Moneypenny predicts 2026 B2B marketing trends

Against a backdrop of high interest rates and ongoing economic uncertainty, some UK businesses are finding the sales environment tough, and need to work hard to put together the right marketing strategy to attract new customers and retain current clients, often on tighter budgets. Moneypenny Marketing Director Hannah Stringer, has put together her tips for B2B marketing in 2024:

Back to basics

Hannah comments: “Marketeers have been having a tough time lately, trying to generate demand in a new world, battling real-world impacts of tech adoption, all in an increasingly unpredictable economic environment. The days of dial up/dial down digital activity are done for most sectors and many companies have turned a full 360 degrees and are back to more old-school marketing: investing in brands, working on value propositions, adapting their product set, getting to know their customers and prospects again, and delivering quality work.”

More budget for brand

90%* of buyers select a brand from their first choice list, so, getting ahead is key and the only way to achieve this is by growing brand awareness. Most brands pivoted to direct response channels during the Covid Pandemic, focusing on the 5%¹ of buyers in market at any one time. It’s time to even out the 60/40 brand/sales activation budget balance and nurture the 95% not in market - your future buyers. It’s time to get on their first choice list.

Harness the power of AI

To harness the power of AI practically, B2B marketeers will need to get their (data) house in order. Just under a third of marketers² see data integrity as their biggest barrier to AI success; no longer the reserve of larger brands, smaller businesses will need to consider their own data architecture to benefit from the automation technology that generative AI brings.

Search Marketing is in for a wild ride

With Google paid search costs increasing in some categories up 52%³ since 2020, and Google’s recent admission that they have inflated CPCs, this channel is only getting more expensive. However, it’s also not going away and the dominance of paid ads continues to diminish the power of organic ads. This leaves SEM execs in a quandary: how to scale without exponentially increasing cost per lead.   It comes back to the power of brand. At Moneypenny we have seen clear correlation between brand CPC reducing while brand activity is live.

Marketeer instinct matters

The number one goal for most marketing operations is attribution - the perennial challenge made even harder in B2B due to life cycles, decision committees and lead times. And while attribution models, be it MMM, last touch, time decay play a critical role, there is also a growing movement to layer in old-fashioned ‘gut-feel’. One of the biggest threats to any good marketeer is drowning in data, metrics, KPIs and losing their instinct for what works, what feels right.

For us at Moneypenny, we’ll be very much focusing on driving market awareness to keep filling the hopper now and in the long-term both here in the UK and in the US.