Sign up for the weekly B2B Marketing United newsletter
Blog
Letters
How to
Blog
The very term business-to-business implies that companies buy from other companies. Well, not exactly. What actually happens is that people make purchasing decisions to buy from other people at companies who are selling products, services or software.
Companies don't buy anything. People do. And they generally buy from people based on some level of relationship. This becomes more important as the complexity of the sale moves from commodity to complex solutions. None of this is news to anyone. But the way most B2B marketers behave suggests they have forgotten it entirely.
If people buy from people, then finding the right people and knowing how to reach them is the single most important thing a marketer can do. Yet most of the budget, effort and attention goes elsewhere. That is the problem this piece is about. And the scale of it is worse than most marketers realise.
Contact data decays at 70.8 percent a year. Yes, really.
We conducted a research study on the accuracy of contact information and gathered 1,025 data inputs. The method was straightforward. When giving seminars, I asked the audience to pull out their business card and check any element on it that had changed in the last 12 months. All cards, with or without changes, were collected in exchange for a copy of the research.
The result: 70.8 percent of the business cards had one or more changes in the previous 12 months.
The breakdown tells you a lot about why your CRM is quietly rotting. Title or job function changes accounted for 65.8 percent. Address changes hit 41.9 percent. Phone number changes reached 42.9 percent. Email address changes came in at 37.3 percent, slightly lower thanks to the rise of personal Gmail accounts. Company name changes affected 34.2 percent, mostly driven by people moving to new employers. Even name changes showed up at 3.8 percent, as people still change their name upon marriage or divorce.
Digging deeper, 29.6 percent of individuals changed companies entirely. 4.6 percent of companies changed their name through mergers or acquisitions. 12.3 percent of companies moved locations. And 41.2 percent of individuals stayed at the same company but something else changed, a new title, a restructured department, a relocated office.
This is not just an American problem
Several years ago I was giving a seminar in London to about 100 people. Before running the same exercise, I told the audience I expected the change rate to be much lower in England, because "you are all much more stable than us Americans."
Well, the hands went up, and to everyone's surprise it was exactly 70 percent. The same as the US. So much for stability.
On the other hand, a seminar in Shanghai three years later with 50 people produced a change rate of only 45 percent. And several years ago, the Computer Intelligence division of Harte-Hanks (now Aberdeen) reported a change rate of just over 60 percent in the US technology market.
No matter what the exact percentage, whether it is 60 percent or 70 percent, it is high. And the trend is going in the wrong direction.
It is getting worse, not better
We ran a similar study more than ten years earlier, and 62 percent of individuals had one or more changes in their business card. That compares with 70.8 percent a decade later. The decay rate for B2B contact data is increasing.
The proportion of people changing companies held roughly steady, dropping slightly from 31 percent to 29.6 percent. The biggest shift was a 10 percent increase in movement within companies. 41.2 percent reported data changes without changing employer, compared to 31 percent in the earlier study. People are being restructured, promoted, reassigned and relocated more frequently than ever.
There are newer methods and firms compiling B2B data now, and these lists are an improvement over traditional approaches. But they still contain inaccurate data at some level. It is worth checking out any data provider before assuming their promoted accuracy rates hold up in practice.
Outside lists are less accurate than you think
This usually leads marketers towards external lists, particularly for acquisition campaigns. So how accurate is the compiled information in those lists?
We conducted a snap survey as a data check. We called 50 records from each of three different list sources to verify key contact name, title, company name, address, email and phone number. A record was scored inaccurate if one or more of those data elements were found to be incorrect.
The results were sobering. A B2B trade association membership list came back 20 percent inaccurate. A large B2B data compiler was 35 percent inaccurate. And an industrial directory was 60 percent inaccurate.
Your own data is probably worse
Here is the part that surprises people. Internal customer and prospect data can be even less accurate than external lists. Most companies do not have a rigorous data hygiene process in place. Internal data, once entered, is rarely revisited to update contact and company information, even with widespread usage of CRM and marketing automation platforms.
"There is an old axiom widely accepted in B2B, and it is this: a great campaign sent to a lousy list will not do as well as a lousy campaign sent to a great list."
John Coe
So why does this matter more than everything else?
There are four elements that affect the success of a B2B database or direct marketing campaign. Each has a weighted impact on results:
Targeting and list data that matches the audience accounts for 50 to 70 percent of campaign performance. The offer drives 20 to 30 percent. Sequence, frequency and cadence of contact media contributes another 20 to 30 percent. And creative, which is typically copy-led, accounts for 10 to 20 percent.
The most important element by a significant margin is the targeting and matching data. Yet most of the money gets spent on the other three. There is an old axiom widely accepted in B2B, and it is this: a great campaign sent to a lousy list will not do as well as a lousy campaign sent to a great list.
Most marketers know this instinctively. Very few act on it.
So what should you actually do about it?
Spend time and money on developing and obtaining the best lists and data possible. The payback will be significant. This is particularly true when you consider the investment most companies are making in their marketing technology stack. None of those technologies work to their full potential without good data feeding them.
Your data governance process needs a fixed set of input rules, double checks and procedures for updating accuracy. Ideally, you have merged your data silos into a customer data platform and instituted sound data input rules. But the hardest part remains: verifying, correcting and updating contact-level information on an ongoing basis.
That is a tough job. But given that targeting accounts for up to 70 percent of your campaign performance, it is the job that matters most.
The very term business-to-business implies that companies buy from other companies. Well, not exactly. What actually happens is that people make purchasing decisions to buy from other people at companies who are selling products, services or software.
Companies don't buy anything. People do. And they generally buy from people based on some level of relationship. This becomes more important as the complexity of the sale moves from commodity to complex solutions. None of this is news to anyone. But the way most B2B marketers behave suggests they have forgotten it entirely.
If people buy from people, then finding the right people and knowing how to reach them is the single most important thing a marketer can do. Yet most of the budget, effort and attention goes elsewhere. That is the problem this piece is about. And the scale of it is worse than most marketers realise.
Contact data decays at 70.8 percent a year. Yes, really.
We conducted a research study on the accuracy of contact information and gathered 1,025 data inputs. The method was straightforward. When giving seminars, I asked the audience to pull out their business card and check any element on it that had changed in the last 12 months. All cards, with or without changes, were collected in exchange for a copy of the research.
The result: 70.8 percent of the business cards had one or more changes in the previous 12 months.
