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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallThe 2024 B2B marketing evidence points to a practical priority: connect marketing work to business outcomes by understanding buyers, coordinating with sales, and measuring more than activity. Survey findings also show pressure on budgets, uneven execution capacity, and difficulty connecting data. These are historical 2024 indicators from surveys with different populations and methods—not a single, representative census of B2B companies.
What the 2024 B2B marketing statistics show
The headline figures are not directly interchangeable. Gartner surveyed senior marketing leaders, Forrester surveyed B2B marketing executives and operations leaders, and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) asked B2B content marketers about their practices and expectations. Read each result in its own sample and context.
Budget signals differed by survey
| Survey finding | Population and context |
|---|---|
| Marketing budgets averaged 7.7% of company revenue in 2024, down from 9.1% in 2023; 64% of respondents said they lacked the budget to execute their 2024 strategy. | Gartner’s 2024 survey of 395 CMOs and marketing leaders in North America and Northern and Western Europe, across 10 industries and a range of company sizes. Most respondents reported median annual revenue above $5.3 billion. These results describe Gartner’s sample, not a universal B2B budget benchmark. Gartner’s CMO survey |
| 67% expected technology budgets to rise, 62% expected larger program budgets, and 59% projected higher personnel spending. | Forrester’s 2024 Marketing Survey covered nearly 900 global B2B marketing executives and operations leaders. Respondents also anticipated higher expectations for revenue and growth impact; those expectations make spending increases a demand for results, not evidence that results were achieved. Forrester’s 2024 commentary |
| 45% expected their content marketing budget to increase in 2024 versus 2023, while 42% expected it to stay the same. | CMI respondents who knew their organization’s content budget. This is an expectation reported for 2024, not a record of actual spending. CMI’s 2024 outlook |
Forrester’s growth-strategy rankings kept expansion into new markets in the top position from 2023 to 2024, followed by growth through productivity. The combination suggests a resource-allocation challenge: pursuing new audiences requires buyer education and brand-reputation work, but spreading effort across too many markets can dilute execution. The survey commentary identifies partner ecosystems and integrated campaigns that respond to changing buyer behavior as priorities; it does not establish one universally best investment mix.
What CMI associated with stronger content performance
Among CMI’s surveyed top-performing B2B content marketers, the success factors most often named were knowing the audience (79%), aligning goals with organizational objectives (68%), measuring and demonstrating performance (61%), thought leadership (60%), cross-team collaboration (55%), and having a documented strategy (53%). These are associations within self-assessed performance groups; they do not prove that any one practice causes better results.
Where teams reported friction
Marketing and sales did not consistently share commercial work
Gartner’s inaugural B2B Commercial Strategy Survey, fielded in November and December 2023, covered 412 senior marketing and sales leaders in North America and Western Europe. In that survey, 80% of key commercial activities were missing a contribution from either marketing or sales, and 90% of executives said the functions’ priorities conflicted. Only 17% of surveyed functional leaders collaborated on buyer-journey mapping, while 60% reported lacking shared buyer-journey insights. Gartner’s survey findings
Gartner also reported that organizations sharing buyer-journey insights were 2.3 times more likely to see higher sales conversion rates. That is an association reported in the survey, not proof that sharing information alone produces the result. The practical point is that marketing and sales need a common picture of buyer questions, interactions, and handoffs before they can reliably coordinate campaigns or enable sellers.
Content creation and operations were both constrained
CMI respondents’ most frequently reported content-creation challenges were producing the right content for their audience (57%), maintaining consistency (54%), and differentiating their content (54%). Outside creation itself, respondents cited resource constraints (58%), aligning content with the buyer journey (48%), and aligning sales and marketing efforts (45%). These are percentages of survey respondents identifying challenges, not estimates of how many B2B businesses experience them.
Technology and data practices were additional constraints: only 31% of CMI respondents said their organization had the right technology to manage content across the organization, while 84% identified integrating or correlating data across platforms as a measurement challenge. Buying another platform will not by itself fix unclear ownership, inconsistent definitions, or disconnected workflows.
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1. Start with the buyer and a business goal
Define the audience, the business problem it needs to solve, and the outcome the organization wants marketing to influence. CMI’s audience-knowledge and goal-alignment findings support this order: choose an objective first, then select the buyer insight, content, channel, and measurement that fit it. A campaign intended to build awareness should not be judged as though it were a direct-response program; a demand or revenue objective needs a corresponding path from engagement to a qualified opportunity or sale.
