18 (mostly) B2B marketing and communications statistics that aptly summarize 2024

Integrated marketing and genuine thought leadership defined successful marketing teams from the unsuccessful in a year where B2B marketing was chronically underfunded

Regular readers know I frequently dive into data studies and marketing surveys. Often, I’ll compile these into cliff notes that highlight the more interesting findings, along with analysis or advice for applying the findings to improve your own marketing efforts.

Then at the end of the year, I go back through the findings to filter the best gems to highlight. The process produces a solid list of B2B marketing and communications statistics that aptly summarize the year-in-review.

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1. Marketers expect their budget to grow between ~2% and 5%

After a full year of trying to, like 2Pac once said, “make a dollar out of 15 cents” marketing leaders are optimistic that their budgets will grow, according to multiple surveys:

260 B2B and B2C marketing leads forecast budgets grow to 12.7% of revenue;

41% of 2,400 B2B marketers expect bigger budgets in 2025; and

An economic forecaster says B2B marketing budgets will grow 2% in 2025.

2. Winning marketing teams are “3 times more likely to be fully integrated”

Getting results from marketing requires a team effort – which is why integrated marketing is essential. A survey this year of 300 marketers North American marketers with annual budgets of $10 million or more found:

winning marketing teams are “3 times more likely to be fully integrated”;

90% of winning organizations” have some level of team integration;

87% of winning marketing teams are structured to optimally integrate brand marketing effort with demand generation.

While we are thinking about integration, let’s make sure marketing has regular and direct conversations with customers and prospects. At a minimum, marketing should be listening to Gong recordings from your best salespeople. That alone will 10X your marketing.

3. Gated content consumption has gone up 77% since 2019

A study by an intent data platform found that more prospective customers downloaded gated content in 2023 than the year prior.

Gated content consumption was up 14% compared to 2022 and 77% since 2019.

To be sure, there are good arguments for and against gated content that marketing leaders should consider.

4. B2B marketing managed an average of 10.2 channels in 2024

The term “omnichannel” might be an insufficient description:

B2B marketing manages an average of 10.2 channels in 2024 – that’s double what it managed eight years ago in 2016 – according to a survey with 4,000 respondents by McKinsey.

Moreover, those customers expect those 10 channels to deliver a single and consistent customer experience (CX).

5. 68% of buyers say B2B brands all sound the same

Most prospects and customers that consume B2B marketing material think they all sound the same. The findings are based on 3,528 interviews in 2024 – and more than 14,000 interviews since 2021 by the marketing firm Dentsu.

The study found that 71% of B2B marketers interviewed believe their marketing is “communicating a distinct brand position” or a strong unique selling proposition (USP). By contrast, 68% of buyers indicated that’s not true.

One piece of the puzzle is the false consensus effect. I believe this problem is getting compounded: B2B brands that rely on generative AI to make content for them risk grappling with this problem and erroneously concluding ‘marketing doesn’t work.’

6. Influencers that turn comments off aren’t credible

A thorough academic study published in the Journal of Marketing concluded that influencers that turn off comments are less influential:

“More than 50% of the participants who saw the post with disabled comments noted that the influencer was probably not open to hearing their thoughts and opinions and found her less likable.”

7. The median sales cycle in B2B grew to 120 days

Sales cycles in B2B seem to get longer every year. That was true again in 2024, according to an analysis of lead generation data:

“Overall, global respondents reported a median sales cycle of 120 days.

But amongst Mid-Market and Commercial accounts, the median sales cycle is 150 days.

Even more frightening, when we further focus on $250M-$1B companies who target Mid-Market and Commercial accounts, they report a median sales cycle of 408 days.”

The fact that sales cycles grow longer as marketing budgets shrink seems, as the kids say these days, “sus.”

8. Reporters open 46% of pitches they receive and respond to 3.43%

PR is hard work and it’s only getting harder because of all the noise. A data analysis of 400,000 pitches sent through the Propel all-in-one PR platform quantified this:

Open rate: Reporters open about half (46%) of the story pitches they receive; and

Response rate: Reporters respond to 3.43% of story pitches they receive.

This isn’t that far off from standard email marketing benchmarks.

9. Analyst says 73% of B2B revenue comes from existing customers

Look around in your organization and I’m willing to bet most of the a) marketing budget and b) team roles are geared towards net-new customers. Yet marketing leaders might want to re-think this approach, according to Forrester:

“Seventy-three percent (73%) of B2B revenues comes from existing customers in the form of renewals, cross-sell, and upsell, and the remaining 27% comes from new business. While growth from net-new customers isn’t insignificant, the bulk of B2B revenues come from an existing customer base.”

