This Is the B2B Marketing Playbook for 2024 [Template]

The B2B marketing landscape has changed dramatically over the past three years, with a turning point in 2023. In this introduction I will lay out 4 reasons why you should evolve along with the market and start building your new B2B marketing playbook.

Reason 1 - The rise of the ‘Self-Served Buying Journey’ trend

B2B buyers now inform themselves based on content they discover online through various channels, including social media, blogs, podcasts, videos and online events.

More than ever, they have the ability to search for answers and find them, thanks to the availability of online tools.

Buyers also have access to online communities, such as LinkedIn groups, WhatsApp groups, Telegram groups or Slack groups, where they can get feedback, share best practices and gather information from their peers.

The key to success in this context is creating content that guides buyers through their entire journey. Just as important is being easily accessible at every moment, on every platform.

Reason 2 - Social media plays an increasingly central role in the decision-making process

Gradually, our personal decision-making habits, influenced by social media, have extended to behavior within B2B.

Professionals are using social media more and more for business purposes.

Between 2018 and 2022, LinkedIn’s user base grew from 580 million to 715 million people. This growth of 23% is a good indicator of the increasing importance of B2B social media.

Professionals are starting more conversations, connecting with more colleagues and exchanging ideas on social platforms. These platforms have become real business hubs where buyers can launch new projects and build business relationships.

Reason 3 - Paid ads are now very common in B2B

Paid social ads, search ads and display ads have become the standard in B2B marketing. When I run benchmarks for my clients, I often find that 80% of their competitors use paid ads.

Every company that takes digital marketing seriously now uses at least LinkedIn and Google Ads. On top of that, it seems that horizontal SaaS companies such as Hubspot, Grammarly and Zapier have paved the way for creative video campaigns.

From now on, it is really important to focus on high-quality content. Launching ads with the text “book a demo” is no longer enough. You need high-quality content that informs about the problem you solve and also about your solution.

Reason 4 - The success of cold emailing is declining

The open and reply rates of emails have dropped sharply. In early 2023, generative AI removed the last barrier to cold emailing.

Before that, it was easy to find contacts (database tools, scraping) and send emails. But now it is also easy to come up with a campaign and write the copy with AI (which I do not recommend).

The threshold to send emails has never been so low. And that has a strong impact on results:

• More emails (and more spam)
• The open rate drops
• Fewer results with emailing

This new reality is the foundation of the new marketing playbook I am going to present.

So keep this in mind.

Plan your budget: determine your marketing investment with our Marketing budget calculator.

How do you start renewing your B2B marketing activities?

Here are the five basic steps you need to work through:

1. Accept the shift in the market (as briefly explained in part 1) and understand the impact of these activities on the customer journey.
2. Make sure the people who make decisions in your company understand and accept this new reality.
3. Analyze your current marketing playbook to see what does and does not lead to revenue (you can hire an expert for this).
4. Brainstorm a marketing roadmap to switch to a new playbook that takes the new market reality into account.
5. Implement quick experiments, assess their repeatability and build long-term marketing programs that account for the way your customers buy.

Do not try to do steps 3 and 4 yet if steps 1 and 2 are not done.

Now I can finally share my opinion on what the B2B marketing playbook for 2024 is.

These insights were built by gathering all the B2B learnings from our partners and clients.

With these 5 different tactics you can renew your B2B marketing playbook for next year:

Know that this is not the only playbook, since you may need to integrate other actions that are specific to your company and industry.

So if you are in doubt, make sure to try every tactic before radically switching to a new framework. Or enlist the help of an expert.

Here are 5 B2B tactics you should definitely test in 2024:

• Content marketing
• Social selling
• Paid advertising
• Account-based marketing
• Thought leadership

Enough chatter, time to dive deep!

I. Use content as the backbone of your B2B marketing strategy

You need to redefine content as a pillar of your marketing strategy, because content is what your audience sees, but also how they perceive you.

