In this instructional talk, Joe Apfelbaum outlines a three‑layer framework for building a predictable B2B marketing system. He begins with the strategic foundation—defining a clear vision, identifying the ideal target, and articulating a benefit‑focused solution. He stresses the need for metric alignment (budget, cost‑per‑lead, lifetime value, qualified lead counts) and cross‑functional buy‑in across CEOs, sales directors, and marketers. The second pillar is assets: crafting a compelling brand story, selecting the right attention‑grabber (lead magnet such as webinars, checklists, case studies), and mapping these to the three stages of the marketing funnel (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU) with stage‑appropriate messaging (education, trust, purchase). The third pillar is execution, which includes technology that tracks visitor behavior, continuous reporting to measure performance against the strategic metrics, and tactical traffic generation directed to the appropriate funnel stage and asset. Apfelbaum also details B2B persona segmentation—decision maker, influencer, user, and buyer—explaining how each requires distinct messaging and grabbers. By aligning vision, target, solution, assets, and execution, businesses can forecast lead volume, qualified lead conversion, and sales outcomes with precision.
Chapters
They don't have a very specific, very specific metric for success. What is the metric for success that you need in order for you to be successful? What is your marketing budget? How much can you afford to spend on a lead? What is the lifetime value of a customer? How many leads do you need? How many sales do you need? How many qualified leads do you need? Like you have, if you don't have a clear vision as to exactly what you need in order for you to be successful. You're not going to be able to be successful. You need to get your goals aligned. And a lot of times, especially at mid-market companies, when we're speaking to executives, we speak to the CEO, he has one vision. You speak to the director of sales, they have another vision. We speak to the director of marketing, he has a completely another vision. We speak to the people doing the work, they don't even know what you're talking about when you say vision. They're like, I don't know, I'm just doing the work. You want to make sure that every single person is aligned. And they all know where the company's going. You want to know what the strategy is. So vision is number one. Number 2, want to make sure that you have the right target. What does it mean that you have the right target? That means that you're targeting the right person. Who is your ideal customer? When I speak to business owners and professionals, especially when it's a small business, do you think they took the time to identify exactly who they want to do business with? No, they're desperate for cash. Solution, instead of focusing on features, Instead of focusing on features, focus on benefits. What benefits are you giving your customers? What is your value proposition? So, if you want to have a clear strategy for success, you need to have your vision, you need to have who your target, and you need to have your solution. What are you offering in terms of benefit? That is the key. Most people don't— most people don't have these steps outlined and they don't have a marketing strategy and they wonder Why they're getting random results. Thank you, Rick. The second step for success is assets. What does it mean to have assets? I'm going to give you the exact step-by-step process. There are three steps when it comes to having the right assets. Step number one, story. Step number one is story. You want to make sure that you're telling a story. What is the story of your business? What is your messaging? What is your brand promise? What are you delivering? A random story to bore people. You want to make sure that your story. Fits into your solution and you want to make sure that it's to who. Number 2 is grabber. After you have your story, you want to make sure that you have the right attention grabber, that you have the right lead magnet. A lot of people, they go out and they start marketing, but they don't know what they want people to do. They're like, buy, buy, buy, buy. I don't want to buy. Bye-bye. I'm not going to buy, right? So you want to make sure that you have the right story and the right grabber. Once you have the right grabber, you know, a grabber can be a webinar, It could be a landing page that has a buyer's guide or a checklist or case studies depending on where the people are in the funnel, you're going to want to have different types of grabbers. Now let me show you what the funnel is because now we're up to the funnel. So within assets, step number 3 is stages. There's a concept called the marketing funnel. Have you ever heard of the marketing funnel? If you have heard of the marketing funnel, write yes. If you haven't, press no. Let me show you what the marketing funnel looks like. What happens is there are different stages in the funnel, right? There's top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. We call this TOFU. So the top of the funnel, which is TOFU, on the top of the funnel, those are people who don't even know who you are, and they're not even necessarily ready to buy today. They're just top of the funnel prospects. Now the problem a lot of people face is they're sending bottom of the funnel messages Buyers, people are ready to buy. Are you sending a message, a story, bottom of the funnel message to a top of the funnel prospect? And then you wonder why people get irked out by you. They get irked out. They don't want to buy from you because you're not doing it the right way. You need to understand what stages are. You want