Actionable marketing trends B2B companies must embrace in 2025

This year is coming to a close – and I still can’t tell if we’re in a recession or out of it. Or perhaps we were never really in one to begin with. Regardless, as of late November 2024, the US had their elections and crypto is booming again. The tech sector is still in the doldrums – retrenchments are still happening and anecdotally, budgets are being frozen or worse, being cut.

So, what will 2025 bring?

As a B2B marketer, I’ve been involved in strategy and execution for a wide range of verticals – from tech to professional services, real estate to pharmaceuticals – and each year, I see the same concerns from B2B marketers.

Sales and marketing don’t get along – sales don’t rate the leads from marketing and marketing think sales don’t care to rate these leads. Marketing is seen as the ‘colouring in’ department who only do brochures and events.

Our tech stack isn’t integrated. CRM data isn’t being synced with marketing automation. Marketers have no idea who visited their website – and whether that same visitor ended up downloading an eBook or attended an event. Let’s not even get into web personalisation. 

Consumer agencies we appoint don’t ‘get’ B2B work – media wastage due to inefficient targeting (e.g.: lookalike audiences don’t really work in B2B), content written by generalists don’t hit the mark the same way as specialists, etc.

The list goes on. Instead of focusing on the usual topics, I thought I’d explore a mix of tech/AI, metrics and brand for 2025.

1. The death of search? The rise of prompts.

AI is old news but it still makes headlines. According to 6sense’s head of research and thought leadership, Kerry Cunningham, "In 2025, we will continue to see buyer research shift away from search and toward ChatGPT and similar.”

The question to answer now – how do you rank, not just on Google, but on ChatGPT?

Action: On top of ensuring that your content and website is SEO optimised, you now need to make sure that your content is ChatGPT (and other AI LLM) optimised. Do you create content and ‘train’ public GPTs in the hope that your results get ranked when people prompt or search for relevant content? Remember not to feed any public LLM data that you don’t want others to get access to.

2. MQLs are dead. B2B marketing KPIs will change.

Traditionally, B2B marketers have focused on ‘marketing-qualified leads’ (MQLs) as a metric for success. Typically, these leads are harvested through the usual slew of methods such as lead-gen forms, appointment setting, event sign-ups. Well, guess what?

They don’t really work.

Why? B2B purchases are typically made not by a single person but rather, a committee of buyers. Green Hat and 6sense’s recent B2B buyer journey research report highlights that a B2B deal involves nearly 13 people. Getting a single contact isn’t enough to move the needle on deal making – you really should be influencing 10-13 people.

Action: B2B marketers should ensure that they understand everyone in the buying committee – and ensure that they are engaged with relevant messaging. Do you know who these 10-13 people in a buying committee for your solution are? Have you mapped out content to each of them?

3. AI content overkill – when is good too much?

As AI gets better and better, marketing organisations look set to go hard on using AI for content creation. Aside from using AI to write articles and blogs, platforms are offering AI through ‘agents’ – effectively, AI personas that speak like humans and respond to chat and who email in a manner (technically) indistinguishable from a human.

According to Kerry Cunningham, “In 2025, we will see marketing organisations going deep on AI agents, with the number of emails being sent to contacts massively increasing.”

We had a chat with a client recently and a question came up, “How would you feel if you had engaged with someone thinking it was a real person only to find out it was an AI bot persona all along?”. Most people expressed that finding out would lead to a negative customer experience.

As a tongue-in-cheek follow-up, Cunningham posited, “unsubscribes will hit record levels, and by year end new legislation will begin to appear to regulate the use of email agents. “

Action: Be careful relying too much on AI to assume human functions and communications. There is also a potentially murky area you might fall into – if you are using an AI persona for marketing, you need to adhere to disclosure requirements. Make sure your organisation has proper guidelines for disclosure that err on the side of the law – and stick with them.

4. Brand building in B2B moves from the back seat to the front.

Consumer marketers love brand building – and they have the right avenues to do large brand chest thumping – think the Superbowl. B2B marketers – well, we have some ways to go. Yes, brand impact is harder to measure than pushing out ads that gather ‘leads’ – but let’s get into some stats.

The 6sense buyer experience report indicates that B2B buyers contact their preferred vendor first and 84% of the time, that vendor goes on to win the business. Further, B2B buyers spend about 70% of a 10- to 13-month buying journey doing their research and setting their requirements before even reaching out.

LinkedIn’s B2B Institute’s recent report titled Bigger, bolder B2B branding said, “The majority of B2B buyers agree that a better-known brand is more likely to be the chosen solution, even when that brand has an inferior product, or is more expensive.”

Yet, in a recent Green Hat webinar, 42% of the respondents said they were only investing 11-20% of their marketing budget into brand. That is likely not nearly enough for your brand to get into the radar of buyers especially if you’re not a notable tier one brand that everyone knows.

Action: You need to ensure that your brand lands as close to the top of the preference list when B2B buyers are doing their research. Make sure your brand stands out – be memorable and distinctive. Invest in good creative, and invest in getting that creative in front of people.

Cunningham believes that, “B2B vendors need to get more creative with their websites, transitioning them from information portals to unique, immersive brand experiences.”

Have a great rest of 2024. Wishing you all the very best in 2025 and may you kick all your B2B marketing goals.

This article was written by Shawn Low, country manager, Green Hat Singapore.