By Chris Smith, Bknown Media
For years, B2B marketing operated under a predictable framework: attract leads, nurture through automation, hand off to sales. But the environment that made that playbook work has fundamentally shifted.
Budgets are tighter. Channels are noisier. Buyers are invisible. And the tech stack that once tracked the journey now operates in partial darkness.
The result? Many CMOs feel like their teams are underperforming when, in reality, the system itself no longer supports the way buyers buy.
According to Gartner, marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenue dropped from 11% in 2019 to under 8% in 2025. At the same time, CPC and CPL costs skyrocketed. WordStream’s data shows Google Ads CPLs now exceed $70 for B2B campaigns.
This imbalance means marketers are being asked to drive the same (or greater) pipeline results with far fewer resources. It’s not inefficiency; it’s economics.
Why it matters:
As performance marketing costs rise, B2B brands that rely solely on paid channels will eventually price themselves out. The brands that survive are those that build demand before the click.
Today, as much as 70% of the B2B buyer’s journey happens anonymously, outside your CRM or marketing automation tools. Buying committees now average 6–10 stakeholders, and only a fraction of them ever fill out a form or engage in a trackable way.
This “dark funnel”, where buyers research, read, and decide without interacting with your brand directly — breaks traditional attribution. The “MQL” is no longer the signal it once was.
The theory:
This aligns with the “buyer empowerment” trend described in Gartner’s “Future of B2B Buying” research: modern buyers prefer self-directed exploration. They don’t want to be sold to, they want to learn.
The marketing automation era was built on tracking pixels, cookies, and lead scoring. But with cookie deprecation, privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.), and MAP vendors offering few innovations, the technical foundation is eroding.
Impact:
Data quality and attribution accuracy decline, and marketers lose confidence in reporting. This results in measurement paralysis, an inability to connect activities to outcomes with certainty.
We flooded every channel with content and automation. Now, audiences tune out.
LinkedIn organic reach dropped to 1–2% in 2025.
Email open rates are down from 36% to 27%.
Reply rates hover around 5%.
Every brand is shouting louder in the same spaces, creating noise instead of resonance.
Many companies still optimize for MQLs or vanity metrics like form fills and impressions, despite sales teams prioritizing quality opportunities and brand preference.
The B2B Institute (LinkedIn + Ehrenberg-Bass) calls this the “performance delusion” which is where short-term metrics overshadow the long-term brand building that actually drives growth.
When tracking fails, your brand becomes the signal.
Focus on thought leadership, storytelling, and trust; the elements that buyers remember before they’re ready to buy.
Tactics that work:
Create category-level content (educational, not product-focused).
Invest in consistent creative and messaging across all touchpoints.
Develop a visible leadership presence on platforms like LinkedIn.
🔹 Example: Instead of a “Download our whitepaper” CTA, test “See how 200+ builders solved this same issue.” Focus on credibility and relatability.
You can’t convert buyers who aren’t in-market. But you can influence them before they get there.
Practical approaches:
Run always-on awareness campaigns (video, social, podcasts).
Use first-party data and community engagement instead of rented audiences.
Layer AI-driven intent tools (e.g., 6sense, Bombora, Mutiny) to spot early signals.
Accept that not everything can or should be tracked linearly. Instead, build a multi-touch view that blends data with qualitative insight.
Tools & methods:
Use self-reported attribution (“How did you hear about us?” fields).
Correlate spikes in branded search traffic with campaign launches.
Combine CRM, social, and survey data to identify unseen influence paths.
Retire outdated marketing automation tools that can’t handle modern privacy requirements. Replace them with:
CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) for unified profiles
AI-powered analytics to fill gaps in attribution
Server-side tracking for compliant measurement
When measurement gets messy, alignment matters most.
Co-own pipeline and revenue metrics, not just MQLs.
Adopt Revenue Operations (RevOps) practices to unify data and incentives.
💬 Key shift: Marketing’s job isn’t to generate leads, it’s to create the conditions for revenue growth.
Replace outdated KPIs with metrics that reflect reality:
|
Old KPI |
New KPI |
|---|---|
|
MQL count |
Marketing-sourced pipeline & win rate |
|
Email opens |
Brand search lift & engagement rate |
|
CTR |
Share of voice and audience growth |
|
Form fills |
Content-assisted conversions |
The old B2B marketing infrastructure of automation, attribution, and lead scoring, wasn’t built for today’s buyer.
CMOs who thrive will be those who rebuild their systems around trust, data intelligence, and adaptability, not just technology.
The playbook is broken, yes. But that creates opportunity. A chance to build something better: marketing rooted in value, insight, and human connection.
Ready to grow your business and boost your bottom line? Let’s make it happen! Reach out to Bknown Media today.
© 2025 Bknown Media
