A strong B2C marketer can handle B2B easily

Irmantas Matilionis works as a CMO in a real estate development and management company EIKA Group. The group is leading in Baltics since 1993, alongside their core activity of real estate development and construction, they also provide accommodation services, manage investment funds and invest abroad. 

His previous experience was mainly in B2C marketing and B2C product growth - in Delfi and Bigbank. Today, around 70% of his work is B2B—everything connected to reputation, communication, events and conferences, LinkedIn, and the whole question of how to generate B2B opportunities: how to get them, how to nurture them, and how to stay patient…

You’ve worked in finance, media, and now real estate—very different fields. What’s your superpower?

My superpower is passion for marketing, I would say. But it’s also about constantly growing as a professional. It’s not only about switching industries—it’s also about improving my tools, sharpening my skills, and learning new ways to create impact.

For example: Delfi subscriptions are very impulsive, very short-term purchases. People see a good offer, they click, they buy—and that’s it.

But a €10 million real estate project can take a year—or even longer—for a client to decide. It’s very, very different. Marketers often say that when you’re used to quick wins, you get this adrenaline rush every time you see results. But if you work in a business where success takes years, it can be difficult to motivate yourself, because you don’t see the results of your work quickly.

So how do you handle that?

It’s difficult—but at the same time, it’s more interesting. The most powerful thing, honestly, is managing all the managers, because I’m currently working at the group holding level. We operate like an internal advertising and communication agency, supporting different businesses across the group.

One business might be hospitality, another might be real estate project management, or even technology development. The B2B sales funnel itself isn’t necessarily so different—or so difficult—but the most important thing is patience, as I mentioned.

And it’s genuinely interesting to align managers around that patience: to agree with them that we have to stay consistent, trust the process, and believe the results will come. Honestly, I find it more engaging than just “click, buy, click, buy,” like in some B2C products.

But how do you measure progress? With such a long cycle, people can get frustrated if they don’t see results. How do you define intermediate KPIs—and how do you measure them?

Sales—or B2B leads—are the final KPI, the final step. But before that, we measure awareness first, then consideration, and only then leads.

For awareness and consideration, communication and social media—especially LinkedIn—are really important channels. We measure everything we can measure there: not only impressions or clicks, but also engagement and other indicators.

When you see growth in these parts, results come afterwards. And it’s not always that you must wait three years to see progress. Leads can come earlier—after one month, after two, maybe after half a year. And even getting leads is already a meaningful result.

You mentioned you have an in-house agency at group level. What are the strengths and weaknesses of that approach compared to buying services from an external agency?

It’s not that we don’t buy or outsource anything—we do! External partners are part of the mix, but mostly as support to what we do internally.

When you have an internal agency, the biggest advantage is access to information and detail. You know much more, because you’re inside the business every day. External agencies usually aren’t as deep in the business, and they don’t always understand what’s truly important to highlight, what’s actually working, and what really matters.

The difficult part in our scenario is that we still have many different bosses we are accountable to—and yes, there is quite a lot of persuasion and people management. In every management structure, people management is often the hardest part. If you have people, you have to deal with them.

That’s the most challenging part, because 50% of my daily job is people management.

Many B2B marketing managers complain that traditional agencies—especially creative agencies—don’t understand B2B. They’re good at selling beer, ice cream, retail… but B2B is different and they don’t “get it.” What’s your opinion?

In my personal opinion, there isn’t such a big difference between B2C and B2B—especially when we’re talking about the creative side. The end user is still a person. In the end, it’s the same human being in B2C and in B2B.

Also, I’m a board member of the Lithuanian Marketing Association (LiMA). A few months ago we had a discussion about marketer skills. What we see is that many marketers have strong B2C skills but limited B2B experience—but at the end of the day, very similar skills are needed.

In B2B, what tends to matter more is communication, events, thought leadership, and reputation—compared to B2C. And B2C today is more connected to digital marketing and performance marketing (not always, but often).

