B2B Marketing Trends and Stats for Right Now

Published on 7th July 2023

Why you should care about B2B marketing statistics

At Virtual Intelligence Briefing (ViB), we are committed to staying up to date with the ever-changing B2B marketing ecosystem. Maintaining a clear view of emerging technologies and trends allows us to better serve marketers; understanding what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and the best ways to get you there.

Recently, we conducted a survey of 300+ marketing professionals with the specific goal of understanding three things:

B2B marketing budgets: Where are people allocating the most resources and why?
Emerging trends in artificial intelligence: How are marketers currently using it, and where do they see the most potential in the future?
The impact that changes in the industry have on lead generation: How are budget changes affecting lead quality, and what impact will AI have in the future?

Let’s take a peek at our methodology:

Interviewees' job titles spanned from IC and manager all the way up to C-Suite
We saw an even split of company sizes—from 10 employees to over 1k
There was an even distribution of marketing budgets among respondents, beginning at 10k and going upwards of 1mil
We spoke to predominantly SaaS organizations, although other industries such as healthcare, finance, IT, and manufacturing were also included

Looking at 2022 & 2023: budgets, lead gen statistics, email, and more

First, let’s take a look at prioritization. In 2023, marketers are increasingly focused on brand awareness—in fact, 51% said that this was their top marketing priority for the year. Being memorable to consumers—and having a voice in the market—is, arguably, more important than any email or ad campaign you can create.

[STAT CALLOUT: 51% of marketers say brand awareness is their top priority]

This statistic corroborates a trend we’ve been seeing for several years: B2B marketers are moving towards a more traditional B2C approach. When we say B2C, what we mean is marketing to humans instead of to organizations. We are seeing more and more campaigns (and content) that are funny or memorable and that keep that brand kicking around in folks' brains well after they have finished engaging with it (take a peek at Okta’s video ads or this mockumentary from Slack for some inspiration). When it comes down to it, brand awareness is the foundation on which your other marketing efforts rest.

After brand awareness, marketing teams are planning to prioritize lead generation (49%) and lead quality and conversion rates (46%) above other initiatives such as ABM (18%) and expanding to new markets (17%). This tells us that marketers are trying to find a middle ground between cost-per-lead and lead quality. While approaches like ABM can yield excellent results, they can also be costly, and there is inherently more risk involved. While expanding to new markets may be more cost-effective, you run the risk of generating lower-quality leads overall as you devote resources to learning new geographies and localizing content. Honing in on an effective strategy that hits your target markets and personas without putting all your eggs into one basket is ideal.

{Insert graph of marketing priorities from research deck}

Next, let’s break down how marketing teams are prioritizing different channels in their marketing strategy. Despite the strong trend toward visual and audio content that we’ve seen over the last several years, videos and podcasts are only viewed as important channels by 31% of marketers. The majority of emphasis is placed on email and web marketing (83%) SEO (83%), content marketing (75%), and social (74%). When looking at these numbers, is important to note the possibility that B2B marketers haven’t fully explored the full potential of video and audio—as most major industry leaders and news outlets tout its effectiveness. With the rise of platforms like TikTok and Twitch, it will be difficult to ignore video for much longer.

When it comes to efficacy, 45% of marketers say website, SEO, and events yield positive results, while videos & podcasts (22%) and social media (21%) are the least impactful. Interestingly, despite email being a top focus when it comes to strategy, only 33% of marketers say that it is an effective marketing channel. In fact, the majority of marketers (61%) say that they had an email open rate of below 20% in 2022. This begs the question: are we focusing on email because we think we should—or because it’s a smart priority?

Looking ahead to the remainder of 2023, our study revealed several interesting trends. To start, 53% of marketers say they are leaning into repurposed content—this can mean anything from refreshing old pieces from years back to taking current long-form copy and editing it down into blogs and other bite-size pieces. Strategically, this is a brilliant use of resources as it allows you to generate content for every channel from a single piece. To this point, short-form video is on the rise as well, with 53% of marketers saying they plan to adopt it this year. This is particularly interesting given how many of these same people responded that video as a channel wasn’t effective or a high priority. It is very likely that, for many of these organizations, video is a new tactic, and they are open to exploring it despite not entirely having a grasp on best practices for engagement. Lastly, 50% of marketers are back to in-person events this year. The return to IRL experiences has been tenuous at best—but it seems as though many marketers are ready to make the leap.

