The #1 Problem in B2B Marketing

(And How to Fix It)

Hello, welcome to this edition! 👋

After 9 years in marketing, I’ve discovered the biggest marketing problem plaguing B2B businesses:

Skipping crucial business strategy and operational steps in order to chase quick results.

So here’s what you’ll learn in this edition:

1. Why most B2B businesses get marketing wrong from day 1.

2. The 4 levels of B2B marketing you must master.

3. How to build your marketing strategy the right way.

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Here are the four levels of B2B marketing (step-by-step explanation to follow):

All smart businesses focus on all four levels.

The problem is that people skip levels 1 and 2 to go straight for the marketing tactics and operations.

This is not good practice. Here’s why…

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What happens when you skip the first two levels

Here’s what it looks like when you skip through the first two levels of B2B marketing to go straight for the tactics and execution:

• Launching cold email campaigns without a target market

• Building complex CRM routines without clear revenue objectives

• Publishing content without a desired positioning

• Writing homepage copy without a clear messaging strategy

These are all marketing operations without any strategic input.

This is like choosing your wall’s color when your house doesn’t even have any foundations yet.

Here’s an example of skipping the foundations:

Because the target audience is broad and unclear, the end result (copywriting) is not effective.

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Your problem is clarity

When you skip the strategic foundations behind your marketing, you’re taking shots in the dark.

• How can you do your marketing when you don’t actually know what it is you’re trying to achieve?

• Why would prospects listen to you if you don't know what you’re even trying to say?

• What will you even say if you don’t know who it is you’re speaking to?

As my subscriber, George Zeidan, nicely put it:

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Here’s the truth that took me 9 years to learn:

Clarity doesn’t come to you in the middle of the day.

You don’t scream “EUREKA” and jump out your chair knowing exactly what your business does and who you should serve.

You get clarity by answering the right questions, one by one.

These steps will help you start:

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1. Always start from your business strategy

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Marketing isn’t some isolated department used to create pretty assets for your business.

Your marketing must be aligned with the objectives and revenue targets of the business. (Otherwise, you have an arts & crafts department. 🤷)

You must first figure out the base of your strategy. Your:

• Revenue objectives ($10k/month?.. $50k MRR?.. $5M/year?)

• Target market (e-com brands, SaaS companies, real estate agents, etc.)

• Value proposition (why does your customer actually need what you’re selling)

• Mission (why are you in business? What is it you actually want to do?)

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2. Turn it into a marketing strategy

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Once you have your business objectives clear, you must ‘game plan’ how to achieve them.

Some people hear the word ‘strategy’ and think it means creating a 50-page document that will never be read again.

But here’s all you really need:

• Market Positioning: Who do you serve? How are you different?

• Core Messaging: What are the specific words and ideas that will make your target audience stop scrolling and think “wait, this is exactly what I need”.

• Customer Research: Dig for more than just demographic data — what keeps your customer up at night? What language do they use? How do they think? How do they buy? These are called psychographics and are essential to know.

• Marketing Roadmap: A roadmap is not a wish-list (e.g., “I want a $10M/yr business”). Instead, develop a practical, monthly/quarterly/yearly plan so you can align your priorities and resources with your business.

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3. Choose marketing tactics accordingly

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Most marketing tactics fail — not because they’re bad tactics — but because they’re the wrong tactics for your strategy.

If your positioning is “high end consulting for enterprise” does it make sense to run Meta Ads?

Maybe not.

You need to choose tactics that align with your target audience and your desired positioning.

Some great questions for you to ask here are:

• Does this tactic match how our target audience prefers to learn and buy?

• Can we execute this consistently with our current resources?

• Does this reinforce our positioning or harm it?

• Will this scale with our plans for growth?

Some common tactics that work well in B2B include:

• Content marketing: But not just random blog posts. Post content that positions you as an authority and expert.

• Email marketing: Don’t just blast out emails to whoever. Create well-written campaigns that qualify and get replies or calls booked.

• Direct advertising: Targeted campaigns on the platforms your target audience spends the most time on.

• Outbound: When done right (and when combined with authority content), this can be a fast path to high-value deals.

• Affiliates: Sometimes your best growth channel can simply be partnering with complimentary services and partners.

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4. Run Operations to apply those tactics

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Now that you’re done answering questions and have actually laid the groundwork for your strategy, you can finally start running your marketing operations.

It’s important here to consistently execute on your marketing tasks and then iterate based on the results.

Some key day-to-day operational tactics for your business could be:

• Writing copy

• Managing campaigns

• Creating assets

• Sending emails

• Making designs

• Publishing posts

• Speaking with qualified prospects

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The feedback loop of success

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The most important part about this 4-stage framework is that it isn’t something you just do once and forget about.

Each level gives you feedback on a previous stage so you can make better choices with each iteration.

For example, suppose you’ve been running Meta Ads for a few months.

If your Meta Ads aren’t performing well (stage 4), perhaps your messaging isn’t resonating with your audience (stage 2). So you revisit stage 2 and revise your messaging. Now, when you test a new ad campaign with a different angle, your ads perform well.

This illustrative example highlights how a problem at the operations level can be a symptom of a deeper issue at the strategic level.

As you can see, B2B marketing is an infinite game. One that, if you master it, can create a very successful business for yourself — just like it has for me.

If you run B2B marketing for your own business or in a team and you’d like to learn more about how I used fundamentals like the above to scale my agency from $0 to $1m in 14 months, check out my course Authority-First Content.

Inside, you’ll find:

✅ 55+ video lessons teaching you how to implement my Authority-First framework

✅ My Notion dashboard to build your content plan

✅ 30 checklists & templates to create great content

✅ Community of 400+ marketers & founders

✅ Weekly live group call to ask questions & have me personally review your content

✅ Email & Community alerts to take action

Plus, you also get these valuable bonuses:

✅ Get access to my library of 500 posts that drove 45M+ views

✅ Steal my sales deck template that drove $1M

✅ -15% on my coaching programs

✅ 1-Hour LinkedIn™ Masterclass

—> Go to this link to find out more.

Alright that’s the end of this newsletter 👋 I hope it helped you! Thanks for reading :)