March 8, 2019

Bermad, a kibbutz-based company manufacturing water control valves, built itself into a successful global concern from the ground up. Here’s what Ofir Marx, VP Marketing at Bermad had to say about inbound marketing and what it’s done for the company’s business.

The conversation has changed: From top down to two-way communication

“Today, we can communicate directly with customers,” says Marx. “In the past, our way of communicating with customers was top down. HQ communicated to its subsidiaries, who communicated to the dealers, who in turn, communicated to the end users. We never got direct feedback, and even if we did, it had passed through three to four different hands and got filtered along the way. That’s changed. Now by publishing blogs, case studies, and white papers, sending out emails, and posting to social media, we have the ability to deliver messages directly to the end user and get feedback.“

bermad blog

Generating leads, assessing quality

Leads are collected on landing pages with targeted calls to action (CTAs). By asking qualifying questions, Bermad is able to assess the quality of the leads received. The results show that 35% are sales qualified leads (SQL), 30% are marketing qualified leads (MQL), and the balance are service requests, spare parts or vendors looking to sell the company something. In short: More than 60% leads are relevant enquiries.

Key goals versus results

At the beginning of the process, Bermad set some goals:

  • Increase site traffic to 20,000
    Moved from 12,000 to 20,000 website visitors per month in less than 2 years
  • Generate 500 leads per month
    Approximately 200 leads per month now and it’s rising
  • Added Revenue of $1,000,000 per year
    Reached $700,000 in 2017; anticipate higher in 2018

bermad case study

Are we getting it right?

The ability to speak directly to the marketplace and understand what they are interested in and what questions they ask, enables the company to understand whether they need to do anything differently.

What’s next?

Marx believes that the awareness and exposure that is being gained is very important, and it’s only the beginning. There’s still much to be done, from increased involvement in Linked In discussion groups to targeted campaigns in specific locations, as well as blogging in other languages such as Spanish and Portuguese.

Leveraging the power of marketing automation

The company is just beginning to benefit from the powerful marketing tools available on HubSpot including lead scoring and nurturing. Having tripled the amount of contacts, there is a wealth of potential customers to cultivate, taking them from the awareness and consideration stages through to making the decision to purchase.

It takes time, effort and investment

Today, all Bermad’s divisions are involved, with 4-5 people at HQ contributing to content creation as well as support from professionals at the company’s various subsidiaries. Blogs are published on a monthly basis for all four segments (waterworks, irrigation, fire protection and building & construction), supported by email blasts, newsletters and ongoing social media posts. Campaigns are run to support product launches, exhibitions and special events. All marketing activities are integrated into Bermad’s CRM system, allowing the sales team to see a 360° view of potential customers and enabling them to close more deals. “Today, nobody asks why we are doing it,” notes Marx. “We’re just beginning to see the benefits.”

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OZ Global b2b

Let’s Talk About the Cheetah in the Room

By 
Nirit Elyovich, MBA
, 26/08/2025

Is your marketing sprinting in the right direction? A simple five-step process keeps focus on what drives real business results.

