The 5 Biggest Problems with Modern B2B Marketing

The modern B2B marketing landscape continues to face challenges that impact the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing teams, creating further barriers to success. To make matters worse, the average marketing budget in 2024 has fallen by 15%, forcing already overwhelmed marketers to do more with a lot less.

To properly equip marketers with the tools necessary to actually do more with less, CMOs need to address the current challenges that marketers face, and provide them with the solutions and support required to get the job done.

Problem 1: Bloated Tech Stacks

Thanks to merger and acquisition (M&A) activity rebounding in 2024, with deal volumes rising 17% YoY in the first six months alone, many organizations are experiencing duplicative functionality across their vendors. While bloated tech stacks are nothing new, the rise in gen AI and subsequent product offerings have left marketers dealing with multiple platforms and tools with redundant functionalities. For example, consider the rise of AI-powered chatbots and the integration of this feature by most tech vendors, causing marketers to have multiple options when it comes to AI assistants.

As boards push for a decrease in business spend, they continue to encourage marketers to reduce their software spend and consolidate their tech stack. With that in mind, marketers must ensure they evaluate vendors thoroughly and leverage strong relationships to get the best deals. When marketers have too many tools with similar capabilities, this can lead to a decrease in productivity – which impacts the top to the bottom of the organization. By working with vendors and conducting internal reviews to determine the usefulness of solutions, B2B CMOs can consolidate solutions within their tech stack to ensure marketers are equipped with the right tools to work more effectively.

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Problem 2: Marketing Teams Functioning in Silos

Organizations regularly function in silos, with marketing, sales, and finance teams all working independently of each other and causing each team to row in a different direction. The distinct lack of communication and collaboration between teams trickles down into daily operations, often leaving marketers struggling to understand the current state of pipeline, success metrics, and more. Instead of operating in distinct silos, marketing can reframe their structure to instead think of themselves as a part  of a four legged stool supported by sales development representatives (SDRs), sales, marketing and partners, all upholding the same goal.

To encourage better cross-departmental collaboration, CMOs can lead the charge by setting up periodic business reviews with other leaders, such as the CFO, to dive into where each team is at, what’s working and what isn’t, and re-aligning teams each week to row forward in the right direction . By meeting weekly with sales and finance teams for pipeline reviews to review input metrics, such as web-form fills, website traffic, etc, marketers can better analyze performance and the effectiveness of current campaigns, bringing success for all parties involved.

Problem 3: Lack of Clarity in Attribution

With increased pressure on marketers to produce results in light of uncertain market conditions, B2B marketers struggle to define and align on the best metrics to track for organizational success. As the economy continues to face rapid technological development and changing business needs, modern marketers must decide which criteria to follow to determine sales and marketing success. Misaligned benchmarks only emphasizes organizational silos and highlights that teams are rowing in different directions, creating challenges when it comes to showcasing successful campaigns.

To get ahead of this issue, marketers can start with an end-to-end audit on systems but to do so requires making no assumptions and questioning all functionalities. While automating ROI tracking can reduce time spent on battling attribution issues, a lack of integration can hold up automation and aggregation of data. For B2B marketers, sticking with tried and true methods of manual tracking can surprisingly be the best way to measure success and get teams back on track.

Problem 4: Gen AI Use Cases Are Still Lacking

AI has the potential to revolutionize productivity, from summarizing meetings to helping with writer’s block when it comes to content, the tech can greatly reduce things like administrative tasks or brainstorming topics. However, for specific B2B use cases, such as image generation, the applications for AI fall short. As marketers continue to experiment with AI, lapses in accuracy make the technology counterintuitive to increasing productivity.

Additionally, it’s crucial for marketers to remember who they’re marketing to: humans, not machines. By ensuring marketing efforts focus on humans, marketers can lean into their human appeal to stand out from competitors as every organization rushes to integrate gen AI into their tech stacks.

Problem 5: The Dark Funnel Continues to Cast Clouds

Despite larger tech stacks and duplicative functions, modern marketers continue to struggle with identifying where leads come from, as they often don’t know what the right technology to do so is, resulting in the “dark funnel” as originally coined by 6sense. With the dark funnel, marketers are unable to determine exactly how and why prospects are coming to vendors, impacting marketing strategy. Without clarity on what specifically engages prospects with their solution, B2B marketers will continue to face roadblocks when it comes to proving ROI on campaigns.

As organizations head into the second half of the year and begin to plan for the next, it’s crucial for CMOs to be attuned to the challenges their marketing teams are facing and understand what changes must be implemented for success. From conducting end-to-end audits to using emerging technologies sparingly, CMOs must pivot their strategy to ensure teams are equipped with the tools and skills needed to drive revenue and results. Doing more with less is the motto of the modern B2B marketer, and by transforming tactics to better leverage technology, reach target audiences, and measure success, B2B marketers will finally be able to do so.

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Episode 210: The Latest in AI Across SalesTech and MarTech with Dominik Facher, Chief Product Officer, ZoomInfo