If your leads aren’t converting, the problem may not be your sales process. The 70/30 Buying Journey is outlined in the 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report. Research found that the first 70% is where buyers research independently, compare vendors, and form a strong preference. The final 30% is where they validate that choice and make the purchase. By the time a buyer contacts you, they’ve already formed a strong vendor preference.
The B2B companies winning today invest in SEO, content marketing, and credibility building long before a buyer ever reaches out.
What digital marketing strategies work best for B2B companies?
The most effective B2B digital marketing strategies focus on reaching buyers during the research phase, before they ever contact a vendor. That includes SEO and GEO content marketing, email nurturing, and LinkedIn to reach decision-makers directly. For companies targeting high-value accounts, account-based marketing (ABM) adds another layer of precision.
What is B2B digital marketing?
B2B (business-to-business) digital marketing is how businesses market products and services to other businesses online.
It uses digital channels like search engines, social media, email, and paid advertising to attract, educate, and convert business buyers.
Well-known B2B companies like Zoom, DocuSign, and Salesforce rely heavily on digital marketing strategies to reach their audiences.
What makes B2B buyers different?
B2B buyers don’t make quick, emotional decisions. Most purchases involve multiple stakeholders, long evaluation periods, and significant perceived risk.
Here’s what sets B2B buyers apart from B2C consumers:
- Decisions take longer. Executives, managers, and procurement teams are involved.
- Research is extensive. B2B buyers consume an average of 13 pieces of content before contacting a vendor. The majority is vendor-generated content, such as blog posts, but third-party sources, such as reviews and industry analyst reports, carry significant weight in the final decision.
- Logic drives decisions. The focus is on ROI, efficiency, and solving specific business problems.
- You must earn trust early. Because the sales cycle includes proposals and negotiations, credibility matters before a conversation ever starts.
An effective B2B digital marketing strategy addresses every stage of the buyer’s journey: awareness (recognizing the problem), consideration (researching options), and decision (choosing the best fit).
Read: Do I still need to map my buyer’s journey?
10 B2B digital marketing strategies that work
1. Build a high-performing B2B website
Your website is the first impression prospects have of your brand, and it needs to work hard for real buyers and AI systems.
A high-performing B2B website should:
- Load fast and be easy to navigate
- Be fully optimized for mobile devices
- Use clear, simple copy that communicates your value quickly
- Include effective calls-to-action (CTAs) like “Contact Sales,” “Get a Demo,” or “Download the Guide”
- Make key information like services, case studies, and pricing easy to find
- Use clean HTML structure, proper heading hierarchy, and schema markup so AI systems can read and cite your content accurately
Traditional website optimization focused on rankings, but now AI citations matter just as much. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews lead buyers to evaluate vendors. A well-structured, machine-readable website ensures your content gets surfaced accurately when it counts.
2. B2B SEO and GEO
SEO is the foundation of B2B digital visibility. It captures demand from buyers who are actively researching solutions online.
On-page SEO involves optimizing individual pages so search engines and users can understand them clearly. Key elements include:
- Relevant, well-researched keywords that your buyer persona searches for
- Optimized title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and image alt text
- Clean URL structures with relevant keywords
- Internal linking to help search engines understand your site structure
Technical SEO ensures search engines can crawl, index, and rank your site effectively. This includes optimizing page speed, sitemaps, canonical tags, robots.txt, and Core Web Vitals. Strong technical SEO improves both organic visibility and user experience.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Modern B2B SEO now extends beyond Google rankings. According to Forrester, 94% of B2B buyers now use generative AI during their purchasing process, naming it a more meaningful source of information than vendor websites or sales reps.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) structures content so AI systems can surface and cite it. For B2B companies, this means writing clearly, using specific entities and data, and establishing topical authority. GEO and traditional SEO work best when treated as a combined strategy.
Tools like SE Ranking can help you track keyword performance, monitor rankings, and identify content gaps across both traditional and AI search environments.
3. Content marketing
B2B buyers are looking for solutions, not sales pitches. A strong content strategy helps them find answers at every stage of the buyer journey.
Quality B2B content types include:
- Blog posts and industry guides
- Case studies and client success stories
- Comparison pages and whitepapers
- ROI calculators and original research
- Educational videos
Focus on providing solutions and answering the specific questions your target audience is asking. Unlike B2C content, B2B content should clearly communicate expertise and address business-level problems, rather than relying on emotional storytelling.
4. Video marketing
B2B buyers consume a significant amount of video content. It’s one of the most effective formats for simplifying complex topics and building trust early in the buyer journey.
Organic video formats that work well for B2B include:
- Webinars — great for deep-dive education and live audience engagement
- Product demos — show how your solution works before a sales conversation starts
- Explainer videos — break down complex services or processes in a digestible format
- LinkedIn video — short-form clips that reach decision-makers where they already spend time
- YouTube — a long-term search asset that drives organic discovery over time
The goal isn’t production value, it’s usefulness. A clear, well-structured webinar or demo will outperform a polished brand video every time in B2B.
