Playbook: Lead Generation by Account Size
Updated
When you sell to both big enterprises and small businesses, the same ads and landing pages can serve different roles, depending on who is seeing them. They need to be measured separately, so this playbook helps you set up three initiatives: Enterprise, Small Business, and a third one to catch those who have demonstrated they are in market for your solutions.
When to Use This Playbook
Use this playbook when you’re chasing leads from two very different sizes of buyer at once — large enterprises and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) — and you want your sales team to have real conversations to follow up on.
The key idea: account size changes what an ad can do for you.
- With enterprises, a click of an ad almost never produces a lead directly. The buying group is large and the decision is slow, so ads work by making your brand familiar and trusted long before anyone raises their hand. The eventual lead often comes from someone who never even clicked — a colleague they forwarded you to, or a search for your brand weeks later.
- With small businesses, one person is often close enough to the decision that an ad can turn into a lead directly — though rarely on the first touch.
Because those two jobs are so different, you build them as separate Initiatives so you can fund and measure each one on its own terms. A third Initiative catches people who’ve already signaled where they are in their buying journey.
The Three Initiatives at a Glance
| Initiative | Who you target | What it’s for | Can an ad make a lead here? | How you’ll know it’s working |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Demand-Gen | Large target accounts and the people on their buying committee | Build awareness and trust; frame the buying decision | Rarely — it sets leads up rather than creating them | Meaningful engagements; more sales conversations and pipeline over time |
| Small Business Lead-Gen | SMB target accounts and their likely champions | Attract, nurture, and convert directly into leads | Yes — sometimes the direct source of the lead | Meaingful engagements and a trickle of leads directly form fills |
| Detected Intent | People who’ve shown where they are in the buying journey | Meet active interest with the right content and offer | Yes — this is your warmest audience | Leads and meetings from people already in market |
Read the three sections below for how to build each one.
Before You Build: Three Rules That Apply Everywhere
A few choices repeat across every Initiative in this playbook. Set them once here so the walkthroughs below stay short.
1. Fund and measure each Initiative separately — don’t merge them. It can be tempting to drop everything into one Initiative and let Path3 spread the money for you. Don’t. Path3 allocates budget across the Streams inside a single Initiative, so merging enterprise, SMB, and intent into one pool means you can no longer tell which audience your results came from — and one enterprise account is worth tens to thousands of SMBs, so they can’t share a scoreboard. Give each Initiative its own budget on purpose. See Best Practices → When to Split an Initiative.
2. Target profiles or journey states — never both at once. When a Stream targets Account Profiles or Personas, leave Buyer’s Journey States empty — and when you target Buyer’s Journey States, leave Account and Persona Profiles empty. Stacking them chokes your audience to the point the Streams can’t run.
3. Know when to use “AND” vs. “OR” logic. When a Stream targets both a Persona and an Account Profile, the logic decides who sees the ad:
- AND = the person must match a Persona and work at a target account. This is the default. When you use it, make sure the email domains in CRM data synced for your Personas are included in the account lists synced to your Account Profiles, or the two sides won’t line up.
- OR = match on Persona or account. Only use this when most people at your target companies could influence the sale — common at small businesses, where the owner, the office manager, and the technical lead might all have a say.
Enterprise Demand-Gen Initiative
Enterprise leads are shaped by advertising but almost never created by it directly. The number of stakeholders and the length of the journey make it far more likely a lead arrives later — through a branded search, a salesperson’s outreach, or an internal hand-off. The person who eventually raises their hand is often not the person who saw your ad.
Your goal is to prime the conditions so those leads happen more often: build awareness, educate, and offer an easy way to start a conversation. Because you know exactly which companies you want, there’s no reason for Open targeting here — keep everything Closed and make sure the enterprises that matter have company records, and ideally contact records, uploaded or synced to Path3.
Audiences for this Initiative
- Account Profiles: one or more enterprise-only profiles (end-buyer only — don’t include channel partners).
- Personas: all members of the buying committee.
- Buyer’s Journey States: leave empty (see Rule 2 above).
