B2B Marketing: From Linear to Loop

For years, B2B marketing was focused on companies and sales reps sending mass email campaigns to prospects, supported by brand advertising to raise awareness. These emails were sent in a series of campaigns with call-to-actions based on the sellers’ objectives. The common message was, “buy from us now.”

Sellers personalized emails with the prospect’s name, title and company, and then followed up with a phone call, and not much more. Marketers supported their email campaigns with advertising to raise brand awareness and continuously bought leads to feed their email engine.

These campaigns tended to be “spray and pray” mass marketing, until the internet changed the game dramatically. Companies developed websites to tell their brand stories, which allowed them to provide a lot of product features and benefits that prospects could sort through to find what they were interested in based on their objectives. Over time, prospects became less responsive to email campaigns, finding that they could do their own research, although it was complicated and time consuming to learn of a seller’s actual capabilities and differentiators from competitors, but better than being sold by sales reps.

A New Inbound Marketing Strategy

When Hubspot introduced its inbound marketing methodology and technology platform in 2006, it changed the B2B marketing paradigm. The focus was on providing content of interest to prospects, when it is of interest to them, instead of outbound emailing and advertising. Marketing messages could be personalized based on the click pathways that prospects chose when engaging with content. This allowed companies and their sales reps to better understand prospects’ needs and tailor their sales pitches accordingly. Inbound content engagement replaced outbound advertising, improving efficiency and effectiveness while lowering customer acquisition costs.

Now, with the advent of embedded AI and more comprehensive databases, the game is changing again. At its 2025 INBOUND Conference, Hubspot presented a new marketing paradigm known as Loop Marketing.

Angela DeFranco, general manager and vice president of Hubspot Product Marketing, explained in her session about “Reclaiming Purpose in Marketing,” that marketers need to reimagine marketing because the old tactics are no longer working and that “authenticity is the new currency.” DeFranco said marketers need to move from a linear to loop approach because there have never been more challenges as well as opportunities for marketers.

The shape of the conventional sales funnel, in which prospects move from awareness to consideration to conversion, has changed. Now, prospects spend even more time on awareness, less on consideration and then more on conversion. They are using AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to become more educated than ever, and they spend less time engaging with sales reps until they are ready to convert. Only then are they open to guidance.

According to DeFranco, with AI “the volume of content is much greater than before and much of it is not very good.” With buyer behavior changes, the six-month linear marketing campaigns that companies typically run are no longer working effectively. Marketing needs to be more agile and personalized, switching from one generic playbook for all to quick testing, iteration and implementation that creates marketing campaigns targeted to each individual prospect. Companies find that they are getting increased revenue from existing customers, yet converting new prospects is more challenging than before.

Common Loop Marketing Mistakes

Hubspot officials have identified these Loop Marketing traps that can drag on performance and delay results:

1. Trying to perfect all four stages Research shows only 26% of companies have AI capabilities to move beyond proofs of concept and generate tangible value. Start with the stage where you see the most issues and can achieve quick wins. Mastering one stage before expanding to others allows your team to build confidence and expertise incrementally.
2. Neglecting human Human review of AI-produced content is not optional, especially in customer-facing communications. AI accelerates creation, but you need to establish clear workflows in which humans guide and approve final outputs.

3. Focusing on vanity metrics instead of revenue impact. Impressive e-mail open rates are great to have, but meaningless if they don’t impact revenue. Customer satisfaction and retention are the most important customer experience For each loop stage, establish activities and outcomes. Track how “Express” activities lead to better “Tailor” performance, how “Tailor” improvements drive “Amplify” results, and how the entire loop impacts customer lifetime value and revenue growth.
4. Creating disconnected channel Customer conversations with agents should flow seamlessly from one channel to the other without repeating information. Use unified customer profiles that update in real time across all systems, and test the customer experience from start to finish, not just individual channel performance.
5. Ignoring the feedback and lessons AI-generated content is faster and more successful than content created without AI, but organizations must still schedule review cycles in which teams analyze performance data and identify optimization opportunities.

Understanding Loop Marketing

Loop Marketing is the name Hubspot developed for its four-stage playbook for marketers to adapt and grow in the digital age. It combines AI efficiency with human authenticity and builds momentum.

1. Expressing your message – First, understand your ideal customer profile (ICP) by using AI powered sales enablement tools and analyzing your customer Mine the data from multiple sources, including the CRM system, purchase data, customer service information, etc. Then, craft your unique style guide, to best express your unique differentiators vs. your competitors. Define why you are different and provide more value. Finally, create campaign concepts.
2. Tailor your campaigns – Use AI to improve personalization of messaging based on context and relevance to different customer segments. Understand customer needs and desires, and continually enrich customer data to fully understand the Create personalized content for emails, landing pages and other communications using AI tools, but make sure to have humans review to ensure quality control before implementing.
3. Amplify your message – Use AI tools to scale content creation and amplify your messages across multiple channels, including social media platforms where prospects are doing their research. Create a content strategy for each channel and remix content for each format such as ChatGPT, Claude, TikTok, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc. Use creators and influencers to put you into the right conversations and optimize each channel for conversion, so each contextualized Call-to-Action is
4. Evolve in real time – Use AI to make changes quickly and continuously iterate messages, moving from six-month linear campaigns to an agile loop marketing

As traditional marketing methods continue to lose their effectiveness, marketing and sales leaders need to take a new approach to increase sales to new and existing customers. It starts by leveraging the power of AI and data from multiple sources to create targeted customer segments that fit their ICP, meet the customers where they are doing their research, and use sales enablement technology platforms to efficiently transition messaging from mass marketing to one-on-one relationships.