B2B Marketing Strategies: Best Practices to Win

Introduction: B2B Marketing Has Changed (Your Buyers Didn’t Tell You)

If it feels like your old demand gen playbook suddenly stopped working, you’re not crazy.

B2B buyers are doing more research on their own, using more channels, and talking to sales a lot later than they used to. One major study found that buyers are roughly 70% through their purchasing process before they ever engage a seller, and 84% say the first vendor they contact ultimately wins the deal (6sense 2024 source).

Translation: if your marketing engine and SDR outreach aren’t shaping the buyer’s thinking early, you’re fighting for scraps.

This guide breaks down the B2B marketing strategies that actually win in 2025—especially if your goal is pipeline, not vanity metrics. We’ll cover:

• How the modern B2B buying journey really works (and what that means for outbound)
• Building a rock-solid ICP, messaging, and data foundation
• Aligning marketing and SDRs into one revenue engine
• Designing multi-channel programs that generate meetings, not just clicks
• Using content and thought leadership to make outreach welcome instead of annoying
• The KPIs that actually matter for sales teams

And we’ll keep it grounded in reality-what works on the phones, in inboxes, and on LinkedIn, not just on slides.

The New B2B Buying Reality (And Why Your Old Playbook Fails)

Buyers Are in Control (Whether You Acknowledge It or Not)

Classic B2B thinking: marketing runs campaigns, hands MQLs to SDRs, SDRs run discovery, AEs close. Nice linear story.

Reality: buyers do their own research first, often anonymously, and only raise their hand when they’ve mostly decided what they want. 6sense’s research shows buyers are about 70% through their journey before engaging sellers and that when they do reach out, the first vendor contacted wins 84% of the time source. Buyers also report that their requirements change little after that first interaction.

Other data points say the same thing from a different angle:

• Around 70% of buyers research a company’s products or services before engaging with sales, and 60% of the journey happens before they contact sales source.
• 81% of buyers conduct online research before making a purchase, and 71% say they’re more likely to buy from vendors who provide educational content during the journey source.

If your strategy assumes sales is where the persuasion starts, you’re late to your own deals.

Omnichannel Is the Default, Not a “Nice to Have”

McKinsey’s B2B Pulse survey shows that B2B decision-makers now use around 10 channels across their buying journey, up from just five in 2016 source. That includes websites, search, events, email, social, video calls, phone calls, and more.

So when we talk about B2B marketing strategies, we’re really talking about orchestrating:

• Digital self-serve (website, content, tools, pricing experiences)
• Outbound touches (cold email, cold calling, LinkedIn)
• Social proof and third-party influence (reviews, analysts, communities)

Your buyer doesn’t care which team “owns” which channel. They only notice whether the experience feels consistent and helpful-or chaotic and annoying.

Buyers Prefer Less Human Contact… Until They Don’t

Here’s the fun twist: 61% of B2B buyers say they prefer a rep-free buying experience overall, and 73% actively avoid suppliers whose outreach feels irrelevant (Gartner 2025 source).

At the same time, separate Gartner research shows buyers actually regret purely self-serve purchases more often and ultimately want a hybrid model-self-serve for learning, humans for context and confidence source.

The takeaway for sales development:

• You can’t brute-force your way in with generic cold outreach.
• You can become the guide buyers actually appreciate if you reach out with relevant, context-aware help.

Your B2B marketing strategy has to set your SDRs up as that kind of guide-not as the 37th interruption of the week.

Nail the Foundation: ICP, Messaging, and Data

Most teams that complain “marketing doesn’t work” or “outbound is dead” are really suffering from a foundation problem: they’re talking to the wrong people, in the wrong way, with dirty data.

Get Brutally Clear on Your ICP

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not “any company with 50-5,000 employees that uses SaaS.” That’s how you end up burning your lists and your SDRs.

A useful ICP for sales development and marketing includes:

• Firmographics: industry, employee range, revenue band, geography
• Technographics: critical tools or platforms your solution complements or replaces
• Buying triggers: growth, hiring patterns, funding rounds, tech changes, regulatory pressure
• Deal profile: average deal size, sales cycle, decision-making complexity

If you’re not sure where to start, look at your last 12-24 months of closed-won deals:

1. Group them by cluster (industry, size, existing stack).
2. Identify the clusters with the best combination of win rate, deal size, and time to close.
3. Turn those into Tier 1/2 ICP definitions that both marketing and SDRs agree to prioritize.