2. Map the journey with sales, not in a marketing-only workshop
Agree on the buyer stages and the evidence that matters at each one. Include self-service research as well as seller-supported interactions, and involve sales when creating enablement materials so the resources fit actual seller workflows and buyer questions. Gartner reported that organizations offering both rep-led and self-service interactions were 3.9 times more likely to exceed profit-growth expectations. This is a survey association, not an individual-company forecast or a guaranteed effect.
A useful working map records the buyer’s question, the available content or interaction, the responsible team, and the next useful handoff at each stage. Review it with sales and update it when customer-facing teams see a change in buyer behavior.
3. Make content distinct by making it useful
Thought leadership should offer expertise, guidance, or a distinctive point of view—not simply describe a product. The 2024 Edelman–LinkedIn report, based on a survey of 3,484 global business executives, treats publicly available essays, videos, webinars, presentations, and research as possible forms of thought leadership. It excludes product descriptions and paid client deliverables. Its guidance is to use credible research and data, help buyers understand business challenges, and give them concrete direction. Edelman–LinkedIn’s 2024 report
This approach addresses the differentiation problem more directly than publishing more often. A distinctive argument grounded in evidence can help buyers reconsider a problem; a stream of generic posts can add volume without making the company more memorable or useful.
4. Choose channels for audience fit and job to be done
In CMI’s survey, 84% of B2B marketers selected LinkedIn as the organic social platform delivering the best value, and 72% said they had increased their LinkedIn use in the preceding 12 months. Those responses show perceived value and increased use among respondents, not a guarantee that LinkedIn will outperform other channels for a particular company. Match each channel to the audience, buying stage, and intended outcome; do not mistake platform popularity for effectiveness in every market.
CMI respondents’ planned content investments for 2024 included video (69%), thought leadership content (53%), in-person events (47%), and paid advertising (43%). These are reported planned investment areas, not evidence of actual spend or comparative returns.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Measure outcomes without confusing activity for impact
CMI respondents most commonly reported tracking conversions (73%), email engagement (71%), website traffic (71%), website engagement (69%), and social analytics (65%). These measures can help explain what audiences do, but activity metrics only become useful for decisions when connected to the business goal and interpreted with the buyer journey in view.
Best Value
- For awareness: use relevant reach and engagement measures to assess whether the intended audience is encountering and responding to the work.
- For demand: connect responses and conversions to qualified inquiries or opportunities, with definitions agreed across marketing and sales.
- For revenue: track how marketing-influenced activity relates to pipeline and sales outcomes, while being explicit about attribution limits and shared contributions.
Because platform data integration was the leading measurement challenge CMI respondents identified, teams should first agree on common definitions, data ownership, and reporting needs. Then select technology that supports those requirements. This is especially important when comparing channels: a high engagement count on one platform is not directly comparable to a conversion measure elsewhere.
A practical operating plan for a constrained team
- Choose one or two business outcomes. State what should change—such as awareness among a defined buyer group, qualified demand, revenue contribution, or retention—and set a baseline and time frame.
- Document the audience and buyer questions. Use sales conversations and customer-facing knowledge to identify what buyers need to understand at each stage.
- Agree on the journey and handoffs. Map self-service and rep-led interactions with sales; assign ownership for content, follow-up, and feedback.
- Invest in a focused content program. Prioritize evidence-backed guidance that addresses real buyer problems, and choose formats and channels for audience fit rather than trend-following.
- Set measurement rules before launch. Define what counts as engagement, conversion, and a qualified opportunity, and specify how channel data will be combined and interpreted.
- Review results jointly and reallocate. Compare outcomes with the original goal, record what the data can and cannot establish, and use sales feedback to adjust the next cycle.
This sequence follows the success factors CMI respondents identified while addressing the collaboration and data gaps reported in Gartner’s and CMI’s surveys. It is a practical framework, not a claim that one process guarantees a particular financial return.
How to read these 2024 findings now
The figures describe expectations, reported practices, and survey associations published around 2024. Gartner’s budget survey was conducted in February–March 2024; its commercial-strategy survey was fielded in November–December 2023; Edelman–LinkedIn fielded its report survey in December 2023. CMI’s 2024 outlook reflects its survey findings for that report, and Forrester’s commentary describes its 2024 Marketing Survey. They should be used as dated context for planning, not as current market measurements or causal proof. Recheck present-day budgets, buyer behavior, channel performance, and internal capacity before applying the numbers to a current plan.
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