.

Those hidden influencers are usually very rational and pragmatic. And so, they'll typically base their decisions on analyst reports, industry benchmarks, or respected third-party validation.

These sources of authority reassure them that the decision aligns with best practice.

Turn translation into practice

The most effective sales teams don’t just memorize these roles. They map them for each account. By preparing a tailored narrative and content package for each stakeholder, you enable the buying group to move together instead of pulling in different directions.

Winning the room, not just the person

Numbers speak volumes: the toughest competitor in B2B sales is not another vendor. It is indecision. And indecision thrives when a buying committee cannot align.

Convincing one person is no longer enough. Success depends on helping a group of stakeholders, each with their own metrics and objections, to reach a shared confidence.

When finance sees the ROI, IT trusts the integration, users believe in the ease of adoption, and procurement is satisfied with the terms, momentum builds. Alignment replaces friction, and decisions move forward.

The most effective sellers and marketers do not push harder on a single pitch. They prepare a portfolio of tailored stories and materials designed to address each role within the committee. This is how deals are not just won, but accelerated.

To make this easier, try our message map template!

Can B2B marketing be more sustainable? (yes, here's how)

mari@advanceb2b.fi (Mari) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 04:30:00 GMT

This article, in short

This article covers how everyday marketing choices, like swag, events, ad placements, AI use, and travel, directly shape your brand’s credibility, reduce environmental impact, and help you avoid greenwashing while building stronger trust with your audience.

Sustainability efforts and communications shouldn’t just be a boardroom topic. They should be on every marketer’s radar.

Why? Because those actions shape your brand and influence how people and your target audience see you.

Marketing sometimes gets sidelined in the sustainability conversation. But guess what? Marketers have loads of opportunities to champion responsibility in their daily work. After all, sustainability should run through every part of a business, so of course it belongs on marketing’s agenda.

So… how do you actually do it? Let’s peek into the Sustainable Marketer’s Checklist!

Swag (a.k.a. branded merch and corporate gifts)

Newsflash: we’re burning through the Earth’s resources so fast that by summer each year, we’ve used up more than our fair share. This year, Earth Overshoot Day landed on July 24th. Time to pause and ask: do we really need to stock up on more stuff for the marketing closet?

Water bottles? Well, most people already have a dozen lying around from former jobs or personal buys. The same goes for tote bags, t-shirts, towels, and hoodies.

So, what if you got creative with non-physical or digital gifts instead? Think streaming or audiobook service gift cards, stuff that brings joy without adding junk. If physical swag is a must, you can still do it the smart way. For example, Finnish company re-cloy offers a re-merch service where they upcycle second-hand clothes into fresh branded gear.

The textile industry is one of the dirtiest out there, and spoiler alert: Earth already has enough clothes to dress the next six generations. And let’s not forget about the working conditions behind all that merch. So next time you’re about to order new branded hoodies, consider other ways to produce and source your swag!

How to party more sustainably

Events might come with a big carbon footprint: think travel emissions, giveaways, decorations, and catering.

But there’s hope! Take a cue from startup event Slush, which has been a sustainability pioneer for years. Their toolkit is gold: only vegetarian food, reusable decorations, no swag allowed, and they’ve even offset their carbon footprint (including attendees’ flights). That’s what real accountability looks like!

Here’s how to run an event like a sustainability champ:

Let long-distance guests join remotely with a high-quality stream
Pick a venue with good public transit, and maybe even throw in a transit pass for attendees
Skip the plastic freebies and avoid single-use decorations
Remind guests (in the invite!) that no one needs to buy a new outfit for the party. Come as you are, or wear your favorite something-again.
Serve sustainably produced, mostly plant-based food, and think reusable dishes and recycling points
Ditch plastic name tags and lanyards. Let’s be honest, no one’s missing them.
Do staff really need new branded outfits, or could they stand out in another way?
Make sure your event follows safe space principles

What your ad placements say about you

Trying to keep up with all the changes in advertising platforms lately? Same. It’s like a fast-moving soap opera, just with more algorithms.

Some companies have decided to wave goodbye to X (yep, formerly known as Twitter). Why? For some, it’s the increasingly political vibe. For others, it’s about distancing themselves from Elon Musk and his business empire. Whatever the reason, the decision to leave X is becoming a branding move in itself.

Then there’s Meta, which recently announced it's dropping fact-checking in the U.S. While the fact-checking is still going strong in Europe, advertisers might still pause and ask: Do we want our ads showing up next to possible fake news?

And then… there’s TikTok.

Oh, TikTok.

