More than three-quarters (76%) of B2B businesses are prioritising short-term sales goals over long-term brand building as pressure mounts to deliver immediate commercial returns.
That’s according to research from Propolis, which surveyed 150 UK CEOs and business leaders at B2B organisations to explore how current commercial pressures are influencing marketing investment and long-term growth.
The findings show B2B businesses are increasingly favouring activity that can be directly linked to short-term revenue. Three quarters (76%) of respondents agree that budgets are now too tight to invest in marketing activity that isn’t directly tied to lead generation.
Meanwhile, 77% of B2B business leaders are prioritising revenue growth over market visibility, and 76% say hard leads are currently more valuable than brand awareness.
Economic pressure is also making marketing investment harder to defend. More than four in five (81%) business leaders say marketing budgets are harder to justify than sales budgets in the current climate.
Propolis warns that this focus on immediate returns risks weakening the pipeline businesses will depend on in six to 12 months. B2B buying cyclers are often long, meaning marketing activity can influence future revenue well before that contribution becomes visible in sales data.
Richard O’Connor, CEO of Propolis, said: “When businesses prioritise only the marketing activity they can immediately connect to leads and revenue, they risk undervaluing the brand building and demand creation that influence buying decisions much earlier in the journey. The danger is that this leads businesses to cut the very marketing investment that helped create that growth in the first place.”
“But we need to stop framing this solely as a marketing problem. It’s a business problem, and the onus can’t sit entirely with marketers to fix it. CEOs have a responsibility to understand where sustainable growth comes from and give their marketing teams the support they need to demonstrate their commercial contribution, whether that’s better access to commercial data, greater financial understanding, or much closer alignment between marketing and sales.”
The full The CEO Blind Spot report is available to read here, exploring why marketing’s contribution to growth so often goes unseen and what organisations can do to make long-term demand creation more visible in the boardroom.