10. CMOs invested in paid media at the expense of talent

According to Gartner, marketing leaders increased their spending on paid media – while decreasing the investment in talent, technology and outside help, like agencies.

Paid media grew ~4%-5% to 27.9% of the overall budget while everything else by at least as much of not more.

11. CMOs would have spent extra budget on talent in 2024

What would you do with an unexpected extra $1 million in the marketing budget?

The CMO Survey polled 292 marketing leaders and asked this question:

17% would invest in hiring and talent development;

The remaining answers stacked up like this:

10% would invest in more digital ads;
8% would invest in brand building;
7% would invest in AI or automation; and
5% would invest paid media.

If there’s one marketing statistic that could sum up all of 2024, this one would be it.

12. Just ~5% of B2B buyers are ready to make a purchase today

This statistic is an estimate – a heuristic for sure but not without a methodology:

“Only 20% of business buyers are ‘in the market’ over the course of an entire year; something like 5% in a quarter – or put another way, 95% aren’t in the market.”

If true for your organization, it has enormous implications for when and where marketing invests its budget.

13. Successful B2B software companies experiment with marketing more often

A study by Bain and Google found B2B software companies that are the most successful with marketing are very intentional about experimentation:

“Revenue-leading organizations in our survey—which we define as having high revenue growth and website traffic growth over the past three to five years—devote about 50% more budget and 80% more staff hours to digital marketing experimentation compared with laggards, in part to extract more value from innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI). Other companies that treat experimentation as an afterthought, or pursue it only if they have extra budget, do not realize the same performance gains.”

14. 45% of all B2B tech startups do zero marketing (to their detriment)

About half (45%) of all B2B technology startups make no effort to market their products. As a business function, marketing does not exist in those companies:

“…we find that investments in systematic marketing by early-stage B2B start-ups increase firm valuation, yet more than half of early-stage B2B start-up firms choose not to invest in systematic marketing, apparently believing such investments will not pay off.”

That’s according to a new paper published in a peer-reviewed journal by two academics Gary L. Lilien of Smeal College of Business, Penn State, and Ofer Mintz of UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney.

Why? My theory that companies that underinvest in marketing tend to have C-suite leaders and members of the board that have very little marketing experience. That’s not conjecture either: there are rigorous academic studies supporting this conclusion.

15. Benchmark study finds a 56% increase in demo requests after a webinar

Webinar engagement grew in 2024 by 8% – and the number of interactions on webinars has increased 22% – yet another statistic shows the real potential of effective webinars:

Webinar hosts saw a 56% increase in demo requests stemming from webinars.

If that doesn’t reflect your experience, consider re-evaluating your approach to the topic, content and delivery of your webinars.

16. Study: effective thought leadership drives sales, pricing power and retention

A survey of 3,484 business executives globally demonstrates that effective thought leadership has a clear business impact. According to the study:

70% of participants think better of vendors that “consistently produce high-quality thought leadership”;

54% said a solution provider “that consistently produces high-quality thought-leadership content has prompted them to research the organization’s offers or capabilities”;

60% “said that piece of thought leadership had made them realize their organization was missing out on a significant business opportunity”; and

60% of decision-makers “say that good thought leadership makes them willing to pay a premium to work with that organization.”

There is a risk to slapping together sloppy content and calling it thought leadership:

54% of decision-makers said, “thought leadership got them to realize there were other suppliers they could work with that had a better understanding of the challenges their organization was facing.”

As I’m prone to quip, thought leadership actually requires thought and leadership.

17. Just 28% of U.S.-based in-house comms leaders are satisfied with their agency

A survey of 427 in-house communications leaders found Europeans are more satisfied with their PR firms than their U.S. counterparts:

While 40% of in-house communicators overall are “very satisfied”’ with their agency, satisfaction sinks to just 28% in the U.S. and 14% in APAC said the same. Europe seems to be very happy with their agencies – some 62% are very satisfied.

I’m clearly biased because I’m a consultant for hire too, but generally clients are better off hiring a consultant or PR freelancer for help. You get more experience staff that have walked in your shoes and can get things done more efficiently.

I too have worked on the in-house and for agencies, and my direct experience is what informs this view.

18. 20% of email unsubscribes are caused by too many messages

More output drives more results, right? As it turns out, it depends. The law of diminishing returns is a real phenomenon. Email marketing is a good example:

20% of the 2,000 readers surveyed say they unsubscribe from email marketing because they get too many messages.

That was the top finding and was followed by these:

18% said they lost interest;
17% said the messages are not relevant;
10% don’t remember subscribing; and
10% have too much inbox clutter.

I’ve long contended – proven in practice and continue to see it in data – that subscribed audience is the key to B2B marketing. This has to be central to win in today’s marketing landscape.