The app has been in hot water more times than we can count, whether it’s privacy concerns, geopolitical drama, or questions around content moderation. The key? If you’re going to play on TikTok, play smart and keep an eye on how the platform aligns with your brand values.

Diversity: Who's in your ads, and on your team?

Let’s get real: diversity in marketing isn’t just a checkbox. It’s a mirror that shows who your brand sees, includes, and speaks to.

You can look at diversity from a few different angles (and we recommend you do):

First up: your marketing team. Does your team bring together different backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences? A diverse team isn’t just good for workplace vibes, it leads to sharper ideas and more inclusive campaigns. If everyone at the table looks and thinks the same, you might be missing out on viewpoints that could truly level up your brand.

Next up: your ads. Take a good look at your campaigns, imagery, and social media posts. Are you representing a wide range of people? Or do they feature the same five smiley people in matching blazers and suspiciously perfect lighting?

Inclusive visuals aren’t just nice, they’re powerful. Representation matters. People want to see themselves reflected in the brands they support. That means showing different ages, ethnicities, body types, gender identities, abilities, you name it.

The magic (and the mess) is often in the details:

Who’s speaking in your campaigns, and who’s silent?
Are different cultures represented respectfully, or as exotic backdrops?
Is your idea of “diversity” one vaguely ambiguous group photo once a year?

Real inclusivity is woven into the everyday choices of your brand. So before you hit publish, pause and ask: who’s missing from this picture?

AI is a brilliant sidekick, but it comes with ethical baggage

AI is officially the coworker of the year. More and more companies and employees are inviting it into their daily workflows, and in marketing, it’s basically the Swiss army knife of productivity. Need ideas? Editing help? Creative brainstorming? Data analysis? Boom, AI's got your back.

But here’s the thing: behind the smooth interface, AI has a pretty hefty footprint.

Let’s talk resources.

That friendly AI assistant helping you write a short email? It might have slurped up over half a liter of clean water just to generate those 100 words. Oh, and the electricity used? Around 0.14 kilowatt-hours, the same as running 14 LED bulbs for an hour. Generating images or video? Even more resource-intensive.

Then there’s the human side.

Some AI tools were trained using labor from lower-income countries, where people (often young workers) were paid under a dollar an hour to label data, and some were laid off with no warning.

Plus, there’s the data risk factor. AI tools aren’t your private diary. Feeding them sensitive company data or personal information? Major no-no. You never know where that info might end up or who might be training the next model with it.

So yes, AI is awesome, but like any powerful tool, it deserves thoughtful, ethical use. Respect the tech and the people behind it.

Business travel: Zoom in before you fly out

There’s something special about face-to-face meetings. But before you book those flights, ask yourself: Is the value of this trip worth the emissions?

In many expert-driven organizations, air travel can be one of the top-shelf emitters, especially if flights are frequent. So, unless it’s a meeting that truly benefits from being in person, it might be time to rethink.

Virtual meetings remain the lightest lift in terms of emissions, and hey, no need to wear real pants.

And if virtual isn’t an option? Consider flight-free travel. It’s increasingly popular, and it’s not only planet-friendly but also productive. You can work on the way and arrive well-prepared. Wins all around.

Sustainable travel doesn’t mean no travel. It just means smarter travel.

Avoid greenwashing: Walk the talk

Greenwashing misleads customers and undermines genuine sustainability efforts. For marketers, it’s time to sharpen up how you talk about sustainability. To keep your sustainability messaging credible:

Be clear and specific. Spell out the actual impact or benefit.
Prove it. Back claims with data or third-party verification.
Stay consistent. Don’t highlight one action while ignoring bigger harms.

Honest, evidence-based communication not only keeps you compliant, it also protects your brand from the trust erosion caused by greenwashing. Read more about avoiding greenwashing in our full article.

Small choices, big impact

Sustainable marketing isn’t about perfection; it’s about progress. Every choice, from skipping a swag order to rethinking your travel or ad platforms, adds up.

You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. Start small. Be curious. Ask better questions. And hey, being a sustainable marketer? That’s not just good for the planet. It’s pretty great for business, too.

⚠️ A quick note: This checklist is written with a B2B marketing lens. While the principles apply broadly, in B2C marketing there’s an added risk: campaigns that encourage unnecessary purchases can undermine sustainability goals altogether. Pushing people to consume more, particularly products that damage the climate and environment, goes against the core principles of responsible marketing.

Budgets are defended with data, not anecdotes

inka@advanceb2b.fi (Inka Kaislalampi) — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 13:34:16 GMT

This article, in short

Attribution in B2B should be simple: spend money, measure results, adjust budget. But the reality is anything but. Long buying cycles, multiple stakeholders, and offline influence make it elusive. This article should help you question your current attribution model and give you ideas to turn complex B2B journeys into data you can trust.

