Syrup Marketing

06/03/2026

We are seeing something common among the businesses that are continuing to push ahead and it’s all around protecting space for experimentation. The messy, will-this-work, no immediate payoff type of experimentation.

https://syrupmarketing.com/rd-should-be-a-marketing-investment-category/

Playing it safe is the most expensive bet in B2B. See how disciplined marketing experimentation and an R&D budget line item help you win with small bets.

05/29/2026

Industry average for an agency-client relationship is around 3.2 years, and retainer engagements average closer to 5 years. For context, Syrup’s average is 4+ years with a 91% client retention rate.

Why does that number matter so much? Because marketing is compounding work. Strategy takes months to build, and results take longer. If an agency’s average engagement is 7 months, that’s a revolving door, not a partnership. You’ll feel it in the work (and eventually in your P&L).

05/27/2026

Humans are the center.
SEO is the layer on top of that.
AEO is the layer on top of SEO.

AEO isn’t a new channel. It’s not a new platform you log into and configure. It’s an expansion of the work you should already be doing, optimized for a new kind of reader, the answer engine. And answer engines are pulling from the same internet your humans are reading. They’re parsing the same pages, the same schema, the same structure.

If your underlying site doesn’t serve a human well, no amount of FAQ schema is going to make an LLM choose you.

You can’t do the outer layer without doing the inner layers.

https://syrupmarketing.com/why-humans-still-belong-at-the-center-of-aeo-and-seo/

05/22/2026

The companies actually winning demand right now aren't louder. They're clearer. They know exactly who they help, what problem they solve, and why their approach is meaningfully different.

05/20/2026

When the metric became popular, MQLs gave marketing a scoreboard at a time when marketing had no scoreboard. An important first move towards accountability.

However, the B2B buying environment has changed in many ways since then, including longer cycles, larger buying committees, and more self-directed buyers, to name a few. Predictably, a metric built for a 2010 funnel, like MQLs, is much less relevant to a business in 2026.

https://syrupmarketing.com/pipeline-velocity-the-metric-that-matters-more-than-mqls/

MQLs measure activity, not momentum. Learn why pipeline velocity is the B2B metric CMOs and CEOs should track.

05/13/2026

If marketing is treated like an expense, then why are we talking about ROI?

Marketing is one of the few line items on the P&L that looks discretionary on a spreadsheet. It’s so often the thing to cut when things are tight or the first to blame when growth isn’t going as planned.

Marketing isn’t a faucet. You can’t shut it off when the bill feels heavy and turn it back on when you decide you’d like leads again.

Marketing is an investment, not an expense. Your marketing budget should be treated like a portfolio. Some of it captures demand that already exists. Some of it builds the brand and category position that creates demand. Some of it is the bet you place on what’s next. When you “stop marketing,” what you’re usually doing is liquidating opportunities that took years to build in exchange for short-term cost relief that won’t last more than a quarter.

https://syrupmarketing.com/what-happens-when-b2b-companies-stop-marketing/

The B2B leaders who stop marketing usually don’t realize what they’re stopping until they try to start it back up.

05/11/2026

Marketing run like a business function earns a seat at the table. Marketing run like a creative department stays in the budget conversation.

05/06/2026

Your brand guide is no longer a nice-to-have.

A brand guide is now a performance asset because AI can only create to the level of understanding you give it. Feed it weak articulation, you get weak output. Feed it a generic strategy, you get generic everything: content, design, campaigns, ideas, decks, decks, more decks.

AI will not strengthen a weak brand. A strong brand strengthens AI.

https://syrupmarketing.com/your-brand-guide-is-a-performance-asset/

Your brand guide is a performance asset in the age of AI. AI will not strengthen a weak brand. A strong brand guide strengthens AI.

05/01/2026

Email isn’t dead.
Bad email is.

The inbox is still one of the highest ROI channels in B2B. But you have to treat it like a conversation, not a campaign.

04/29/2026

A recent Ahrefs study actually found that over 80% of top-ranking pages now include some level of AI assistance, and Google has confirmed they don’t penalize content just because AI helped create it. The issue isn’t AI itself. It’s content that lacks expertise, originality, or a genuine point of view. AI just made it really easy to produce that kind of content at scale.

https://syrupmarketing.com/being-part-of-the-blur/

Most B2B content blends into the blur. Learn why AI-generated content is losing ground on Google and what it takes to actually get found.