In conversation with Marwin Iedema and Dirk Schaafsma of Art of Advertising.
In B2B marketing the promises fly around: more leads, more traffic, more of everything, preferably yesterday. But anyone who really wants to build something has to look beyond quick results. That is why Art of Advertising sounds a different note. “Relevance. Not once, but structurally.” What makes Art of Advertising unique? They base content not on assumptions but on conversations. With the entrepreneur, the engineer or the customer. That produces recognisable content that is not about the product, but about the customer's problems and how you solve them.
How it started
It started, as with many entrepreneurs, from curiosity. “We studied commercial economics and just got going,” Dirk says. “First we built websites for people in our network. But what good is a website if nobody visits it?”
Online marketing was the logical next step. First for e-commerce, but that turned out not to fit. “Small margins, returns, price fighters… that is not us.”
“What we love is helping companies with more complex products. Then you can really immerse yourself in that customer.”
And so they discovered the B2B market. “A B2B customer asked us to help with lead generation. And that is where we saw the room to really add value with online marketing.”
“Lots of traffic, little result? Then you are in the wrong place.”
What makes Art of Advertising different is their fundamental structure:
The foundation > Demand Generation > Demand Capture > Sales Intelligence.
It always starts with sharpening the right audience: who is your ideal customer? “If that is not clear, the rest of your marketing strategy will probably be less effective too,” says Marwin. Dirk adds: “You can get a hundred thousand people to your site, but if they are not your audience, nothing happens.” That is why our strategy targets a list of 1,500 to 2,000 companies that fall within your Ideal Customer Profile.
Then comes Demand Generation: ‘creating demand’. They call it ‘planting the seed’: building authority by sharing your knowledge, so you are the expert in the market as soon as someone starts researching. “A good example is Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks,” says Marwin. “They wanted to reach companies thinking about warehouse automation. So we created content about capacity pressure, staff shortages, process optimisation. The things their audience loses sleep over.”
And only then comes Demand Capture. “When someone starts googling, you have to be there,” says Dirk. “On the right search terms, with buying intent. And yes, on Bing too, because there are more B2B decision-makers there than you think.”
From clicks to conversations
Perhaps the most striking thing about their approach is what happens after the click. “You do not buy a forklift online,” says Marwin. “A conversation comes first. We make sure that conversation happens.”
They call it Sales Intelligence. They map exactly which companies from the ICP visit their website, which pages are viewed and who might be involved.
“Say you have a list of 1,500 companies from your Ideal Customer Profile. We see when one of them lands on your site, which pages they view and for how long. Then sales gets a nudge: this party is researching,” says Dirk. “Then you can send a connection request, a card, a personal email. Not to sell, but to open the conversation.”
Working without assumptions
What really makes Art of Advertising different from other agencies? Marwin says it without hesitation: “A lot of agencies make things up or make assumptions; we don't. We talk. With the entrepreneur, with the engineer, and sometimes even with the customer's customers.”
What they gather there forms the basis of their content. “We do not write about your product,” says Dirk. Here too it is about recognition and relevance. “We write about your customer's problem. And how you solve it.”
According to Dirk that is exactly where marketing adds value. “It helps sales open the conversation. That way marketing is not something separate from sales, but contributes to it directly,” says Dirk. And that, in their view, is where many B2B companies have enormous gains to make.
Growth and satisfaction
With clients such as Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks and Templari Benelux, that approach led to better conversations, rising enquiries and more control. “What we often hear back is that clients feel in control of their online marketing for the first time,” says Dirk.
And that is exactly what they are after. “For me the satisfaction is not in the clicks,” says Marwin. “But when an account manager says: ‘I had a good conversation thanks to you’, that gives a kick.”
Dirk adds: “There are whole worlds hidden behind industries you have never heard of. And if you sink your teeth into them, you find commercial opportunities that really matter. That is what makes this work the most fun.”
Together, or not at all
For them a collaboration is only successful if it really is a collaboration. “We do not want distance. We sit down together and make plans together. It also simply has to be fun.”
And for B2B companies still relying on a traditional SEO/SEA agency? Dirk is clear: “Then you should seriously ask yourself whether you are still in the right place in 2025.”