But performance marketing skills are needed in B2B as well. So I don’t think the gap is as big as many people claim. Some marketers have B2B experience and others don’t—but taking a strong B2C marketer and moving them into B2B is not so different, and not so difficult, in my opinion.

Yeah—what I’ve heard is that one key difference is often the funnel length. B2C marketers are used to quick results and quick measurement. In B2B, when the funnel is long, it’s harder to understand what’s working and what isn’t. Another issue is sales and marketing alignment: in B2B, they have to work much more closely, especially with complex products.

Are you happy with sales and marketing alignment in your organization? Where do you see room for improvement?

We have separate departments—sales and marketing—meaning different teams. We also have B2C products, like selling flats, and that side is much more B2C marketing.

The challenge is also product development—marketers being more involved in the product. But that depends on salespeople too. I do agree that if these people can sit together, share insights, and cooperate closely, the results can be better.

What are your goals on LinkedIn, and how happy are you with it?

On LinkedIn, what is truly effective is managers’ communication—they need to become thought leaders. If you communicate only as a brand from a corporate account, results are very different. But when you communicate through people, the results can be impressive.

We have tools and we measure it. For example, one CEO’s communication over a year can deliver two or three times better results than the brand account—reach, engagement, everything.

And we also see leads coming from managers’ communication. We tested it for one and a half years, and now we’re scaling it: bringing in more managers to communicate as professionals.

What are your LinkedIn KPIs—reach, engagement, comments, followers? What matters most?

The first KPI for us is reach. Reach on LinkedIn is the most important, in my opinion, because on Facebook you can sponsor and buy reach. On LinkedIn, if you can’t sponsor a post, then what you get is organic reach—so reach matters. Then engagement.

We don’t see direct leads inside LinkedIn analytics, but we know from our salespeople and from the managers that they are getting leads or having useful conversations via LinkedIn after their communication.

And how do you actually measure that? People often say: “I heard from the market that someone read my post and contacted me.” But how do you capture it? Do you record it in CRM, do you report it—what’s your approach?

We monitor all mentions—not only on LinkedIn. We also use Mediaskopas, so all news media mentions are collected, measured, and reviewed. And similarly for LinkedIn: we use a separate tool that shows mentions across social media, not only LinkedIn.

But if you mean something like: someone tells you, “A customer said they read my post”—do we record that? Yes and no.

We have meetings with salespeople and managers, and we talk about leads. In our case, it’s not hundreds of leads—few leads per month is already a really good number—so we can discuss them directly.

Another issue: how do you motivate people to be active on LinkedIn? They have other priorities, many aren’t naturally communicative, they struggle with writing—and video is even harder. How do you push or motivate them?

C-level is a must—we don’t “motivate” them, we simply ask them to do it. What we do is support them: we prepare information and draft post texts so they spend less time and don’t start from a blank page.

When we go down the organization, motivation becomes necessary. In my previous job we used small incentives—for example, vouchers for bookstores for the most active people. But it’s still not easy.

In the beginning, people are motivated and think, “Yes, it’s interesting, I will do it.” Then they realize how much time it takes to invest, so some drop out. But if you keep 30–40% of people active after one year, that’s already a very good result.

For lower management and employees, the beginning is always training. We did trainings and we do them regularly, so people think not only from the company’s perspective, but also from their personal brand perspective. They start to understand: “I will not only help my company—I will also grow myself in the public space.”

Finally: what’s the main challenge for you—what keeps you up at night in B2B marketing? In 2026, what’s the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge—as we discussed—is leads, sales, and patience, because you never fully know whether it’s successful or not. So we need a strong belief in what we’re doing, we track the secondary KPIs, and we keep trusting that even if this month wasn’t successful—maybe we got leads but not sales—it can still succeed later.

When we talk about reputation, for example, and C-level communication—not only on LinkedIn but also through press releases and professional communication—it often feels like you’re doing, doing, doing… and getting nothing, nothing, nothing… and only after some months, results start to come.

So yes, that’s the difficult part. But when you’re in a team and you truly believe in what you’re doing, nothing is impossible.