Build Messaging That Maps to Real Problems and Buying Committees

B2B deals are made by groups. You usually have:

• An economic buyer (CFO, CRO, COO)
• A functional owner (VP/Director of Sales, Marketing, Ops)
• Influencers and users (managers, ICs, ops folks)

Each of these cares about different things. Your B2B marketing strategy should:

• Speak to business outcomes for executives (revenue growth, CAC, risk)
• Address workflow and KPIs for functional owners (conversion rates, cycle time, team efficiency)
• Tackle pain in the trenches for users (manual work, broken tools, lack of visibility)

Then your SDRs can tailor outreach:

• To a CRO: “Increase pipeline predictability and win rates in enterprise accounts.”
• To a VP Sales: “Raise MQL-to-SQL conversion from 13% to 25%+ with tighter outbound and qualification.”
• To a RevOps lead: “Clean up contact data and automate routing so SDRs stop wasting dials on bad leads.”

Fix Your Data Before You Pour on More Leads

Here’s the unsexy truth: B2B data decays fast. Titles change, people move, companies merge. If your SDRs are constantly hitting dead numbers and bouncing emails, your marketing strategies don’t stand a chance.

Best practices:

• Centralize your source of truth. CRM + marketing automation + sales engagement tools should share one clean contact and account record.
• Standardize key fields. Industry, employee bands, territory, vertical tags-make sure these are picklists, not free text.
• Enrich and verify regularly. Use third-party tools and/or a partner like SalesHive for ongoing list building and data verification in your ICP.
• Protect the top of your funnel. Keep your highest-intent and Tier 1 accounts the cleanest; that’s where every bad record hurts most.

You can’t run modern B2B marketing or SDR programs on junk data. Fix that, and suddenly all your other strategies start working better.

Build an Aligned Revenue Engine: Marketing + SDRs on the Same Team

If your marketing and SDR teams sit on different floors (or different planets), you will always leave money on the table.

Alignment Is a Revenue Strategy, Not a Workshop Topic

Multiple studies have shown that companies with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions see around 32% higher year-over-year revenue growth and roughly 38% higher win rates compared to misaligned peers source. Other research from Forrester echoes this, noting aligned organizations grow while less aligned companies actually shrink on average source.

So what does real alignment look like in practice?

Share One Funnel, One Language

Start with definitions everyone buys into:

• Lead: raw contact that fits your basic ICP filters
• MQL: lead that shows enough engagement or fit to warrant human follow-up
• SAL (Sales Accepted Lead): lead that SDRs agree is worth working
• SQL: lead where a real conversation confirms need, fit, and interest
• Opportunity: a qualified deal with a defined next step and timeline

Most teams think they’ve agreed on this. Then you ask marketing and SDRs separately and get two different answers. Until those definitions are written down and enforced in systems, your reporting will lie to you.

Put SLAs Around Lead Handoffs and Follow-Up

Lead handoff is where good demand gen goes to die.

Use simple, clear SLAs:

• Speed-to-lead: e.g., all high-intent inbound leads get first contact attempt within 1 hour during business hours.
• Follow-up sequence: e.g., every accepted lead gets at least 8-10 multi-channel touches over 14-21 days.
• Feedback loop: SDRs tag disqualified leads with standardized reasons (wrong persona, no budget, tech mismatch, etc.).

Remember: some studies show contacting qualified leads in the first hour can more than triple conversion rates versus waiting 24 hours or more source. That’s not a marketing problem or a sales problem-it’s a process problem.

Run Joint Reviews, Not Blame Sessions

Once a week or bi-weekly, get marketing, SDR leadership, and RevOps in the same review. Look at:

• MQL volume and conversion to SQL
• Top-performing campaigns by pipeline, not just by clicks
• Lead sources with best opportunity and win rates
• SDR feedback on lead quality (qualitative + tags)

The goal isn’t to call anyone out; it’s to refine targeting, creative, and sequences together. When your SDRs start saying, “That last campaign? Keep doing that,” you’ll know you’re onto something.

Design Multi-Channel Programs That Actually Generate Meetings

Let’s talk about the thing everyone cares about: meetings on the calendar.

Why Single-Channel Outbound is a Dead End

We’ve all seen it: a sequencer blasting the same generic email to 5,000 contacts, then everyone is shocked when it “only” gets a 1% reply rate-and most of those are opt-outs.

In the real world:

• Reps often need 8 or more touches across channels to reliably get a meeting with a cold prospect (anecdotal, but reflected again and again in SDR communities).
• Gartner found 73% of buyers actively avoid suppliers that send irrelevant outreach source.

So the game isn’t “more emails.” It’s coordinated touches your prospect actually cares about.