Content will help you to:

• Create awareness for your brand
• Create demand for your solution
• Position yourself as an authority in your industry
• Build transparency and trust at scale
• Inform about the problem you solve
• Close deals by removing objections
• Move buyers through the buyer’s journey

Here is an overview of benefits spread across all stages of the buyer’s journey:

• Awareness: increase the visibility of your brand by creating relevant content that your audience will find and share. Short & snackable.
• Interest: spark interest in your solution by offering valuable content that addresses the needs and challenges of your audience.
• Consideration: help buyers make a decision by providing them with in-depth information about your solution, including case studies, testimonials and product comparisons.
• Purchase: motivate buyers to make a purchase by giving them a clear picture of the value of your solution and how it can solve their problems.
• Post-purchase: stay in touch with customers after the purchase by offering them valuable content and support.

Line those five stages up beneath each other and it becomes clear why content is not a single blog post but a chain: each stage calls for a different kind of story to move the buyer one step further.

2. Content quality is the absolute minimum

If your content is of poor quality, people will stay far away from you!

If your content offers good solutions to your audience’s problem, you will be seen as valuable.

• High quality content that offers solutions? You are valuable.
• Poor quality content that repeats basics? You are worthless.

Being seen as valuable = a sum of specific pieces of content that always answer the questions and objections of your audience.

If your content is always “on point”, your brand will naturally be seen as “on point” too.

3. The 5 rules for publishing quality content

Defining “quality” content can be vague, so here is how I define it in 5 rules:

• The content is based on audience research (keywords, survey, interviews, desk research), so you know for sure it meets a real market need, problem or trend.
• You share a unique, or at least a strong point of view through your content that can barely be found elsewhere.
• The insights shared in the content are clear and specific (numbers, evidence, experiments, case studies). The human brain loves clarity and coherence.
• The content respects your positioning and messaging (and this must apply to all channels)
• The copywriting and the visuals are great

4. Volume matters too because your prospects need repetition

Quality is the absolute minimum, but you also need to publish a lot of content. You have to build content programs across various channels (e.g. LinkedIn posts, podcast, content hub, YouTube channel) and experiment with a lot of volume to achieve real results.

People in your industry receive thousands of stimuli every day. Their brain processes the information and removes the useless clutter. It is similar to when you clean up your inbox and drag the spam to the trash.

Repeated high-quality content keeps you “top of mind” in the brains of your audience.

The goal is to build a strong connection between your topic and your brand name this way.

Hear about the topic → think of your name Hear about your name → think of your topic

In other words, visibility and compounding effects come from volume.

II. Social Selling on social media

Social selling is a sales strategy that uses social media platforms and online networks to connect with potential customers (instead of the traditional methods of cold calling and hard selling).

As mentioned in the introduction, many B2B buyers today use social media to meet new industry peers, but also to find potential buyers and suppliers. It is therefore important to integrate social selling into your strategy.

1. Use social media platforms to connect with potential customers.

This means using social networks such as LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and others to identify, engage and convert leads into customers.

For most B2B marketers this is still very new. The good news is that it is not rocket science.

So here is a simple 5-step plan to do this:

1. Analyze your audience’s favorite channels
2. Post content on this channel or these channels (see my content guide)
3. Build lists of target accounts and ICPs
4. Respond to their posts
5. Send direct messages to connect (very underrated)

2. Build your own community

Building a B2B community means creating an online place where professionals with the same interests or goals can talk and grow together. The main goal is to create a space where people can help each other. This in turn will help your company. Here is the difference between an audience and a community:

• Audience: one-to-many (you talk to your audience)
• Community: many-to-many (community members talk to each other)

Building a B2B community is a mix of three important elements:

• A shared interest or goal
• A platform where people can meet and communicate
• A dedicated facilitator who helps the community grow and thrive

In my opinion, this is one of the hardest tactics in B2B marketing, but also one of the most powerful. Over time you can build a community that fits the story of your brand. You also create a strong feedback loop with your audience thanks to direct access to them.

Here are the top 5 channels to create a B2B community:

• Slack channel
• Discord
• WhatsApp group
• Telegram group
• Your own channel on Podia

Here is how you can use a community for social selling (monetization):

• Downsell: prospect is not ready to buy → invite them to your community
• Upsell: audience in your community → become a paying customer
• Private launch: top member → early access to a new product

3. Rely on the network effects of your team

Your employees’ network is a source of revenue. As you know, personal brands are now very important for the C-levels: CEO, CMO, COO, CFO, and so on.

