Fractional / Strategic Sprints

Marketing direction for B2B tech companies that outgrew their marketing team.

Most 50–500 person B2B tech and IT services companies don't have a marketing problem. They have a judgment problem dressed as a resourcing problem. I sit beside the team you already have, decide what to stop doing, and own the four or five things that actually compound.

Book a call See the work

The diagnosis

What's broken in B2B marketing at 50–500 person tech and IT services companies.

The pattern repeats. A CEO restructures sales, a marketing director gets a vague brief to "drive interest," and the team underneath inherits a budget that won't outspend competitors and a homepage they can't change. The result is a stack of campaigns that produce activity but no compounding asset. Four failure modes recur.

Strategy is outsourced to the agency.

The agency does the thinking, the in-house team does coordination. Positioning gets reduced to a brief, then to a deck, then to a campaign that ratifies decisions no one is willing to defend in public.

Content production is disconnected from positioning.

Ten small assets get made when one large one would carry the year. Pillar pages, video, testimonials, paid all run on different narratives. Nothing compounds because nothing repeats.

AI workflows are bolted on without judgment.

Tools get adopted because a vendor demoed them, not because they remove a real bottleneck. Output volume goes up. Quality goes down. The operator spends more time editing than thinking.

The team is busy. No one is deciding what to stop.

Every quarter brings a new portfolio focus. The discipline of refusal — what to kill, what to not produce, what to say no to — is the move that frees the budget. It almost never happens without an outside voice.

What I build

Two ways in. Both end with you owning the system, not me.

Strategic Sprint

Positioning audit, funnel diagnosis, 90-day roadmap.

2–3 weeks · €3K–5K

For teams that suspect the strategy is wrong but can't name where. I sit with sales, marketing, and the founder, audit the four positioning questions, diagnose where the funnel is actually leaking, and deliver a roadmap your team can execute without me.

  • Positioning audit (the four questions, where you stop short)
  • Funnel diagnosis (which stage is structurally missing assets)
  • 90-day roadmap with named priorities and what to kill
  • One working session with the team to install it
Fractional Engagement

Strategic direction, content oversight, AI workflows, async-first.

2–6 month minimum · €3.5K–6K/month

For teams with a junior or mid-level marketer who needs an operator above them, not another agency beside them. I direct strategy, review production, install AI workflows your team will actually keep using, and stay accountable to a small number of compounding outcomes.

  • Quarterly strategy and 30-day priority resets
  • Content oversight: brief, review, kill, keep
  • AI workflow design (Claude, n8n, custom) tied to real bottlenecks
  • Async-first: weekly Loom, one live call, no meeting tax

Selected work

Three engagements. Same operator move: install the asset that compounds.

Case 01 · Econocom Belux · 2019–2024

Building the acquisition stack from zero, one marketer against 45 sales.

No SEO, no nurturing, no funnel architecture, no video, no positioning. Only partner MDFs tied to partner narratives. Two and a half years later, Belgium was the most marketing-mature country in the Econocom group.

Every quarter Hilde, the Marketing Director, came to me with a different portfolio focus. The surface ask was always "run a campaign." The structural problem underneath: no campaign could compound in our conditions. We were a reseller outspent by every competitor, and the homepage value proposition was something I couldn't move. Direct-response lead generation at our budget was a losing trade.

The only viable play was to install positioning into the surfaces I did control — pillar pages, lead nurture, video, sales-attack ammunition — and use every quarterly campaign as cover to install another permanent piece. Tactics consume. Durable assets compound.

Build marketing as account-attack ammunition for sales, not as inbound volume. Most marketers in my seat would have run the partner-branded campaign, hit the MDF reporting, moved on. I delivered the campaign and used partner money to install assets that paid Econocom forward. Underneath that: recruit sales 1:1 as co-builders, not as an audience to convince. Work with the reps who lean in. Let results pull the rest along.

A pillar page per portfolio (CYOD, Plan Cafetaria, refurbishing, leasing) became the gravity well for every channel. LinkedIn ads, outbound email, lead nurture, and organic search all pointed to one long-form destination covering every funnel stage and persona. Hero assets compounded across surfaces. The testimonial shot with Belfius in December 2023 ran across the pillar page, lead nurture, LinkedIn social selling, the Plan Cafetaria campaign, and the Veolia attack the year after.

Thank-you pages became cross-sell real estate, not dead ends. Social selling was built as a sales-rep extension: approved target lists, LinkedIn outreach run from the rep's own account, handed off only on engagement. Sales enablement was 20 LinkedIn posts from existing content for every rep who leaned in. I refused lead scoring. Our volume was too low for it to be meaningful. France adopted the HubSpot portal as their internal reference.

