How to Build Visibility and Sales From Scratch? Choosing Marketing Channels for Your Business Model

• The choice of communication channels has to follow directly from how the company operates. Factors such as the length of the decision making process, the existence of active demand, the value of a single transaction and seasonality determine the entire structure of the sales funnel and decide whether investing in specific activities makes sense.
• The strategy has to combine activities that generate immediate leads with building brand awareness. Budget proportions (for example 70/30) are not fixed, though: they change depending on the company’s growth stage, market maturity, and whether the brand responds to existing demand or still has to create it.
• In B2B, the fight for the customer takes place long before any contact with sales: as many as 95% of buying teams have a ready list of vendors under consideration before official conversations even begin. This requires B2B brands to have a strong presence at the early education and research stage (through SEO, expert content and on LinkedIn).
• Because customers increasingly use artificial intelligence to verify and compare vendors, building organic visibility has to be expanded. Optimization for generative answers in search engines (GEO) and presence in the recommendations of language models themselves (AISO) are becoming essential.

The starting point for building a communication strategy should be the business model. It is worth moving on to the choice of specific channels only later, once the key areas of how the business operates have been defined. Whether a company sells a physical product, a service, a subscription model, or delivers complex projects defines the entire structure of the sales funnel and determines the shape of the planned digital strategy.

• Analyzing the purchase process and consumer behavior
  

First, it is worth establishing whether active demand already exists on the market and whether customers are searching for a solution themselves. If they are, this strengthens the case for investing in SEO, GEO and paid campaigns. If the product is an innovative solution instead, more attention will have to go into building awareness, for example through a presence on industry portals or in social media.

Just as important is the length of the decision making process, which for B2B businesses can stretch to several months. The time a customer takes to make a decision defines the role of activities such as content marketing, email marketing or optimization for AI (AISO). When processes are extended, presence at every stage of the customer journey becomes especially important.

• Local reach and seasonality
  

If the business is built on acquiring customers locally, this will call for a local SEO strategy and a focus on presence in local industry media. Seasonality, in turn, may affect how budgets are spread over time and how campaigns are planned in line with the natural sales cycle.

• The sales process
  

The way a transaction is finalized, whether it happens entirely online or requires a sales representative, defines the role of CRM systems and the methodology for optimizing these activities. It determines whether the job of the marketing channels is to lead to an immediate purchase or to generate a qualified lead for further negotiations.

A communication strategy for a new business should rest on two pillars: building reach and brand recognition, and generating sales.

Brand building activities

A brand building strategy is based above all on creating recognition, trust and reputation. These activities decide whether the customer will consider the brand in their decision making process and whether they will see the company as credible and authentic.

Such activities usually include:

• Campaigns in traditional media: radio, press, television, for brands with a larger budget and a planned mass reach.
• e-PR: for brands that want to build their image mainly online. E-PR activities help take care of brand consistency, sentiment toward the brand, and presence in industry media.
• OOH: outdoor advertising in public spaces, for example advertising banners, billboards, posters at bus stops.
• Social media: activities in social media may include creating your own educational materials on YouTube, investing in reach campaigns on social platforms, or collaborating with influencers.
• Content marketing: creating informational content supports building an expert brand image.
• AISO: activities connected with brand presence in the recommendations of LLM models help reach customers at the stage of researching a solution. More and more customers compare vendors with the help of AI, and a well designed AISO strategy helps the brand reach users during that process.

Many brands do not dedicate any budget to brand building in the early stage, focusing instead on activities meant to lead directly to sales. Analyses of the effectiveness of brand campaigns show, however, that consistent brand building can influence sales as well. In one of the cases awarded by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, McCain’s 9 year brand building strategy increased base sales by as much as 44% and generated 26 million pounds in additional net profit. This shows that a well thought out branding strategy can bring long term benefits in the context of conversion too.

Performance

A performance strategy usually focuses on closing the conversion process, for example on the customer making a purchase, filling in a form, making a phone call, downloading an offer or booking a visit at a location.

Performance campaigns may involve:

• Google Ads campaigns: ads for products and services in search and on sites in the Google Display Network. They can cover both standard ads and remarketing.
• Microsoft Ads campaigns: similar to Google Ads campaigns, except within the Bing search ecosystem. Campaigns like these will be effective especially for businesses in the B2B sector (learn more: Why B2B and E-commerce Need to Pay Attention to Microsoft Ads).
• Meta Ads campaigns: advertising activities within Meta’s social platforms (Facebook and Instagram).
• SEO: ranking product, category and service pages in order to reach the customer and increase conversion on keywords with purchase intent.
• Email marketing campaigns: newsletters and messages with a clear CTA that encourage conversion.

How to split the budget?

The percentage split of the budget between brand building and performance should change along with the company’s growth stage, the season, sales results, brand recognition and the level of existing demand. In the table below we have prepared a few examples of how a company can divide its budget depending on the business situation:

How does the split change over time?

Generalizing the budget split by brand growth stage, you can plan roughly the following values:

A company entering a mature market with demand already created can focus on closing transactions with the help of performance activities. For brands creating a new service or entering a completely new market, brand building activities such as education, generating reach or building recognition will be a higher priority.

A marketing strategy requires full awareness of what results can be expected from specific channels and tools, and in what time frame. Once a brand has established the optimal budget split between brand campaigns and performance activities, it can move on to choosing the right channels. The overview below organizes the most important of them, indicating their main role, their potential in both areas, and the expected durability of the effect.

