Intelligence Hub
Research, methodology, and the thinking behind the work
No theory and no recycled trend pieces. Just what is actually working in B2B marketing, written by someone who builds the data, sends the campaigns and makes the calls.
Featured
Featured articles
How a one-person agency outbuilds a ten-person one
The advantage is not effort, it is leverage. AI carries the routine load and a senior person keeps the judgement. Here is how a specialist-network model delivers agency-grade work without the agency overhead, and where the line is drawn.
ReadWhat AI says about your business, and why your Google ranking no longer tells the whole story
ReadWhy most cold email fails, and what a predictable pipeline actually takes in 2026
ReadAll articles
llms.txt explained: the one file most B2B sites are missing
A plain text file at the root of your website that tells AI assistants who you are and where the important pages live, and most businesses have never heard of it.
ReadWhat to automate, and what to never automate, in your marketing
Automation should carry the routine load so a person's judgement goes where it actually matters, not replace the judgement itself.
ReadWhy your cold email list is quietly wrecking your deliverability
A bounce-heavy list does not just fail to deliver, it teaches inbox providers to distrust everything you send afterwards, including to people who actually want to hear from you.
ReadThe five questions to ask ChatGPT about your own business
Most business owners have never asked an AI assistant what it knows about them, and the answer usually reveals more than a Google search ever would.
Read
What Your Marketing Agency Isn't Telling You
Agency strategies built from templates, retainers that quiet down by month three, and reports full of vanity metrics. Here's what to ask for honest answers.
Read
The Satellite Strategy: How One Client Became Six Markets Overnight
One website competing across six sectors loses to specialists every time. Here's how a business brokerage became six separate, sector-specific brands.
Read
How We Use AI (Honestly)
AA2 uses AI for roughly 60% of its operational work. Here's an honest account of where it earns its keep, where it fails, and what a human handles every time.
Read
The Telemarketer's Secret: Why Your Best Salesperson Might Be Someone Else's Voice
The caller matters more than the script. Here's what separates effective outsourced B2B calling from the kind that gives telemarketing its reputation problem.
Read
Automation Without Strategy Is Just Faster Chaos
Automating before the strategy is clear doesn't speed things up, it scales mistakes. Why getting the thinking right has to come before the wiring.
Read
The One-Person Agency Model: How AI Changed Everything
Two years ago, if you'd told me that a single person could run data builds for a seal manufacturer, email campaigns for a print provider, telemarketing...
Read
Your Prospect Data Is a Product. Start Treating It Like One.
Prospect databases decay at 25 to 30% per year. Treating data as an ongoing asset, not a one-time purchase, changes what's possible from every campaign you run.
Read
The Year in B2B Marketing: What Actually Worked in 2025
Twelve months ago, in this publication's December 2024 issue, I made four predictions for the year ahead.
Read
2026 Predictions: The Year the Small Business Catches Up
Last December I published predictions for 2025 and graded myself honestly in last month's retrospective.
Read
Why I Fired Our Email Platform (And What Replaced It)
Inconsistent deliverability led to a switch from a shared email platform to dedicated infrastructure. Here's what changed and who should consider the same move.
Read
Writing for Robots: How to Make Your Content LLM-Ready
AI search tools pick sources based on structure and authority. Here's how to get your B2B content cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews.
Read
The Dashboard Revolution (And Why PDF Reports Should Be Illegal)
Monthly PDF reports arrive weeks late and let agencies shape the story. A live dashboard is more honest. Here's why agencies rarely offer one.
Read
AI Agents Are Coming for Your Marketing Agency (Including Mine)
AI agents are executing real marketing work right now. Here's what they do well, what they cannot replace, and why lean agencies are best placed to benefit.
Read
The BADR Clock Is Ticking: What It Means for Business Owners Thinking About Selling
BADR rises from 10% to 14% in April 2026. For business owners thinking about a sale, the 12-18 month transaction timeline means the window is already tight.
Read
What I Learned From Sending 50,000 Cold Emails
Fifty thousand cold emails produced clear patterns. Short subject lines, no links in email one, a real sender name, and Tuesday mornings consistently win.
Read
The CRM Nobody Uses (And How to Fix It in a Week)
Every business has a CRM and almost none use it properly. Here's how to fix that in a week without a consultant or a six-month change management programme.
Read
Small Business Marketing Budgets: Where the Money Actually Goes
Most B2B marketing budgets are split the wrong way. Here's how the spending should actually be divided and what returns look like by month six.
Read
The White Paper Is Not Dead. You're Just Doing It Wrong.
Most white papers are brochures in disguise. A genuine one, built from original data, fuels a year of campaigns. Here's what that process actually looks like.
