How to Create a B2B Marketing Strategy

Introduction

The harsh truth: most “B2B marketing strategies” are just slide decks full of channels and buzzwords.

In the real world, your strategy either creates qualified pipeline for sales… or it doesn’t. And if you’re leading sales or marketing, you don’t get paid for impressions-you get paid for meetings, opportunities, and revenue.

This guide is about building a B2B marketing strategy that actually does that, with a special focus on cold calling and outbound sales development.

We’ll walk through how modern B2B buyers really buy, how to architect your strategy from ICP to channels, how to design multichannel outbound programs that support your SDRs, and how to build feedback loops so your plan keeps getting better every quarter. Along the way we’ll pull in current data, practical examples, and where a partner like SalesHive can take the heavy lifting off your plate.

1. Understand How B2B Buyers Actually Buy Now

Before we talk tactics, you need a clear picture of the game you’re playing.

Buyers are digital-first and channel-agnostic

Multiple recent studies tell the same story:

• 89% of B2B buyers research products online before buying, and 60% say digital content heavily influences their final decision. 【0search3】
• Buyers use around seven channels-four digital and three non-digital-over the course of a typical B2B buying journey. 【1search9】
• McKinsey’s data (summarized by Forbes) shows many B2B customers now routinely use 10+ channels to interact with suppliers. 【1search4】

Translation: your prospects aren’t sitting around waiting for a single cold call or a single email. They bounce between search, your website, LinkedIn, events, peers, and yes, phone conversations.

They’re also more independent-and more allergic to bad outreach

Gartner’s 2024 survey of 632 B2B buyers found that 61% prefer an overall rep-free buying experience, and 73% actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. 【1search0】【1search8】

That doesn’t mean they never want to talk to sales. It means they only want to talk to sales when:

1. The outreach is relevant and clearly about their situation, and
2. They’re at a point in the journey where a human can help them make sense of options.

If your “strategy” is blasting generic sequences at a scraped list, you’re not just being ignored-you’re training your market to avoid you.

Buying committees are bigger and more complex

A decade ago you could sometimes win a deal with one strong champion. Those days are mostly gone.

• Harvard Business Review once pegged the average at 6.8 decision-makers per B2B purchase.
• Newer research shows buying groups now often include 8-13 stakeholders, depending on company size and complexity. 【1search6】
• 6sense’s 2023 study found the average B2B buying team is about 10 people, and that team creates 160+ digital and human interactions per deal. 【1search11】

For your marketing strategy, that means:

• You need account-based thinking, not just “persona-based” campaigns.
• You have to equip SDRs and AEs to multi-thread accounts-finance, IT, operations, users, and executives-over a long journey.

What this means for cold calling

This is where people get it wrong and declare “cold calling is dead.” The data says otherwise:

• Cognism’s 2025 report puts the average cold calling success rate at 2.3%, down from 4.82% in 2024—but with the right script and targeting, teams achieved up to 10.01% success. 【0search6】【0search7】
• SDR research shows only 2-5% of cold calls turn into booked meetings on average, but multichannel outreach (phone + email + LinkedIn) can boost results by 287% compared to single-channel. 【0search8】

So cold calling isn’t dead-it’s just unforgiving if your data, message, and overall strategy are sloppy. In a good strategy, phone is the spearpoint, not the entire weapon.

2. Build the Foundation of Your B2B Marketing Strategy

Every strong B2B strategy sits on four pillars: ICP, positioning, buying journey, and shared definitions with sales.

2.1 Define (or refine) your ICP like it’s a spec sheet

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is not “mid-market companies that want to grow.” That’s a vibe, not a profile.

At minimum, document:

• Firmographics: industry, company size, geography, funding stage, revenue band.
• Technographics: key tools or platforms they already use.
• Situational triggers: hiring patterns, product launches, compliance changes, M&A, new execs.
• Pains & priorities: 3-5 business problems they pay to solve, in their own language.