Streams
| Stream | Scope | Stream Type | Logic | Refresh | How you’ll know it’s working |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Awareness | Closed | Brand Awareness | AND | Rarely, if ever | Brand awareness among target accounts |
| Education | Closed | Education or Nurture | AND | Monthly | Meaningful Engagements |
| Solution | Closed | Education or Nurture | AND | Monthly | Meaningful Engagements |
| Offer | Closed | Lead or Sales | AND | Monthly (consider going dark every other month) | Occational meetings booked and leads |
Creative guidance
- Brand Awareness — a single brand ad with your logo and a short line that says how you’re different. No button or CTA needed; the impression is the play. Level up with a 15-second video for even better results.
- Education — a series of ads promoting a blog post, whitepaper (no form fill needed), case study, or article. A 1–3 minute educational video can run as the ad instead. For cleanest metric comparisons, run video or written content, not both in the same stream.
- Solution — a series of ads promoting a product or service, highlighting it’s unique value to the enterprise audience. This could be image, html5 and/or video.
- Offer — a low-friction reason to talk: a free consultation, design review, or personalized demo, optionally with a time-boxed incentive for taking the meeting (for example, a gift card or a charitable donation if you book by [date]).
Small Business Lead-Gen Initiative
Small businesses are much more likely to convert straight off an ad — though rarely on the first or only touch. Your goal is to get in front of them with brand, content, and offer creative, and to grow your audience by letting Path3 use Open targeting to pull in new people who closely resemble those you’re reaching and who are engaging.
Audiences for this Initiative
- Account Profiles: one or more SMB profiles (end-buyer only — don’t include channel partners).
- Personas: the one or two people most likely to champion the sale — often an owner/exec and a technical buyer.
- Buyer’s Journey States: leave empty.
Streams
| Stream | Scope | Stream Type | Logic | Refresh | How you’ll know it’s working |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Awareness | Closed | Brand Awareness | OR or AND* | Rarely, if ever | Brand awareness among target accounts |
| Education | Closed | Education or Nurture | OR or AND* | Monthly | Meaningful Engagements |
| Webinar or Assessment | Open | Form Fills | AND | Monthly to quarterly | New contacts captured |
| Solution | Closed | Education or Nurture | OR or AND* | Monthly | Meaningful Engagements |
| Offer | Closed | Lead or Sales | OR or AND* | Monthly (consider going dark every other month) | Handful of meetings booked, sales or leads |
* For Closed Streams, use OR logic if roughly half or more of the people at each target company could influence the sale, and AND if only a small share could. This is the one place in this playbook where OR is often the right call because it’s hard to know exactly who within the company could be the one to suggest your brand.
Creative guidance
- Brand Awareness — same as enterprise: logo, a short line on how you’re different, no CTA required; a 15-second video lifts performance.
- Education — a series of ads promoting a blog post, whitepaper (no form fill needed), case study, or article; or a 1–3 minute educational video. Run video or written content in a given stream, not both.
- Webinar or Assessment — this series of ads is your Open stream, built to grow the audience. Offer something so valuable that only a qualified buyer would sign up. The topic doesn’t have to signal they’re in-market — only that they’re the right kind of person at the right kind of company. Make the value impossible to pass up.
- Solution — a series of ads promoting a product or service, highlighting it’s unique value to the small business audience. This could be image, html5 and/or video.
- Offer — a free consultation, design review, or personalized demo, or a time-boxed nudge to act now such as a bonus or extended free trial (something lower value than your enterprise incentive). Avoid discounts.
Detected Intent Initiative
This Initiative is like traditional retargeting, but it groups people by the context that has them in market. For middle-of-funnel, this is the problem or opportunity that triggers a need for your solutions. For bottom-of-funnel, this is the solution they’re weighing, or more specifically a product or service category as the market defines it (not you).
Path3 identifies these people because they engage with ads or content tagged to a specific point in the buyer’s journey, called a Buyer’s Journey State. Your job is to serve content and offers that help them understand the problem, see your brand as the answer, and start the purchase.
