Let’s play a game I call “Back to the Future of B2B Marketing.” We’ll peek into the rearview mirror at my 2023 year’s predictions – where I hit the mark and where, perhaps, I went off course – and then leap forward to unravel the biggest B2B marketing trends of 2024.
So, buckle up and let’s dive into what’s coming, what’s changing, and what it all means for you.
Review of last year’s predictions
Before we get into 2024, let’s give a report card to the predictions I made last year.
Efficiency as a necessity: Grade: A
Yes, 2023 was all about a potential recession and budget constraints. Gartner’s 2023 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey found 71% thought their budgets for 2023 weren’t enough to fully execute their plans and 75% were attempting the proverbial “do more with less”. This was also born out via data from OpenView’s recent SaaS Benchmarks report.
Follow-on prediction: Interest rates will remain high, cheap money will be scarce, and discretionary marketing budgets, headcount, and software investments will continue to be scrutinized heavily in 2024.
A new model for Sales and Marketing alignment: Grade: B
While there has been improvement – 53% of sales people say they’re aligned with marketing and 51% of marketers agreed that they’re aligned with sales, up from 42% and 44% respectively in 2022 – we’re still a long ways away from sales and marketing teams acting like an integrated soccer team.
Follow-on prediction: Alignment remains the number one priority to drive growth, according to the 2023 C-Suite Go-to-Market Benchmark Survey from DemandGen Report and Demandbase. But most companies will not achieve true integrated orchestration for years, if ever.
“Everyone-Sourced Pipeline” takes over from Marketing-Sourced Pipeline: Grade: C
While the concept of a unified revenue team is gaining traction, the shift from traditional metrics like marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced pipeline isn’t as pronounced or rapid as I’d hoped. The C-Suite Go-to-Market Benchmark Survey found the top marketing metrics in use today are total revenue (18%), MQLs (16%), marketing-influenced revenue (12%), and marketing-sourced revenue (10%).
Follow-on prediction: The move to shared metrics across sales and marketing is inevitable but difficult, given how entrenched the current models are. In 2024, we will see more companies adopt “team-based pipeline” but it will remain the minority.
The continued rise of the self-service buyer: Grade: A+
With Gartner reporting that 75% of B2B buyers prefer to buy online without interacting with a salesperson (Forrester reports 70%) and growing numbers of Millenials and Gen Z in the decision-maker seat, the shift towards frictionless self-service buying is only accelerating.
Follow-on prediction: In 2024 B2B marketers will invest in content and tools that enable buyers to make informed decisions independently. More – though still not most – companies will provide transparent pricing and personalized product demos without the initial involvement of sales representatives. (In fact, TrustRadius’s 2023 B2B Buying Disconnect report found 72% of buyers said access to transparent pricing made them more likely to purchase a product, while pricing not being available continues to be the number one reason buyers are less likely to purchase from you.)
The lines between ABM & Demand Gen get blurrier: Grade: B
The trend towards thinking of your go-to-market strategies as a spectrum, blending ABM and Demand Gen tactics, is happening – but not as fast as I expected. On the technology side, I don’t see the ABM or marketing automation vendors implementing blurred capabilities (yet).
Follow-on musing: I wonder if Malachi Threadgill’s departure from Forrester will delay their proposed merging of the ABM Platform and B2B Marketing Automation Platform Wave™ reports? That would have been one of the biggest drivers of this trend.
Privacy will still be consequential: Grade: A-
Not only is this true, but as I wrote, “privacy will always be consequential”. And the importance of proper use of first-party data is even more critical given the voracious appetite for data from AI systems.
Follow-on prediction: I also wrote “[cookies will] be sticking around for a while longer still”; as noted below, 2024 is the year we’ll finally see the end of third-party cookies.
Delayed embracing of the metaverse and Web3: Grade: A
There’s still skepticism and slow adoption in the B2B sector regarding the metaverse and Web3, reflecting a cautious approach as I predicted.
Follow-on prediction: These trends remain buried under a mountain of AI.
Dark communities’ place in the buying process will keep growing: Grade: B-
This isn’t growing as fast as I predicted. The TrustRadius 2023 B2B Buying Disconnect report found that buyers consulting communities/forums to inform their purchasing decisions decreased from 37% in 2022 to 24% in 2023.
Follow-on prediction: Despite the decline in 2023, buyers do want to research off your website and consult with peers. Whether it’s a formal community or informal networking with peers, so-called “dark social” will remain part of the equation. A related prediction: these touches can’t be tracked by attribution software, which will accelerate the decline of traditional attribution.