Your buyers are forming opinions about you long before they ever show up in your CRM. Maybe it’s a podcast they listened to on their commute. Maybe it’s a Slack thread where someone mentioned your product. Maybe it’s a LinkedIn comment they saw from a peer. By the time they finally land on your website and fill out a form, the most influential touches have already happened, and your dashboards have missed most of them.

You are expected to explain what’s working, but the evidence rarely tells one clear story. Marketing shows campaign influence, sales points to outbound, finance focuses on revenue, and somehow none of it quite lines up.

If you’ve ever walked into a leadership meeting and felt that mismatch between numbers and narratives, you know this is bigger than a reporting problem. The thing is, attribution isn’t a ‘technical nuisance’; without a credible way to connect investment to impact, budgets become harder to defend. This makes attribution a strategic concern.

In this short read, I’ll cover:

The B2B buyer journey isn’t linear

Attribution goes beyond building pretty dashboards

Stop asking “what caused this deal?”

Set the course and let tools do the heavy lifting for you

Challenge your current attribution model, often

The B2B buyer journey isn’t linear

Attribution models don’t usually fail because you pick the wrong one. They fail because the buying journey itself refuses to fit into a neat formula.

A B2B deal often unfolds across months, touching multiple people and countless interactions along the way. Reducing that complexity into a first-touch or last-touch view collapses a rich story into a single, misleading datapoint.

On top of that, influence doesn’t belong to just one person. Modern buying decisions are made by committees, where each member consumes different content and weighs in at different times:

One may attend a webinar,

another may speak to a partner,

and a third may quietly read the pricing page.

And so, credit is dispersed across roles, and any attempt to pin it to a single action could distort reality.

Even when you have robust digital tracking, some of the most powerful moments leave no trace at all. A dinner conversation, an introduction from a partner, or a quick phone call can tip the balance. Those signals requiring manual input rarely find their way into your dashboards. And when systems themselves are disconnected attribution has little chance of producing a story that makes sense.

The cracks accumulate, and what could be clear becomes confusing.

And it costs.

Attribution goes beyond building pretty dashboards

Now, fixing attribution isn’t about making dashboards prettier; it’s about giving you the means to make better decisions based on what really fuels your growth. From experience, weak attribution can make it difficult to:

Defend your budget: without a clear ROI story, marketing budgets are harder to justify at the board level.

Build more confident forecasts: you will lose confidence in pipeline forecasts when the inputs are inconsistent.

Maintain cross-functional trust: if marketing, sales, and finance each bring their own version of the truth, alignment frays and collaboration suffers.

Attribution is not about chasing a perfect model. It is about building enough trust in the numbers that leadership can make bold, confident decisions. And that starts with reframing the way you think about ROI.

Stop asking “what caused this deal?”

The mistake I think most teams make is looking for a single, perfect answer to the question: “What caused this deal?” A better approach is to ask two different questions:

Which activities consistently increase the probability and velocity of deals?

How confident are we in that evidence?

This shift changes attribution from a quest for certainty to a framework for decision-making. Instead of arguing over whether an ad or a webinar deserves the credit, leadership can ask whether the mix of channels is working together to move deals forward, and whether the data is strong enough to back a budget decision.

Set the course and let tools do the heavy lifting for you

Building a high-trust attribution model comes from layering different types of evidence.

Rely on your CRM

Use multi-touch attribution in your CRM to distribute credit across tracked activities. A good practice is to keep it simple (position-based or time-decay could be enough) and to document your process, so that anyone looking at the data would be able to understand the weight of each interaction.

HubSpot has a built-in attribution reporting tool (available in Marketing Hub Enterprise) that lets you assign credit across different touchpoints in the customer journey. You can choose between several standard models, including:

Position-based: Emphasizes the first and last touch, while still giving partial credit to the interactions in between.

Time-decay: Gives more weight to touches that happen closer to the conversion.

These models are already available in HubSpot’s reporting dashboards, so you don’t need to build complex custom logic. You can filter by campaigns, content types, channels, or deal stages to see which efforts influenced pipeline and revenue.

The goal is not perfection in any one layer, but convergence across them. When declared, modeled, and experimental evidence all point in the same direction, you can reallocate budget with confidence.

