More than half (51%) of UK B2B marketers have to justify marketing spend to C-suite executives every month, according to new research shared exclusively with Marketing Week.
Plus as B2B buying cycles grow longer, 87% of B2B marketers say it’s getting harder to measure the long-term impact of a campaign.
LinkedIn’s ‘B2B ROI Impact’ research, which surveyed more than 250 B2B marketers in the UK, and more than 1,000 respondents across the globe, reveals that marketers face continued pressure to find new ways to prove the impact of their work on company revenue.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of UK B2B marketers say proving campaign return on investment (ROI) has become more important in the past two years.
Over a third of B2B marketers ‘often’ in conflict with sales
The research also shows three key barriers UK B2B marketers are facing when demonstrating ROI – changes in the regulatory environment (39%), integration issues between different data platforms (39%), and the time and resources required to analyse results (37%).
The pressure to justify marketing investment to businesses is becoming a “much more common theme” for B2B marketers, says Tunji Akintokun, head of enterprise solutions, UK and Ireland at LinkedIn, who adds its “not surprising” half of B2B marketers are having to make justifications monthly. Indeed, it “could be more in the future, if budgets continue to be challenged,” he says.
He urges businesses to acknowledge B2B’s “much longer” buying cycles. “It takes longer to be able to justify that ROI,” Akintokun tells Marketing Week.
It may also be contributing to how B2B marketers feel about their jobs. Most B2B marketers (55%) are open to a new role, according to LinkedIn’s 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark data with Ipsos, published in November.
Value over volume
The research shows that volume metrics, like customer acquisition cost (CAC), return on ad spend (ROAS), and customer per acquisition/action (CPA), are the most frequently requested metrics from the C-suite, and prove a disconnect between what B2B marketers believe are strongest indicators of campaign success versus what senior leadership is demanding.
The majority of the UK’s B2B marketers say value metrics are stronger indicators of campaign success. These value metrics include marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs).
Akintokun tells Marketing Week it’s not a quick process to switch from volume to value.
“That’s a story and a narrative that has to be told by B2B marketers to the C-suite over a period of time,” he says.“However, there are some really good tools now in AI that allow them to provide some of those more volume-centric to value metrics that they can use.”
Indeed, 95% believe AI will have a positive impact on measurement over the next five years.
Brand building is as important at the bottom of the B2B funnel as the top
The vast majority (91%) of UK B2B marketers agree they are seeing improved ROI when using AI to build and optimise campaigns. The research shows they are using AI to enhance audience segmentation and targeting (55%), automate routine tasks (55%), conduct predictive analysis to improve performance and lead scoring (54%), and provide real-time optimisation of ad spend and creative content (53%).
Over the next five years, UK B2B marketers believe AI will prove to be the most valuable in measuring ad effectiveness (52%), campaign optimisation (49%) and content creation and personalisation (48%). This tracks with a “positive trend” for marketers upskilling around AI on LinkedIn, says Akintokun.
Looking into 2025, UK B2B marketers say understanding buyer intent will be one of the biggest challenges in proving campaign effectiveness. As a result, nearly half of B2B marketers are pivoting to a buyer group marketing strategy to drive conversions (43%) and focusing on customer lifetime value (CLV) in reporting (45%), the research finds.
While the imperative for B2B brands to start investing in brand marketing has grown in recent years, the pressure to optimise and do more with less may be holding this up.
In terms of “brand versus demand and the pressure around lower and higher funnel, we are seeing that shift,” says Akintokun. “Brand is still important, brand needs to be there. But increasingly when you’re focusing on bottom-funnel activity, being able to have value associated with that is really important and will play out over the next few years.”
This is something Marketing Week columnist David van Schaick discussed last year when he urged B2B marketers to see brand building as being as important at the bottom of the B2B funnel as the top.