Why this matters for cold calling and outbound:

• Your list-building team knows exactly which accounts to research.
• SDRs can reference specific triggers on calls ("I saw you just opened a new warehouse in Dallas...").
• Marketing stops wasting paid, content, and event dollars on bad-fit accounts.

Pro move: work backwards from your last 12 months of closed-won deals. Pull firmographic and deal-math patterns: highest LTV, lowest churn, fastest cycle. That’s your true ICP, not what you wish it were.

2.2 Nail your positioning and core narrative

If you can’t explain what you do and why it matters in two sentences, your SDRs definitely can’t do it in 15 seconds on a cold call.

You need:

1. Category & reference point, what are you “like” in the buyer’s mental model?
2. Specific problem, not “help you grow,” but “cut your onboarding time by 50%” or “get your SDRs 3 more meetings per week.”
3. Unique angle, what’s meaningfully different about how you solve it?
4. Proof, data, logos, or case anecdotes SDRs can drop casually.

Example for an analytics platform:

> “We’re a revenue analytics platform for B2B sales teams. Instead of just showing you pipeline, we automatically flag deals that will stall based on patterns across thousands of opportunities, so your managers know where to coach and which accounts to prioritize.”

Marketing uses this narrative in ads and content. SDRs use it in openers and replies. Consistency is the point.

2.3 Map the buying journey (for accounts, not individuals)

With buying committees averaging 8-13 people, you map account journeys, not just personas.

Stages often look like:

1. Unaware / Status quo, don’t see the problem or see it as “just how it is.”
2. Problem aware, they feel the pain and start researching.
3. Solution aware, they understand categories and tradeoffs.
4. Vendor aware, you’re on a shortlist.
5. Consensus building, internal wrangling and approvals.
6. Post-purchase, implementation and expansion.

For each stage, ask:

• What questions do different roles have?
• What content or proof reduces friction?
• Where can a smart SDR call add value rather than interrupt?

For example:

• Early stages: marketing and SDRs should lead with education and problem framing, not demos.
• Later stages: outbound should focus on consensus building-getting finance or security on a call, not just hammering your champion for a signature.

2.4 Align on lead definitions and SLAs with sales

This is where a lot of “strategies” quietly die.

If marketing is optimizing for MQL volume and SDRs/AEs are graded on opportunities and revenue, you’re going to have friction, slow follow-up, and wasted spend.

Fix it by agreeing on:

• MQL, engagement thresholds and ICP fit.
• SAL (Sales Accepted Lead), what SDRs will accept and work.
• SQL / Opportunity, minimal criteria for a real deal (budget, timing, use case, etc.).
• SLAs, how fast SDRs will respond (for inbound), how many touches they’ll commit to, and how they’ll disposition leads.

Once that’s locked, your B2B marketing strategy is judged the way it should be: by pipeline and revenue, not just leads.

3. Design a Revenue-Backed B2B Marketing Plan

Now we get into the fun part: deciding where to actually show up.

3.1 Start with the math (revenue → opportunities → meetings → accounts)

A simple version:

1. Revenue target: Say you need $5M in new ARR.
2. Average deal size: $50K ARR → you need 100 new deals.
3. Win rate: 25% → you need 400 opportunities.
4. Opportunity rate: If 20% of qualified meetings become opportunities, you need 2,000 qualified meetings.

Now you can ask:

• How many of those 2,000 meetings will come from inbound vs outbound?
• For outbound, what’s our meetings-per-100-accounts benchmark? (e.g., 3-5% for good programs.)
• Given our SDR capacity and/or partners, how many accounts can we realistically work per quarter?

Your strategy is now a pipeline plan with channels and capacity attached, not a hope-and-pray wish list.

3.2 Choose your core channel mix

Most B2B teams end up with a similar spine:

• Content & SEO, to generate and warm up demand.
• Email, for nurturing and outbound.
• Cold calling, for direct, high-intent conversations.
• LinkedIn & social, for distribution and targeted outreach.
• Events & webinars, for concentrated bursts of engagement.
• Paid (search, social, review sites), to capture and accelerate in-market demand.