Read
Your Competitors Stopped Cold Calling. That's Your Advantage.
Roughly 73% of B2B sales teams reduced or eliminated cold calling from their outreach strategy between 2020 and 2024.
Read
Content That Gets Saved, Not Just Liked
LinkedIn now weights saves more heavily than likes, which changes what content is worth making. The formats that earn saves, and why utility beats performance.
Read
Data Ownership in 2025: You Either Build It or You Rent It
Data subscriptions keep rising while contacts decay. For most UK SMEs, building a verified prospect database from public sources makes more financial sense.
Read
The Automation Paradox: Why More Tools Often Mean Less Pipeline
More tools rarely mean a better pipeline. They usually mean more time moving data between systems that don't connect. Why a smaller, connected stack wins.
Read
The Return of the Phone Call
LinkedIn InMail rates fell below 10% and inboxes are full. Here's why 2025 is proving the phone is still the most effective channel for B2B director outreach.
Read
What Google's AI Overviews Mean for Your B2B Website
Google's AI Overviews reduce click-through rates by up to 25% on some queries. The right response is to become the kind of source those overviews actually cite.
Read
Building a Prospect List That Actually Converts
A good prospect list is verified, scored, and built from an ICP before a campaign launches. Here's the process that produced 12,600 contacts for one client.
Read
The AI Content Arms Race Has Started (And Most Small Businesses Are Losing)
AI content flooded the internet in 2024 and most of it reads identically. Voice and genuine expertise are the only differentiators left for B2B businesses.
Read
Predictions for 2025 (From Someone Who Actually Sends the Campaigns)
Prediction articles are usually written by people who've spent the year reading about marketing rather than doing it.
Read
The Budget Conversation Nobody Wants to Have
The marketing budget debate goes wrong every year when spend is treated as a cost, not an investment. Here's the framework for making it a numbers conversation.
Read
Email Personalisation: Beyond First Name
There are four levels of B2B email personalisation. Most businesses stop at level one. Here's how to reach level three, and what that requires from your data.
Read
The Companies House Goldmine
Every limited company in the UK is required to file accounts, annual returns, and director information with Companies House.
Read
Why Your Competitors' Clients Are Your Best Prospects
There's a category of prospect that most businesses overlook entirely: people who are already buying what you sell, just from someone else.
Read
Your Dashboard Should Scare You (A Little)
A useful marketing dashboard shows pipeline velocity, conversion gaps, and stalled prospects, not just open rates. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Read
AI Killed the Marketing Intern (And That's Fine)
Twelve months ago, a junior marketer at a typical SME might spend their week doing data entry, pulling basic reports, drafting social media posts...
Read
The Quiet Months Are When Smart Companies Get Ready
Most businesses go quiet in July and August. The ones that use those months to clean data and build prospect lists arrive at Q4 with a considerable head start.
Read
Cold Email Deliverability Is Now a Technical Skill
Two years ago, you could send cold emails from your main business domain with a basic email platform and get decent inbox placement.
Read
The Follow-Up Problem Nobody Talks About
Most leads die from lack of follow-up, not lack of interest. Here's how to build sequences that plug the pipeline leak most B2B businesses never measure.
Read
The Subscription Data Trap
Subscription data looks efficient until you do the maths. Here's when platforms like ZoomInfo and Apollo make sense for B2B prospecting, and when they don't.
Read
Why I Still Start Every Client Engagement With Research
A previous agency spent six months targeting the wrong audience. Two weeks of research would have caught it. Here's why the Client Blueprint always comes first.
Read
Stop Sending the Same Email to Everyone
There's a version of email marketing that goes like this: write one email, send it to the entire list, hope for the best.
Read
Your Website Isn't a Brochure. It's a Qualification Tool.
Most B2B websites describe the company instead of helping visitors decide if there's a fit. Here's what a qualification-first website looks like in practice.
Read
The Data You Bought Last Year Is Already Wrong
B2B contact data decays at roughly 30% per year. A list from twelve months ago could be 40% invalid, quietly damaging every campaign you send to it.
Read
AI Won't Write Your Emails For You. But It Might Write Better Ones.
AI helps with subject lines, segment drafts, and scale, but tone and market knowledge still need a human. Here's the workflow that actually produces results.
Read
The Phone Still Works
Digital channels got noisy and most B2B marketers stopped calling. Here's why the phone still converts interest into meetings better than any email sequence.
Read
What Your CRM Is Actually Telling You (If You'd Listen)
Your CRM is tracking engagement signals most businesses never look at. Here's how to turn that data into a priority list of who to contact this week.
ReadNo articles match that. Try another topic or search.