The breakdown tells you a lot about why your CRM is quietly rotting. Title or job function changes accounted for 65.8 percent. Address changes hit 41.9 percent. Phone number changes reached 42.9 percent. Email address changes came in at 37.3 percent, slightly lower thanks to the rise of personal Gmail accounts. Company name changes affected 34.2 percent, mostly driven by people moving to new employers. Even name changes showed up at 3.8 percent, as people still change their name upon marriage or divorce.
Digging deeper, 29.6 percent of individuals changed companies entirely. 4.6 percent of companies changed their name through mergers or acquisitions. 12.3 percent of companies moved locations. And 41.2 percent of individuals stayed at the same company but something else changed, a new title, a restructured department, a relocated office.
This is not just an American problem
Several years ago I was giving a seminar in London to about 100 people. Before running the same exercise, I told the audience I expected the change rate to be much lower in England, because "you are all much more stable than us Americans."
Well, the hands went up, and to everyone's surprise it was exactly 70 percent. The same as the US. So much for stability.
On the other hand, a seminar in Shanghai three years later with 50 people produced a change rate of only 45 percent. And several years ago, the Computer Intelligence division of Harte-Hanks (now Aberdeen) reported a change rate of just over 60 percent in the US technology market.
No matter what the exact percentage, whether it is 60 percent or 70 percent, it is high. And the trend is going in the wrong direction.
It is getting worse, not better
We ran a similar study more than ten years earlier, and 62 percent of individuals had one or more changes in their business card. That compares with 70.8 percent a decade later. The decay rate for B2B contact data is increasing.
The proportion of people changing companies held roughly steady, dropping slightly from 31 percent to 29.6 percent. The biggest shift was a 10 percent increase in movement within companies. 41.2 percent reported data changes without changing employer, compared to 31 percent in the earlier study. People are being restructured, promoted, reassigned and relocated more frequently than ever.
There are newer methods and firms compiling B2B data now, and these lists are an improvement over traditional approaches. But they still contain inaccurate data at some level. It is worth checking out any data provider before assuming their promoted accuracy rates hold up in practice.
Outside lists are less accurate than you think
This usually leads marketers towards external lists, particularly for acquisition campaigns. So how accurate is the compiled information in those lists?
We conducted a snap survey as a data check. We called 50 records from each of three different list sources to verify key contact name, title, company name, address, email and phone number. A record was scored inaccurate if one or more of those data elements were found to be incorrect.
The results were sobering. A B2B trade association membership list came back 20 percent inaccurate. A large B2B data compiler was 35 percent inaccurate. And an industrial directory was 60 percent inaccurate.
Your own data is probably worse
Here is the part that surprises people. Internal customer and prospect data can be even less accurate than external lists. Most companies do not have a rigorous data hygiene process in place. Internal data, once entered, is rarely revisited to update contact and company information, even with widespread usage of CRM and marketing automation platforms.
"There is an old axiom widely accepted in B2B, and it is this: a great campaign sent to a lousy list will not do as well as a lousy campaign sent to a great list."
John Coe
So why does this matter more than everything else?
There are four elements that affect the success of a B2B database or direct marketing campaign. Each has a weighted impact on results:
Targeting and list data that matches the audience accounts for 50 to 70 percent of campaign performance. The offer drives 20 to 30 percent. Sequence, frequency and cadence of contact media contributes another 20 to 30 percent. And creative, which is typically copy-led, accounts for 10 to 20 percent.
The most important element by a significant margin is the targeting and matching data. Yet most of the money gets spent on the other three. There is an old axiom widely accepted in B2B, and it is this: a great campaign sent to a lousy list will not do as well as a lousy campaign sent to a great list.
Most marketers know this instinctively. Very few act on it.
So what should you actually do about it?
Spend time and money on developing and obtaining the best lists and data possible. The payback will be significant. This is particularly true when you consider the investment most companies are making in their marketing technology stack. None of those technologies work to their full potential without good data feeding them.
Your data governance process needs a fixed set of input rules, double checks and procedures for updating accuracy. Ideally, you have merged your data silos into a customer data platform and instituted sound data input rules. But the hardest part remains: verifying, correcting and updating contact-level information on an ongoing basis.
That is a tough job. But given that targeting accounts for up to 70 percent of your campaign performance, it is the job that matters most.
The very term business-to-business implies that companies buy from other companies. Well, not exactly. What actually happens is that people make purchasing decisions to buy from other people at companies who are selling products, services or software.
Companies don't buy anything. People do. And they generally buy from people based on some level of relationship. This becomes more important as the complexity of the sale moves from commodity to complex solutions. None of this is news to anyone. But the way most B2B marketers behave suggests they have forgotten it entirely.
If people buy from people, then finding the right people and knowing how to reach them is the single most important thing a marketer can do. Yet most of the budget, effort and attention goes elsewhere. That is the problem this piece is about. And the scale of it is worse than most marketers realise.
Contact data decays at 70.8 percent a year. Yes, really.
We conducted a research study on the accuracy of contact information and gathered 1,025 data inputs. The method was straightforward. When giving seminars, I asked the audience to pull out their business card and check any element on it that had changed in the last 12 months. All cards, with or without changes, were collected in exchange for a copy of the research.
The result: 70.8 percent of the business cards had one or more changes in the previous 12 months.
The breakdown tells you a lot about why your CRM is quietly rotting. Title or job function changes accounted for 65.8 percent. Address changes hit 41.9 percent. Phone number changes reached 42.9 percent. Email address changes came in at 37.3 percent, slightly lower thanks to the rise of personal Gmail accounts. Company name changes affected 34.2 percent, mostly driven by people moving to new employers. Even name changes showed up at 3.8 percent, as people still change their name upon marriage or divorce.
Digging deeper, 29.6 percent of individuals changed companies entirely. 4.6 percent of companies changed their name through mergers or acquisitions. 12.3 percent of companies moved locations. And 41.2 percent of individuals stayed at the same company but something else changed, a new title, a restructured department, a relocated office.
This is not just an American problem
Several years ago I was giving a seminar in London to about 100 people. Before running the same exercise, I told the audience I expected the change rate to be much lower in England, because "you are all much more stable than us Americans."
Well, the hands went up, and to everyone's surprise it was exactly 70 percent. The same as the US. So much for stability.
On the other hand, a seminar in Shanghai three years later with 50 people produced a change rate of only 45 percent. And several years ago, the Computer Intelligence division of Harte-Hanks (now Aberdeen) reported a change rate of just over 60 percent in the US technology market.
No matter what the exact percentage, whether it is 60 percent or 70 percent, it is high. And the trend is going in the wrong direction.
It is getting worse, not better
We ran a similar study more than ten years earlier, and 62 percent of individuals had one or more changes in their business card. That compares with 70.8 percent a decade later. The decay rate for B2B contact data is increasing.
