Start a conversationMost B2B channel-mix arguments are measurement arguments in disguise. A sale that crosses a buying committee and takes months, scored on last click, will always flatter the bottom of the funnel. I am hired to decide what the accounts are for — which channel captures demand, which creates it, what conversion the platforms are told to maximize, and how you tell a lead apart from a buyer.
Overview
B2B paid media strategy is the decision layer above campaign execution: which channels get budget, what job each one is doing, which conversion the platforms are told to optimize toward, and how a sale that takes months and crosses a buying committee gets attributed back to the spend that caused it. It is distinct from ppc campaign management, which is the ongoing work of running the accounts well. A well-run account pointed at the wrong conversion produces a falling cost per lead and a flat pipeline, which is the single most common pattern I am called in to explain.
In practice the strategy work is mostly measurement work. Last-click attribution systematically overpays the bottom of the funnel — brand search, retargeting — and underpays whatever created the demand those clicks are harvesting, so a channel-mix argument is usually an argument about a broken model. I set the portfolio: capture, creation and retargeting with separate jobs and separate success measures; pipeline and closed revenue pushed back into Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads by offline conversion import; and the incrementality tests that say what would have happened anyway. Where paid and organic search compete for the same terms, someone has to decide which one stops.
Who it's for
A B2B purchase crosses a buying committee and takes months, so the last touch before the form fill is almost always a branded search the buyer would have made regardless. Scored that way, brand and retargeting look like the best line items in the account and get more budget, while the channels that created the demand get cut. Most channel-mix disputes resolve themselves once the model stops paying twice for the same click.
Channels have different jobs, so ranking them by ROAS is a category error. Search captures demand that already exists and is capped by how many people are looking. Paid social, video and Demand Gen create demand among people who were not looking, and will always report worse on a last-click basis. Retargeting re-contacts people the other two already reached. A portfolio is budgeted by job and measured by job.
Smart bidding maximizes whatever you tell it to count. Tell it to count form fills and it will find the cheapest people willing to fill in a form, which in B2B is students, competitors and consultants. The fix is mechanical: pass a CRM identifier with the lead, then import qualified opportunity and closed revenue back into the platforms as offline conversions so the algorithm optimizes toward pipeline instead.
The honest question is not which channel got credit but what would have happened anyway. Geo holdouts answer it: hold a matched set of regions out of a line item, run it long enough to clear the sales cycle, and compare pipeline. It is the only instrument I trust on brand search and retargeting. Marketing mix modelling is worth the effort above a certain spend and several years of history, and is noise below it.
What's included
Conversion definitions, CRM stage mapping and the offline conversion import that gets qualified opportunities and closed revenue back into Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads, so bidding optimizes toward pipeline rather than form fills.
Capture, creation and retargeting sized separately, each with a stated job, a success measure it can actually be held to, and a floor and ceiling for the next two quarters rather than a single blended target.
Geo holdout designs for the line items that always look best in the report (brand search and retargeting) with the hold period set against your sales cycle rather than a reporting month.
Which keyword and message hypotheses paid search should test before editorial budget is committed, and which terms organic has already won well enough that continuing to bid is buying clicks you own.
Not sure which of these you actually need?
Request a discovery callProcess
1
Account, CRM and analytics access, a read on how leads currently become pipeline, and where those two data sets disagree.
2
Conversion definitions rebuilt, CRM stages mapped to platform actions, offline conversion import specified and tested.
3
Budget split across capture, creation and retargeting, with a test plan for the claims nobody has ever checked.
4
Holdout results read, budget re-cut, and whatever the tests did not support is stopped rather than renamed.
FAQ
Not in this engagement. This is the decision layer: what the accounts are for, what they optimize toward, and how you judge them. If you want the same person to build and run the campaigns, that is Google Ads management or LinkedIn Ads management, and plenty of clients buy both. What I will not do is hand over a strategy deck nobody implements, so I stay involved until the plan is actually in the accounts.
Because cost per lead and lead quality move in opposite directions when the algorithm is told to maximize leads. It finds the people cheapest to convert, and in B2B those are rarely buyers. Until qualified opportunities are imported back into the platform, the optimization is working exactly as instructed and against you.
Not from the platform report, and I will not pretend otherwise. Attribution assigns credit; it does not establish cause. A geo holdout does, at the cost of deliberately switching spend off in matched regions for long enough to clear your sales cycle. If nobody will accept that cost, the honest answer is that the number stays an estimate and should be described as one.
Only if I think it is right. If the brief is to produce a model that makes a particular channel look good (usually the one someone has already defended in a board meeting) I am the wrong person to hire. You are paying for the opposite service, and it is worth very little if I fold the first time the answer is unwelcome.
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Send me your spend split and the channel your team keeps arguing about. I reply personally within 48 hours.