"In a crowded market with a small budget, the discipline of refusal did more for the system than the discipline of producing."

By 2022, Belgium was the most marketing-mature country in the Econocom group. France adopted the website and HubSpot architecture as their internal reference. The Belfius testimonial was nominated for Apple's best marketing video across Benelux in 2024. The Eutraco testimonial, spread across social, led directly into the CEO-to-CEO meeting that produced a multi-year, multi-million-euro deal.

Find the one asset with disproportionate leverage and 10x it. Build brand and demand upstream of the buyer entering the market — trust earned before the shopping starts, not conversion tactics once it has. Recruit sales 1:1, not in groups. The 1:1 move isn't needed in companies where sales and marketing are already culturally aligned; in every other case it is the bottleneck.

#1–3 SEO
Pillar page rankings, four portfolios
+250%
Time-on-page, Apple & CYOD pillars
Multi-million
Eutraco deal opened by testimonial work
Case 02 · Econocom Refurbishing · 2023–2025

Built an ICT refurbishing buyback funnel on €10K of ad hoc spend.

CSRD made CO2 reporting a procurement requirement. Most competitors led with values. I led with cash. One marketer, one motion design video, two pillar pages.

Reading the buyer correctly mattered more than reading the regulation. B2B refurbishing wasn't a values purchase. It was a compliance-and-balance-sheet purchase wearing sustainability clothing. CSRD made CO2 reporting a procurement requirement, not a passion. Most companies had dormant value sitting in IT closets nobody had bothered to liquidate. Two motivations met in the same buying decision, and neither was moral. The real competition wasn't other refurbishing vendors. It was inertia.

Most refurbishing campaigns in 2023 led with sustainability. I inverted: "votre matériel ICT vaut de l'argent." Up to €600 per laptop, €700 per smartphone, €2000 per server. Sustainability rode shotgun.

Two cross-linked pillar pages (buyback as entry, purchase as cross-sell). Both ranked top 3 in Belgian organic search within months. A motion design video, scripted after I interviewed the refurbishing director — two cuts (long for awareness, short for lead gen), EN and FR. The video lived on the pillar pages, in a 3-email post-opt-in nurture, in LinkedIn organic, and in paid ads. A "Demande d'estimation" CTA with a 2-question qualifying form auto-routed via HubSpot to the portfolio director.

Credibility was installed in artifacts, not adjectives: Grade A/B/C/D classification with photos, the 7-step circular framework, Green Deal partner badge dated 2017, INR/ISIT signature, a stats card (95% reconditionable, 25,000 devices, 97% client satisfaction). Hilde sat on the page as Circular Economy Expert, not as Marketing Director. The Nivelles school story (€20K recovered on 150 iPads) proved Apple residual value and named education as a credible segment.

Belgium adopted as the Econocom group's refurbishing marketing reference. No external press, no awards. The signal was commercial. One honest miss: I expected the buyback funnel to produce large or recurring enterprise RFPs. It didn't. Buyback inbound generates transactional SQLs. Enterprise RFPs need a separate ABM motion.

Lead with the buyer's commercial motivation, not the regulatory backdrop. Compliance and ESG ratify decisions. Cash and ROI initiate them. One asset can carry a category — script discipline and asset reuse beat content budget. In a new category, the competition is often inertia, not other vendors. The "lead with cash" play needs an asset the buyer can monetize (buyback, energy savings, fleet liquidation); it doesn't apply when there's no clear recovery angle.

130+ SQLs
Over two years, ~70% closed
~90 deals
Closed buyback transactions
#1–3 SEO
Matériel reconditionné, rachat matériel
Case 03 · Econocom × Belfius · 2023–2024

One shoot day. Five surfaces. The BOFU asset that helped close Veolia.

The system had TOFU and MOFU coverage and no peer-proof asset to close. A conservative regulated bank running Macs in flexible comp was the artifact that punctured every common objection at once.

The system didn't need more content. It needed the layer that could close. Plan Cafetaria buyers in Belgian B2B don't move on tax math or hardware specs. They move on names they recognize, used by institutions whose risk aversion mirrors their own. A conservative regulated bank running Macs in flexible compensation was the artifact that punctured every common objection at once: if Belfius can, your CFO can stop saying we can't. The asset had to deploy across five surfaces, designed for that from day one.

Build the missing BOFU asset, not more TOFU or MOFU. Most marketers in my seat would have spent the €10K Apple MDF on LinkedIn ads with generic Mac in Business messaging and a short written case study. I redirected: take part of the MDF to amortize the in-house video gear I'd bought in 2022, produce one in-house testimonial with Belfius, designed from day one for multi-surface deployment, captured mid-rollout when the client was happy and cooperative.