The data backs this multi-channel approach:

• B2B buyers use multiple channels and touchpoints before a decision; high-growth organizations show up across more channels than their peers. 【1search9】
• Content marketing is nearly universal-91% of B2B marketers use it, and 58% report increased sales/revenue from content in the last year. 【0search3】【0search2】

The strategic question is how these channels support each other.

3.3 Decide how cold calling fits into your mix

Cold calling is uniquely powerful because it:

• Gets you real-time feedback on messaging and objections.
• Reaches people who don’t respond to email or ads.
• Lets you multi-thread into buying committees when email gets stuck with one person.

There are three common models:

1. Phone-led outbound, SDRs lead with calls, with email and LinkedIn as support.
2. Email-led outbound, SDRs start with personalized email, then call engaged contacts.
3. Hybrid, varies by segment (e.g., phone-led for SMB/mid-market, email-led for enterprise).

Given declining connect rates (often 15-25% of dials resulting in a live conversation) 【0search8】, you can’t run cold calling as a standalone channel. But as the tip of a multichannel spear, it’s still one of the best ways to generate high-intent conversations.

3.4 Budget realistically

Benchmarks show B2B organizations spend roughly 8-9% of total budgets on marketing. 【0search3】【0search4】 That’s a starting point, not a cap.

Within that marketing budget, earmark explicit line items for:

• Data and list building, enrichment tools, human research, verification.
• Sales tech, CRM, sequencing, dialers, call recording, analytics.
• Content, writers, designers, SMEs, video.
• Paid media, search, social, sponsorships, review sites.
• Outbound capacity, SDR salaries or outsourced SDR contracts.

For outbound headcount, compare the fully loaded cost of internal SDRs (salary, benefits, tools, management, ramp time) vs. a partner like SalesHive that brings all of that as a service.

4. Turn Strategy into Outbound Programs: From List to Meeting

This is where most teams either win or stall out. Let’s walk the full flow.

4.1 List building: your strategy lives or dies here

If your data is bad, nothing else matters.

Using your ICP, define list criteria such as:

• Industries and revenue bands.
• Tech stack (from tools like BuiltWith, Clearbit, etc.).
• Titles and departments by buying-role (economic buyer, user, influencer).
• Trigger events (new VP, funding round, expansion into a region).

Then choose your approach:

• Internal research team, slow to build, but tightly aligned.
• External list services, faster, but you must QA and filter hard.
• Outbound partners, agencies like SalesHive that combine offshore researchers with strict ICP filters.

The goal: every contact on your list should be someone a reasonable SDR could call without apologizing.

4.2 Design multichannel outbound sequences

Think of your sequence as a short story told across channels, not a random collection of touches.

A simple 10-touch, 15-18 day cadence might look like:

1. Day 1, Email #1: short, problem-focused, with a soft CTA.
2. Day 2, Call #1: reference email, ask a tailored insight-led question.
3. Day 3, LinkedIn view + profile follow (or connection if appropriate).
4. Day 5, Email #2: share a relevant case study or stat.
5. Day 6, Call #2: different time of day, new angle.
6. Day 8, LinkedIn message or comment on a relevant post.
7. Day 10, Email #3: objection-handling or alternative offer (content, assessment).
8. Day 11, Call #3: intent to close the loop ("should I close the file?").
9. Day 14, Voicemail or short Loom/Video message for high-priority accounts.
10. Day 18, Final breakup email.

Data suggests it often takes 6-8 touches across channels to get a live conversation. 【2reddit14】 If your team stops after two calls and one email, it’s a strategy problem, not a market problem.

4.3 Build messaging that doesn’t sound like everyone else

Most cold outreach fails because it sounds like it came straight out of a sequencer template.

