Key Results
- ✓30%Conversion uplift
- ✓2xTotal engagement in won deals
- ✓3.5xRepeat visitors
"We needed to make the shift from targeting customers to engaging buyers so that we could progress more buyers through their buying journey..."
B2B buying has been moving away from seller-led journeys for years. Prospects self-educate, build shortlists, and align internally long before they're willing to talk to sales. For marketing teams, that creates a simple problem:
If you can't see where buyers are in their journey, you can't help them progress.
Client Context
Splitit is a fintech that provides a Buy-Now-Pay-Later instalment solution for merchants, with a key differentiator: instalments are paid using the shopper's existing credit card account.
Splitit's marketing challenge was familiar: reaching and converting busy retailers through digital touchpoints, where the buyer controls the pace and sequence of research.
The problem: the funnel you think you have vs the journey buyers are actually on
Splitit compared the "classic" funnel assumption with what their buyer behaviour looked like when prospects were mapped to journey stages based on the content they consumed.
The result was a "fat-bottomed funnel": lots of prospects being pushed towards late-stage content and calls-to-action. That's only good if they're truly ready to buy. In B2B, they rarely are - they need time to understand value, align internally, evaluate options, resolve objections, and build confidence.
In other words: the marketing system was pushing buyers forward faster than their decision process could support.
Why this matters even more now: AI is breaking the click-based model
For two decades, most marketing has optimised for a simple story:
Search → click → website → conversion
That story is over. AI answers, chat interfaces, and "search that doesn't look like search" are pushing buyers towards decisions before they ever visit your site.
The uncomfortable truth: you can't optimise what you can't see
Most dashboards still treat website sessions like "demand". But increasingly, the website is just the last checkpoint - not where intent is formed. AI systems summarise options, compare vendors, and surface pros/cons in a single response. People read the answer, then they:
- Search your brand later (shows up as branded search)
- Type your URL (Direct)
- Ask a colleague (dark social)
- Go to a marketplace (G2, app stores, etc.)
- DM you on LinkedIn
- Or arrive on a sales call already half-decided
So the click is no longer proof that discovery happened. It's often just proof they've moved into verification.
This is exactly why "more content" doesn't automatically fix performance. You don't only have a traffic problem. You have a presence + proof problem - and without journey visibility, you can't see which it is.
Results
The dashboards revealed clear behavioural differences between won and lost opportunities. Won opportunities showed:
- 2× total engagement
- 3.5× repeat visitors
- 3× number of sessions
- 2.2× number of assets viewed
And most importantly: Splitit reported a 30% improvement in conversion rate.
AI Visibility: The Principle
Visibility comes from measurement. Improvement comes from a repeatable loop.
- Splitit didn't "write more content".
- They made the journey observable, identified friction points, and changed priorities based on evidence.
Today, buyers don't just read websites - they ask AI.
- How are we showing up in AI answers? (baseline + competitors + themes)
- What do we do about it? (high-confidence changes + re-test + learn)
Not promises. Not guesswork. A managed, measurable improvement cycle - the same operating mindset that delivered results for Splitit.