Outlook 2025

As we near the close of another year, it is a pivotal moment for reflection. B2B leaders are in a critical position to assess the effectiveness of their strategies and chart a new course for 2024.

In recent years, the business landscape has undergone rapid transformation, largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the years following, companies adapted swiftly, leading to a post-pandemic economic resurgence. However, this was short-lived as 2023 brought economic uncertainty, provoking widespread budget cuts and downsizing.

This also shifted attention to technology purchases as many B2B organizations found themselves burdened with bloated tech stacks that proved difficult to maintain. Coupled with diminishing PE/VC resources and the AI hype cycle leveling off, this trend has given rise to a more defensive approach among buyers.

As a result, organizations are now facing a complex business environment as expectations to drive performance and ROI are met conversely with reduced budgets and teams.

So, what does success look like in 2024?

As the sun sets on another year, now is the time to reflect, analyze, and plan new innovative strategies in order to generate the best outcomes for 2023.

Indeed, ahead of next year’s challenges lies the opportunity to drive growth and results for those quick to pivot to trends with flexible and resilient strategies that keep pace with emerging developments. It is evident that if success is to be attained in 2023, a significant shift in marketing strategies will be required.

At the center of the trends driving the evolution in B2B marketing is the need for marketing and demand leaders to demonstrate quantifiable performance and significant results from their marketing investment initiatives. This emphasis on performance and growth marketing born from the pressures of the looming recession has already had noticeable impact on the role of marketing departments within organizations—and will continue to affect how teams operate next year.

In fact, Forrester reports that up to 20% of demand teams stand to be incorporated into sales functions in 2023—a rather concerning statistic that demonstrates the ongoing problem of misalignment between sales and marketing and a wider issue that continues to plague many organizations.

While certainly an attempt to improve performance and boost revenue, this trend only emphasizes the need for marketers to deliver extraordinary growth results in the face of greater budget scrutiny—or risk losing their autonomy to the sales team.

As the ever-evolving B2B landscape continues to present unique challenges for B2B marketers, its changing nature also means new possibilities and opportunities. It is only logical to question how the B2B market will continue to shift in 2022, and which strategies will be the most effective for managing change.

In INFUSE’s outlook for 2022, our industry experts forecast the upcoming trends and their impact on not only demand generation, but the B2B marketplace and how we work in general.

Outlook 2022 was written in December 2021, before the invasion of Ukraine.

Therefore, this piece has been revisited, with new considerations (labeled as “update”) and a new section on Cyber Resilience to reflect on how this escalating war has and will continue to change the predictions we made at the end of 2021.

Our focus will be on the impact of the conflict on B2B growth marketing. We believe that any geopolitical commentary would be out of place and beyond our expertise.

At the beginning of 2021, B2B marketers find themselves at a crossroads – both in terms of the business climate and the greater social context in which they operate. What’s next?

In our Outlook for 2021, INFUSE leadership share their unique views and insights into this major moment in B2B marketing, including exciting developments that lay in store for INFUSE in the year ahead.