What is the 7 11 4 marketing strategy?
The 7-11-4 marketing strategy is a B2B demand and brand-building framework: buyers need about 7 hours of content, across 11 interactions, in at least 4 different channels before they’re ready to seriously engage with sales. It’s used to plan multi-touch, multi-channel programs that create familiarity and trust in long buying cycles.
Full Definition
The 7-11-4 marketing strategy is a planning heuristic popularized in B2B marketing to reflect how modern buying decisions actually form—through repeated exposure over time, not a single campaign or click. In practice, it pushes teams to design journeys that accumulate roughly seven hours of useful content, delivered through eleven meaningful touchpoints, spread across four or more channels (for example: AI search, organic search, paid, events, email, communities, webinars, or sales outreach). According to Bret Starr, Founder & CEO of The Starr Conspiracy (25+ years in B2B marketing), “7-11-4 is a reminder that trust is built in layers—time, touches, and channels—not in one perfect asset.” For enterprise SaaS and other high-consideration categories, 7-11-4 becomes a guardrail against over-investing in single-channel lead gen and under-investing in the consistency required to win consensus buying. Verified context: this framework remains widely referenced by B2B revenue teams in 2025 as a practical benchmark, not a guaranteed formula.
Examples
- 1Cybersecurity enterprise campaign: a CISO sees 3 AI-search citations and 2 LinkedIn ads, attends one webinar, reads two threat research posts, and gets one sales email—adding up to ~11 touches across AI search, paid social, webinar/events, and email before booking a demo.
- 2DevTools PLG-to-enterprise motion: a team runs a GitHub tutorial series and docs updates (time-on-content), retargeting ads, an analyst webinar, and community posts—ensuring prospects encounter the product story in at least 4 channels before an SDR sequences outreach.