5. B2B account-based marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) has been a core B2B strategy for decades. AI and intent data have made it more precise and accessible than ever, allowing companies to identify and engage high-value accounts earlier in the buying journey.
Instead of marketing broadly, ABM coordinates personalized outreach across marketing and sales to engage the right companies directly.
ABM tactics typically include:
- Personalized messaging and content for specific accounts
- Custom landing pages tailored to individual companies or industries
- Targeted LinkedIn and display advertising
- Close alignment between sales and marketing teams
ABM is especially effective for companies selling SaaS, cybersecurity, manufacturing solutions, engineering services, or other high-value enterprise offerings. The overall trend is toward precision over volume, reaching fewer, better-fit prospects rather than generating high quantities of low-quality leads.
6. LinkedIn and social media marketing
LinkedIn is the dominant social platform for B2B digital marketing. It’s where decision-makers consume industry content, engage with vendors, and evaluate potential partners.
The most effective LinkedIn strategies include:
- Executive thought leadership and personal branding
- Educational posts and industry commentary
- Employee advocacy programs
- LinkedIn Ads targeting specific job titles, industries, and company sizes
One important note: content from real people, especially executives and subject-matter experts, consistently outperforms content posted from company pages alone. If your team isn’t posting on LinkedIn individually, that’s a missed opportunity.
7. Email marketing and lead nurturing
Most B2B buyers are not ready to purchase immediately. Email nurturing keeps your brand visible and relevant throughout a long sales cycle.
A few core benefits of email marketing for B2B companies:
- Cost-effective reach. You can communicate with a large audience at a low cost per contact.
- Segmentation. Target prospects by industry, job title, funnel stage, or behavior for more relevant messaging.
- Relationship-building. Consistent, helpful emails build trust over time.
- Measurable results. Open rates, click-through rates, and conversion data make it easy to optimize campaigns.
The most effective B2B email programs use behavioral triggers, funnel-stage personalization, and automation workflows to send the right message at the right time.
Learn more about B2B lead generation strategies that work alongside email nurturing.
8. B2B digital advertising
Paid advertising accelerates visibility and pipeline when organic marketing strategies need a boost. But in B2B, lead quality matters more than traffic volume.
The strongest B2B paid channels include:
- Google Search Ads for capturing high-intent searches from buyers actively looking for solutions
- LinkedIn Ads for targeting decision-makers by role, industry, and company size
- Retargeting campaigns for re-engaging website visitors who didn’t convert the first time
- YouTube remarketing for staying visible to warm audiences through video
PPC campaigns require careful planning and ongoing optimization to perform well. Partnering with a digital marketing expert helps you spend your budget where it counts.
9. Building trust as a competitive advantage
B2B buyers need confidence before they commit. Trust-building content is one of the most underrated competitive advantages in B2B marketing.
The most important trust-building assets include:
- Case studies and client success stories
- Testimonials and third-party reviews
- Industry certifications and partnerships
- Video interviews and educational webinars
- Original research and data-backed content
Thought leadership is particularly powerful. When your team publishes proprietary insights, commentary on industry trends, or original research, it signals expertise and credibility in a way that promotional content simply can’t.
10. B2B marketing automation and intent data
Marketing automation helps B2B teams scale their efforts, respond faster, and personalize buyer experiences without adding headcount.
Key tools and capabilities to consider:
- CRM integration using platforms like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics to align marketing and sales data
- Lead scoring to prioritize the most sales-ready prospects
- Behavioral automation through tools like Marketo or ActiveCampaign to trigger emails or outreach based on specific actions
- Intent data from platforms like 6sense, Demandbase, or Bombora to surface in-market buyers before they contact you
- Visitor identification tools like Leadfeeder to de-anonymize website traffic and connect it to real accounts
The broader shift is toward revenue operations, a tighter alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success that uses data to drive smarter decisions at every stage.
Building a B2B marketing strategy that works
The most effective B2B digital marketing strategies combine targeted visibility, educational content, trust-building, and long-term lead nurturing. There’s no single tactic that does it all.
The highest-performing B2B companies typically:
- Focus on a well-defined ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Create useful, search-driven content that answers real buyer questions
- Build authority through thought leadership and original research
- Use LinkedIn and email to stay visible throughout the sales cycle
- Support sales with automation and personalization
- Prioritize lead quality over volume
And increasingly, success depends on being discoverable not just in Google search results but also in AI-generated search experiences from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.
If you’re ready to build or refine your B2B digital marketing strategy, SMA Marketing can help. Contact us to get started.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on September 28, 2023, and has been updated with fresh content.