The Quiet Shift: How B2B Teams are Winning Post-SEO
B2B Marketing with Dave Gerhardt
Intro
This chapter explores the hurdles faced by B2B marketers in today's budget-constrained landscape and emphasizes the benefits of using Webflow for more efficient marketing strategies. A seasoned guest shares valuable insights on the current dynamics of the B2B marketing industry.
#242: Content Strategy | In this episode, Danielle sits down with Brendan Hufford, founder of Growth Sprints, to talk about what actually works in content and SEO today and why most B2B strategies are broken. Brendan went from high school teacher to leading content at top SaaS companies, and now helps brands move faster and build content strategies that drive real impact.
They cover:
- Why most SEO strategies are broken - and why retainers make it worse
- The content checklist that took ActiveCampaign from 200K to 240K visitors in 30 days
- Why the most lucrative SEO opportunities are hiding in plain sight
- Brendan’s "immortal newsletter" framework that cuts production time in half while doubling engagement
Plus, check out the checklist Brendan mentioned in this episode here!
Timestamps
- (00:00) - – Intro to Brendan
- (04:56) - – Lessons from teaching that apply directly to marketing
- (07:56) - – Why Brendan left education and entered the B2B world
- (09:26) - – Early agency and in-house marketing experience
- (11:11) - – Building a defensible career: audience, trust, and network
- (13:31) - – The Growth Sprints model: why retainers don’t make sense
- (14:41) - – Content strategy in bets, not buckets
- (15:56) - – Why SEO still works and where it actually drives results
- (17:26) - – Getting deep on audience, product, and internal dynamics
- (19:41) - – What marketers get wrong about internal buy-in
- (21:41) - – Real example: what a content sprint looks like in practice
- (23:11) - – The power of internal linking and content refreshes
- (26:19) - – How Google views internal linking and user signals
- (29:19) - – Why technical SEO is often overrated
- (32:19) - – Brendan’s hot take: most SEOs aren’t marketers
- (33:49) - – Why the “SEO takes 6 months” narrative is flawed
- (35:49) - – The problem with traditional retainers and content brief models
- (37:19) - – The immortal newsletter: how to mix evergreen + ephemeral content
- (40:19) - – Naming the problem, not just the category
- (41:49) - – Content should do 3–5 jobs at once: how to prioritize impact
- (44:19) - – The real value of competitor and alternatives pages
- (46:49) - – How to make content more useful for sales and buyer enablement
- (48:19) - – Brendan’s final mindset shift: create content that earns its keep
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This episode is brought to you by Webflow.
If you're a B2B marketer right now, you’re probably being asked to do more with less - less budget, fewer resources, tighter timelines. And you’re expected to somehow grow pipeline anyway.
That’s why more teams are switching to Webflow.
Webflow is the website experience platform that helps you consolidate your stack, reduce program spend, and move faster. Instead of juggling a dozen tools and waiting on devs, Webflow gives marketing and design teams the power to build, launch, and optimize sites all in one place.
No-code flexibility. Dev-level control. Built-in A/B testing, SEO, localization, and AI tools. It’s everything you need to turn your website into your highest-performing channel.
It’s everything you need to turn your website into your most efficient, highest-performing channel.
Check it out at webflow.com/exitfive.
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