This is where HubSpot becomes a powerful enabler. HubSpot unifies campaign data, contact activity, deal progression, and revenue in one system. When every touchpoint is properly associated, when campaign costs are synced in, and when deals are linked to contacts and companies, leaders finally see the connection between spend and revenue. HubSpot doesn’t eliminate the complexity of attribution, per say, but it provides the operating hub that makes attribution credible at the executive level.

Ask buyers directly (and involve AI to aggregate the data)

Consider what’s called declared attribution.

Ask “How did you hear about us?” Capture free text, keep the raw answers, then categorize them separately. This often reveals peer referrals, community influence, and other touches you’d otherwise miss.

Now, declared attribution isn’t perfect as response rates vary and answers can be biased by a number of factors outside of your control. But it’s a valuable complement to modeled and experimental evidence.

To make it scalable, use AI to aggregate responses into themes, but pair that with periodic human review to catch misclassifications and maintain trust in the categories.

Challenge your current attribution model, often

Attribution isn’t something you set once and trust forever.

Left unchecked, models drift (often in ways that undermine trust long before anyone notices).

One early warning sign is reporting sprawl: dashboards multiply, yet no single view becomes the accepted source of truth.

Another common pattern is channel bias, where last-touch activities suddenly emerge as the “heroes” of the story, capturing undue credit simply because they sit closest to the conversion.

And then there are the data hygiene gaps: campaigns missing cost data, or buyer-reported sources that never reconcile with what shows up in the system.

Each of these signals points to the same problem: a model that’s slowly drifting away from reality. A good hygiene practice is to set quarterly or bi-yearly reviews to prevent your focus from drifting away and recalibrate your attribution and reporting system before trust erodes further.

Turning attribution into your growth advantage

Attribution in B2B will never deliver perfect clarity, and it doesn’t need to.

What marketing and sales need is confidence: enough evidence, layered and repeatable, to guide budget decisions, defend investments, and align teams.

When HubSpot sits at the center, connecting campaign data, deals, and revenue, attribution becomes more than a marketing report. It becomes an executive tool for growth. Add in declared, modeled, and experimental layers, and suddenly the story is not just clearer, it’s credible.

The payoff is significant. Budgets are defended with data, not anecdotes. Forecasts become more reliable. Sales, marketing, and finance align on one version of the truth. And instead of debating reports, you can focus on where to double down and where to pull back.

—

Learn how we helped Katana solve an attribution issue and turned it into a strategic advantage. Building a partner management system in HubSpot for Katana.

Your tech stack isn’t a bottleneck; you are (probably)

mikko.laaksonen@advanceb2b.fi (Mikko Laaksonen) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 07:51:07 GMT

This article, in short

The article underlines the main reasons why implementing change is so difficult. If you read until the end, you’ll also get thoughts on building a future-proof infrastructure through Revenue Operations (RevOps) to overcome data, people, and tech challenges and support your growth.

The title is clickbaity, I know - But I hear from good sources that good marketing should be somewhat controversial, so here goes nothing.

Before else, let me address the elephant in the room: Yes, in many situations, the tech stack is a challenge, but tools are essentially … just tools, things. And things are easy to fix when you know what you’re doing.

On the other hand, fixing processes, ways of working, or old habits is much more challenging, because they rely on people. And people are slightly more complicated than ‘things’.

And the fact of the matter is that we are now forced to change those old habits because of factors that can no longer be ignored, namely:

AI, penetrating all areas of business
and evolving ways of buying

This article combines my daily observations with my predictions for fixing what seems to be broken. I’m aware it may generate frustration or anger.

And that’s a good thing. Change is scary, and it triggers strong emotions.

However, change is also necessary as the environment around us evolves.

And so, my argument here is that people are the main bottleneck to successfully implementing necessary changes in organizations.

In other words, YOU are the bottleneck.

Oops, I did it again. I took a shortcut to increase your heartbeat.

Joke aside, let me elaborate on that.

Misaligned data. Misaligned goals. Misaligned everything.

Working in a B2B agency environment gives me a first-hand chance to witness the challenges our customers and prospective customers face.

One of those challenges is data.

In (too) many organizations, sales & marketing data is a hot and messy pile that keeps growing alongside a shaky legacy baggage.

And no one really knows where to begin to bring balance back.

The martech setup often shares part of the blame, but it’s also, in most cases, a mere symptom of a much deeper root cause.

Silos.

Siloed organizations are struggling to find a way out

What I see is that a vast majority of businesses I interact with are yet to figure out how to break the silos between their core teams.

Worst even, if having silos is often a problem that is widely well-known and acknowledged across the board, there are no processes in place to actually break them.

Not by lack of will, but by lack of know-how.

In other cases, companies work hard to design processes only to realize down the road that they don’t work in practice.

