Most marketing leaders in B2B and tech are looking forward to leaving 2023 behind. In what the Atlantic called a “troubling” year for tech in particular, companies faced layoffs, shrinking budgets, longer sales cycles, and difficulty fundraising. Major enterprises like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce kept their businesses afloat through massive reductions in force, while successful startup exits hit their lowest levels in years.

Marketing and revenue teams are ready to close the chapter and use 2024 as an opportunity for a fresh start.

Using expert perspectives and industry trends from 2023, we’ve compiled the following priorities to keep top of mind as you build a modern marketing program for 2024.

1. Strike the right balance between brand development and demand generation.

   It’s the hardest goal for marketing to achieve, so we’re putting it at the top of the list. Generating brand awareness is key for durability, longevity, customer loyalty, and trust. But demand is what brings the dollars in and keeps your marketing engine running.

   Heading into 2024, we're seeing many B2B companies trying to acquire larger customers and move upmarket. They are strategizing how to approach prospects with larger, more complex business environments, where the decision-making process involves engaging and influencing various stakeholders across different levels and departments.

   This requires moving investment to support brand building rather than demand generation. "Rather than thinking in terms of MQLs and driving immediate sign-ups, trials, or demos, many of our B2B customers are taking more calculated risks to develop trust and establish themselves in the market," said Greg Wise, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer of OneScreen.ai. "This requires a whole different marketing mix and strategy." 

2. Increase revenue (of course) but do it efficiently.

   For many B2B companies, the growth-at-all-costs mentality of previous years came to a screeching halt in the back half of 2022. Instead, 2023 was the year of “doing more with less”. Marketing budgets were getting cut to the point where most marketing leaders felt they didn’t have enough to spend to reach their goals. They needed to prove the real ROI of every single program and tactic they were running.

   This focus on efficiency will continue into 2024, as marketing teams continue to evaluate the performance of traditional paid channels. Experiment with low-cost or free organic marketing tactics (like peer and partner influence and social media). Taking a truly integrated, ‘surround sound’ approach can also help increase the impact of your marketing programs. Amplifying the same message across many channels will make them each stronger. With efficiency at the core of your marketing strategy, you can’t be saying too many things across different channels. Stay focused on repeating your key message and working all your channels in concert to amplify that message.

3. Figure out how to harness the power of AI.

   Marketers have got to wrap their heads around AI and how to harness its power for their teams. One of Gartner's top 3 action items for CMOs to address in 2024 is to build AI-enabled marketing teams. “With the introduction of GenAI, CMOs’ talent plans are at a crossroads; they must look to adapt and realign roles, or risk teams becoming obsolete,” said Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst, VP of Research in the Gartner Marketing practice. "They must have an answer that blends the best of both technology and human capabilities.”

   The best place to start is leveraging Gen AI for content creation. But it needs to be done with guardrails and a very keen eye for quality. “New Gen AI tools present a huge advantage for content experts to do research, test theories, brainstorm ideas, and accelerate the process. It will help great content marketers rise to the top of their craft,” said James Somers, B2B Marketing leader and CMO at EcoOnline. “But it will also crowd the room with a lot of average content.”

4. Get together and stay united as a revenue team.

   Many B2B teams have recently transformed go-to-market into a ‘team sport’ under one CRO. The CRO manages the entire revenue cycle from upper funnel demand generation, to lower funnel activation, sales, and customer success. These teams work together on initiatives to improve resource allocation, align on messaging, and drive growth more efficiently. It’s not about ‘marketing vs. sales’ anymore - it’s about everyone working to grow the lifetime value of a customer.

   Even if your organization hasn’t formally united under a revenue leader, the idea of go-to-market unity is still critical to success.  According to Gartner, “no function drives growth in isolation, CMOs must help guide the enterprise toward a new era of collaborative customer success via a compelling and clearly understood strategic narrative.” A marketing leader's job is to reinforce collaboration between the go-to-market “all-stars” in the company.That takes cutting out some noise and focusing on what’s driving the most success for your top sales reps and customer success reps. Use their feedback to help shape the brand narrative and programs you’re running for entire team.

5. Get ahead of the changing role of SEO.
   

   Website traffic is an important bellwether for marketers and a great indicator of brand health. Marketing teams have leveraged SEO to grow their organic audiences over the past decade, but 2023 brought changes to Google Analytics and new generative AI powered search that has challenged the SEO function.
   