But it is also very useful to leverage the networks of other team members. Every time you hire a new person, you also integrate this:

• Background → what they have done before
• Industry network → their connections
• Socials → their profile and follower base
• Expertise → their knowledge and skills
• Personality → who they are as an individual

Those five elements form their personal brand. If your new employees agree to this, you can set up a system to help them build their personal brands when they join the company.

It is a rough diamond that can be leveraged for both the company and the individual:

• For the company → customer acquisition
• For the individual → personal fulfillment and career growth

Here is how you can use personal brands for social selling:

• Publish content on their LinkedIn and X profiles about their expertise.
• Create an incentive plan and system to refer customers from their networks.
• Give them the space to work on a personal project (e.g. organizing workshops every Friday of the month)

Again, these actions must arise from a mutual agreement between the team members and the company.

III. Rethink your paid advertising system

Most B2B paid advertising systems are optimized for generating unqualified leads. A typical funnel is to promote a new ebook, collect emails, send nurturing sequences and run a retargeting “book a demo” campaign.

This playbook is not 100% wrong: if the ebook and the sequences meet a real need, it can be useful. But the problem is when the advertising system relies entirely on this funnel. As a result, the following happens:

• The marketing team hits its KPI target;
• They send thousands of MQLs to the CRM;
• But the sales team drowns in the volume.

This scenario is bad for both teams:

• Marketers are not aligned with the company’s revenue targets.
• Sales waste time and resources qualifying leads.

To avoid this imbalance, you need to rethink your entire B2B marketing strategy.

And one of the most important components is to rethink your advertising system on the following 5 points:

Stop seeing ads as a magic spell for lead generation

The average B2B sales cycle lasts 4 months, but founders expect to get a ROI on ads within 2 weeks. Shift your expectation to a window of at least 3 months for substantial results.

Build ads based on your customer’s buyer journey

Analyze and map your customers’ buyer journey. Then research what they need to read to move to the next stage of the buying process.

This is the best way to design your ads.

Set the North Star Metric as revenue generation

The marketing and sales team must work together toward the same goal (revenue). This makes their collaboration easier and they will no longer waste time together.

Diversify ad creatives and experiment with new formats

The ebook + demo campaign combination is not enough. Experiment with new formats using weekly sprints and track the early intent signals.

You can also test new channels (e.g. Meta, TikTok, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, X).

Connect your advertising system to your content strategy

Implement an organic-to-paid system: test topics and formats with organic content (e.g. a LinkedIn post or YouTube shorts). Then promote the best-performing content (this reminds me of when I “boosted” posts on Facebook back in 2014).

IV. Account-based Outbound Marketing

The threshold to send emails has never been so low. The performance of emails has therefore declined over the past 6 months with lower open rates and fewer replies than ever before.

Still, it would be foolish to say that “outbound is dead”.

Because ‘outbound’ means that you reach out to your target customers.

Your goal should be to adapt to a new playbook:

1. Reconsider the place of outbound

• Reposition outbound as a tool within a broader strategy
• Use outbound mainly for account-based marketing
• Research the industry thoroughly before sending ICP-based emails
• See every contact as an opportunity, not a data point
• Have minimum viable signals to trigger campaigns
• Develop internal intelligence to uncover real intent
• Build a bridge between the content and outbound strategies
• Integrate social selling into the outbound strategy

And of course all of this must be 100% compliant with GDPR regulations.

2. ABM is the most efficient outbound approach in this playbook because there is a strong link with other tactics.

If you implement tactics (1), (2) and (3) correctly, many accounts will navigate around your brand:

• Content → Demand will rise
• Community → More active members
• Paid ads → Reach new accounts

Can you not rely 100% on capturing demand to convert interested audiences into a revenue pipeline?

Know that some accounts simply will not reach out to you (busy, ego, no trigger, did not think to get in touch).

3. Put buying intent at the center of your ABM strategy

The goal of ABM here is to capture buying intent to convert interested accounts into a sales pipeline. In other words, tactics (1), (2) and (3) create “low hanging fruit” that you can approach directly with ABM.