Oftentimes, this is because the reason(s) why silos exist are misdiagnosed.

The first step to breaking silos is to understand what caused them to begin with.

And reasons can be plural.

Historical Structures: Many organizations have evolved over time, and their structures reflect past needs or legacy systems. These structures can create silos that persist even as the organization's goals and environment change.

Specialization: Different departments or teams often have specialized functions, such as marketing, finance, or IT. This specialization can lead to silos as each team focuses on its own goals and processes.

Geographical distribution: Organizations with multiple locations or remote work arrangements can naturally form silos due to physical separation and different local priorities.

Leadership and management styles: Leaders who focus on departmental goals rather than overall organizational objectives can inadvertently encourage silo formation. Lack of cross-functional leadership can also contribute to this issue.

Communication barriers: Poor communication practices, lack of transparency, and inadequate information-sharing tools can create silos. And when teams do not communicate frequently and effectively, they’ll naturally drift on their own path and operate in isolation from each other.

Cultural difference: Different teams or departments may develop their own subcultures, which can lead to silos if there is no overarching organizational culture that promotes collaboration.

Resource allocation: Competition for resources, budget, and recognition can lead to silos as departments try to secure what they need to meet their goals.

Lack of Integrated systems: The absence of integrated technology systems can make it difficult for different parts of the organization to share data and collaborate, leading to silos.

And, finally…

… Resistance to change: Employees and managers may resist changes that would break down silos, especially if they perceive these changes as threatening to their roles or departmental autonomy.

This last point is, I believe, the toughest knot of them all. You could try and address all the other root causes, but if people don’t want to change, change won’t happen.

Why is change so difficult to accept and implement

2 reasons:

A skill gap
Lack of consistency

Now is a good time to admit we’re all entering uncharted territories.

I’ll say it again;

no one knows where we’ll be in 5 years.
no one knows who the winners will be in 5 years.

Think about it, even Google’s foundations are shaken as generative AI is gaining ground. Something no other search engine managed to do before.

Something no one would have put on their bingo cards.

And the reason for this is simple: AI is literally re-inventing how we work and operate.

It’s changing search, but also sales, marketing, customer success, product development, …

New shapes and ideas are starting to emerge from the inaudible AI conversations happening worldwide, but commonly accepted and widespread norms aren’t a thing just yet.

A direct consequence of this is that companies are learning by doing (and it’s challenging).

There’s an evident skill gap

My experience is that companies either lack the resources or the skills to make significant change happen.

And you can probably anticipate which one I see most, right?

Skills.

For starters, it’s difficult for companies to know how they should do this.

And it’s quite understandable, as there are so many moving pieces to deal with:

Auditing the current situation to identify bottlenecks and areas of improvement.
Finding people to help them with these technology setups so that they can actually use the data and benefit from it.

No strict implementation follow-up (or owner of change)

You can’t expect change to stick if you only say, “Change is happening now!”

You need concrete actions to accompany the words, solid martech foundations to support your ambition, and a proper follow-up plan (or, in the best-case scenario, an owner to drive said change).

Rant over: here’s my (suggested) fix

I can’t claim to know what to do—no one does—so I’m inclined to make suggestions instead.

Educated suggestions, but suggestions nonetheless.

Focus on the WHY change is necessary to get people on board

It’s really not that complicated.

The bigger the carrot, the more likely we are to accept hurdles and challenges to get to it.

Stakeholders need to understand the risks of not implementing the change. In other words, how much money will be left on the table if they choose to “do nothing?”

Similarly, to accept change, employees need to understand how change will help them be better at their jobs. For instance, by aligning processes between marketing, sales, and customer success, a CMO would be able to follow the money and differentiate marketing actions that impact their bottom line from those that don’t.

Work towards building a future-proof infrastructure

Once everyone is on the same page, the challenge is to deliver on the promise.

And that comes from figuring out a martech ecosystem that:

is aligned with how your organization functions
is fully integrated across the board

The big idea is to set the foundations for your sales, marketing, and customer success to work toward shared goals.

I’m talking about RevOps (Revenue Operations).

The ‘fix’ is to:

Give you access to data you can trust
Establish processes and targets that make sense across teams
Establish processes for people to work together
Ensure your tech works for you, not the other way around.

Note that I’m not claiming any of this is easy, because it’s not. However, with the right minds and skills, you can get it done.

—

I’ll conclude by repeating that change is inevitable. The winners will be those with foundations (read, data, process, people and tech) strong enough to navigate dangerous and uncertain waters.

It’s all about catching the train on time - and if you need help with that, we’re here for it.