Digital Marketing
B2B Lead Generation
Six people have to agree, four of them never speak to you, and the whole thing takes seven months. Plan for that or do not start.
B2B lead generation works where the buyer is a committee, the cycle runs months and a click costs several pounds. The Nexclick builds for pipeline rather than lead count, because a cost per lead that looks good on LinkedIn usually means targeting has drifted towards people who cannot buy.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- Your average deal is large and your marketing is measured on form fills.
- LinkedIn costs per click look alarming and nobody can say whether they are worth it.
- Sales reports a thin pipeline in the same month marketing reports a record for leads.
- Deals stall in the middle and nobody knows who else is in the room.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Define the account, not just the lead
- Which companies are worth pursuing, by size, sector, technology and trigger event. In B2B the account is the unit of value and the individual is a route into it.
- Map the buying committee
- Champion, end user, technical evaluator, finance, and the person who can veto without ever appearing. Content and targeting built for each rather than for one composite persona.
- Run the LinkedIn arithmetic before recommending it
- Clicks cost several pounds, which is entirely rational at a five-figure deal size and ruinous at a small one. That calculation happens before the channel is proposed, not after the first month.
- Build for the majority not currently in market
- At any moment most of your addressable market is not buying. Content reaching them creates the preference that decides a shortlist eighteen months later, and it will not appear in this quarter’s lead report.
- Decide gating asset by asset
- Gating everything suppresses reach and fills the CRM with people who wanted the document. Some assets should be gated, most should not, and the choice should be argued rather than defaulted.
- Measure pipeline rather than leads
- Qualified through to closed-won, with self-reported attribution on the form — multi-touch models handle seven-month cycles badly and are believed by nobody in sales.
- Support the middle of the deal
- Comparison pages, security documentation and the objection-handling material sales sends after the second meeting. Frequently the highest-return content in a B2B business and almost never on a content calendar.
- Coordinate outbound with everything else
- So a prospect is not being cold-emailed by sales in the same week marketing is retargeting them with a brand advert and nobody internally knows both are happening.
Comparison
The buying committee, and what each member needs from you
Most B2B marketing addresses the champion and ignores everyone else in the room. Several of these people can stop the deal, and most of them will never speak to your sales team at all.
| Who | What they are actually worried about | What to give them |
|---|---|---|
| The champion | Looking foolish for having recommended you | Evidence they can forward internally without editing it |
| The end user | More work, or a tool they will quietly resent | A demo, a trial, and honestly stated limitations |
| The technical evaluator | Integration, security and who carries the support burden | Documentation, security posture, a named contact |
| Finance | Total cost over three years, not the licence price | Transparent pricing with switching costs stated |
| The silent veto | Risk, precedent, and who else has done this | Recognisable customers in a comparable position |
| Procurement | Terms, insurance and supplier assurance | Paperwork answered quickly and without drama |
| The executive sponsor | Whether this matters against ten other projects | A one-page case in commercial terms, not features |
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1–2
ICP and committee definition
Built from your own closed-won deals rather than an aspirational description of who you would like to sell to. Ends with a target account list.
- 02Week 2–3
Channel economics
What each channel costs against deal size and close rate, so the LinkedIn decision is arithmetic rather than instinct or fashion.
- 03Week 3–6
Content and campaign build
Assets addressed to each committee role, the gating decisions made explicitly, and the campaigns that will distribute them.
- 04Ongoing, monthly
Run and report on pipeline
Reporting on pipeline created and influenced, with a quarterly read on closed revenue because that is the first genuinely honest number available.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- A target account list built from your own closed-won history.
- A mapped buying committee with content addressed to each role in it.
- Channel economics worked out against deal size before any budget is committed.
- Reporting on pipeline created and influenced rather than lead count.
- Middle-of-deal material your sales team will actually send.
Tools and platforms
- LinkedIn Campaign Manager
- CRM with account-level reporting
- Intent and firmographic data where budget justifies it
- Google Ads for high-intent search
- Self-reported attribution on forms
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Six to eight weeks to build, then a quarter before pipeline reporting means anything and two quarters before closed revenue does. That lag is the defining feature of B2B and the reason most programmes get cancelled in month four, roughly one month before the first deals would have landed. Two things worth saying plainly. If your average deal is under a few thousand pounds, LinkedIn advertising will not work at its click prices and we will point you at search and email instead. And if your sales team cannot describe why the last five deals were won, the ICP work has to happen before any advertising, because targeting without it is an expensive guess with a media budget attached.
Pricing model
Project, then retainer
Fixed price for the ICP work, committee mapping and build, retainer for ongoing campaign management, plus media spend paid directly to the platforms rather than through us.
Questions
B2B Lead Generation questions
Is LinkedIn advertising worth the cost per click?
It depends entirely on deal size, and the calculation is simple enough to do before committing. At a £20,000 average deal, £9 a click is cheap. At £800 it is unusable, and no amount of optimisation closes that gap. We run the arithmetic first and recommend search or email where it fails.
Should we gate our content?
Some of it. Gate the things a serious buyer will trade an email for — a detailed comparison, a benchmark, a template. Leave the thinking ungated so it can circulate and be read by the four committee members who will never fill in a form but will influence the decision.
How long before B2B lead generation shows results?
A quarter before pipeline reporting is meaningful and two before closed revenue is. That lag kills more programmes than poor execution does — month four looks like failure and is usually the month before the first deals land. Anyone promising faster is describing a shorter sales cycle than you have.
What is an ICP and how do you build one?
An ideal customer profile: the firmographic and behavioural characteristics of accounts you win, retain and make margin on. Built by examining your own closed-won deals rather than by describing who you would like to sell to. The two lists are usually noticeably different, which is the useful part.
How do we measure marketing when the cycle is seven months?
On pipeline created and influenced, reported monthly, with closed revenue read quarterly. Add a self-reported field on the enquiry form, because it is the only source that captures the podcast, the conference and the recommendation that no attribution model will ever see.
Do you do cold outbound?
We do not run outbound sequences ourselves. What we do is make sure it is coordinated with everything else — that the account list matches, that a prospect is not simultaneously being cold-emailed and shown a brand advert by two teams unaware of each other, and that responses land in the same CRM.
What if sales cannot tell us why deals were won?
Then that comes first, before any media spend. A dozen short conversations with recent customers about why they chose you produces better targeting than any tool. Building campaigns without it means guessing at the message, the audience and the objection all at once.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.