Artificial Intelligence, the prediction I missed completely: Grade: F
I wrote my 2023 predictions in October, 2022, about a month before the release of ChatGPT. Who knew? I failed to even mention what would be the most important trend of the year, likely the decade. Oops. (Read on for more about AI.)
My Predictions for B2B Marketing in 2024
OK, here we go.
AI in B2B marketing is overhyped in the short run, and underestimated in the long run
Email marketing isn’t dead or dying — but it is evolving (quality over quantity)
The traditional B2B demand gen playbook will continue to decline in effectiveness
We will see more content based on original research and data
Leading companies will build brand by investing in owned media and engaged communities
New “XLG” go-to-market motions will continue even as companies embrace blended approaches
B2B marketers will not be prepared for the end of third-party cookies
Innovative marketers will start tracking Qualified Buying Groups (QBGs) instead of MQLs
1. AI in B2B marketing is overhyped in the short run, and underestimated in the long run
Amara’s Law states that “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,” and I think that’s exactly what’s happening with AI.
In 2024 we’re going to see a rising backlash against the “first-generation” uses of AI. We’re already seeing a surge of startups offering a light layer of content personalization on top of existing tools. This will just lead to more mediocre, inauthentic content, even as B2B buyers are already overwhelmed with too much irrelevant content. In fact, Forrester predicts that thinly customized generative AI content will further degrade the purchase experience for 70% of B2B buyers. Google’s concern over AI-generated content quality, as indicated by its November 2023 update targeting unhelpful content, is a further testament to this issue.
In 2024, our social feeds will be full of people posting a range of AI mishaps, from hallucinated facts to poor personalization to ill-timed offers. While sometimes amusing, these will remind us that AI for now is better suited as a “co-pilot” than “autopilot”, augmenting human skills and working in tandem with our creativity and strategic thinking.
All that said, if we look past 2024, most marketers are underestimating the absolutely transformational impact AI will have on go-to-market strategies and platforms. In the future, text-based conversational user interfaces will automatically identify the right audience for any campaign, eliminating the need for marketing operations expertise in data and complex segmentation rules. AI will also enhance the effectiveness of existing campaigns by streamlining A/B testing and segmentation, and will transform broadcast-like campaigns into engaging conversations, analyzing and reacting to user responses appropriately.
Looking further ahead, we’ll see a shift from human-in-the-loop systems to more automated, agent-based systems. These systems will have the autonomy to solve problems and access external tools, leading to a network of interconnected agents rather than monolithic platforms.
The culmination of these advancements will be the emergence of true self-driving marketing capabilities. These will function like a large language model, but instead of predicting the next word they will predict the next optimal interaction for each buyer. In this future, the role of marketers will pivot to focus on training and tuning the models and setting strategic goals and constraints. This will be a fundamental departure from current marketing automation platforms and will radically transform how marketers use technology.
In sum, the long-term impact of AI on B2B marketing is not just an enhancement of existing practices but a complete reinvention of how marketing works. This will create new jobs, eliminate others, and transform the day to day of every marketer. It will perhaps even transform what we think marketing even is.
What do you think?
2. Email marketing isn’t dead or dying – but it is evolving (quality over quantity)
Email has been used as a marketing tool for over 40 years – and people have been predicting its death for nearly half that time. Yet, somehow, email has remained not only relevant but also imperative for B2B marketing. Sure, we might use Slack or Teams for internal communications, and instant messaging for our friends and family, but email remains the preferred way to receive offers: in fact, Adobe reports 56% of buyers prefer to receive B2B offers over email, significantly more than direct mail, social, and other marketing channels.
Email has remained critical in marketing in part because it has capabilities not found in text messages or messaging. When you need clickable links, URLs with UTM parameters, open tracking, easy replies, attachments or images, and so on, you have email.
At the same time, email is far from perfect. Buyers complain about too many emails, too much junk. The important messages get lost in the clutter, and the sheer volume leads to disengagement. Additionally, marketers and sellers too often take the easy way out and don’t personalize or use personalization that doesn’t actually add value to the recipient (“I see your company announced an award last week, congrats!”). It’s no surprise that Adobe finds buyers say only 25% of emails from brands are interesting or compelling enough to even be worth opening.
The goal in 2024 is to have people receive fewer emails, but for each email to be more relevant, more engaging, and thus, more valuable. This is being enforced by the email clients: starting February 1st, Google and Yahoo are imposing stringent requirements to curb unwanted mass emails, especially from sellers using sales engagement platforms.