Audiences for this Initiative
- Account Profiles: leave empty.
- Personas: leave empty.
- Buyer’s Journey States: pick 1-3 middle-of-funnel states, and 1-3 bottom-of-funnel states.
Layering account or persona targeting on top of buyer’s journey states here will choke out your audience and ads will not run (Rule 2).
Streams
| Stream | Scope | Stream Type | Targeting | How you’ll know it’s working |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Awareness | Closed | Brand Awareness | All targeted journey states, middle- and bottom-of-funnel | Higher engagement with other ads |
| Problem/Opportunity X — Content (1–3 per problem) | Closed or Open* | Education or Nurture | The middle-of-funnel state for problem X | Meaningful Engagements |
| Problem/Opportunity X — Solution (1-3 per problem) | Closed | Education or Nurture | The middle-of-funnel state for problem X | Meaningful Engagements |
| Problem/Opportunity X — Offer (1 per problem) | Closed | Lead or Sales | The middle-of-funnel state for problem X | Meetings booked, sales or leads |
| Solution Y — Content (1–2 per solution) | Closed | Education or Nurture | The bottom-of-funnel state for solution Y | Meaningful Engagements |
| Solution Y — Solution (1 per solution) | Closed | Education or Nurture | The bottom-of-funnel state for solution Y | Meaningful Engagements |
| Solution Y — Offer (1 per solution) | Closed | Lead or Sales | The bottom-of-funnel state for solution Y | Meetings booked, sales or leads |
* Choose Open for content only if your budget and your ability to convert new traffic both support it.
Creative guidance
- Brand Awareness — same brand ad as the other Initiatives; a 15-second video helps.
- Problem/Opportunity — Content — one or more blog posts, videos, whitepapers, or case studies that help the prospect understand the middle-of-funnel problem or opportunity they’re facing.
- Problem/Opportunity — Solution — one or more products or services and how they directly address the middle-of-funnel problem or opportunity the prospect is facing.
- Problem/Opportunity — Offer — an invitation (consultation, design review, personalized demo) that directly addresses the middle-of-funnel problem or opportunity the prospect is facing.
- Solution — Content — a blog post, video, whitepaper, or case study that helps the prospect justify choosing your solution for the bottom-of-funnel category they’re considering.
- Solution — Solution — The one product or service for this bottom-of-funnel category.
- Solution — Offer — an invitation that’s the ideal starting point for buying the specific solution they’re weighing.
Because the audience is constantly changing based on who is at a particular point in the buyer’s journey, your ads can stay the same. You only need to update them when you feel performance could be improved.
This one grows fast. With just two middle-of-funnel problems and two bottom-of-funnel solutions, you could be up to 22 Streams — and it climbs from there as you add more buyer’s journey states. You don’t have to build it all at once. See the rollout order below.
How to Budget Across the Three Initiatives
Set a separate budget for each Initiative rather than one shared pool. Within an Initiative, Path3 handles the rest for you: it funds your Closed streams first, keeps a guaranteed slice for Open exploration, and spreads the remainder across streams, smoothing day-to-day changes so spend stays predictable. What Path3 can’t do is decide that an enterprise account matters more than a hundred SMBs — that judgment is yours, and separate budgets are how you express it.
If money is tight, deprioritize a whole Initiative rather than starving every Stream evenly. It’s better to run one audience well than three at half strength.
How to Roll This Out
You don’t need to launch everything on day one. A good order:
- Start with brand and education in your top-priority Initiative — usually SMB if you need leads fast, or Enterprise if you’re playing a longer game.
- Add the Solution and/or Offer streams once brand and education are live and creative is flowing. You may not need both if the solution ads drive traffic to a page with a strong lead generation form on it.
- Stand up the second size Initiative (Enterprise or SMB, whichever you didn’t start with).
- Layer in Detected Intent last, a few streams at a time — begin with your one or two most important problems and solutions, then expand as content and budget allow.
You’ll have a working program after step 1 and a complete one by the end — without ever being buried in more streams than you can feed with fresh creative.