According to the Content Marketing Institute, 85% of B2B businesses see lead generation as their most important marketing goal, surprising absolutely nobody. But a study by APSIS reveals that 68% of all businesses feel like they’re really struggling with lead generation.
So, where’s the disconnect?
In Summary:
- Short-term intensity doesn’t work: One-off events and aggressive ads generate expensive leads that drop off quickly without proper foundations or a buffer in place.
- Build strategy and maintain hygiene: Develop strategy for where your business is now, segment your audience properly, and personalise messages instead of mass generic communications.
- The 7-11-4 rule builds trust: People need seven hours of content, eleven interactions, across four locations before they’ll buy. That’s a lot of thoughtful content, not ChatGPT churn.
- Long-term results are real: One client saw 106% more conversions and 207% more organic traffic in 18 months. Another generated £121,000 extra revenue from organic channels alone.
- Systemise your content creation: Use spreadsheets for ideas from all teams, assess strategic alignment and commercial viability, schedule everything like a client project, and interview experts for their insights.
The Pressure of Short-Termism
Introducing ‘short-termism’. Your new favourite phrase to drop when you’re fighting your marketing corner (again). Essentially it’s when we’re expected to do more for less; when budgets are cut, or during exciting high-growth periods, our focus naturally shrinks to immediate results. This short-term thinking always comes at the expense of longer-term brand-building efforts that drive steady, sustainable growth. It’s a tale as old as time… or at least the last few decades.
"You have to produce results in the short-term, but you also have to produce results in the long-term. And the long-term is not simply the adding up of short-terms."
What's going on?
The State of B2B Marketing Today
Long-Term Consistency vs. Short-Term Intensity
We’ve all seen the professional growth diagrams that contrast short-term intensity with long-term consistency. When it comes to marketing, my recommendation is clear: aim for long-term consistency rather than short-term intensity.
Sure, we can all spend thousands of pounds on a one-off event or turn on aggressive ad campaigns to generate quick (expensive) leads. But these will always be short-term bursts of lead generation. And the fall from these heights can be painful if you don’t have proper foundations or a buffer in place.
"When it comes to marketing, my recommendation is clear: aim for long-term consistency rather than short-term intensity."
Polly Buckland
How to Play the Marketing Long Game
1. Establish a Rock-Solid Strategy
- What type of content do they consume? What are their beliefs and habits?
- What challenges are they facing?
- What impact can you have on them?
Put real effort into developing a strategy that’s relevant to where your business is now, not where it was years ago, when you last had the time to check.
2. Focus on Marketing Hygiene
The second pillar is maintaining excellent hygiene in your ongoing marketing activities:
- Don’t build a website and neglect optimisation
- Avoid sending generic newsletters to your entire mailing list without proper segmentation
- Move away from mass generic communications (short-term thinking)
- Strategically segment your audience and personalise messages to build relationships (long-term behaviour)
the 3% rule
Expanding Your Audience of Opportunity
The 7-11-4 Rule
Building Trust Through Content
Google’s 7-11-4 theory suggests that to move someone from not knowing you at all to knowing, liking, and trusting you enough to purchase, they need to see:
- Seven hours of content
- Over eleven interactions
- Across four different locations
In practice, this might mean half an hour of content consumption counts as one interaction in one location – whether that’s on your website, YouTube channel, or LinkedIn post.
That’s a lot of content! But remember, it’s not about churning out low-quality material through ChatGPT.
At The Typeface Group, we’ve developed a content creation process that’s thoughtful, reduces marketing waste, and maximises the value of your time, energy, and investment.
Real-Life Success Stories
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Over 18 months of playing the long game with us, this client has seen:
- 106% increase in website conversions (actual enquiries via form submissions)
- 207% increase in organic traffic
- 56.4% of all conversions now coming from organic acquisition paths
When they came to us, they were effectively held hostage by a paid ads company and were primarily generating leads through inefficient paid channels. We stripped everything back, they committed to the long game, and now they’re seeing tremendous results – so much so that they’ve hired a new paid ads company to complement their organic success.
- £121,000 in additional revenue from organic traffic
- 73% increase in sales from organic channels
- Data tracking that shows exactly how much revenue each blog post has earned
Maintaining Consistency
The Content Creation System
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- Senior leadership team
- Technical teams
- Customer service
- Engineers
- Anyone with expertise who interacts with customers
Set up a simple spreadsheet where they can contribute ideas. This method engages stakeholders early in the content creation process and brings in perspectives from those closer to the customer than marketing might be.
- Is it strategically aligned with your business goals?
- Is it commercially viable? (Have your SEO lead assess search volume, competition, and angle)
Systemise your content creation process. Don’t rely on written to-do lists where items can drop off.
At The Typeface Group, we use ClickUp and schedule our own content as if we’re a client – with clear assignments, peer review processes, and fixed upload dates.
This system is how we maintain consistency.
- Interview your technical experts and leadership team members with decades of experience
- Extract their gold and weave it into your content
- Don’t expect junior copywriters to convey expert-level insights without this crucial step
- Conduct regular content audits
- Keep only relevant and rich content on your website
- Update and republish older content with new insights rather than creating multiple thin pieces on the same topic
- Build authority around cornerstone content rather than fragmenting your expertise
Get efficient
Optimising Your Marketing Efforts
The Marketing Activity Matrix
To refocus your efforts and potentially reduce workload, try this simple exercise.
Plot your marketing activities on a matrix with:
- Horizontal axis: Effectiveness in generating leads (low to high)
- Vertical axis: Budget effectiveness (low to high)
When facing budget cuts or limited resources, prioritise activities in the bottom-right quadrant – high lead generation with low cost. This guarantees you’re investing your time and money on high-value activities before spending on awareness-building initiatives.
Maximise Content Value Through Distribution
Squeeze every drop of value from the content you create:
- Repurpose across multiple channels and formats
- For every hour spent creating content, spend an equal amount of time promoting it
- Consider all possible distribution channels for major content pieces like annual reports
For example, this blog post started as a talk, became a webinar, will be embedded on our website, chopped up for TikTok, shared on LinkedIn, and forms part of our online training course.
Finding Your Balance
Let’s agree on how to allocate your marketing time:
- 40% on foundational work (strategy, messaging)
- 30% on creating excellent content
- 30% on distributing and recycling content
The results? You’ll flatten the lead generation curve, find your focus, do more of what works, smooth out peaks and troughs, stop being order-takers, secure more budget, gain clarity, and improve forecasting accuracy.