The proportion of people changing companies held roughly steady, dropping slightly from 31 percent to 29.6 percent. The biggest shift was a 10 percent increase in movement within companies. 41.2 percent reported data changes without changing employer, compared to 31 percent in the earlier study. People are being restructured, promoted, reassigned and relocated more frequently than ever.
There are newer methods and firms compiling B2B data now, and these lists are an improvement over traditional approaches. But they still contain inaccurate data at some level. It is worth checking out any data provider before assuming their promoted accuracy rates hold up in practice.
Outside lists are less accurate than you think
This usually leads marketers towards external lists, particularly for acquisition campaigns. So how accurate is the compiled information in those lists?
We conducted a snap survey as a data check. We called 50 records from each of three different list sources to verify key contact name, title, company name, address, email and phone number. A record was scored inaccurate if one or more of those data elements were found to be incorrect.
The results were sobering. A B2B trade association membership list came back 20 percent inaccurate. A large B2B data compiler was 35 percent inaccurate. And an industrial directory was 60 percent inaccurate.
Your own data is probably worse
Here is the part that surprises people. Internal customer and prospect data can be even less accurate than external lists. Most companies do not have a rigorous data hygiene process in place. Internal data, once entered, is rarely revisited to update contact and company information, even with widespread usage of CRM and marketing automation platforms.
"There is an old axiom widely accepted in B2B, and it is this: a great campaign sent to a lousy list will not do as well as a lousy campaign sent to a great list."
John Coe
So why does this matter more than everything else?
There are four elements that affect the success of a B2B database or direct marketing campaign. Each has a weighted impact on results:
Targeting and list data that matches the audience accounts for 50 to 70 percent of campaign performance. The offer drives 20 to 30 percent. Sequence, frequency and cadence of contact media contributes another 20 to 30 percent. And creative, which is typically copy-led, accounts for 10 to 20 percent.
The most important element by a significant margin is the targeting and matching data. Yet most of the money gets spent on the other three. There is an old axiom widely accepted in B2B, and it is this: a great campaign sent to a lousy list will not do as well as a lousy campaign sent to a great list.
Most marketers know this instinctively. Very few act on it.
So what should you actually do about it?
Spend time and money on developing and obtaining the best lists and data possible. The payback will be significant. This is particularly true when you consider the investment most companies are making in their marketing technology stack. None of those technologies work to their full potential without good data feeding them.
Your data governance process needs a fixed set of input rules, double checks and procedures for updating accuracy. Ideally, you have merged your data silos into a customer data platform and instituted sound data input rules. But the hardest part remains: verifying, correcting and updating contact-level information on an ongoing basis.
That is a tough job. But given that targeting accounts for up to 70 percent of your campaign performance, it is the job that matters most.
London
Mar 2, 2026
Rich Fitzmaurice
Letters
"Dear Rich,
I am a Marketing Director at a B2B fintech. We have about 300 employees but have secured new funding to hire 100 more before the end of the year so we're growing fast.
About 18 months ago we hired a creative agency to handle our brand refresh, website redesign, and campaign creative. The founder is well connected and spoke at an event our CEO attended. He worked his charm and our CEO personally introduced us to them and was very enthusiastic about using them. You can probably see where this is going.
I had no choice but to roll with it. The brand work was fine. Not exceptional, but fine. The website was delivered late and over budget, and the end result was acceptable. Since then we have moved into the ongoing retainer phase and the quality has fallen off a cliff.
The senior people who pitched us are nowhere to be seen. Our day-to-day contact is a mid-level account manager who is perfectly nice but clearly overwhelmed. The creative work is generic. I have sent back briefs three and four times on the same piece of work. Timelines slip constantly and every delay comes with a cheerful apology and no change in behaviour. I feed back clearly and fairly but I strongly feel that there are side conversations going on between my CEO and their founder.
Last month they delivered campaign concepts for our upcoming product launch of the year. It was so off-brief that my team could not even identify which product it was supposed to be for. We will have to redo most of it internally over a few weekends.
Here is the complication. Our CEO still thinks they are great. He plays golf with the agency founder. He references "our agency" in board meetings like it is a point of pride. When I have gently raised concerns, he tells me to "give them clearer briefs" or "be more collaborative" or "manage them better". I honestly feel as if he is being coached by the other side.
I have tried clearer briefs. I have tried workshops. I have tried giving feedback directly to the agency. Each time I get nodding, agreement, promises to put more senior resource on the account, and then absolutely nothing changes.
Meanwhile the retainer is costing us around $15k a month. That is $180k a year going to an agency that is actively making my team's job harder. I would much rather swap them out for someone else or hire in-house.
I do not want to be dramatic about it. They are not terrible people. They are just not delivering. But I feel trapped between an underperforming agency and a CEO who has emotional equity in the relationship.
How do I handle this without losing sleep or my job?"
Laura, Texas
Rich's reply
Laura, I expect most marketing leaders have been in similar situations and it's always a bit maddening.
I remember once when one of my VPs of marketing was having an affair with an agency I couldn't stand and I refused to sign off their purchase orders as they just felt off. I knew saying no could be career limiting but I felt that was the better option for me at that time.
It is one of the hardest dynamics to deal with because the problem is not really about the agency. That on its own would be relatively easy to manage if you had full autonomy. The problem is about relationships and the fact that your CEO has accidentally created a situation where giving honest feedback feels career threatening.
Let us deal with that part first because it is the part that matters most.
Your CEO introduced this agency. He is personally connected to the founder. He references them proudly. He likes them because he liked what he heard about them and he enjoys their company.
When you tell him the agency is underperforming, what he hears, whether he realises it or not, is that his judgement was wrong. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and CEOs enjoy it less than most. Maybe he even, myopically, feels that you'll make him look bad in front of his friend.
So you cannot approach this as "the agency is bad" as that has got you nowhere so far. But you could approach it as "the business has outgrown what this agency can deliver." That is a completely different conversation. One is a whinge. The other is a natural occurrence. Same facts, different frame.
But before you have that conversation, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring some facts to the table, just in case you need them. Not because your CEO is unreasonable, but because when emotions and personal relationships are involved, fact based arguments may help change the tide.
Here is something you could try and, as always, feel free to take it on board and chart your own course.
Have your team start a simple log. Nothing elaborate. A shared document that tracks every piece of work the agency delivers. Date requested. Date due. Date actually delivered. Number of revision rounds. Whether the final output was used as delivered or reworked internally. Time your team spent on rework.