{Insert graph of tools, trends, and tactics for ‘23}

Lastly, let’s take a peek at trends in marketing budgets and spending. When it comes to the allocation of budget, marketing programs/paid media account for 45% of most organizations’ plans for 2023—while outsourced services, like agencies, make up only 12%. Additionally, as compared to last year, marketing spending is up across the board—regardless of channel. It’s worth noting that although email ranks high on marketers’ priority listings, 42% of professionals said that their spend on email was “low.” The biggest changes to budgets we recorded are in advertising (up 47%) and in web + SEO (up 39%). In fact, 61% of marketing organizations say that their advertising spend is “high.” This can be attributed to the previously discussed prioritization of brand awareness above all else. If orchestrated correctly, your spending on SEO, paid media, and advertising will increase the visibility of your brand and awareness around your brand and messaging. This is not to say that agencies, contractors, and technology are not important—they simply account for a smaller piece of the pie.

AI’s impact on B2B marketing trends

What is AI-generated content, anyway? According to TechTarget, “AI-generated content is copy such as blogs, marketing materials, articles and product descriptions written by a machine. The AI content creator generates the content after a person inputs information such as keywords, phrases, and topics.” While ChatGPT popularized this technology, there are a variety of platforms on the market today that use AI to generate everything from articles to websites to video—and marketers have begun to implement this into their day-to-day. In fact, 41% of marketers have plans to use AI in 2023 and 96% say it will have an impact on marketing channels.

[STAT CALLOUT: 96% of marketers say AI will impact marketing channels in 2023]

While AI may seem like a no-brainer for content creation, there are some pros and cons to take into consideration before you begin to integrate it into your marketing strategy.

Let’s begin with the positives:

It’s fast: AI-generated content draws from existing materials, enabling it to produce content at an unprecedented speed, allowing for faster turnaround times and the ability to allocate resources to other tasks throughout the workday.
Cost-efficiency: Compared to a freelance writer, AI is a fraction of the price. While this is absolutely a pro in certain cases, be cautioned that these platforms are not a catch-all solution to replace humans. For a small business without a lot of resources, however, AI can be a huge boon in creating written content.
Better SEO: Because AI uses already extant SEO-optimized content to inform its writing, it can be a boon to those marketers who are new to SEO—helping with keyword insertion and article structure.
Combatting writers' block: Instead of asking AI to write articles for you, you can ask the platform to assist you in brainstorming new ideas; even helping write outlines so that you can get to content creation more quickly.

[STAT CALLOUT: 85% of marketers see AI as having a positive impact on B2B marketing]

[Quote callout: “If you don't jump on the trend, you will be left behind. I believe most big companies will shift to using chatbots and AI-generated materials.” - anonymous survey respondent]

AI isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, however—and marketers know it. 59% of marketers surveyed have concerns regarding the quality of output, while 48% have data privacy worries, and 37% take issue with the ethics. Let’s dig into the drawbacks of these AI content-generation platforms:

Plagiarism: Because AI pulls from writing that already exists on the web (without citations), there is the potential that a piece you generate is already extant elsewhere, nearly verbatim. Always Google the verbiage that a platform like ChatGPT outputs to ensure it is original.
Privacy concerns: AI platforms are new and vastly unregulated; they scrape the web for content sources for their writing. While consent for data release is implied in (most of) the United States, privacy laws in Europe—GDPR—and even in some parts of the US—CCPA & CPA—make the legality of these technologies murky. While it is unlikely at this point in time that we will see companies who use ChatGPT being sued for privacy violations, it isn’t impossible. Staying up-to-date with regulations and legislation is a must if you want to implement any sort of AI writing assistant in your marketing plans.
Inconsistency: AI writing tools don’t always produce the same quality content across topics. They have varying degrees of knowledge on different subjects—meaning that while you might get an in-depth piece for one prompt, the next will be severely lacking. Additionally, the pieces AI writes can be significantly less readable than what a good human writer could produce—even if they are grammatically correct.
Requires resources: Under no circumstances should you use AI-generated content without human oversight. These platforms are not a replacement for employees but should be used to augment work already being done by humans. This means that someone needs to proofread and edit every piece that is generated before it goes live—often re-writing parts that are clunky, inaccurate, or don’t hold up to brand standards.