min read
Why a cheetah and not an elephant? Because an elephant doesn’t run anywhere - but a cheetah does. Blink, and the year may sprint past you before you’ve managed to focus your marketing on what truly matters for your business. You’ve finally closed your business strategy. The executive team is aligned and committed to the decisions and ambitious goals that were set. Until now, everything fit neatly into the Excel sheet. From this point forward, it’s up to the leadership team to prove execution. Each executive must ensure their function contributes directly to reaching those goals. You return to the office energized - yet not always clear on what this means in practice. How do you turn strategy into action? How do you transform ambition into results? Marketing owns the revenue side of the business. Which means it must be directly tied to business decisions. In our view, any marketing initiative that doesn’t move the needle on company performance - whether short or long term - is irrelevant. As one frustrated CMO once told me: “Unfortunately, whoever shouts loudest wins my attention.” Too often, urgent matters push aside the truly important ones. There are many reasons behind this frustration, which often prevents CMOs from focusing marketing efforts on the company’s core business anchors - prioritizing initiatives with deep impact on business results long before other requests land on their desks. As a company that leads Israeli B2B companies to success in the global market, we’ve developed a structured five-step process to ensure marketing directly advances the company’s business decisions.
  1. Translate business decisions into marketing initiatives Take a disciplined look at your strategy through a marketing lens and identify which decisions can be transformed into marketing moves. Not every business decision needs to land on the marketing desk - that’s exactly why you have multiple executives around the table. The CEO ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
  2. Prioritize five key initiatives Establish clear criteria and select the marketing initiatives with the greatest potential to impact business performance. Keep the list realistic and aligned with budget and leadership attention.
  3. Deep-dive into the chosen initiatives Define success metrics, risks, internal stakeholders, milestones, and timelines for each initiative. This thorough review will also help you reassess whether the initiative you’ve chosen truly has a meaningful impact on business results.
  4. Win executive approval Confirm these are the most meaningful initiatives and gain budget approval. This stage is also an opportunity to sync with fellow executives.
  5. Build the annual marketing plan Break each initiative down into specific actions, map them across the year, and create a logical, effective flow of execution.
From here, it’s all about consistent management - making sure the team works according to plan, monitors results, and improves along the way. The beauty of this process lies in its clarity. Every marketing effort is measured by its direct contribution to the business. If it’s not in the plan, there’s a reason. It may sound simple - and it is - but it requires you to pause, plan, and sometimes partner with an external professional. Someone who will hold you accountable, challenge your thinking, and keep you focused. Someone who’s done this many times before and knows how to steer the process. The cheetah doesn’t wait - and the year won’t either. Now is the time to focus your marketing on what truly matters for your business and drive real impact. We’re here to help.
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1250X600

Your Growth Engine for 2026 and Beyond: No, It’s not Paid. It’s Organic Marketing

By 
Liat Shaaf
, 17/08/2025

Is paid marketing enough in today’s digital chaos? How do B2B buyers really decide? Discover why organic drives trust, growth, and long-term results, while paid only accelerates.

min read
Growth Engine is the big question in today’s fast-changing digital world, where algorithms decide what we see. B2B companies keep asking: is organic digital marketing still worth it, or is paid the better way to hit business goals? It’s a fair question. Ad costs keep rising, buyers are harder to reach, and AI and privacy changes are shifting the rules on all of us. Both organic and paid have their strengths. But if we’re talking about long-term, sustainable results, organic is strongly becoming a key driver of real business results, 2025, 2026, and beyond.

1. Organic fits how B2B buyers actually make decisions

Every marketer understands that the B2B buyer’s journey isn’t a straight line. It’s a maze - multiple stakeholders, long evaluation cycles, and endless rounds of research before anyone ever talks to sales.

Where do buyers spend that time? On search engines, LinkedIn, industry forums, and reading trusted publications, not clicking random banner ads. That’s where organic channels like SEO, thought leadership, organic social, PR coverage, and influencer mentions come in.

When you’re showing up in those places early, you’re shaping their perception before they even start shortlisting vendors. You’re educating them on your value, building familiarity, and making it easier for them to say “yes” later.

You see, paid ads can put you in front of them fast, but organic keeps you in their line of sight throughout the entire journey, which supports business goals like higher lead quality, bigger deal sizes, and shorter sales cycles.

Here’s an example for you: I worked with an industrial equipment manufacturer that leaned into SEO and highly technical content. They started getting engagement from engineers months before RFQs were even issued. Those early touchpoints turned into warmer, more qualified leads down the line.

 

2. Organic builds the kind of trust you can’t buy

In B2B, trust isn’t just nice to have. It’s the currency deals run on. These aren’t impulse purchases; they’re multi-year contracts or mission-critical tools.

Sure, paid ads can grab attention. But buyers know they’re ads. That awareness puts a ceiling on how much trust you can build with them.

Now, organic content, whether it’s a deep-dive whitepaper, a webinar, or a mention in a respected industry journal, positions you as a credible authority. That credibility is often the deciding factor when procurement teams are weighing similar proposals.

The result? Bigger deals, higher win rates, and customers who stick around longer.

 

3. Organic content keeps working even after you’ve paid for it

IHere’s something paid will rarely give you: compounding returns.

When a paid campaign stops, so does the traffic and the leads. But a great piece of organic content can keep attracting and nurturing prospects for months, even years.

That means the budget you put into organic keeps paying you back, without needing constant top-ups. Over time, that makes your pipeline more predictable and your cost per lead lower.

 

4. AI, Privacy, and Platform changes are making organic even more critical

The way people find and consume information is shifting fast.

