As 2024 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on a year defined by rapid shifts, creative breakthroughs, and new challenges in the world of B2B marketing. For leaders and decision-makers, these trends and lessons are more than a retrospective; they mark the starting line for success in 2025.
Looking ahead, it’s clear that 2025 will demand new approaches fueled by AI, data, and radical creativity. But before we can boldly go, we need to understand what drove the big B2B marketing wins and misses this year.
6 Trends: What Worked in B2B Marketing in 2024
A continuation of familiar themes ran through the year—like personalization, digital transformation, and data-driven decision-making—but 2024 pushed these trends to new dimensions in key areas. Here are a few that captured our attention:
1. Using AI as an empowering force
Generative AI began to move beyond experimentation into practical applications. By incorporating AI strategies—across content creation, audience segmentation, and predictive analytics—marketers scaled faster, smarter campaigns with greater precision.
At Tendo, we advised our clients to find AI opportunities to free their teams from repetitive tasks, foster creativity, and focus on higher-level work. Generative AI is especially effective as a creative accelerator, enabling teams to quickly develop campaign storyboards, brainstorm initial ideas, articulate a creative vision, and streamline complex data analysis for existing and potential clients.
We set high standards for our approach and experimentation and are strong advocates for combining human insight with precision-trained AI tools.
2. Adapting to the changing dynamics of buyers and their purchase journey
In 2024, successful marketers adapted to the growing complexity of enterprise B2B buyer journeys. On average, the B2B buying process takes longer, involving more touchpoints and stakeholders—an average of 13 people, according to a 2024 Forrester study.
More marketers shifted from a traditional model of attracting and converting individual MQLs to one that engages the entire buying committee. This requires personalized content focused on each stakeholder segment, from executive decision makers to technical influencers.
To capture future results, B2B marketing leaders need to put this priority front and center as this evolution continues. This requires investment in ongoing buyer research and analysis—with outputs that include detailed mapping of buyer journey stages and updated personas of all buying committee behaviors, motivations, and careabouts.
The B2B customer journey has become more, not less, complex as marketers strive to engage the full buying committee in a contextually relevant and progressive way in order to drive conversion, loyalty and renewals.
–Lindy Roux, EVP, Tendo Communications
3. Fine-tuning omnichannel marketing
In 2024, omnichannel marketing became table stakes as B2B customers demand seamless, connected experiences across every channel. Leading marketers developed unified strategies with content and digital experiences that enable buyers to experience their brand as a consistent entity, regardless of where or how they engaged.
But designing and maintaining omnichannel experiences isn’t easy. We met this challenge by identifying some of the most common barriers B2B brands face, particularly organizational silos. We developed a crawl, walk, run framework for clients to assess their omnichannel maturity and take focused steps to build on their successes.
4. Aligning marketing, sales, and customer experience
In 2024, more B2B organizations focused on deeper alignment between marketing, sales, and customer experience. By adopting a revenue operations (RevOps) approach, these teams saw improved results. In the best cases, RevOps broke down silos, streamlined processes, and delivered measurable growth, with every team working toward shared goals.
One key to RevOps success: Marketing and sales teams need to align their strategies around the customer and their journey, and improve content collaboration. Teams will benefit from a centralized content creation process that reduces inefficiencies and creates consistency across campaigns.
5. Rethinking content types, forms, and uses
To break through the noise, marketers found new ways to create, diversify, and deploy content. They used more compelling visual content, video, and interactive elements more strategically to stand out and create memorable experiences.
Video has reigned for years as a top content type, but it’s important for brands to continue to evolve their larger video strategy. In an omnichannel world, video needs to be leveraged effectively and consistently across channels to reach customers.
6. Connecting brand building to demand generation
In a crowded and competitive B2B landscape, brand building was again in the spotlight as a differentiator in 2024. Marketers recognized that only a fraction of their potential buyers are in-market at any given time. And when they’re ready to buy, 92% of B2B buyers begin their purchase journey with a list of preferred vendors they already know, according to Bain & Company and Google research.
