Sascha Bonomally.
Sascha Bonomally, General Manager, Growth Operations, Atomic 212°.
Business-to-business marketing has always had a distinct character. The buying audiences are smaller, the decision cycles are longer, and the channels that actually reach buyers are different from those that dominate consumer campaigns.
Understanding and acting on those differences creates a genuine opportunity for stronger B2B marketing results, but it requires tools and processes built specifically for the job.
In B2B marketing, the channels where buyers are actively researching and evaluating often reach less than 30% of a defined target audience in any given month. Reaching a tightly defined audience – say, 500 procurement managers in the mining sector – requires a fundamentally different channel strategy than a broad consumer campaign.
A properly built B2B campaign typically needs seven or more channels to reach 90% of its audience, whereas a consumer campaign might need two. The planning approach is different and the measurement approach is different, so applying the same frameworks to both doesn’t make sense.
When B2B campaigns are planned and measured using frameworks designed for the job, the results tell a compelling story. Campaigns reach the right buyers, generate qualified leads, and connect media spend directly to commercial outcomes. Marketing and sales work from the same strategy plan.
Getting there requires multi-channel reach, measurement that goes beyond clicks, and close integration with the sales teams working the leads. When planning, measurement and sales are aligned, B2B campaigns generate real pipeline, not just activity.
Building campaigns that deliver this requires a clear approach at every stage of the process.
Planning needs to start with how B2B buyers actually behave: how they research, evaluate and make decisions, what content they engage with, and which channels they use at each stage of the buying process. It’s different from how consumer audiences behave and it requires different data to understand it.
Channel selection needs to account for the specific environments where B2B buyers are active. Content syndication, for example, is one of the most effective B2B channels, but it is largely invisible in standard planning tools. There are also significant differences in quality between providers, something that matters a lot when you’re trying to reach a small, defined audience.
Measurement needs to go beyond clicks and leads and connect directly to CRM data, tracking leads through qualification stages and through to closed revenue. That means understanding which media activity is actually generating pipeline, not just impressions, and it means working closely with sales teams to get feedback on lead quality and closing the loop between media spend and commercial outcomes.
None of this is complex, but it does require infrastructure built specifically for B2B. At Atomic 212°, we’ve built a planning and measurement platform called Prism to do exactly that.
Why? Because B2B media planning needs its own approach, its own tools and its own standards.
A good example is our work with Enable, a SaaS platform in the rebate management space. When we reviewed their funnel data, the issue wasn’t media performance as you would expect. Instead, it was process alignment.
Every inbound lead was being labelled as an MQL (marketing qualified lead). On paper this looked strong, with 80–90% progressing to the next sales stage. But fewer than 2% of those opportunities were turning into pipeline, meaning sales teams were spending time on leads that weren’t actually ready.
At the same time, Enable had begun shifting internally toward a true “hand-raise” sales motion, but the marketing model hadn’t caught up.
We adapted the demand-generation approach to match that change. Instead of pushing raw leads directly into CRM, content partners introduced a simple qualification step asking whether prospects wanted to speak with Enable about their rebate-management solutions. More than half said yes.
That single adjustment aligned marketing with the sales process and increased SQL (sales qualified lead) volume by 120% without increasing budget or creative production.
During this period, I was also seconded into Enable as VP of Programmatic Demand Generation, working directly in their commercial and marketing teams. That experience provided a much clearer view of how media actually fits within the broader B2B revenue system, something that is often invisible from the agency side.
Many of those lessons have been built directly into the Prism planning framework (and adapted for other clients as no B2B client is the same), ensuring the tool reflects how B2B organisations actually operate – and the genuine commercial opportunity that opens up when planning, channels, and measurement are all built for the job.