Do this for eight to twelve weeks. Be scrupulously fair. If they deliver something on time and on brief, log that too. You are not building a prosecution. You are building a picture that you should be mature enough to treat like a hypothesis. "We need to change our agency to get better value for money and drive growth."
At the same time, start tracking the internal cost of rework. When your team spent a weekend redoing that campaign concept, that has a cost. Calculate it. Hours multiplied by loaded salary rates. You do not need to be exact, just be directional. If you are paying $15k a month for agency output and then spending another $8k in internal time fixing it, the real cost of this relationship is $23k a month. That number may get attention in a way that "the creative is not very good" never will.
Now, while you are building this evidence base, I want you to try one more thing with the agency. Because you have to try and be balanced and give the hypothesis a chance to go in whatever direction is true, regardless of feelings.
Request a formal quarterly business review. Put it in writing. Make it structured. Not a coffee and a chat with the founder. An actual meeting with an agenda where you present the data: delivery timelines, revision counts, brief adherence, internal rework hours. Bring your log. Be specific.
If your CEO values the relationship as much as you think he does, then this agency founder should value it too and be mortified by the prospect of not delivering for him.
Cut out the middleman and build that relationship yourself. But the important advice is to be factual.
Say something like: "You are our retained agency for a reason and we want this to continue. But the current delivery model is not meeting our needs and here is the evidence. We need to agree on specific changes and a timeline to see improvement, otherwise we're going to outgrow you pretty soon."
It's not a threat. It's not personal opinion based. It's numbers. You're being fair. And you're giving them a chance to step up.
Give them 60 days after that meeting. Set clear expectations. If the senior people need to be back on the account, say that explicitly. If turnaround times need to improve, define what good looks like. Put it in an email after the meeting so there is a record.
Two things will happen. Either they step up, in which case you have solved the problem without any political fallout and possibly gained an external ally. Or they do not step up, in which case you now have a documented trail that shows you gave them every opportunity and they still could not deliver.
That trail is your protection.
Now let us talk about the CEO conversation.
If the 60 days are up and nothing has changed, you go to your CEO. But you do not go with a complaint. You go with a proposal.
"I want to talk about how we set up our creative support for the next stage of growth. Our pipeline targets are more than what they were when we brought the agency on. I have been tracking our delivery metrics and I think we have outgrown the current model. Here is what I am seeing."
Then you show the data. Timelines. Revision rounds. Rework costs. You are not saying they are bad. You are saying the business has moved and the agency has not moved with it. You are also detailing your dialogue with the founder. You treated his friend fairly.
Then you present the alternative.
Give him a side-by-side comparison. Agency model versus in-house model. Cost, capacity, speed, quality. Make it about what the business needs, not about what the agency is failing to do.
If your CEO still pushes back, and he might, then you have one more card to play. Suggest a hybrid. Keep the agency on a reduced retainer for project work or overflow, which preserves the CEO's relationship, but bring the core capability in-house. This gives him a way to save face while you get the resources you actually need.
The golf friendship does not need to end. And you don't need to be frustrated forever.
By the time you have that conversation you will have four months of evidence, a documented attempt to fix the relationship, and a clear alternative that is better for the business. No reasonable CEO pushes back on that. And if your CEO is unreasonable, well, that is a different letter entirely.
You are not trapped. You just need to sequence this properly. Build the case, give them a fair shot, then move decisively if they miss it.
Onwards,
Rich
Got a question for Rich? Email it to editor@b2bmarketing.com
"Dear Rich,
I am a Marketing Director at a B2B fintech. We have about 300 employees but have secured new funding to hire 100 more before the end of the year so we're growing fast.
About 18 months ago we hired a creative agency to handle our brand refresh, website redesign, and campaign creative. The founder is well connected and spoke at an event our CEO attended. He worked his charm and our CEO personally introduced us to them and was very enthusiastic about using them. You can probably see where this is going.
I had no choice but to roll with it. The brand work was fine. Not exceptional, but fine. The website was delivered late and over budget, and the end result was acceptable. Since then we have moved into the ongoing retainer phase and the quality has fallen off a cliff.
The senior people who pitched us are nowhere to be seen. Our day-to-day contact is a mid-level account manager who is perfectly nice but clearly overwhelmed. The creative work is generic. I have sent back briefs three and four times on the same piece of work. Timelines slip constantly and every delay comes with a cheerful apology and no change in behaviour. I feed back clearly and fairly but I strongly feel that there are side conversations going on between my CEO and their founder.
Last month they delivered campaign concepts for our upcoming product launch of the year. It was so off-brief that my team could not even identify which product it was supposed to be for. We will have to redo most of it internally over a few weekends.
Here is the complication. Our CEO still thinks they are great. He plays golf with the agency founder. He references "our agency" in board meetings like it is a point of pride. When I have gently raised concerns, he tells me to "give them clearer briefs" or "be more collaborative" or "manage them better". I honestly feel as if he is being coached by the other side.
I have tried clearer briefs. I have tried workshops. I have tried giving feedback directly to the agency. Each time I get nodding, agreement, promises to put more senior resource on the account, and then absolutely nothing changes.
Meanwhile the retainer is costing us around $15k a month. That is $180k a year going to an agency that is actively making my team's job harder. I would much rather swap them out for someone else or hire in-house.
I do not want to be dramatic about it. They are not terrible people. They are just not delivering. But I feel trapped between an underperforming agency and a CEO who has emotional equity in the relationship.
How do I handle this without losing sleep or my job?"
Laura, Texas
Rich's reply
Laura, I expect most marketing leaders have been in similar situations and it's always a bit maddening.
I remember once when one of my VPs of marketing was having an affair with an agency I couldn't stand and I refused to sign off their purchase orders as they just felt off. I knew saying no could be career limiting but I felt that was the better option for me at that time.
It is one of the hardest dynamics to deal with because the problem is not really about the agency. That on its own would be relatively easy to manage if you had full autonomy. The problem is about relationships and the fact that your CEO has accidentally created a situation where giving honest feedback feels career threatening.
Let us deal with that part first because it is the part that matters most.
Your CEO introduced this agency. He is personally connected to the founder. He references them proudly. He likes them because he liked what he heard about them and he enjoys their company.
When you tell him the agency is underperforming, what he hears, whether he realises it or not, is that his judgement was wrong. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and CEOs enjoy it less than most. Maybe he even, myopically, feels that you'll make him look bad in front of his friend.
So you cannot approach this as "the agency is bad" as that has got you nowhere so far. But you could approach it as "the business has outgrown what this agency can deliver." That is a completely different conversation. One is a whinge. The other is a natural occurrence. Same facts, different frame.
