4 predictions for B2B marketing in 2024

If you work in B2B marketing, you know we are in the middle of a major transformation. Technologies like generative AI (GAI) are transforming our daily routines and long-term plans. Many of us are feeling pressure to deliver more value within current budgets. Organization structures are changing. C-suite demands are up. There is more focus on revenue generation and the ability to report on your impact.?

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Our firm, 普华永道 , conducts regular surveys to learn what other CMOs are thinking and doing. Based on our insights and what I’m seeing in the industry, I have four key predictions for senior marketing leaders in 2024. And if you navigate these developments well, you could end 2024 delivering far more value than when the year began.?

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1. The C-suite will look to you for growth?

It’s not new that CMOs need to drive growth. What will be new in 2024 is that CMOs may also be their companies’ chief growth officers as the reality is B2B marketers have more power than before to make growth happen. Thanks to GAI and other marketing technology, for example, you can map the customer journey, deepen engagement and deliver hyper-personalized marketing.?

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In PwC’s recent customer loyalty survey, 61% of executives ranked personalizing the customer experience as a high priority — more than any other loyalty activator. Who is best placed to guide the whole organization to deliver that personalized experience? It should be marketers, with our continuous interaction with customers, focus on customer-centricity, and data to back up our convictions.???

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2. You will tell your story better?

In PwC’s Pulse Survey of CMOs and marketing leaders, only 54% of respondents strongly agreed that key decision-makers understood the value of marketing. In other words, marketers may be doing a better job marketing their organizations than marketing their own teams. While that’s arguably better than the opposite, for marketing organizations to do their job well, other decision-makers need to understand their value.?

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MarTech makes it possible to gather data to prove your impact — but it has to be the right data. Don’t, for example, report mostly on vanity metrics such as clicks, traffic, impressions or conversions. Instead, give the CFO a dollar figure on revenue that you're helping to grow or relationships you are enabling. Give the CEO revenue, too, and also data on the state of the brand. Give technology leads the numbers they need to understand what you are accomplishing with tech — and what you need to do more of. Speak their language and watch your influence rise.?

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3. You will deploy and use tech more strategically?

You’re likely already using a lot of MarTech and probably have plans to leverage even more, but for many of us, budgets are constrained. Nearly half of the CMOs in my firm’s Pulse Survey said the cost of adopting new technology poses a significant challenge in the next three to five years. Given this, it's important to find smarter, cost-effective ways to leverage your existing tools and seamlessly integrate new ones.??

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On my team, for example, our recently deployed tech includes a GAI-based content generator for derivative marketing assets and a GAI assistant for data analysis and content review. But these tools aren’t just for us. They run on the same GAI model the entire firm uses. We just customized the model for marketing. That’s one of the wonderful things about GAI: it’s incredibly scalable. We're working on further GAI solutions for marketing, and we’re “co-developing” them with other functions — with whom we’ll divide both the value and the costs. It’s this kind of approach to tech that can both grow your impact and keep your CFO happy.??

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4. You will embrace your inner tech leader?

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Unless you’re a MarTech specialist, you may not think of yourself as a technologist. But in 2024, you could become one. Some of the most exciting use cases for GAI, virtual reality (VR) and other emerging technologies are in B2B marketing. In my team’s experience, for example, besides our GAI initiatives, we’ve had great outcomes from metaverse initiatives to better engage with our clients.?

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But, the way to lead on tech is by rethinking skills and roles — starting with your own. Are you ready to upskill and reassign people to do higher-value work, once GAI does simpler tasks? Are you ready to oversee teams where GAI is augmenting everyone’s work? Are you encouraging your people to invent new, GAI-enhanced roles for themselves? Becoming fully tech-enabled may sound like a big shift, but it’s exciting once you get started — and many marketers possess the open, creative mindset needed to be a tech trailblazer.?

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Bonus prediction: What won’t change one bit in 2024?

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One of the things I love about marketing is how it mixes fast-paced change with a stable core — and that core is people. Good marketing is people understanding other people and speaking to them. That’s as true for B2B marketing as for B2C, and it’s as true when you’re talking to your GAI assistant in your VR headset as it is when you’re brainstorming with your colleagues.?

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That’s why marketing should consistently be tech-powered and human-led. Because the point of MarTech isn’t to replace people. It’s to help marketers do higher-impact, more fulfilling work, by helping customers do the same. Keep that in mind, and I predict that you will be a highly effective marketing leader in 2024 and beyond.

For more B2B marketing leadership trends, watch my session at the 2023 LinkedIn Collective Studio at Cannes.