"Single shoot day. No reshoot. I wrote the questions and the story arc designed for the cuts before the camera rolled. Production discipline beats post-hoc repurposing."

A single video, fully in-house. I wrote the questions and the story arc, designed for the cuts. Hilde interviewed Jos Vanschoenwinkel (Reward Manager) and Ine van de Vaerd (Reward Expert). I shot in Belfius offices in December 2023 and used Ine as the B-roll character, following her through her work to carry the narrative thread. Camera, B-roll, edit, color grade, deployment: solo. Two language cuts (NL and FR). A companion text testimonial drafted after the shoot, for sales who prefer text and internal sharing. The rollout was sequenced: pillar page first, then LinkedIn organic and internal share, then LinkedIn paid, then outreach. The asset was positioned where it could earn trust before it had to convert.

Throughout 2024 the video became a key piece of content in the Plan Cafetaria campaign and outreach sequences, including the one that helped close the Veolia deal. Sales mentioned it in pitch meetings beyond Veolia, contributing peer-proof to conversations across the portfolio.

Diagnose the funnel stage gap, not the content gap. BOFU peer proof is the most often-missing layer in B2B. Pick the most conservative subject available in your category — the subject's risk aversion is itself the message. Design for multi-surface deployment from day one: script, edit, cuts, languages, rollout sequence decided before the camera rolls.

Apple Benelux nom.
Best marketing video, 2024
5 surfaces
From one shoot day, two languages
40% open rate
Plan Cafetaria nurture sequence

Operator credibility

Ten years inside companies, not beside them.

We became the best in class for our corporate website and LinkedIn content across the Econocom countries. Your remarkable ability to transform our messages into content that truly resonates with our customers at every stage of the funnel. Hilde Janssens · Marketing, Communications & CSR Director, Econocom Belux
  • 10+ years in B2B and corporate marketing — Econocom, fintech, enterprise portfolios.
  • Apple AAER and IBM partner program literacy: MDF mechanics, partner co-marketing, accreditation pressure.
  • Built Belgium's #1 marketing-mature country in the Econocom group (adopted as France's internal reference).
  • End-to-end: positioning, pillar pages, video production (in-house), HubSpot architecture, LinkedIn paid + organic, sales enablement.
  • Operator, not consultant. The work I do gets shipped under your roof, not delivered as a deck and handed off.

Who this is not for

Honest exclusion set.

  • Companies under 30 people or pre-product-market-fit. The work I do compounds; you need something that converts.
  • Teams hiring an agency to "own marketing." I sit beside your team. I don't replace it.
  • Founders who want a content machine without making positioning decisions. The machine without the decisions produces noise.
  • B2C, e-commerce, or consumer brand work. Adjacent skills, wrong reps. I'd be a worse choice than someone who has lived in your buyer's head.

FAQ

What B2B buyers ask before signing.

Two layers. The first 30 days: a written diagnosis of where the funnel is structurally leaking, with named priorities. You'll know it's working because your team stops being busy on the wrong things. The second layer: every 90 days, a small number of compounding outcomes — a pillar page ranking, a peer-proof asset deployed across surfaces, a sales enablement loop your reps actually use. If those don't show by month three of a fractional engagement, the engagement ends.

Yes, and it's the same risk you carry with any senior hire. Two things mitigate it. One: I write everything down. Strategy docs, briefs, decision logs, AI workflows — built so your team can run the system if I disappear. Two: I work above your existing marketer or content lead, not instead of them. The point is to leave you stronger, not more dependent.

An agency sells you a scope, a team, and a retainer. The strategic judgment lives in a senior person you rarely see; the day-to-day lives with juniors who don't know your business. I sit at the strategic layer and stay close to execution. One operator, no hand-offs, no scope translation loss. I'm not always the right answer — if you genuinely need a 12-person production team and don't have one in-house, hire the agency. If you need the strategic layer the agency under-delivers on, hire me.

I've shipped all of it under constraint — LinkedIn paid, SEO pillar pages, lead nurture, in-house video, HubSpot ops, social selling enablement. But that's not the engagement. The engagement is judgment about which of those to invest in, when, and what to kill so the remaining work compounds. If you need a specialist to execute one channel, you don't need me. You need a specialist.

Thirty minutes. No pitch deck, no discovery script. I ask three questions about your sales motion, your current marketing output, and what you've already tried. By the end of the call you'll either have a clear next step or a clean "this isn't the right fit, here's who is." The filter runs both directions.

Next step

Thirty minutes. Either we work together or we don't.

If you're a B2B tech or IT services company between 50 and 500 people, with a marketing team that's busy but not compounding, send a note. I'll come back within 48 hours with whether this looks like a fit and what the first call would cover.

Book a call Or reach me on LinkedIn