How Advocacy Drives B2B Growth, Trust, and Buyer Influence

A B2B product or service is typically more complex, involves a bigger investment and offers more robust features than B2C solutions. Learning more about your audience takes time, but the more you learn, the more engagement you’ll get in the future. I spoke with Legg, who has been on Salesforce’s social media team since 2019, about how a B2B social marketer can start from scratch (or refresh a stale approach). There are many other aspects to the platform including LinkedIn Learning, Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Marketing which offer B2B advertising and targeting solutions.

Use multi-touch attribution (or post-purchase surveys) to understand how buyers actually discovered b2b content marketing funnel you; don't use the funnel to predict individual buyer sequence. The numbers below are drawn from B2B SaaS cohort data covering 2025–2026 and represent industry averages, green zones, and red zones. An immediate offer page outperforms a thank-you page plus delayed nurture sequence in high-ticket offer funnels. Your job is to remove friction, provide final reassurance, and close.

Basic-Fit put their ads right at the top of TikTok when people opened the app to get lots of views. For bottom-funnel conversion, Refinitiv used LinkedIn's lead generation forms, which simplified the lead capture process by auto-filling prospect information rather than redirecting to external landing pages. This allowed them to deliver more specific, detailed content to prospects who were already familiar with their brand. Refinitiv used LinkedIn sponsored content to deliver thought leadership to targeted B2B audiences. According to Socialinsider's LinkedIn benchmarks, engagement rates on the platform score a year-over-year increase of 44%. They started broad at the awareness stage, narrowed to the most relevant audiences for consideration, and then retargeted previously engaged segments for conversions.

What types of social media posts work best for B2B?

Analyze CRM data, conduct win/loss interviews, and review support tickets to uncover patterns. Without this, you’re shooting in the dark, wasting resources on prospects who were never going to buy in the first place. B2B lead generation is the engine that keeps your sales and revenue machine running. B2B sales often involve recurring contracts, renewals, or upsell opportunities. A Forcastio article found that companies with structured, data-driven lead generation processes grow revenue 33% faster than those without. Effective lead generation balances each stage of the pipeline, so there’s always a healthy mix of prospects moving toward conversion.

• Based on that, I researched different industries and verticals for market opportunities.
• Telecommunications SaaS providers historically suffer from low visitor-to-lead conversion rates because many companies still rely on legacy systems.
• By blending consistent publishing, strategic guest posting, and valuable content, you can build a reputation as a trusted authority that people rely on.
• From AI-powered automation to building authentic thought leadership, the future of inbound marketing is about smarter, faster, and more strategic execution.
• TopRank Marketing's full-funnel influence and SEO/GEO solutions help B2B companies become the best answer for their customers.

High-engagement posts and community discussions can influence what AI tools understand about your brand, category and expertise. With the right reporting structure, your team can show how social contributes across the customer journey by identifying the insights, content and engagement indicators that can influence the next cycle. Strong social media goals support the full customer journey, from awareness and consideration to conversion, customer care and retention. Before you create anything or choose distribution channels, use social intelligence to understand what your audience cares about, where they spend time and what they need from brands like yours. A stronger social media marketing funnel starts with better listening. Building a flywheel-style funnel starts with changing how your team listens, creates, distributes and measures social content.

So your top-of-funnel campaigns reach people who actually look like pipeline. This stage is about improving your targeting, building better audience segments, and matching your message to real buyer pain points. Your leads have just started checking you out. For most teams, a high-performing lead generation strategy involves organic search combined with paid search, LinkedIn, paid social, webinars, and partnerships. When they start comparing you with your competitors and look for proof, they are at the lower end of your funnel. They then move down the funnel by checking your landing page or social media page.

With the right coaching from a seller who knows the path from awareness to close, prospects can quickly discover, evaluate, and buy a solution that fits their unique needs. In a feed full of AI-generated content and polished corporate messaging, the creative that feels human and fast is the creative that gets noticed. Cultural relevance drives engagement, and the brands winning on LinkedIn are the ones willing to act more like culture and less like a press release. Conversions API integration, CRM syncing, company-level attribution, pipeline velocity tracking.

What LinkedIn is pointing toward, and what the data supports, is that narrative consistency across roles and an always-on presence across stages is what actually moves buying groups forward. Roughly half of the people involved in a B2B purchase decision are invisible in most campaigns. If large language models are drawing on professional web content to answer B2B queries, the volume and credibility of your LinkedIn presence starts to matter in ways that go beyond impressions and clicks. B2B buyers are forming shortlists before they ever search for a solution. While always having a knack for storytelling, Ben's favorite aspect of content creation is making even the most complex topics both relatable and understandable.

That doesn’t mean just saying you’re “the best.” Rather, it’s about showing that you’re able, willing, and qualified to solve their problem. You need a few different appeals to reach buyers, living the pain, managing the pain, and deciding on spending money to solve the pain. Marketing content should show that this pain exists and explain why you can fix it for these stressed-out content teams.

“The pool of potential people that could benefit from your product is the largest.” “This is where you are trying to create awareness,” says Derse. You risk mismatching content with the wrong audience, which diminishes your chances for higher conversion rates and engagement. Plus, industry tech experts within a company want to make absolutely sure your brand is reputable before investing. “Brand trust is critical, and this is something that can be built with the messaging at each stage of the funnel,” she explains.