Personalization will be essential. This is not “Dear {{lead.First Name:default= }}” or even “I saw you went to school at Duke” personalization; it’s about being relevant to a recipient’s actual interests. We’ll also see an increased use of the human touch in email marketing. Emails from real people have higher open rates, especially when they come authentically from people the recipient knows or executives at your company. And as buyers become sensitized to poorly customized, AI-written emails, we will see the pendulum swing towards genuine human interactions.
So, as we step into 2024, it’s not time for email to die, but for its transformation into a more relevant, personal, and authentic tool. This evolution is an exciting opportunity for marketers to innovate, connect more meaningfully with our audiences, and create truly engaging experiences.
3. The traditional B2B demand gen playbook will continue to decline in effectiveness
I’ve previously written that the traditional marketing playbook (you know, the one I helped create at Marketo) doesn’t work anymore. Years of eBook promotions, nurturing emails, social posts, and SDR outreach have numbed buyers to the traditional tactics, and our buyers are staying unknown and anonymous for longer. At the same time, the traditional playbook’s focus on highly measurable tactics has left us over-rotated towards short-term pipeline creation and significantly underinvested in brand and other parts of the revenue cycle, specifically pipeline closing and retention.
The new B2B playbook calls for marketers and their companies to evolve:
Invest in brand creation that speaks to buyers’ emotions before they are in-market.
Use intent and AI to identify when buyers are in-market.
Focus on all aspects of revenue including retention and expansion efforts, not just acquiring net-new pipeline.
Deeply align with sales every step of the way.
Of course, all this is easier said than done. Too many boards and CFOs still insist on making every marketing dollar measurable and tracking outdated metrics like MQLs and marketing-sourced pipeline. Short-term thinking pervades the annual budgeting processes, and many CMOs haven’t built the credibility or conviction needed to budget for longer-term, harder to measure initiatives that build brand but not immediate pipeline.
The result? In 2024, only a fraction of companies will fully embrace the new B2B playbook, and the ones that don’t will continue to feel the declining effectiveness of the traditional tactics. Nonetheless, the new playbook is inevitable, and over the next few years we’ll see more and more companies adopting its principles and evolving their thinking and metrics.
4. We will see more content based on original research and data
Part of the decline in the traditional B2B playbook comes from the dramatic changes happening in content marketing. It’s no longer about gated eBooks or Definitive Guides. For better or worse, people don’t want long-form content anymore. (I appreciate the irony of writing that in a 4,000+ word article.) And as discussed, GenAI is making this problem worse by simultaneously increasing the volume and decreasing the value of written content.
Nonetheless, building a brand with quality content and thought leadership remains vital, so what’s a company to do? One strategy is more content grounded in original research and data – think in-depth reports, industry surveys, and data-driven content – which will become the gold-standard for thought leadership. This type of content relies on unique data, often owned and/or gathered by the company itself, to provide fresh insights and perspectives. According to the Content to Conversion Report from Pavillion and Kickstand, executives in particular appreciate this kind of content.
Gong Labs is the best example of this trend. They analyze the sales interactions captured by their product, which includes transcripts of web meetings and phone calls, as well as emails from across their customer base. This wealth of proprietary information is then analyzed in aggregate form to create content on various sales topics, such as the effectiveness of different cold email strategies or when you should, or should not, swear on a sales call. This is branding gold for Gong for two reasons: first, it’s full of really useful and insightful insights that their target audience truly values, and second, it can only come from Gong and their unique data set.
In essence, companies that invest in generating content backed by analyzing proprietary data, similar to Gong Labs, will enhance their brands and better position themselves to influence their target audience, particularly with executive buyers.
5. Leading companies will build brand by investing in owned media and engaged communities
Anyone involved in B2B content marketing knows that getting the content distributed and seen by the right audience is usually a bigger challenge than getting it created. For years, we’ve been stuck relying on social media and SEO to get our content found. But these are fickle friends. They’re governed by algorithms beyond our control, often pushing us towards paid promotions to gain visibility.
The solution? As evangelized by Anthony Kennada of AudiencePlus, traditional B2B content marketing needs to evolve to owned audiences and communities. This means creating and publishing content on your own platform and directly distributing the content to your audience.
Owned media encompasses channels entirely under a company’s control, including websites, blogs, and email newsletters; new content formats such as short and long-form videos, podcasts, live streams, online courses, certification programs, and branded apps; and live experiences such as events and conferences. An intriguing addition to this mix is “merch.” As my daughter’s Taylor Swift obsession shows, merch is different from SWAG. SWAG (“stuff we all get”) is given away for free to promote a brand, such as pens and water bottles with the company logo. Merch is focused on the desires of the audience and extends to items and designs that have an intrinsic value or desirability beyond the logo or brand; as such, the audience is willing to pay for it with money – or attention.