AI-driven search tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot are pulling answers from trusted, authoritative sources. If your content isn’t seen as credible, you’re invisible in those results.

Add to that the privacy changes - cookie deprecation, tighter ad targeting rules - and paid ads are getting more expensive and less precise.

Meanwhile, organic channels help you collect first-party data (subscribers, event signups, community engagement) you actually own. That’s gold for account-based marketing, personalized outreach, and nurturing high-value deals.

 

5. Paid Still Has a Role, Just Not as the Foundation

Don’t get me wrong: paid still matters.

If you’re promoting a product launch, driving event signups, or retargeting high-intent prospects, paid can deliver quick wins. But when paid is your only engine, your costs rise every quarter just to maintain results.

The smarter play? Build an organic foundation that runs 24/7, then use paid strategically to boost your best content and accelerate deals already in motion. That way, you get both speed and staying power.

  So, you see, in B2B, where the landscape is only getting more complex: longer sales cycles, more decision-makers, new tech shaping how people discover solutions, organic marketing isn’t just about “free” traffic. It’s about meeting core business goals: generating high-quality pipeline, shortening sales cycles, increasing deal sizes, and building trust that keeps customers coming back. Paid promotion is a great accelerator. But organic? That’s your foundation for sustainable growth in 2025–2026 and beyond. Build it now, and it will keep paying you back long after the latest ad campaign ends.  
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seo to geo

From SEO to GEO: How to Make Sure Your Content Shows Up in AI Engines

By 
Einat Talal-Cohen
, 29/06/2025

Your brand is more than just a logo - it’s a powerful strategic tool. Discover how CEOs can leverage branding to build trust, differentiate, and drive business growth.

min read

SEO to GEO marks a new phase in online success. For years, success online meant ranking high on Google. And that’s still true - but search itself is expanding. Today, visibility doesn’t stop with search engines.

It also means showing up in AI-generated answers from tools like GPT-4o, Gemini, and Claude.

Here are some facts you need to know:

  • 67% of technical queries never make it to Google
  • They’re being answered instantly by ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity
  • Google’s AI Overviews now appear in ~13% of all searches - up from 6.5% in January 2025
 

If your brand isn’t part of those answers, you’re invisible to a growing share of your market.

Search behavior is evolving:

  • Queries are longer (23 words on average, not 4)
  • Sessions are deeper (lasting around 6 minutes)
  • And AI engines don’t just search - they remember, reason, and respond with personalized, conversational synthesis

SEO still matters. But it’s no longer enough on its own. That’s where GEO - Generative Engine Optimization - comes in: the next evolution in making sure your content gets seen wherever people search for answers.

Here’s how to start positioning your content to show up where it matters most:

5 Ways to Optimize Your Content for AI Engines

1. Build Topical Authority, Not Just Keyword Lists SEO taught us to chase keywords. GEO rewards expertise. AI engines prefer trusted sources that consistently publish valuable content on specific subjects. What to do: Create content clusters. Go beyond isolated blog posts and build topic ecosystems: guides, FAQs, thought leadership pieces, and deep dives.   2. Write Like You’re Explaining It to a Smart Friend AI engines favor content written in a natural, conversational tone. If it reads like stiff marketing jargon, it’s likely to be ignored by LLMs. What to do: Break down complex topics clearly and simply. Use questions, summaries, and direct answers. Write to inform, not impress.   3. Format for Easy Extraction AI engines love content that’s easy to lift, quote, and summarize. Dense paragraphs are ignored - clarity wins. What to do:
  • Use H2s and H3s properly
  • Add bullet points and numbered lists Start with a TL;DR or summary whenever possible Think: Could ChatGPT easily use this paragraph in an answer?
  4. Build Trust with Credibility Signals AI models look for trustworthy, well-sourced content to avoid hallucinations or misinformation. What to do: Use expert bylines, cite credible sources, include data, and showcase expertise. Think “thought leader,” not “content farm.”   5. Optimize for Zero-Click Visibility People may not click anymore - they may just read the AI’s answer. Your goal is brand visibility in the answer itself. What to do: Include brand mentions, URL citations, or phrases like:“According to [YourBrand].com…” Help the AI connect your expertise to your name.

Final Thought: Be Part of the Answer

SEO isn’t dead. It’s evolving.  GEO is the next layer, giving your brand the power to show up not just in search engines but in the AI-generated answers people increasingly trust.
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