Build a Simple, Effective Multi-Channel Cadence

Here’s a baseline cadence that works well for many B2B teams targeting mid-market or enterprise accounts:

• Days 1-3
• Email 1: Short, personalized opener tied to a specific trigger or pain
• Call 1: Same day as Email 1; leave a tight voicemail
• LinkedIn: View profile + send a non-pitch connection request

• Days 4-7
• Email 2: Share a relevant insight or short case study
• Call 2: Reference the value you shared, not “did you read my email?”
• LinkedIn: Like or comment on a recent post if they’re active

• Days 8-14
• Email 3: Direct ask for a short meeting with a clear agenda
• Call 3: Stronger CTA, fallback to email recap
• LinkedIn: Light nurture (e.g., DM with a useful resource)

• Days 15-21
• Email 4: “Any interest in this at all?” close-the-loop style
• Call 4: Final attempt

This gets you into that 8-12 touch range without feeling like harassment if your messaging is actually relevant.

Use Personalization Where It Actually Matters

Personalization isn’t just sprinkling {{First Name}}. Studies aggregated by HubSpot show that personalized subject lines can boost open rates by 26-50% or more and materially increase replies in cold B2B outreach source.

Focus personalization on:

• Subject line: name, company, or specific initiative (“{{Company}}’s SDR ramp times”)
• First sentence: a quick, honest observation (recent funding, hiring, content, or tech-change hint)
• Value hook: connect what you do to something they clearly care about

Don’t write a novel; write something that obviously isn’t a template.

This is also where tools like SalesHive’s eMod engine shine-using AI to pull in public info about the prospect or account so every email feels researched without your SDRs spending 20 minutes on each contact.

Align Paid Media and Outbound

If you’re running paid campaigns (LinkedIn, display, retargeting) in B2B, hook them into your sales development motion:

• Target the same accounts and personas your SDRs are working.
• Use ad messaging that mirrors what SDRs say on the phone and in email.
• Trigger SDR sequences when target accounts hit key thresholds (e.g., multiple ad clicks, pricing page visits, or content downloads).

The prospect should feel like your SDR showing up is a natural next step in the conversation they’ve been having with your brand-not a random cold call.

Content and Thought Leadership: Fuel for Sales Conversations

If outbound is the engine, content is the fuel.

Thought Leadership Directly Impacts Outbound Success

LinkedIn and Edelman’s research on B2B thought leadership found:

• 52% of decision-makers and 54% of C-suite execs spend at least an hour per week with thought leadership content.
• 75% say a piece of thought leadership led them to research a product or service they weren’t previously considering.
• 9 in 10 say they’re more receptive to outreach from companies that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership source.

So when marketing publishes strong content, it doesn’t just help SEO. It makes your cold outreach land softer and convert better.

Build a Content Spine That Maps to the Funnel

You don’t need 200 blog posts. You need a spine of content that lines up with how your buyers actually think:

• Problem awareness: Short articles and social posts that name the pain and quantify impact.
• Solution exploration: Guides, webinars, and comparison pieces that explore ways to solve it.
• Vendor selection: Case studies, ROI calculators, and implementation playbooks.

Now overlay this with sales development:

• Email 1 might link to a crisp blog post that nails the prospect’s pain.
• Email 2 could offer a benchmark or short guide relevant to their role.
• Follow-up LinkedIn DMs can point to a 2-3 minute customer story video.

Each touch delivers a bit of value and slowly moves them from “who are you?” to “these folks seem to get it.”

Make Content Accessible to SDRs

Content is useless if SDRs don’t know it exists or when to use it.

Give your SDRs:

• A simple content menu: one page that lists key assets by persona and use case.
• Email and call snippets: 1-2 sentence blurbs they can paste into messages when sending assets.
• Feedback loop: a way to tell marketing, “Prospects love this deck,” or “No one is clicking this guide.”

Teams like SalesHive do this by building campaigns from the ground up with SDR usage in mind-every campaign includes outbound copy, call scripts, and asset pairings so the jump from marketing to sales dev is seamless.

Measure What Matters: KPIs for B2B Marketing That Actually Help Sales

If your marketing dashboard is all traffic, impressions, and form fills, you’re flying blind from a sales perspective.

Know Your Funnel Benchmarks

Across B2B, some rough benchmarks:

• MQL → SQL: averages around 13%, but top B2B SaaS teams see 30-40% with good scoring and qualification source.
• SQL → Opportunity: often falls in the 30-40% range for well-qualified pipeline source.
• Opportunity → Close: will vary by segment, but mid-market SaaS might target ~30-35% win rates source.

If your MQL-to-SQL is way below 10%, you likely have a quality issue. If SQL-to-opportunity is bad, you might have a messaging or qualification problem. If opportunity-to-close is rough, it’s often positioning, pricing, or competitive dynamics.