   What’s important heading into 2024 is adjusting to quality over quantity. “With the new way that Gen AI SEO works, links and backlinks and domain authority won’t matter much anymore. But content – the richness of the content, how that content is laid out, etc. – will”, SEO expert Eli Schwartz shared recently. Create content that speaks to the value that your brand delivers and appeals to what your target audience values the most. Here are three more tips Eli recommends for SEO in 2024:

   1. 1. Be much more deliberate in targeting the right users with the right keywords.
      2. Align all of your content with your actual buyer personas. 
      3. Publish content that compares you to your competitors.
         
         

6. Leverage your own company data to tell unique stories.

   Quality content means telling a unique story. Becoming a thought leader in your space is easy if you look at what your user data tells you. There’s no other brand that can tell the same story that your company data can tell, and sharing data-backed trends is far more compelling than sharing an executive perspective. "Companies that invest in generating content backed by analyzing proprietary data [...] will enhance their brands and better position themselves to influence their target audience, particularly with executive buyers." shared Jon Miller, marketing leader and entrepreneur.
   
   And in most organizations today, the data is all there and available to your team. You just need to work with the right internal partners to find it, analyze it, and distill it into key trends and ideas for your audience.

7. Translate company innovation in a creative, meaningful way.
   

   B2B companies in 2024 must show innovation, particularly in response to the rapid advancement of AI tech. A marketer’s role is to craft effective communication about that innovation. “Marketers must position innovations and enhancements in a way that resonates with the customer's pain points, creating a market pull,” says Shirin Shahin, Product Marketing Consultant and Expert. “Product marketers play a key role in crafting this messaging, blending their understanding of customer needs, market expectations, and product capabilities." 

   Combine innovation with creative communication formats and messages to make a memorable moment in the market. “Companies have an opportunity for even more creativity in each big launch which in turn will create a more memorable and unique identity," shared Shahin. Rallying big marketing campaigns around product innovations can help gain cross-functional internal support - and funding. If your product and engineering teams are excited about the marketing campaign, you might unlock additional budget to make an even bigger splash.

8. Prioritize customer love and loyalty.
   

   The economic climate of 2022 and 2023 made it incredibly difficult to sell new products and services to companies with tightening budgets. Teams doing more with less are also working with what they have. “Market economics are pushing marketers to get creative with activating customer evangelists to expand the current base and help hit new logo revenue goals,” said Amber Picotte, fractional CMO and marketing consultant. “A marketer's dollar invested in an existing customer goes farther than landing a new customer – especially with the declining efficiency of digital advertising and outbound tactics.”

9. Fill the gaps left by declining digital channels.

   The “trusted channels'' of the last 10 years simply don’t work the way they used to. Most growth and performance marketers are seeing a declining ROI on digital ads and email marketing. Digital advertising spend declined for 10 straight months from 2022 into 2023, and the “one-size fits all” approach of most email blasts won’t resonate with audiences who expect personalization. “Marketers are pressured to balance performance with efficiency, always playing tug-o-war between the two,” said Jonah Katz, growth marketing expert. “This requires us to think outside the box when one (or both) decline. Add on increasing revenue expectations for marketing and it’s simply not enough to spend your way to growth.” 

How OOH (Out-of-Home) Can Help B2B Marketers Achieve Their 2024 Goals

Yikes... this list is long enough to make the most dedicated marketer consider early retirement. But the good news is there are  tactics, trends, and technologies can help marketers accomplish these priorities at the same time. One of those tactics is a well-known stalwart of the advertising industry - out-of-home (OOH) advertising. But not your Grandma's OOH - we’re talking OOH 2.0 that’s precision-targeted, measurable, and delivers brand and pipeline impact.  

Out-of-home 2.0 is a strong choice for modern marketers to leverage in 2024 for a few reasons:

• It can be used across the entire buyer journey.

• It can be measured with precision.

• It can break through digital fatigue to meet buyers where they are.

We'll share more on these in upcoming posts - but let's talk about the buyer journey, and how OOH can play a role in all stages. 

Leverage Out-of-Home Advertising Across the Whole Buyer Journey

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has a reputation for serving one purpose - a big brand awareness moment delivered through an expensive billboard. But this limited view has held OOH back. New technology and performance data have moved OOH up in the list of tactics leveraged by leading B2B companies for goals across all funnel stages.

More and more B2B marketers are leaning on OOH to achieve their goals across the funnel. OOH can influence the whole B2B buyer's journey:

To learn more about how to leverage out-of-home to make a larger impact at B2B conferences, read our free guide.

Leave your 2023 marketing playbook behind, and get focused on the strategies and tactics that will further these top priorities. Book a free strategy session with our team to discuss how OOH can help you achieve your 2024 goals.