Marketing budgets are under more scrutiny than at any point in the past decade. Expectations continue to rise with most marketing leaders relaying that they’re being “forced to do more with less”— creating an environment where marketers must justify every decision with measurable impact. Capgemini’s latest research1 underscores this tension, showing that CMOs are being asked to deliver greater returns on budgets that have largely flattened. In this environment, the difference between hitting revenue goals and missing them often comes down to whether a brand has a partner who knows how to stretch every dollar, eliminate waste, and turn previously disjointed tactics into a connected performance engine. This is where Garrison Olson (GO) excels. Consider this scenario: a B2B technology company comes to GO with a lean marketing budget—let’s say 3–5% of annual revenue—and a mandate to increase its qualified lead pipeline. The goal isn’t to chase impressions or boost vanity metrics, but to engineer a modern marketing system that produces immediate wins while investing in longer-term strategies and tactics.

Below, we’ll outline our approach for a fictional data infrastructure company.

1. Lay the Foundation: An SEO System Built for Compounding Returns

Even with a tight budget, SEO is often the most powerful long-term lever a B2B company can pull. Our approach begins with a full technical audit to correct the structural issues that quietly erode performance—slow load times, crawl inefficiencies, non-existent schema, broken internal linking, and content buried too deep for search engines to index. From there, we map all existing content to the terms decision makers actually use at each stage of the funnel. For a B2B brand, that often includes long-tail, high-intent keywords such as “cloud data warehouse for regulated industries,” “ETL automation for financial services teams,” “data governance tooling for enterprise environments,” etc. It all starts with the key terms most likely to net prospects that are exploring new partners and are actively seeking (relevant) solutions to their pain points. Finally, we execute a customized link-building strategy focused exclusively on authoritative placements. No directories or link farms—just reputable outlets, industry publications, analyst sites, and credible thought-leadership channels. Authority compounds over time, and when combined with structural improvements and content relevance, it reduces future reliance on paid media dramatically.

2. Short-Term Wins: PPC Engineered to Minimize Waste

Anyone can spend money on ads; very few truly spend efficiently. Far too many PPC builds cast a wide net around high-volume keywords that may look appealing on paper but produce unqualified traffic and inflated acquisition costs. We flip that thinking on its head. We target long-tail, intent-heavy terms such as “best cloud-native data lakehouse for enterprise teams,” “SOC 2-compliant data storage solution,” and “data warehouse migration support for Fortune 500 IT teams.” Search volume is lower, but every click counts — capturing searchers with a genuine business problem that the client’s solution solves. From there, the work becomes surgical: daily pruning of terms that aren’t converting, driving meticulous negative keyword expansion, bid adjustments around real buying signals, and geographic refinement to eliminate underperforming regions and eliminate waste from irrelevant countries. The output is a PPC program with minimal ad leakage and maximum revenue contribution—delivering sales-qualified-ready leads without burning precious budget.

3. Mid-Term Acceleration: ABM-Driven Programmatic and LinkedIn

Organic and PPC drive discovery. ABM drives awareness and hyper-targeted funnel progression. We build micro-targeted audiences using CRM data, job titles, job functions, seniority, industry, and account-level signals, then serve message variants crafted around the real operational challenges your prospects face — in this “client” example: latency issues, governance gaps, cloud complexity, cost-to-compute, or compliance requirements. When each impression hits a person who actually owns the problem, lean budgets suddenly behave like larger ones. ABM becomes the connective tissue that turns early curiosity into meaningful movement down the funnel.

4. Maximize Visibility Through Smart Pixeling and Always-On Retargeting

We deploy pixels only where intent is highest — think: product pages, case studies, relevant blogs, and high-value solution pages. Programmatic and Performance Max then retarget these visitors with content aligned to what they’ve viewed—low-cost touches that maintain visibility throughout the entire marketing cycle. With impressions effectively free, this becomes one of the highest-ROI plays in a constrained-budget environment.

5. Pull Back Paid Spend as Organic Strengthens

As organic rankings improve across key terms, we intentionally dial back paid spend on those same queries. Most agencies don’t do this—they benefit when PPC budgets stay inflated. We do the opposite. Because GO never takes a percentage of ad spend (for any channel), we reduce paid coverage where organic has taken hold and reinvest those savings into higher-ROI channels. Over time, this shifts the cost structure of the entire digital engine, allowing the same budget to work harder and cover more ground.

Think Omnichannel Marketing Is Only for B2C? Think Again.

B2B buyers behave like consumers. They skim. They compare. They follow nonlinear paths across dozens of touchpoints. And they read personal editorial publications where digital ads can follow them. Capgemini’s research reinforces this reality: marketing today functions as a system, not a set of independent channels. A cohesive omnichannel strategy should never be reserved for consumer brands—it’s a modern-day requirement for any B2B organization competing for elusive attention. When SEO, PPC, ABM, and retargeting all reinforce one another, even small budgets deliver enterprise-grade budget impact. That’s the environment Garrison Olson builds for its B2B clients.

Ready to Build a Smarter Engine for 2026?

Budgets are limited. Expectations aren’t. But with a partner who understands how to build a connected, compounding digital machine—not fragmented tactics—your dollars will go significantly further. If your B2B organization is ready to drive short-term leads, strategic mid-term pipelines, and lasting momentum, we’d love to show you what’s possible.

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, From Complexity to Clarity: How CMOs Can Reclaim Marketing to Build Competitive Edge (2025).