But before you have that conversation, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring some facts to the table, just in case you need them. Not because your CEO is unreasonable, but because when emotions and personal relationships are involved, fact based arguments may help change the tide.
Here is something you could try and, as always, feel free to take it on board and chart your own course.
Have your team start a simple log. Nothing elaborate. A shared document that tracks every piece of work the agency delivers. Date requested. Date due. Date actually delivered. Number of revision rounds. Whether the final output was used as delivered or reworked internally. Time your team spent on rework.
Do this for eight to twelve weeks. Be scrupulously fair. If they deliver something on time and on brief, log that too. You are not building a prosecution. You are building a picture that you should be mature enough to treat like a hypothesis. "We need to change our agency to get better value for money and drive growth."
At the same time, start tracking the internal cost of rework. When your team spent a weekend redoing that campaign concept, that has a cost. Calculate it. Hours multiplied by loaded salary rates. You do not need to be exact, just be directional. If you are paying $15k a month for agency output and then spending another $8k in internal time fixing it, the real cost of this relationship is $23k a month. That number may get attention in a way that "the creative is not very good" never will.
Now, while you are building this evidence base, I want you to try one more thing with the agency. Because you have to try and be balanced and give the hypothesis a chance to go in whatever direction is true, regardless of feelings.
Request a formal quarterly business review. Put it in writing. Make it structured. Not a coffee and a chat with the founder. An actual meeting with an agenda where you present the data: delivery timelines, revision counts, brief adherence, internal rework hours. Bring your log. Be specific.
If your CEO values the relationship as much as you think he does, then this agency founder should value it too and be mortified by the prospect of not delivering for him.
Cut out the middleman and build that relationship yourself. But the important advice is to be factual.
Say something like: "You are our retained agency for a reason and we want this to continue. But the current delivery model is not meeting our needs and here is the evidence. We need to agree on specific changes and a timeline to see improvement, otherwise we're going to outgrow you pretty soon."
It's not a threat. It's not personal opinion based. It's numbers. You're being fair. And you're giving them a chance to step up.
Give them 60 days after that meeting. Set clear expectations. If the senior people need to be back on the account, say that explicitly. If turnaround times need to improve, define what good looks like. Put it in an email after the meeting so there is a record.
Two things will happen. Either they step up, in which case you have solved the problem without any political fallout and possibly gained an external ally. Or they do not step up, in which case you now have a documented trail that shows you gave them every opportunity and they still could not deliver.
That trail is your protection.
Now let us talk about the CEO conversation.
If the 60 days are up and nothing has changed, you go to your CEO. But you do not go with a complaint. You go with a proposal.
"I want to talk about how we set up our creative support for the next stage of growth. Our pipeline targets are more than what they were when we brought the agency on. I have been tracking our delivery metrics and I think we have outgrown the current model. Here is what I am seeing."
Then you show the data. Timelines. Revision rounds. Rework costs. You are not saying they are bad. You are saying the business has moved and the agency has not moved with it. You are also detailing your dialogue with the founder. You treated his friend fairly.
Then you present the alternative.
Give him a side-by-side comparison. Agency model versus in-house model. Cost, capacity, speed, quality. Make it about what the business needs, not about what the agency is failing to do.
If your CEO still pushes back, and he might, then you have one more card to play. Suggest a hybrid. Keep the agency on a reduced retainer for project work or overflow, which preserves the CEO's relationship, but bring the core capability in-house. This gives him a way to save face while you get the resources you actually need.
The golf friendship does not need to end. And you don't need to be frustrated forever.
By the time you have that conversation you will have four months of evidence, a documented attempt to fix the relationship, and a clear alternative that is better for the business. No reasonable CEO pushes back on that. And if your CEO is unreasonable, well, that is a different letter entirely.
You are not trapped. You just need to sequence this properly. Build the case, give them a fair shot, then move decisively if they miss it.
Onwards,
Rich
Got a question for Rich? Email it to editor@b2bmarketing.com
"Dear Rich,
I am a Marketing Director at a B2B fintech. We have about 300 employees but have secured new funding to hire 100 more before the end of the year so we're growing fast.
About 18 months ago we hired a creative agency to handle our brand refresh, website redesign, and campaign creative. The founder is well connected and spoke at an event our CEO attended. He worked his charm and our CEO personally introduced us to them and was very enthusiastic about using them. You can probably see where this is going.
I had no choice but to roll with it. The brand work was fine. Not exceptional, but fine. The website was delivered late and over budget, and the end result was acceptable. Since then we have moved into the ongoing retainer phase and the quality has fallen off a cliff.
The senior people who pitched us are nowhere to be seen. Our day-to-day contact is a mid-level account manager who is perfectly nice but clearly overwhelmed. The creative work is generic. I have sent back briefs three and four times on the same piece of work. Timelines slip constantly and every delay comes with a cheerful apology and no change in behaviour. I feed back clearly and fairly but I strongly feel that there are side conversations going on between my CEO and their founder.
Last month they delivered campaign concepts for our upcoming product launch of the year. It was so off-brief that my team could not even identify which product it was supposed to be for. We will have to redo most of it internally over a few weekends.
Here is the complication. Our CEO still thinks they are great. He plays golf with the agency founder. He references "our agency" in board meetings like it is a point of pride. When I have gently raised concerns, he tells me to "give them clearer briefs" or "be more collaborative" or "manage them better". I honestly feel as if he is being coached by the other side.
I have tried clearer briefs. I have tried workshops. I have tried giving feedback directly to the agency. Each time I get nodding, agreement, promises to put more senior resource on the account, and then absolutely nothing changes.
Meanwhile the retainer is costing us around $15k a month. That is $180k a year going to an agency that is actively making my team's job harder. I would much rather swap them out for someone else or hire in-house.
I do not want to be dramatic about it. They are not terrible people. They are just not delivering. But I feel trapped between an underperforming agency and a CEO who has emotional equity in the relationship.
How do I handle this without losing sleep or my job?"
Laura, Texas
Rich's reply
Laura, I expect most marketing leaders have been in similar situations and it's always a bit maddening.
I remember once when one of my VPs of marketing was having an affair with an agency I couldn't stand and I refused to sign off their purchase orders as they just felt off. I knew saying no could be career limiting but I felt that was the better option for me at that time.
It is one of the hardest dynamics to deal with because the problem is not really about the agency. That on its own would be relatively easy to manage if you had full autonomy. The problem is about relationships and the fact that your CEO has accidentally created a situation where giving honest feedback feels career threatening.
Let us deal with that part first because it is the part that matters most.
Your CEO introduced this agency. He is personally connected to the founder. He references them proudly. He likes them because he liked what he heard about them and he enjoys their company.