The primary advantage of owned media is cost-effectiveness. When you control the distribution, the cost drops significantly, often to zero. This not only reduces expenditure but also ensures unfettered reach to your audience. It’s about nurturing direct relationships, where communications are not mediated by third-party platforms or algorithms.
Central to this strategy is building subscribers, not just opt-ins. Subscribers actively indicate a desire for ongoing engagement and value from your content. The key is to 1) offer publicly accessible, high-quality content to showcase value, and then 2) provide exclusive content, experiences, and merch to subscribers, thereby nurturing a sense of exclusivity and community.
Ultimately, the goal transcends mere audience building; it’s about creating a community of fans, and advocates that help you create brand recognition and grow the business. We’ll also continue to see influencer marketing grow in popularity as part of this trend. A key reason is trust: buyers are more likely to trust people than companies, and in B2B they especially trust experts.
This is a far cry from traditional content marketing, but it’s where the industry is headed, and the best content marketers will evolve and adapt accordingly.
6. New “XLG” go-to-market motions will continue even as companies embrace blended approaches
Over the last year or so, we’ve seen an explosion of giving names to what John Common of Intelligent Demand calls the various XLG go-to-market motions (where X = the driving function). GTM Partners names some of these approaches, including:
Product-Led Growth (PLG): Centers around the product itself driving customer acquisition, expansion, and retention. (Slack, Canva, Zoom are all good examples.)
Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG): Leverages partnerships for market expansion and product distribution. Also called Partner-Led Growth, but PLG is taken. (Example: 95% of Microsoft revenue comes from its reseller network.)
Inbound-Led Growth (ILG): Focuses on attracting customers through content, SEO, and digital strategies. Also can be called Marketing-Led Growth or MLG. (Hubspot and the early days of Marketo were good examples of this.)
Sales-Led Growth (SLG): Involves proactive outreach to potential customers through channels like outbound email and working existing relationships; more growth comes from more sales reps. (Salesforce and Oracle are examples.)
Community-Led Growth (CLG): Builds and engages with communities to foster brand loyalty, advocacy, and growth. (GitHub and Figma both benefit from their communities.)
Do a simple search and you’ll see that each motion has multiple websites, self-proclaimed experts, and even industry events dedicated to them.
You’ll also see that most of these concepts are not new. But that’s OK. What’s happening now is more about giving a formal name and structure to well-established practices, which is a key element of codifying structured frameworks into best practices. So if using PLG or ELG or CLG or any other XLG works for your business, then I say embrace it.
First, I predict we’ll continue to see all of these approaches gain traction in 2024. Companies will leverage partnerships more strategically as human trust and connections gain importance in business relationships. As discussed above, communities will become an increasingly important part of building brand and awareness, and marketers will invest in PLG-like tools to enable self-service buyers. And so on.
However, there’s a caveat. Overemphasizing one GTM approach can cause companies to neglect other equally vital strategies and lead to an imbalance. The real challenge lies in not getting tunnel-visioned by one approach while overlooking the rest.
Therefore I also predict that companies will increasingly recognize the need for using a blend of these GTM approaches, tailored to their unique market conditions, deal sizes, and product offerings. The blending of inbound and sales-led motions, including blurring of ABM and demand generation, will continue. Product-led companies will keep building enterprise sales teams to complement their motion. Companies of all sorts will embrace partners and communities. And through all of this, we’ll come to understand that no matter what we call it, it’s all just go-to-market.
7. B2B marketers will not be prepared for the end of third-party cookies
Against the backdrop of privacy concerns and regulations, after two years of delays Google Chrome will finally phase out third-party cookies in 2024.
A great deal has been written about what cookie deprecation means for companies (including this and this), but despite the delay and lots of advice, I predict most B2B marketers will not be prepared.
Common approaches for dealing with the end of third-party cookies include:
First-Party Data: Take advantage of data directly obtained from your own systems to gain deeper insights and drive personalized marketing efforts.
Consent Managers: Implement consent management platforms to ensure transparent user consent and compliance with data privacy regulations for any data collection and processing activities.
Contextual Advertising: Focus on aligning your advertising content with the context of the web page the user is engaged with.
Google Topics (Cohorts): Use Google’s privacy-centric Topics API for audience targeting, which groups users into cohorts based on interests while preserving individual anonymity (formerly called FLoC).