to have the right grabber for the right stage. You want to have the right story for the right stage. Middle of the funnel prospect, you know, what do they need? They need a case study, they need trust, they already know who you are. Top of the funnel, they don't know who you are, so you need to teach them through education-based marketing. Middle of the funnel, they know who you are already, but they don't trust you, so you need trust-based marketing. You need to be able to create trust with them. And bottom of the funnel is they know you, they trust you, now you have to be able to entice them to actually buy. Third step is doing, execution. You want to make sure that you're executing. You have to understand How to execute. Now there are 3 steps to execute. You ready? I'm going to show you the 3 steps to execute. Step number 1, step number 1 is technology. If you're selling to other businesses, you need technology that will tell you who's coming to your website, what they're doing on your website. Now even if somebody didn't fill out a form, you can have technology that tells you who comes to your website, what they're doing on your website, and what they're saying when they call you. Step number 2 is reporting. People are wondering why the heck they're not getting results from marketing when they're not even executing based on reporting. It's part of execution. Reporting is something that you have to do all the time. The thing is, you haven't set your vision, you don't know who your target is, and you don't have a solution. So how are you supposed to do reporting? That's why you need strategy as your foundation for success. Then you build out your assets, and then you can have your execution. But there's a core key step that a lot of people put first, and that's why they keep failing over and over and over. They invest money in something I call tactics, which is the final step, which is driving a tremendous amount of traffic. But where are you driving traffic? Are you driving traffic to your homepage? Are you driving traffic to a landing page? Are you driving top of the funnel traffic? Are you driving middle of the funnel traffic or bottom of the funnel traffic? Where are you sending it to? What is your grabber? What story are you giving them? What is the solution? Who are you targeting and what is your vision? If you get these 3 steps of strategy, assets, and execution done correctly, you have a predictable marketing system. So we know how much it costs us to get a lead. Now for every lead that we get and every conversation that we have, there's a certain value to that. We understand the value to that, so we know how many leads we need to get in order for us to get a certain amount of qualified leads, in order for us to get a certain amount of sales qualified leads, because there's a difference between marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. in order for us to know exactly how many deals we're going to close on our first product, which is B2BX, which is strategy, and our second product, which is execution. We know exactly how many we need, and we know how long it's going to take because we know how long it takes to get somebody from the top of the funnel, right, to the middle of the funnel, to the bottom of the funnel. So we can forecast out literally with laser, with laser targeting ability To know if our reporting is successful, if our technology is successful, if we're sending the right people using the right tactics, we literally can break it down. And let me, let me tell you something about the funnel, by the way, David, and marketing team listening to this after. Listen to this. There are 4 different types of people in the B2B marketing world. Because you're selling B2B, right, you're selling to lawyers. So there are 4 different types of people. There's the decision maker, right, who's the decision maker in the law firm? The decision maker might be the person in charge of education if it's a large law firm. There is the influencer, that might be the managing director, the CEO, the chairman, the investor, right, those are the people. There is the actual user, it might be the paralegal or the attorney or whatever, and then there's the buyer, the person who actually makes the purchase. Within the B2B space, there are 4, usually 4, maybe sometimes 5, maybe 3. In the B2C space, it's just one person, right? They're the buyer, the decision maker, the influencer, they're everything, they're the user. But in the B2B space, it's segmented. So you have different personas, different targets for the different types of functions. And in the funnel, there are the people that are— that's the length of the funnel, right? So it goes like that. The top of the funnel You have the people who don't know who you are and the influencers that don't know who you are, the decision makers that don't know who you are, the buyers that don't know who you are, the users that don't know who you are, they all need separate messages. You can't just send one message, oh, here you go everyone. No, because they all have a different story that needs to be told based on a different solution. The CFO cares about one thing, the CEO cares about another thing. The CFO cares about training the talent. The CEO cares about retaining the talent or whatever it is. There's different things that each person cares about. You got to know what they are in order for you to create the right grabber. What is the grabber? What grabber are you giving out? What value are you adding to them? What's the problem that you're solving that's such a big problem? For me, my grabber is teaching you marketing strategy, giving you an understanding of what ROI is. Every single business owner, every marketing director needs to know this stuff.
