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#003: Nobody cares about your funnel

We’re nearly there my B2B folks!

I hope you’re all gearing up to spend overdue time with friends, family…

… or like Kevin,

making up chores to do like deleting your ‘less than perfect’ photos in your phone (he actually does this 🙄). 

You should be able to read today’s issue in 5 minutes or less.

If you don’t want this newsletter, you can unsubscribe

💡 3 B2B Strategy Tips

1) Nobody cares about your funnel: The traditional idea of our Dream Customers making their way down a neat funnel (awareness, consideration, purchase) is outdated. The reality is – your Dream Customers have so much going on in their lives that they will rarely fit neatly into any one of these buckets and stay there. My brain can’t retain what I read yesterday, let alone what articles I read on your website last week. Your Dream Customers are the same.

Ditch the old-school funnel, and instead think about your Dream Customers moving through The 5 Stages of Awareness. This is the idea that there’s 5 stages your Dream Customer moves through before becoming a paying customer. They start at completely ‘unaware’ that they even have a problem that your product solves, to logically being led to the conclusion that your product is the perfect and only solution for them. Your goal is to create content for each of these 5 stages of awareness, and make it easy for Dream Customers to consume. And remember – people’s memories suck – so they’re likely to bounce around between these different stages of awareness. Market accordingly.

Check out our episode on The 5 Stages of Awareness and how your business can use them here

2) Check if your lead generation is working: If you’ve been tasked with generating ‘leads’, it’s worth checking to see if the way you are sourcing them is sustainable for the business. Jump in your CRM and look at the conversion rate from leads to revenue and see how it’s going. If you want to be even more of a superstar, calculate the total cost of marketing and sales to source and service these leads. 

If revenue is outweighed by those costs, it’s probably time to start looking at shifting away from lead generation and towards demand generation. We caught up with Myles Madden to discuss how he’s moving Observe.ai from lead gen to demand generation. 

Grab the notes from our conversation and the full interview here.

3) Here’s how Monday.com are using LinkedIn to dominate: There’s plenty we can learn from the ‘big guys’ like Monday.com. So Kev and I put them through the ringer to see (1) whether Monday.com comply with our 5 BEs Framework (2) examine how they use LinkedIn paid and organic, and (3) what you can take from it to use yourself. 

SPOILER: they’re doing an amazing job at using the platform to educate on their product, lighting the load on their sales team.

Grab the full episode here.


✏️ Doodle of the Week

Most companies give up too early to see the benefits of creating demand. And yet, creating demand is the only way to scale beyond those who are ready to buy from you ‘right now’.

📖 3 Articles and Resources

1) Our 4 cheap-ass ways to seeing which companies view your content: Reporting on the impact of your marketing has long been a struggle. Here’s 4 free tools we use to show our marketing is on the right track.

2) The one thing that makes or breaks a customer interview: ‘Talk to your customers’ is bad advice. You need an objective and a plan before interviewing customers. Customer research expert Ryan Gibson gives it to us.

3) Your B2B marketing strategy should go through these 3 stages: These stages are the non-negotiables that underpin every solid, customer focussed B2B marketing strategy.


Thanks for reading!

P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to The B2B Playbook podcast

Strategy, Templates & Tools To Drive More Revenue With Marketing

Our 5 BEs Framework teaches b2b marketers exactly how to drive more revenue with your marketing.

We share our Framework step-by-step every week on The B2B Playbook.


There’s 3 ways you can learn and implement it in your own business:

  1. Listen to The B2B Playbook Podcast
  2. Subscribe to our Newsletter
  3. Apply for The B2B Incubator

(P.S. The B2B Incubator gives you strategy, templates and tools you need to implement this in your business over 12 weeks. Click here to find out more or apply now).


I'm George, and I'm an embarrassingly passionate B2B marketer.

But it wasn't always that way. When I first got into B2B marketing, I actually found it so confusing. There was conflicting advice - and I kept pursuing the promise of "the one thing" that would work - with varying success.

With my own agency and working in-house, I tested different strategies and tactics to see:
(a) which ones could be done by a small marketing team
(b) which ones actually resulted in REVENUE for the business

We then turned the stuff that works into one cohesive strategy that I follow when I consult with B2B clients.

It's called our 5 BEs Framework.

And now we're dedicated to sharing it, right here, on The B2B Playbook.

We're giving away our 5 BEs Framework step-by-step, and creating the resource I wish I had when I first fell in love with B2B marketing.

When I say step-by-step - I mean it! Start the podcast at Episode 1, and work your way through.

If that sounds like too much, we give you the strategy, templates & tools in our 12 week program - The B2B Incubator.

Check it out here: https://theb2bincubator.com/

I'm also extremely active and share much of our framework on LinkedIn - so please feel free to connect with me there and say hi!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/b2b-marketing-expert/

Further reading