Depending on the stage of the purchase process, reaching the customer will require different communication channels:

• Discovering the need and building interest
  

To create a need, traditional media such as radio or television will work well, along with outdoor advertising, social media content and PR activities. The next step is familiarizing the user with the available solutions, and here SEO and GEO will do the job (building visibility for informational keywords around products and services), as well as video formats on social media, YouTube in particular.

• Active research, comparisons and brand verification
  

Once a potential customer knows what they are looking for, they start actively researching the available vendors, products and companies. In this phase the most effective channels will be SEO, AISO, and industry portals with reviews and rankings. It is also worth taking care of positive brand reviews, because at the verification stage the customer will pay attention to them and will trust the company that has positive reviews in many places. In terms of paid campaigns, remarketing activities will also work well at this stage.

• Purchase or contact form submission
  

For acquiring a customer and driving conversion, the most effective elements are specific CTAs and visibility for keywords with purchase intent. Here, local SEO will work for companies operating in a specific area, SEO for transactional keywords in the case of e-commerce, and paid campaigns on the same keywords, both in Google search and in social media.

E commerce

For e-commerce businesses, the greatest impact on generating conversions will come above all from properly preparing the store itself. If the information on the product page is unclear to the user, conversion will not happen, even if the customer lands on the site and traffic acquisition is effective. That is why, to begin with, e-commerce brands should take care of:

• A consistent product feed on the store site and in Google Merchant Center,
• Visible information about product availability and price (including the requirements of the Omnibus Directive),
• Clear delivery and return terms,
• Implementation of structured data (schema).

When it comes to the choice of marketing channels, the three most effective ones will be paid product campaigns in search, SEO for both products and categories, and social media advertising along with a presence in TikTok Shop (depending on the industry).

Local services

For local businesses, the crucial elements will be building visibility for keywords with local intent using local SEO, taking care of reviews, actively managing and optimizing the Google Business Profile listing, having the company present in Google Maps, and placing information about the service area along with a location map on the site. Depending on the industry, it is also worth budgeting for articles and mentions in local media, such as online portals or radio.

B2B

In the case of B2B businesses we are dealing with a distinctive decision making model that can last several months. In practice, the decision to choose a specific vendor may be made by the customer long before the first contact. A 2025 study by 6sense, conducted on a group of around 4,000 B2B customers, shows that as many as 95% of buying teams already have a ready list of vendors under consideration after the research stage, from which they later choose, and 94% of them also establish a preferred order of companies at that stage, before official conversations begin.

This means that B2B brand marketing has to be present already at the stage of research, comparison and knowledge building, long before the lead reaches the CRM. That is why, in the initial phase of building visibility, it is worth focusing on SEO and content, on creating expert materials, case studies and use cases. For niche industries, LinkedIn and social selling will also be effective, along with AISO, especially in the context of appearing in comparisons and recommendations generated by AI tools.

Stage 1. Build the foundation

The first activities you undertake should cover above all the answers to questions about defining customer groups, the operating model and the planned way of acquiring customers. On this basis, the site architecture, tone of voice and analytics should be planned, so that from the very beginning you can effectively measure the elements of your communication. It is also worth configuring and preparing the CRM at this stage. In terms of choosing marketing tools, you can start with optimizing technical SEO aspects, local SEO and building valuable expert content.

Stage 2. Capture existing demand

In the next step it is worth launching:

• Google Search Ads,
• Shopping Ads,
• industry portals,
• marketplaces,
• local campaigns,
• Meta Lead Ads,
• remarketing,
• brand campaigns.

These activities will allow you to gather information about demand, will give you the first insights into the customer acquisition cost and lead quality, and will also let you preliminarily identify the highest converting campaigns and segments.

Stage 3. Develop brand and reach

In the next stage it is worth focusing more strongly on brand building activities. According to research conducted by the Content Media Institute, the most effective formats for B2B companies include video (58%), case studies and customer stories (53%), ebooks (45%) and proprietary reports (45%). Beyond creating content, this is also a good moment to strengthen the budget for e-PR activities.

Source: Content Marketing Institute

Stage 4. Scale SEO, GEO and AISO

In the following steps it is worth focusing on scaling SEO, GEO and AISO activities, in order to reach the customer at every stage of the purchase decision. All of the channels mentioned complement each other perfectly.

Learn more: GEO vs. AISO: What is the Difference Between AI Optimization Strategies?

Stage 5. Connect marketing with sales

An effective marketing strategy requires building a data based bridge between the customer acquisition channels and the final closing of the transaction. At this stage it is worth connecting the data in CRM systems with campaign analytics tools. Such an integration allows for better measurement of the effectiveness of individual channels and gives insights for later optimization and budget adjustments.

The key to the effectiveness of a marketing strategy for a new business is evaluating the activities you have implemented and measuring their effectiveness, and, if necessary, adjusting and shifting budgets away from ineffective channels. Below we have prepared sets of KPIs worth monitoring for both types of activities:

Wskaźniki wizerunkowe Brand metrics

Performance metrics

Measuring the effectiveness of a brand built from scratch requires well thought out analytics and reporting that covers the results of both brand and sales activities. The metrics above will allow you to make decisions based on a Data Insights approach.

We have prepared our own tool, the Media Mix barometer, which, based on a short survey about your business, suggests which marketing channels will be the most effective and how to split the budget between branding and performance: