B2B Marketing

B2B marketing is increasingly expected to deliver the level of experience buyers are used to having as consumers. Success depends on marketers adapting — and quickly. Explore our B2B marketing insights to stay ahead.

Discover how Forrester supports B2B marketing leaders.

Insights

Blog

Private AI Will Beat Public AI For B2B Marketing Use Cases

Mark Ogne 1 day ago
Since Everyone Has Access To Increasingly Capable AI, Where Is Your Differentiation? When it comes to AI, B2B marketing leaders often focus on chatbots, prompts, content creation and agentic use cases, and model selection. Those topics are understandably relevant and where most of my AI client conversations begin. But in my experience, they aren’t usually […]
Blog

B2B Growth Is A Team Sport: Winning The Buying Group Era Requires Every Function To Play Together

Jeremy Schwartz 1 day ago
Learn why B2B growth depends on cross-functional alignment, buying group strategies, and shared revenue goals to improve customer outcomes, accelerate pipeline, and drive growth.
Blog

How Leading Organizations Are Rethinking B2B Event Strategy

Conrad Mills 2 days ago
B2B event teams are operating under increasing pressure. Budgets remain constrained, audience expectations continue to rise, and CMOs want clearer evidence that events contribute to business impact — yet not all event programs respond in the same way. Our analysis of Forrester’s Q1 2026 State Of B2B Events Survey reveals that the highest-performing organizations set […]
Blog

The World That Spawned RevOps Is Unrecognizable

Ross Graber 2 days ago
Over the past decade, B2B go-to-market (GTM) organizations have grown increasingly complex and fragmented. Revenue operations (RevOps) functions emerged to drive consistency, efficiency, and alignment across the GTM processes and systems that connect sales, marketing, and product functions. While never seamless, RevOps managed the mission. It standardized processes, improved data quality, drove common metrics, and brought much-needed discipline […]
  • What is B2B marketing? ​

    B2B marketing refers to strategies and tactics that firms use to reach, engage, and influence business buyers or organizations rather than individual consumers. It often involves longer buying cycles, multiple stakeholders, and more complex decision criteria. The goal is to generate demand, build relationships, and support revenue growth.​

  • How has B2B marketing evolved in recent years?​

    B2B marketing now demands the level of personalization, agility, and experience that customers expect in consumer settings. Today’s buyers are more informed, independent, and digitally driven. Marketing leaders must embrace new tools, data, and cross-functional alignment to stay competitive. ​

  • What are the biggest challenges facing B2B marketers?​

    Common challenges include poor data quality, misaligned business and marketing goals, and lack of trust in measurement. In addition, marketing must adapt to the complexity of buying groups, rapidly shifting customer expectations, and AI-driven search.​

  • What key metrics should B2B marketers track?​

    Though funnel metrics such as lead conversion, pipeline influence, and marketing-generated revenue remain the most common, marketers should also track brand perception and preference, engagement metrics, account-level outcomes, customer retention, and customer lifetime value. ​

  • How does Forrester support B2B marketing leaders?​

    Forrester offers research, frameworks, and advisory services to help B2B marketers refine their strategies, improve execution, and measure impact. We guide clients in integrating marketing with sales, applying data and AI, and evolving in complex environments.​

Blog

Companies Get The Marketing They Expect

Craig Moore 2 days ago
Marketing’s role is shaped less by strategy documents than by the expectations executives place on the function. New research reveals a significant gap between how companies currently view marketing and how marketing leaders believe the function should contribute to growth, strategy, and business performance.
Blog

AI Agents For Marketing Are Here: Are You Ready?

Joe Stanhope 4 days ago
AI agents for marketing are no longer a future state — they have arrived. Eighty-three percent of B2C marketing decision makers report actively implementing agentic AI into their workflows, and 85% agree that it’s delivering meaningful business value in their marketing efforts. With the rise of AI platforms like Claude and ChatGPT, and the majority of […]
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AEO Will Be Won With Solutions That Provide Intelligence, Orchestration, And Outcomes

Nikhil Lai September 2, 2026
Answer engines such as ChatGPT, AI Mode, and Claude mediate brand growth. They institutionalize word of mouth, determine consideration sets, and increasingly monetize. Marketers eager to influence how answer engines perceive their brands are rushing to enact answer engine optimization (AEO) best practices, connect roles critical to AEO, and mature AEO competencies. As they do, […]
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Meet The Winners Of The 2026 B2B Awards And Hear Their Stories Live At B2B Forum EMEA

Christina Schmitt September 2, 2026
In London, we’ll celebrate two organizations that have raised the bar for how to operate, collaborate, and grow. Get a preview of their stories and join us later this month to learn more.
Webinar

Rethinking B2B Marketing Contribution In The AI Era – APAC

AI is reshaping buyer behavior, making traditional measurement approaches increasingly difficult to rely on. Join us live to learn how marketing leaders are evolving accountability frameworks and redefining how they measure contribution and business impact.
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Too Many AI Use Cases, Too Little Impact

Christina Schmitt August 24, 2026
Organizations are flooded with AI ideas, pilots, and proofs of concept, yet many struggle to translate them into measurable business outcomes. The problem is not a lack of AI use cases. The problem is prioritization. Learn how to evaluate AI opportunities through the lens of business value, impact, feasibility, and strategic alignment to focus investments where they deliver the greatest return.
Webinar

Rethinking B2B Marketing Contribution In The AI Era

AI is reshaping buyer behavior, making traditional measurement approaches increasingly difficult to rely on. Join us live to learn how marketing leaders are evolving accountability frameworks and redefining how they measure contribution and business impact.
Blog

The Real Promise Of Synthetic Personas Is Better Activation

Barbara Winters August 19, 2026
The value of synthetic personas is not faster persona creation. It’s better activation of buyer insight across marketing, sales, product, and customer success workflows.

Surface Your B2B Brand In AI Results

Answer engines are shaping vendor evaluation earlier in B2B buying. Learn how to gain visibility in AI-generated recommendations, build credibility, and attract higher-intent buyers through AI-powered discovery.

Blog

Your AI Strategy Already Made A Risk Decision. Have You?

Mark Ogne August 18, 2026
How do you know when an AI use case is too risky to pursue? The answer has less to do with the technology itself and more to do with whether your organization has the governance, processes, and decision-making discipline needed to support it.
Blog

Meet Digital Experience Tech’s New Interface: Agentic AI Systems Of Action

Joe Cicman August 17, 2026
User interfaces and workflows built with agentic AI are emerging as the next frontier of digital experience tech’s evolution. For two decades, digital teams accelerated business results by implementing better software. Monolithic digital experience and content management solutions gave way to composable architectures that allowed digital teams to assemble specialized capabilities faster and create better […]
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Partner Ecosystem Growth’s New Challenge: Understanding How Partners Create Value

Kathy Contreras August 14, 2026
For years, B2B organizations have expanded their partner ecosystems by adding new partner types, routes to market, and strategic relationships. The result has been greater market reach, new growth opportunities, and increasingly complex partner ecosystems. A growing challenge for suppliers is establishing a clear, consistent, and effective definition of the partners within their partner ecosystem. […]
Blog

B2B Customer Communities Need An AI-Powered Reboot

Amy Bills August 6, 2026
AI doesn’t have to replace the human connection that makes B2B customer communities valuable. Used purposefully, it can help community managers reduce repetitive work, improve customer experiences, surface business insights, and connect community engagement to measurable outcomes.
Blog

Your Processes Are The Weakest Part Of Your AEO Strategy

Nikhil Lai August 6, 2026
Many marketers know the best practices they must implement to get mentioned and cited by ChatGPT, Google, and Claude but still struggle to implement answer engine optimization (AEO). Marketers sync with web developers about the technical prerequisites of visibility: server-side rendering, Bing’s IndexNow protocol, monitoring for indexation issues, and more. They’re well aware of the […]

Is Your Marketing Measurement Built For Today’s Buyer?

AI is changing how buyers discover and evaluate vendors, yet many teams still rely on measurement models built for a different buying journey. Join Ross Graber to learn what needs to change.

Webinar

Does Your Content Matter? Measuring Buyer Engagement In An AI World – APAC

Join us September 8: Learn how to identify and measure the content that influences buyers and drives revenue — and receive Forrester’s Agent-On-A-Page Template.
Blog

Preference Matters More Than In-Market Intent Alone In Modern B2B Buying

Ian Bruce August 5, 2026
The traditional performance marketing model assumes that marketers can influence buyers once they enter the market, but today’s B2B buyers often begin their search with strong preferences already in place. Intent signals frequently reveal existing demand rather than create it, making many late-stage marketing efforts a pursuit of opportunities that are already leaning toward a competitor.
Blog

B2B Marketing Is Moving Faster Than Its Foundations Can Handle

Mark Ogne August 5, 2026
Eighty-eight percent of B2B marketing organizations have adopted AI tools or developed their own, yet marketing leaders continue to report unclear AI strategy, difficulty measuring impact, data infrastructure challenges, and uncertainty about where AI should be applied. In other words, many marketing teams are moving quickly to adopt new capabilities before establishing or firming up […]
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