When you tell him the agency is underperforming, what he hears, whether he realises it or not, is that his judgement was wrong. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and CEOs enjoy it less than most. Maybe he even, myopically, feels that you'll make him look bad in front of his friend.
So you cannot approach this as "the agency is bad" as that has got you nowhere so far. But you could approach it as "the business has outgrown what this agency can deliver." That is a completely different conversation. One is a whinge. The other is a natural occurrence. Same facts, different frame.
But before you have that conversation, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring some facts to the table, just in case you need them. Not because your CEO is unreasonable, but because when emotions and personal relationships are involved, fact based arguments may help change the tide.
Here is something you could try and, as always, feel free to take it on board and chart your own course.
Have your team start a simple log. Nothing elaborate. A shared document that tracks every piece of work the agency delivers. Date requested. Date due. Date actually delivered. Number of revision rounds. Whether the final output was used as delivered or reworked internally. Time your team spent on rework.
Do this for eight to twelve weeks. Be scrupulously fair. If they deliver something on time and on brief, log that too. You are not building a prosecution. You are building a picture that you should be mature enough to treat like a hypothesis. "We need to change our agency to get better value for money and drive growth."
At the same time, start tracking the internal cost of rework. When your team spent a weekend redoing that campaign concept, that has a cost. Calculate it. Hours multiplied by loaded salary rates. You do not need to be exact, just be directional. If you are paying $15k a month for agency output and then spending another $8k in internal time fixing it, the real cost of this relationship is $23k a month. That number may get attention in a way that "the creative is not very good" never will.
Now, while you are building this evidence base, I want you to try one more thing with the agency. Because you have to try and be balanced and give the hypothesis a chance to go in whatever direction is true, regardless of feelings.
Request a formal quarterly business review. Put it in writing. Make it structured. Not a coffee and a chat with the founder. An actual meeting with an agenda where you present the data: delivery timelines, revision counts, brief adherence, internal rework hours. Bring your log. Be specific.
If your CEO values the relationship as much as you think he does, then this agency founder should value it too and be mortified by the prospect of not delivering for him.
Cut out the middleman and build that relationship yourself. But the important advice is to be factual.
Say something like: "You are our retained agency for a reason and we want this to continue. But the current delivery model is not meeting our needs and here is the evidence. We need to agree on specific changes and a timeline to see improvement, otherwise we're going to outgrow you pretty soon."
It's not a threat. It's not personal opinion based. It's numbers. You're being fair. And you're giving them a chance to step up.
Give them 60 days after that meeting. Set clear expectations. If the senior people need to be back on the account, say that explicitly. If turnaround times need to improve, define what good looks like. Put it in an email after the meeting so there is a record.
Two things will happen. Either they step up, in which case you have solved the problem without any political fallout and possibly gained an external ally. Or they do not step up, in which case you now have a documented trail that shows you gave them every opportunity and they still could not deliver.
That trail is your protection.
Now let us talk about the CEO conversation.
If the 60 days are up and nothing has changed, you go to your CEO. But you do not go with a complaint. You go with a proposal.
"I want to talk about how we set up our creative support for the next stage of growth. Our pipeline targets are more than what they were when we brought the agency on. I have been tracking our delivery metrics and I think we have outgrown the current model. Here is what I am seeing."
Then you show the data. Timelines. Revision rounds. Rework costs. You are not saying they are bad. You are saying the business has moved and the agency has not moved with it. You are also detailing your dialogue with the founder. You treated his friend fairly.
Then you present the alternative.
Give him a side-by-side comparison. Agency model versus in-house model. Cost, capacity, speed, quality. Make it about what the business needs, not about what the agency is failing to do.
If your CEO still pushes back, and he might, then you have one more card to play. Suggest a hybrid. Keep the agency on a reduced retainer for project work or overflow, which preserves the CEO's relationship, but bring the core capability in-house. This gives him a way to save face while you get the resources you actually need.
The golf friendship does not need to end. And you don't need to be frustrated forever.
By the time you have that conversation you will have four months of evidence, a documented attempt to fix the relationship, and a clear alternative that is better for the business. No reasonable CEO pushes back on that. And if your CEO is unreasonable, well, that is a different letter entirely.
You are not trapped. You just need to sequence this properly. Build the case, give them a fair shot, then move decisively if they miss it.
Onwards,
Rich
Got a question for Rich? Email it to editor@b2bmarketing.com
Content
Mar 3, 2026
Content
How to's
In my experience, most PR underperforms for one simple reason. It is built to generate coverage, not influence.
Press releases go out. Coverage appears. Logos get dropped into decks. Somewhere along the way, teams convince themselves that visibility equals impact.
It does not.
In complex B2B buying, nobody buys because they saw your logo in the trade press. They buy because choosing you feels safe, defensible, and sensible to the people who have to put their names against the decision.
PR only works when it reduces risk. When it does not, it becomes noise.
What PR is actually for in B2B
PR is not about announcements or press releases (I am not even sure journalists read them anymore). It is not about share of voice. It is not about chasing journalists for coverage.
In our world, PR exists to build external credibility that buyers can borrow internally.
When a deal is live, buying group members are quietly asking themselves variations of:
Are these people legitimate?
Do they understand our world?
Have others trusted them before?
Would I look foolish defending this choice internally?
This aligns closely with buying group research from Gartner, which shows that deals stall far more often due to lack of confidence and consensus than lack of information. PR contributes to what Gartner calls sense making. It helps groups align around whether a decision feels safe.
So from that viewpoint, PR is another tool in the arsenal that helps do that job.
PR is not the same as media relations
One reason PR disappoints is because it is often reduced to media relations alone.
It actually includes:
Media commentary
Executive visibility
Analyst relations
Third party validation
Consistent narrative across external touchpoints
Media coverage is just one output. Credibility is the outcome.
You can get plenty of coverage and still be ignored in deals if what you say sounds generic, inconsistent, or self-congratulatory.
Why most B2B PR fails
Most B2B PR fails in predictable ways.
It sounds like marketing
It talks about the company, not the problem
It overclaims and underexplains
It avoids trade-offs and reality
It focuses on announcements that only matter to that firm, rather than insight for anybody else
This is why buyers skim it or ignore it entirely. They are not looking for promotion. They are looking for reassurance.
Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that people trust expertise, transparency, and third-party validation far more than corporate messaging. PR that feels polished but empty actively erodes trust.
What is actually newsworthy in B2B
Most B2B companies are not newsworthy because they exist. They become newsworthy when they help others make sense of change.
What journalists and buyers actually care about:
What is changing in the market?