So build an internal system to collect buying intent:

• Identify the buying intent that is important for your strategy
• Install an internal system to find and centralize it
• Prioritize accounts based on intent score

4. Here is how you can implement ABM in 6 steps:

Once you have prioritized a list of accounts based on intent, you can follow the next steps for good ABM:

1. Research each account individually
2. Map the decision-makers
3. Draw up one strategy for each account
4. Create assets (copy, creatives)
5. Run each campaign individually
6. Analyze and report qualitative learnings

V. Use thought leadership to position yourself as the reference within your industry

In an increasingly competitive market, it is important to distinguish yourself from your competitors. An effective way to do this is by using thought leadership. Thought leadership is sharing expertise and knowledge to create a position of authority in your industry. But how do you get started?

What is thought leadership?

Thought leadership is not the same as marketing or public relations. It is not about promoting your company or products, but about sharing valuable information with your audience. Thought leaders are seen as experts in their field and their opinion is respected by others. The key to this success is to know your industry inside out and to connect with your peers.

Why is thought leadership important?

Thought leadership offers you a number of benefits, including:

• Increased awareness: Thought leadership helps you grow your brand awareness and improve your name recognition.
• Building trust: Thought leadership helps you build trust with your audience and be seen as a reliable source of information.
• Lead generation: Thought leadership can lead to more leads and customers.
• Influencer status: Thought leadership can help you become an influencer in your industry.

How do you use thought leadership?

There are many different ways to use thought leadership. Here are some of the most commonly used tactics:

• Organizing: Share knowledge and connect with your peers.
• Speaking: Give presentations to demonstrate your expertise.
• Blogging: Share knowledge and expertise with your audience.
• Publishing: Publishing books, whitepapers or other articles is another effective way to generate thought leadership.
• Social media: Social media is a great way to connect with your audience and share your thought leadership.

How do you make the most of B2B content within thought leadership?

One of the benefits of thought leadership is that you can recycle your content to use it in other ways.

Use the following thought leadership framework to get a better view of all the activities, audiences and levels.

Here are a few thought leadership playbooks:

Research to Whitepaper to Blog series:

• Research report: Conduct detailed research in your field.
• Whitepaper: Turn the results of the research into an in-depth whitepaper.
• Blog series: Break the whitepaper down into a series of blog posts, where each post covers a specific aspect of the research.

Podcast Episode to Blog post to Social Media Posts:

• Podcast Episode: Create a podcast with experts about a trending topic.
• Blog post: Turn interesting segments from your podcast into a comprehensive blog post.
• Social Media Posts: Share small, catchy snippets from the blog post on social media platforms.

To position yourself as the reference within the industry, you will carry out your thought leadership program in a consistent way.

You will always have to make sure that your content is relevant to your audience and that your expertise is recognized by others.

So use the CARB method as a memory aid.

• Consistent: Publish new content regularly and make sure your message is consistent.
• Active: Take part in panel discussions and network with others in your industry.
• Relevant: Focus on topics that are relevant to your audience.
• Believable: Make sure your content is accurate and up-to-date.

Who ever said that CARBs are bad for you?

No inspiration to write on social media?

Then use the following cheat sheet!

That is my recommendation for the B2B marketing playbook for 2024 based on my experiences. Experiment with this Playbook in 2024.

And I hope it will help you with your strategy. Know that you must adapt this playbook to the industry, growth stage and objectives of your company.

👉 If you want to learn more or work with me:

• Follow me on Twitter for growth and building in public
• Follow me on Linkedin for daily marketing tips
• Book a 60-min power-hour call with me for marketing advice
• Contact me for a marketing sprint at tanguy.dekeyzer@customerimpact.be

Need help from experts?

Customer Impact is a team of growth strategists that specializes in generating more revenue.

For more information, check out our website or get in touch with us.

Further reading

• How do you run a competitive analysis for B2B? Step-by-step plan
• How do you create a buyer persona for B2B? (with template)
• What is the customer journey? The B2B customer journey explained
• What is a target audience? The basis for sharp B2B marketing
• What is the north star metric? The one growth metric explained
• How do you create a B2B marketing plan? (with structure)
• How do you plan a B2B product launch? (go-to-market plan)
• How do you create an effective B2B buyer persona for your company?