Unified ID 2.0: Utilize Unified ID 2.0 (or other alternative IDs), which will rely on encrypted and hashed user identifiers (like email addresses) to maintain targeted advertising with a focus on privacy and user consent.
Sites Where Users Are Logged In: Leverage the consented user data available within social media platforms and other walled gardens to target specific audience segments effectively.
Lookalike Audiences: Build audiences with your first-party data and use AI to identify anonymized third-party audiences with similar characteristics.
Google Protected Audiences: Obtain user consent to add visitors on your site to specific interest groups, enabling you to engage in targeted remarketing to these users when they visit other sites (formerly called FLEDGE).
On the plus side, most B2B companies I work with have solid first-party data strategies, with well-managed CRM, ABM, and marketing automation platforms and consent management in place. (If you don’t, it’s time to get on this!)
Also, B2B advertising vendors (including Demandbase) are working on contextual advertising, in which ads are placed based on the content of the web page instead of user behavior. So, for example, if you want to target companies showing intent for “digital security” topics, you’ll place your ads on web pages that talk about it. This approach respects privacy and doesn’t rely on third-party cookies.
However, the other solutions raise more questions than answers for B2B companies.
Regarding Google Topics, there are 470 proposed interests (documented here), but the vast majority are consumer-focused such as Arts & Entertainment, Autos & Vehicles, Beauty & Fitness, Food & Drink, Games, Shopping, Sports, and so on. There are a few Business & Industrial topics, but it’s unlikely they will be granular enough for most B2B companies.
Similarly, it seems like Unified ID 2.0 and other options for targeting logged-in users (such as social media and walled gardens) have a B2C-bias, where the email used as an identifier will primarily be consumer emails, not work emails. Given the low match rates for mapping B2B and B2C identities (typically 30%), it’s unclear how B2B companies, whose first-party data is full of professional emails, will be able to take advantage of these solutions. I wonder if a similar B2C bias will exist for lookalike audiences; in a B2B setting, lookalike audiences would want to focus more on firmographic and technographic data points, but it’s not clear those will be available as options.
Protected Audiences holds the most promise for B2B since advertisers and publishers have control over the interest groups. But it will take time for B2B marketers to figure this out and publishers to adopt B2B topics.
As a final consideration, account identification relies on both third-party cookies and IP addresses to match an anonymous web visitor to the correct company where they work. This is a key capability of ABM platforms, and it remains to be seen what impact the end of third-party cookies will have on account match rates and accuracy.
I’ve seen almost no discussion of these topics with a B2B bent, which leads me to conclude that many B2B marketers will be caught somewhat unprepared by this important change. Figuring out the new way will require testing and tuning, so the sooner marketers start figuring it out, the better.
8. Innovative marketers will start tracking Qualified Buying Groups (QBGs) instead of MQLs
As we look towards 2024, buying groups will increasingly become the core of modern go-to-market strategies. As I’ve written, we’ve seen the limitations of lead-based marketing, particularly in how it disconnects marketing and sales efforts and inefficiently targets individuals who may not be decision-makers or even linked to target accounts. Account-based marketing, while addressing some of these challenges, also misses the mark by treating accounts too broadly, overlooking the diversity of buying scenarios within a single organization.
This is where buying groups shine. They represent a collection of individuals within an organization who are involved in the purchasing process. This approach acknowledges that B2B purchases are rarely made by individuals in isolation but by groups with varying roles and influences. While leads are too narrow and accounts are too broad, buying groups are just right.
Therefore, I predict companies will start talking about Qualified Buying Groups (QBGs) to replace Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) as the new benchmark in B2B marketing. (Perhaps there will be a different three-letter acronym, we’ll see.) Operationalizing buying groups remains challenging, however, requiring AI that can sift through millions of data points to automatically identify the right members. As a result, only the most cutting edge, innovative companies will fully embrace QBGs in 2024, with more companies adopting the strategy in 2025 and beyond.
Closing Thoughts
As we step back into the present from our journey to B2B marketing in 2024, it’s clear that the future holds both challenges and exciting opportunities. From the evolution of AI and the demise of third-party cookies to the rise of self-service buyers and the blurring lines between all the various “XLG” GTM motions, the landscape is shifting beneath our feet.
But remember, with great change comes great opportunity. B2B marketing isn’t just about adapting; it’s about pioneering new strategies, embracing innovation, and leading the charge into the future. The time to act is now. As you stand at the forefront of this transformative era, ask yourself: Are you ready to embrace these changes, or will you watch from the sidelines?
The future is in your hands – let’s make it remarkable!