What is breaking or no longer working?
What leaders are seeing that others are missing?
What trade-offs organizations are facing?
What mistakes are being repeated?
This is why commentary outperforms announcements. Insight travels further than information.
If your PR plan is built around what you want to say rather than what your market is struggling to understand, it will not perform. It simply adds to the plethora of noise that is already out there.
Credibility is built through consistency, not volume
Buyers do not remember one article. They remember patterns.
This is where mental availability matters. Research from the B2B Institute shows that brands grow by being consistently associated with specific problems and outcomes over time.
Effective PR reinforces the same story across:
Executive interviews
Bylined articles
Panel appearances
Analyst commentary
Partner quotes
If each appearance tells a slightly different version of who you are, or if different executives say conflicting things, you are not building credibility, you are creating friction.
Reality check
If your CEO sounds visionary, your CTO sounds tactical, your PR agency sounds promotional, and your sales team sounds defensive, buyers will trust none of them.
How PR actually supports live deals
PR will never close deals directly, of course, but bad PR can lose it.
It can make sales conversations easier.
Good PR helps when:
Prospects already recognize your name
Stakeholders reference your perspective unprompted
Objections sound familiar rather than hostile
Sales spends less time proving legitimacy
This aligns with Forrester guidance on executive thought leadership, which emphasizes that credibility shortens evaluation cycles by reducing perceived risk.
PR works best when sales does not have to explain it.
How to tell if your PR is building credibility
If you want a simple diagnostic, ask these questions:
Would a journalist describe us as experts in one specific thing?
Do our leaders sound consistent across interviews?
Does sales ever forward this coverage without being asked?
Would a cautious buyer feel safer after reading this?
If the answer is no, the issue is not distribution it is a lack of substance.
How to measure PR without pretending attribution
PR does not lend itself to last click attribution and pretending otherwise damages its credibility internally.
Avoid over relying on:
Raw coverage volume
Share of voice without context
Generic sentiment scores
Last click revenue models
Instead, look for signals that confidence is forming:
Sales referencing coverage in meetings
Increased inbound credibility rather than inbound volume
Faster movement through late-stage objections
Analyst inclusion and citation
Executives being sought out for perspective
PR should be discussed in the language of influence, not performance marketing.
The simple rule to remember
PR in B2B is not about being visible. It is about being believable.
If your PR helps buyers feel safer choosing you and helps sales spend less time proving legitimacy, it is working. If it just fills a coverage report, it is not. Especially if you don’t actually recognise the publications who picked up your press release verbatim.
Call to action
Audit your last six months of PR and ask one hard question.
If a cautious buyer read this, would they feel more confident choosing us?
If the answer is unclear, stop producing more content and fix the narrative first.
Decide what you want to be trusted for.
Ensure your leaders sound consistent.
Prioritize insight over announcements.
Measure confidence, not clicks.
If you want help turning PR into a credibility engine rather than a coverage machine, get in touch and we will introduce you to people who genuinely know what good looks like.
In my experience, most PR underperforms for one simple reason. It is built to generate coverage, not influence.
Press releases go out. Coverage appears. Logos get dropped into decks. Somewhere along the way, teams convince themselves that visibility equals impact.
It does not.
In complex B2B buying, nobody buys because they saw your logo in the trade press. They buy because choosing you feels safe, defensible, and sensible to the people who have to put their names against the decision.
PR only works when it reduces risk. When it does not, it becomes noise.
What PR is actually for in B2B
PR is not about announcements or press releases (I am not even sure journalists read them anymore). It is not about share of voice. It is not about chasing journalists for coverage.
In our world, PR exists to build external credibility that buyers can borrow internally.
When a deal is live, buying group members are quietly asking themselves variations of:
Are these people legitimate?
Do they understand our world?
Have others trusted them before?
Would I look foolish defending this choice internally?
This aligns closely with buying group research from Gartner, which shows that deals stall far more often due to lack of confidence and consensus than lack of information. PR contributes to what Gartner calls sense making. It helps groups align around whether a decision feels safe.
So from that viewpoint, PR is another tool in the arsenal that helps do that job.
PR is not the same as media relations
One reason PR disappoints is because it is often reduced to media relations alone.
It actually includes:
Media commentary
Executive visibility
Analyst relations
Third party validation
Consistent narrative across external touchpoints
Media coverage is just one output. Credibility is the outcome.
You can get plenty of coverage and still be ignored in deals if what you say sounds generic, inconsistent, or self-congratulatory.
Why most B2B PR fails
Most B2B PR fails in predictable ways.
It sounds like marketing
It talks about the company, not the problem
It overclaims and underexplains
It avoids trade-offs and reality
It focuses on announcements that only matter to that firm, rather than insight for anybody else
This is why buyers skim it or ignore it entirely. They are not looking for promotion. They are looking for reassurance.
Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that people trust expertise, transparency, and third-party validation far more than corporate messaging. PR that feels polished but empty actively erodes trust.
What is actually newsworthy in B2B
Most B2B companies are not newsworthy because they exist. They become newsworthy when they help others make sense of change.
What journalists and buyers actually care about:
What is changing in the market?
What is breaking or no longer working?
What leaders are seeing that others are missing?
What trade-offs organizations are facing?
What mistakes are being repeated?
This is why commentary outperforms announcements. Insight travels further than information.
If your PR plan is built around what you want to say rather than what your market is struggling to understand, it will not perform. It simply adds to the plethora of noise that is already out there.
Credibility is built through consistency, not volume
Buyers do not remember one article. They remember patterns.
This is where mental availability matters. Research from the B2B Institute shows that brands grow by being consistently associated with specific problems and outcomes over time.
Effective PR reinforces the same story across:
Executive interviews
Bylined articles
Panel appearances
Analyst commentary
Partner quotes
If each appearance tells a slightly different version of who you are, or if different executives say conflicting things, you are not building credibility, you are creating friction.
Reality check
If your CEO sounds visionary, your CTO sounds tactical, your PR agency sounds promotional, and your sales team sounds defensive, buyers will trust none of them.
How PR actually supports live deals
PR will never close deals directly, of course, but bad PR can lose it.
It can make sales conversations easier.
Good PR helps when:
Prospects already recognize your name
Stakeholders reference your perspective unprompted
Objections sound familiar rather than hostile
Sales spends less time proving legitimacy
This aligns with Forrester guidance on executive thought leadership, which emphasizes that credibility shortens evaluation cycles by reducing perceived risk.
PR works best when sales does not have to explain it.
How to tell if your PR is building credibility
If you want a simple diagnostic, ask these questions:
Would a journalist describe us as experts in one specific thing?