Better messaging is:

• Pain-first: lead with a specific, observable problem.
• Buyer-specific: tailored to the role, not just the company.
• Short: especially on first touch.
• Conversational: how you’d actually talk if you bumped into them at a conference.

Example cold call opener for a RevOps platform:

> “Hey Maria, it’s Alex with Acme. I’ll keep this to 20 seconds. I’m calling because a lot of RevOps leaders we work with are fighting dirty data-things like reps skipping fields and deals stalling because leadership can’t trust the forecast. Does any of that sound familiar over there?”

The goal of the first call isn’t to demo-it’s to get a real conversation started.

4.4 Use content as ammo for your SDRs

Remember: 60% of B2B buyers say digital content strongly influences their purchase decisions. 【0search3】

Don’t let content live only on your blog. Integrate it into outbound:

• SDRs send one tailored asset per sequence step (not a resource dump).
• Marketing builds talk-track notes for each piece so SDRs can frame it in 1-2 sentences.
• Case studies are written in a way that’s easy to quote in a cold call: “We helped [company like them] reduce X by Y% in Z months.”

Now your content fuels cold calling instead of existing in a parallel universe.

4.5 Instrument everything

Treat each step in your outbound sequence like a mini-experiment:

• Track reply rates by email, connect rates and conversion to meeting by call, and meetings per 100 accounts overall.
• Run A/B tests on subject lines, openers, CTAs, and call times.
• Use call recording and conversation intelligence to tag outcomes and learn.

SDRs should see this data in simple dashboards, not buried in BI tools no one opens. If it’s easy to see, it’s easy to improve.

5. Operationalize: Systems, Metrics, and Feedback Loops

Strategy without execution discipline is just a nicer PowerPoint.

5.1 Build the right tech stack (without overdoing it)

At minimum, you’ll want:

• CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.).
• Sequencer for email and call tasks.
• Dialer with local presence and call recording.
• Data/enrichment tools.
• Analytics & dashboards.

Resist shiny-object syndrome. The best stack is the one your team actually uses consistently.

5.2 Choose a simple metrics stack

You don’t need 50 KPIs. Focus on a short chain from activity to revenue:

• Top of funnel: new target accounts added, contacts added, sequences launched.
• SDR activity: calls, emails, LinkedIn touches (with quality guardrails).
• Mid-funnel: connect rate, reply rate, meetings set, no-show rate.
• Bottom-funnel: opportunities created, pipeline value, win rate, revenue.

Layer in efficiency metrics like CAC and payback period as your data matures.

Remember those industry benchmarks:

• On average, only 13% of B2B leads convert to opportunities, and it takes about 84 days. 【0search4】

Use these as sanity checks-not excuses-to gauge whether you’re ahead or behind.

5.3 Use cold calling as your truth serum

You can fake a lot of things in dashboards. You can’t fake what happens when a human prospect hears your pitch.

Make it a habit to:

• Have marketing listen to 3-5 recorded calls every week.
• Tag clips where a new objection or phrasing shows up.
• Update messaging, content, and even product positioning based on those patterns.

This is where an SDR outsourcing partner with strong process (like SalesHive) is powerful-they already have call review rhythms, coaching, and analytics in place.

5.4 Establish regular revenue standups

Forget long misaligned QBRs. Instead, run a 30-45 minute weekly revenue standup with marketing, SDR leadership, and sales.

Agenda:

1. Pipeline recap, what changed this week?
2. Outbound performance, best/worst sequences, calls, or campaigns.
3. Key call insight, 1-2 clips that illustrate a pattern.
4. Decisions, what we’ll start, stop, and continue this week.

That cadence keeps your B2B marketing strategy alive instead of fossilized.

6. Build vs. Buy: When to Bring in a Partner Like SalesHive

You can do everything above in-house. The question is: should you?

6.1 The case for building in-house

You should lean toward internal SDRs and marketing hires when:

• Outbound is core to your long-term differentiation (e.g., very complex enterprise sales).
• You already have experienced leaders who’ve built SDR orgs before.
• You’re ready to invest in months of hiring, ramping, and iterating.