Our 2024 brand-building guidance to clients included these core steps:
- Start now. If you build equity early, you influence buyers long before a purchase decision.
- Know who you are. Companies that try to be everything to everyone dilute their message. A clear, consistent brand voice lays the foundation for strong customer impressions. “It starts with knowing who you are—and also who you’re not,” says Lindy Roux, Tendo EVP.
- Tell stories that matter. Strong brands tell stories that resonate with customer priorities and are backed by the brand’s values and actions. The goal isn’t to overwhelm buyers with facts about products or services; but to connect through human voices and original ideas that differentiate your brand in the marketplace.
- Think of brand as experience. Every interaction, from a digital product to customer support, shapes brand perception. “Brands are the sum of all experiences—functional and emotional,” explains Simon Mathews, VP of user experience at Tendo. “Companies that deliver seamless, user-friendly experiences earn loyal advocates.”
Brand has never gone away in terms of importance. It’s foundational to what every company needs to invest in, in every facet of their marketing.
—Karla Spormann, CEO & Founder, Tendo Communications
Tackling these challenges in the year ahead
Let’s look forward and consider how we address these challenges in the new year.
AI challenges: growing pains and maturation
While AI is unlocking tremendous potential, adoption can be fraught with hurdles. Marketers grappled with developing best practices for consistency, alignment, and scaling personalization. Measuring outcomes remained tricky: HubSpot reported that 77% of marketers say generative AI helps create personalized content, but only 35% believe their customers receive a truly personalized experience.
Tendo’s take: AI needs human insight to reach its full potential. Success lies in balancing efficiency with creativity.
Scaling personalization
Achieving omnichannel personalization at scale proved challenging without the right data infrastructure or strategic alignment. Demand Gen Report noted that 59% of marketers report that creating personalized experiences remains one of their top challenges.
Tendo’s take: Personalization requires strong foundational planning—audience-first strategies, data alignment, and content frameworks.
Throwing out the old marketing playbook
In 2024, some marketers struggled to adapt outdated strategies to an evolving buyer landscape. Cultural inertia, risk aversion, and competing priorities created barriers to embracing more agile, innovative approaches.
Tendo’s take: Breaking out of the old playbook takes courage, creativity, and a willingness to experiment. Brands that strike a balance between long-term brand building and near-term demand creation will emerge stronger.
Oversaturating the market
There is simply too much content. Audiences are inundated and content fatigue is real. Case in point: 55% of consumers reported wanting fewer messages from the brands they follow, according to Optimove. Disjointed strategies and oversaturation diluted marketing efforts, while at the same time, a staggering amount of content continues to go unused or underutilized.
Tendo’s take: Quality over quantity is key. Focus on specific audiences and their questions instead of pushing out what you want to say. Thoughtful content planning, quality execution, and consistent measurement is critical to breaking through the noise, learning what works, and making the most of your content.
Leveraging thought leadership effectively
Many organizations struggled to turn thought leadership into a true differentiator. An Edelman-LinkedIn report found that 30% of marketers say their organizations don’t know how to leverage it effectively, and 50% say it’s under-resourced.
Tendo’s take: Strategic thought leadership is an invaluable resource for improving brand recognition, engagement, and trust. But it’s a significant and long-term investment. Capturing, distilling, and telling stories that are unique to your brand and resonate with your customers requires planning, research, creativity, and skill to execute.
Thought leadership content can deliver results for your brand when:
- You focus on the interests of your intended audience.
- You deliver real value via unique information, original or inspiring ideas, and an authentic perspective or POV.
- It’s consistent and true to your brand, actionable, and consistently prioritized.
Build on Lessons Learned to Shape 2025 Marketing Strategies
For B2B marketing, 2024 reinforced the principles that staying adaptable, authentic, and audience-centric is essential for success. Looking ahead, B2B marketers must navigate an increasingly complex landscape by embracing innovation while staying true to what matters most: building trust, delivering value, and driving results.
We look forward to taking on new challenges and redefining how content and experiences will deliver greater results for enterprise businesses.
Ready to lead B2B marketing in 2025? Let’s talk.