Do our leaders sound consistent across interviews?
Does sales ever forward this coverage without being asked?
Would a cautious buyer feel safer after reading this?
If the answer is no, the issue is not distribution it is a lack of substance.
How to measure PR without pretending attribution
PR does not lend itself to last click attribution and pretending otherwise damages its credibility internally.
Avoid over relying on:
Raw coverage volume
Share of voice without context
Generic sentiment scores
Last click revenue models
Instead, look for signals that confidence is forming:
Sales referencing coverage in meetings
Increased inbound credibility rather than inbound volume
Faster movement through late-stage objections
Analyst inclusion and citation
Executives being sought out for perspective
PR should be discussed in the language of influence, not performance marketing.
The simple rule to remember
PR in B2B is not about being visible. It is about being believable.
If your PR helps buyers feel safer choosing you and helps sales spend less time proving legitimacy, it is working. If it just fills a coverage report, it is not. Especially if you don’t actually recognise the publications who picked up your press release verbatim.
Call to action
Audit your last six months of PR and ask one hard question.
If a cautious buyer read this, would they feel more confident choosing us?
If the answer is unclear, stop producing more content and fix the narrative first.
Decide what you want to be trusted for.
Ensure your leaders sound consistent.
Prioritize insight over announcements.
Measure confidence, not clicks.
If you want help turning PR into a credibility engine rather than a coverage machine, get in touch and we will introduce you to people who genuinely know what good looks like.
In my experience, most PR underperforms for one simple reason. It is built to generate coverage, not influence.
Press releases go out. Coverage appears. Logos get dropped into decks. Somewhere along the way, teams convince themselves that visibility equals impact.
It does not.
In complex B2B buying, nobody buys because they saw your logo in the trade press. They buy because choosing you feels safe, defensible, and sensible to the people who have to put their names against the decision.
PR only works when it reduces risk. When it does not, it becomes noise.
What PR is actually for in B2B
PR is not about announcements or press releases (I am not even sure journalists read them anymore). It is not about share of voice. It is not about chasing journalists for coverage.
In our world, PR exists to build external credibility that buyers can borrow internally.
When a deal is live, buying group members are quietly asking themselves variations of:
Are these people legitimate?
Do they understand our world?
Have others trusted them before?
Would I look foolish defending this choice internally?
This aligns closely with buying group research from Gartner, which shows that deals stall far more often due to lack of confidence and consensus than lack of information. PR contributes to what Gartner calls sense making. It helps groups align around whether a decision feels safe.
So from that viewpoint, PR is another tool in the arsenal that helps do that job.
PR is not the same as media relations
One reason PR disappoints is because it is often reduced to media relations alone.
It actually includes:
Media commentary
Executive visibility
Analyst relations
Third party validation
Consistent narrative across external touchpoints
Media coverage is just one output. Credibility is the outcome.
You can get plenty of coverage and still be ignored in deals if what you say sounds generic, inconsistent, or self-congratulatory.
Why most B2B PR fails
Most B2B PR fails in predictable ways.
It sounds like marketing
It talks about the company, not the problem
It overclaims and underexplains
It avoids trade-offs and reality
It focuses on announcements that only matter to that firm, rather than insight for anybody else
This is why buyers skim it or ignore it entirely. They are not looking for promotion. They are looking for reassurance.
Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that people trust expertise, transparency, and third-party validation far more than corporate messaging. PR that feels polished but empty actively erodes trust.
What is actually newsworthy in B2B
Most B2B companies are not newsworthy because they exist. They become newsworthy when they help others make sense of change.
What journalists and buyers actually care about:
What is changing in the market?
What is breaking or no longer working?
What leaders are seeing that others are missing?
What trade-offs organizations are facing?
What mistakes are being repeated?
This is why commentary outperforms announcements. Insight travels further than information.
If your PR plan is built around what you want to say rather than what your market is struggling to understand, it will not perform. It simply adds to the plethora of noise that is already out there.
Credibility is built through consistency, not volume
Buyers do not remember one article. They remember patterns.
This is where mental availability matters. Research from the B2B Institute shows that brands grow by being consistently associated with specific problems and outcomes over time.
Effective PR reinforces the same story across:
Executive interviews
Bylined articles
Panel appearances
Analyst commentary
Partner quotes
If each appearance tells a slightly different version of who you are, or if different executives say conflicting things, you are not building credibility, you are creating friction.
Reality check
If your CEO sounds visionary, your CTO sounds tactical, your PR agency sounds promotional, and your sales team sounds defensive, buyers will trust none of them.
How PR actually supports live deals
PR will never close deals directly, of course, but bad PR can lose it.
It can make sales conversations easier.
Good PR helps when:
Prospects already recognize your name
Stakeholders reference your perspective unprompted
Objections sound familiar rather than hostile
Sales spends less time proving legitimacy
This aligns with Forrester guidance on executive thought leadership, which emphasizes that credibility shortens evaluation cycles by reducing perceived risk.
PR works best when sales does not have to explain it.
How to tell if your PR is building credibility
If you want a simple diagnostic, ask these questions:
Would a journalist describe us as experts in one specific thing?
Do our leaders sound consistent across interviews?
Does sales ever forward this coverage without being asked?
Would a cautious buyer feel safer after reading this?
If the answer is no, the issue is not distribution it is a lack of substance.
How to measure PR without pretending attribution
PR does not lend itself to last click attribution and pretending otherwise damages its credibility internally.
Avoid over relying on:
Raw coverage volume
Share of voice without context
Generic sentiment scores
Last click revenue models
Instead, look for signals that confidence is forming:
Sales referencing coverage in meetings
Increased inbound credibility rather than inbound volume
Faster movement through late-stage objections
Analyst inclusion and citation
Executives being sought out for perspective
PR should be discussed in the language of influence, not performance marketing.
The simple rule to remember
PR in B2B is not about being visible. It is about being believable.
If your PR helps buyers feel safer choosing you and helps sales spend less time proving legitimacy, it is working. If it just fills a coverage report, it is not. Especially if you don’t actually recognise the publications who picked up your press release verbatim.
Call to action
Audit your last six months of PR and ask one hard question.
If a cautious buyer read this, would they feel more confident choosing us?
If the answer is unclear, stop producing more content and fix the narrative first.
Decide what you want to be trusted for.
Ensure your leaders sound consistent.
Prioritize insight over announcements.
Measure confidence, not clicks.
If you want help turning PR into a credibility engine rather than a coverage machine, get in touch and we will introduce you to people who genuinely know what good looks like.
Content
Feb 8, 2026
Content
