How to build a B2B traffic strategy

An entrepreneur asked me recently, “Do you think €1,500 a month for SEO is a good idea?” It’s a fair question. But it’s the wrong one.

The right question is: "which channel is most likely to generate profitable growth, based on my goals, my audience, and my economics?"

That’s the decision this guide is built to help you make. This is a guide for decision-makers. People responsible for choosing where the money goes — and for making that money come back. It’s not about tactics. It’s about sequencing a few key decisions so that traffic becomes scalable, repeatable, and profitable.

I wrote this because too many founders, marketers, and commercial leads are forced into the wrong starting point. They feel the pressure to ‘just start somewhere’ — so they pick a channel, launch a few campaigns, and hope something sticks. And when it doesn’t, they add another channel. And another. Until they’re spread across six tactics, with no clarity on what’s actually working and no time to fix it.

There are three questions you need to answer:

1. ‍What are your growth goals — and what can you afford to spend to hit them?
   Before you do anything, you need to understand your traffic economics. That means working out how much revenue you make per session, what your conversion rates need to be, and what your maximum cost per lead can be. Most companies don’t answer this — and that’s exactly why their traffic strategy doesn’t work.
2. ‍Who exactly are you targeting — and how specific do you need to be to make traffic convert?
   You can’t optimise anything until you know who you’re speaking to. In the early stages, specificity is your friend: tighter targeting usually means higher CTR and better conversion. That gives you more throughput to test your funnel and improve your economics — so you can later afford broader campaigns. You’ll learn how to weigh the trade-offs between narrow and broad audiences, and how to find the right level of focus.
3. ‍Which acquisition channel gives you the highest chance of working now — based on your audience, offer and goals?
   Every channel can work. But not all of them will work for you right now. You’ll walk through how to choose the best channel for your current constraints, how to sequence your bets, and when to layer in new channels once the first one is working.

That’s what this guide helps you do. It gives you a framework to cut through noise, reduce complexity, and make smart growth decisions in the right order — so your traffic turns into results.

Spray and pray does not work‍

Running multiple channels in parallel without a clear economic model is the fastest way to waste your budget. Complexity compounds, and when everything is broken, you can't see which lever to pull. The goal is not ‘more traffic’ — the goal is profitable, scalable acquisition. And that starts with focus.

Channel selection is not an experiment

‍Experiments happen within a channel. Choosing the channel itself is a strategic decision. You can test copy, targeting, pricing — but if you’re changing channels every few weeks, you’ll never get the data you need to optimise. Choose one, commit to learning, and push until it works (or until the economics say it can’t). Running multiple channels without a clear model is how complexity compounds. It’s also how budgets vanish. Growth starts when you reduce surface area.

Start narrow to move fast

The tighter your audience and message, the faster you can learn. High CTR unlocks throughput. Throughput unlocks insight. Insight unlocks profit.

Every channel starts in the red

No channel is profitable from day one. But if you give one your full attention, you can turn it around faster — and build from there.

Keep reading to dive into each decision. Each chapter gives you a framework to answer one of these questions, with examples and templates to help you make the strategy your own.