{Insert graph of biggest concerns from marketers about AI}

[Quote callout: “I believe AI will play a major role in content marketing however, if the content is not reviewed and edited by a person, the content could be low quality and possibly duplicative if other users search for a similar query.”- anonymous survey respondent]

With all this in mind, where does AI have the potential to have the biggest effect? According to marketers, the strongest impact on B2B marketing will be seen in marketing automation (63%) and chatbots (45%), with ChatGPT (61%) and Grammarly (53%) being the strongest impactors. When it comes to potential areas for generative AI-powered marketing tools, respondents saw the most potential in asset creation (55%), followed closely by personalized content (50%) and then content promotion (42%).

[Quote callout: “We hope that AI will allow our content team to focus on our larger content pieces—[we can] use AI to help grind out blogs and smaller pieces so they can concentrate on the pieces that convert.”- anonymous survey respondent]

So, you’re going to use AI—now what? There are some simple best practices that marketers can implement to ensure that they are protecting themselves and their organization while generating content that converts.

Use AI for top-of-funnel assets, not proprietary product content: Anything you input into a platform like ChatGPT goes into its database. You don’t want your organization’s private data being used to generate someone else’s article, so be smart about what you share with AI—because as soon as you do, it’s no longer yours.
Edit everything: Never trust that what an AI platform has presented you with is good enough as is. Always include human oversight in your AI planning and review process.
Personalization and iteration are your best friends: One of the easiest and most efficient ways to make use of AI is to have it take pre-written content and have the platform personalize it to a specific vertical or edit it to a particular use case.

And, as always, be smart. Stay up to date on changes to legislation. AI is a new phenomenon, and we’re likely to see a lot of changes to the technology in the next several years. Don’t assume that today’s best practices will be tomorrow’s.

Let’s talk lead generation (and how AI might help)

95% of marketers say lead generation, lead quality, and conversion rates are the biggest challenges that they’re facing this year—let’s understand why. Last year, 55% of organizations said they met—but did not exceed—their lead generation goals. In fact, nearly a quarter of organizations fell well below their conversion rate targets.

In the world of B2B marketing, “good enough” is never what we strive for, so what can marketers do to start exceeding expectations as opposed to just making ends meet?

One of the best ways that marketers can generate high-quality, high-converting leads is via content syndication. Syndication takes content that you have already created and publishes it across a variety of other websites to help you attract more attention to your brand/services. With an effective strategy, there are many benefits. Most importantly, you are able to get your content—and brand—in front of more people who match your specific buyer personas, opening up a whole new subset of prospects to turn into leads and customers.

There are three core strategies for strong content syndication.

Social media: LinkedIn and other social websites are excellent, cost-effective ways to have your writing seen by more than just your website visitors. By posting to these channels, you can build an organic audience that may not have found your brand otherwise.
Paid syndication: Paying a professional distribution company or a lead generation agency to place your content in high-value places on the web, either on their own website/platform or with other content publishers. Paid syndication can be excellent for brands as it involves features in major publications with little to no effort from your organization. Some examples of paid B2B content syndication platforms include PR Newswire, Outbrain, and Taboola.
Free syndication: Pitching your content to publications and websites in the hopes that these outlets mention you or use excerpts from your work with backlinks to your website. This tactic is very similar to PR, as it involves consistently pitching ideas and pieces to the media. The biggest drawback here is that this requires a significant amount of effort; you must identify the right outlets, build connections with them, and pitch your content in a compelling way.

But how does AI fit in with syndication and lead generation? Well, for starters, many publications are tailored to a specific persona or industry. AI can help you take already extant, successful pieces of content and edit them to be relevant to the target audience of the publication. This frees your content marketers up from having to edit—or write net new—pieces for syndication. These platforms are able to push out content as fast as it is created (so the quicker pieces can be personalized, the better), giving you more qualified and closely targeted leads.

[Quote callout: “I believe that B2B content marketing will continue to be a critical strategy for businesses to reach and engage with their target audience in the next 2-3 years, opportunities to personalize their content to specific buyer personas, industries, or even individual customers with personalized content that will help businesses build stronger relationships.”- anonymous survey respondent]

B2B Marketing Trends In 2023: We’re just getting started

2023 has brought a variety of changes to the B2B marketing landscape—from the return of in-person events to the rise of short-form video to the introduction of AI. With budgets rising and lead generation being seen overwhelmingly as a top priority, now is the perfect time to reevaluate strategy—implementing things like personalization and syndication.