The upside is tight cultural alignment and long-term capability building. The downside is time-to-pipeline and the real cost of trial and error.

6.2 The case for outsourcing SDR and outbound

Outsourcing pieces of your B2B marketing execution-especially cold calling and list building-makes sense when:

• You need pipeline in the next 30-90 days, not 9-12 months.
• You don’t have strong SDR management and playbooks in-house.
• You want to experiment with new segments or offers before committing to headcount.

A partner like SalesHive brings:

• US-based SDRs and Philippines-based researchers/callers.
• Proven playbooks across 1,500+ B2B clients.
• AI-powered personalization (e.g., their eMod engine for cold email).
• Risk-free onboarding and no long-term contracts, so you can scale up or down as needed. 【2search0】【2search4】

Effectively, you rent a fully operational outbound engine while you focus your internal team on closing deals and refining strategy.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team (A 90-Day Game Plan)

Let’s make this concrete. Here’s a practical 90-day roadmap to turn all of this into reality.

Days 1-14: Strategy & alignment

• Run an ICP and journey workshop with sales, SDRs, and marketing.
• Define shared MQL/SAL/SQL criteria and SLAs.
• Identify two priority segments to focus on for the next 90 days.
• Decide your outbound model (phone-led, email-led, or hybrid) per segment.

Output: a one-page GTM brief everyone can recite.

Days 15-30: Lists, messaging, and infrastructure

• Build or source high-quality account and contact lists that match your ICP.
• Draft one flagship multichannel sequence per priority segment.
• Create 2-3 supporting content pieces SDRs can use (one case study, one short guide, one email template with proof).
• Make sure your CRM, sequencer, and dialer are integrated and reporting properly.

If you’re working with SalesHive, this period is where their team builds your custom playbook, warms domains, and preps data before launch. 【2search1】

Days 31-60: Launch and learn

• Launch outbound to a limited cohort of accounts (e.g., 300-500 per segment).
• Have team leads or your agency run daily standups for the first 2 weeks.
• Start recording and reviewing calls 2-3 times per week.
• Begin small experiments: new openers, different CTAs, call times, or email angles.

Track:

• Meetings per 100 accounts.
• Connect and reply rates by step.
• Early signals on opportunity creation.

Days 61-90: Optimize and scale

• Kill obviously underperforming variations.
• Double down on winning messaging and offers.
• Expand sequences to a larger set of ICP accounts.
• Tighten marketing support: tweak landing pages, spin up ads against target accounts, and promote any high-performing content.

By Day 90, you should have:

• Clear visibility into which segments and sequences are producing meetings.
• A realistic view of outbound-sourced pipeline vs. targets.
• A feedback loop between SDR conversations and marketing campaigns.

Whether your SDRs are internal, outsourced through SalesHive, or a mix of both, this is how your B2B marketing strategy becomes a living system that feeds your sales team instead of a document collecting dust.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Creating a B2B marketing strategy isn’t about picking channels or buying a new tool. It’s about making a handful of important decisions very clearly:

• Who you’re going after and why they should care.
• How you’ll show up across channels in a way that matches how they buy.
• What role outbound-especially cold calling-plays in turning interest into revenue.
• Which metrics and feedback loops will keep you honest.

The data is clear: buyers are more independent, more digital, and more overwhelmed than ever. They use multiple channels, avoid irrelevant outreach, and make decisions as teams.

Your job is to build a strategy that respects that reality and still creates pipeline.

If you’ve got the leadership and time to build all of this in-house, great-use the 90-day plan and start running. If you need a proven outbound engine to plug into your strategy fast, a specialist partner like SalesHive can shoulder the heavy lifting on cold calling, email outreach, and list building while your internal team focuses on closing.

Either way, don’t settle for a beautiful deck. Build a B2B marketing strategy your sales team can actually feel on their calendars.