Core Metrics to Track for Marketing + SDRs

Tie your B2B marketing strategies to these KPIs:

• Lead-to-MQL rate (are we attracting the right people?)
• MQL-to-SAL/SQL rate (does sales agree these are worth their time?)
• SQL-to-opportunity and opportunity-to-close (are we qualifying well and closing?)
• Pipeline generated per SDR and per campaign (where is real revenue coming from?)
• Speed-to-lead and touch attempts per lead (do we follow up fast and persistently enough?)
• Channel-level performance (email, phone, LinkedIn, events, content) by meetings and pipeline, not just opens or clicks.

Once you see which campaigns and channels create SQLs and opportunities, not just leads, you can start shifting budget and energy accordingly.

Don’t Ignore Qualitative Feedback

Numbers tell you what is happening. Reps tell you why.

Encourage SDRs and AEs to:

• Tag common objections or confusion (“Thought you only did X,” “Didn’t see pricing,” etc.).
• Flag patterns where prospects mention a specific blog, case study, or ad.
• Share call snippets where messaging really landed-or totally missed.

Feed that back into your B2B marketing strategies and content roadmap. The best campaigns sound suspiciously like your best reps.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

Let’s bring this down to ground level. You’re running a sales org, not a research lab. What should you actually do differently on Monday?

For Heads of Sales / CROs

• Insist on shared revenue metrics. Make sure your marketing leader is measured on SQLs and pipeline sourced, not just MQLs and webinar signups.
• Co-own ICP and territories. Don’t let ICP be a marketing-only exercise. Your reps know where deals get stuck; bake that into targeting.
• Invest in outbound quality, not just headcount. It’s better to have fewer SDRs working great data, messaging, and sequences than a big team burning through lists.

For Marketing Leaders

• Build every campaign with SDR usage in mind. If you can’t answer “What will an SDR say on the phone because of this campaign?” you’re not done.
• Shift some budget into sales development. Sometimes the best “marketing spend” is better tools, lists, or outsourced SDR capacity.
• Champion alignment. You’re in a great position to pull sales, SDRs, and RevOps together around one funnel and message.

For SDR / BDR Managers

• Train on context-led outreach. Don’t let reps rely on scripts. Teach them how to use triggers, content, and account context in their intros.
• Standardize cadences, then personalize within them. Give reps a proven multi-channel structure and teach them where to adapt.
• Feed the loop. Regularly bring feedback to marketing on what messaging lands or falls flat.

When to Bring in a Partner Like SalesHive

If you’re trying to:

• Stand up or scale outbound quickly
• Break into new segments without over-hiring
• Clean and expand your ICP-targeted lists
• Or simply get more meetings without building an internal SDR army

…then outsourcing pieces of the machine can save you 6-12 months of painful trial and error.

SalesHive, for example, offers US-based and Philippines-based SDR teams, cold calling, email outreach, and list building, all plugged into your existing stack and GTM strategy. With 100,000+ meetings booked for 1,500+ clients, they’ve seen what actually works across SaaS, manufacturing, professional services, and more.

Instead of guessing at cadences, subject lines, and call scripts, you start with proven ones-and customize from there.

Conclusion: Winning B2B Marketing Strategies Are Built Around Sales

At the end of the day, “B2B marketing strategy” can feel abstract. But if it’s not helping SDRs and AEs have better conversations with the right people, it’s just noise.

The winners in 2025 are doing a few things consistently:

1. Accepting buyer reality. Buyers research on their own, use ~10 channels, and pick favorites early. Marketing and outbound have to influence that pre-briefing phase.
2. Aligning marketing and sales development. Shared ICPs, definitions, SLAs, and dashboards turn turf wars into joint optimization.
3. Running focused, multi-channel programs. Email, phone, LinkedIn, and content all telling the same story to the right accounts.
4. Fueling outreach with real thought leadership. Helpful insights beat generic pitches every time-and make buyers actually welcome your SDRs.
5. Measuring what matters. SQLs, opportunities, win rates, and pipeline-per-campaign-not just leads and clicks.

You don’t have to rebuild everything overnight. Start with one ICP, one aligned campaign, one multi-channel cadence, and one shared dashboard. Prove it works. Then scale.

And if you’d rather skip the experimental phase, plug in a partner like SalesHive to handle the cold calling, email outreach, SDR management, and list building while your team focuses on closing.

Either way, the game is the same: be the vendor buyers already trust before they ever fill out a form or pick up the phone. Do that, and you won’t just be in the RFP-you’ll be the one everyone else is getting compared to.