Last week, Pipeline360’s Matt Hummel detailed the challenges the B2B industry is currently facing in an article titled Driving the Downturn— How B2B Marketers Can Navigate Economic Headwinds. This article offers a pathway to success during a tough economy.
Everyone knows it’s a tough market out there. A prolonged period of macroeconomic uncertainty is starting to filter down into job losses, tighter budgets and longer sales cycles. Yet not everyone is struggling. In fact, there are six characteristics that define high-performing teams.
As we discussed in the previous article, better content, more effective data handling and a streamlined tech stack—potentially outsourced to an expert service provider—can all do wonders. But there’s more. By also improving buyer engagement, better aligning sales and marketing, and enhancing lead nurturing, it’s possible to navigate the current economic headwinds with confidence.
More Buyers, Longer Cycles
Research on the 2025 State of B2B Pipeline Growth reveals that only a third of U.S. marketers expect robust budgets this year. That probably explains why half report only “some, limited, or no” progress on their goals. And while economic uncertainty is the most cited top challenge in every region, the problems it’s causing many teams are being compounded by other factors.
The same study claims that three-quarters of global marketing teams are experiencing longer sales cycles, driven in part by a short-term focus on cost. They also complain of larger buying groups, often featuring as many as 20 individuals. Some of these may be new stakeholders, with finance in particular appearing late in the day to delay deals. Sales cycles could drag on for up to six months longer than usual, adding complexity to lead nurturing, content strategy and sales and marketing alignment.
In fact, misalignment between sales and marketing is a challenge everywhere. Just half of U.S. marketers say their teams are fully or mostly aligned. They struggle particularly with qualification and nurturing, where input from sales is so important. It’s no coincidence that B2B marketing teams are experiencing their greatest challenges where the two teams’ responsibilities traditionally overlap: closing deals and retention, qualifying leads, and nurturing leads.
Three More Pathways to High Performance
Against this backdrop, there are things that marketers can do today to improve their performance. The first is consistent buyer engagement. Nearly three-quarters of high performers say they can reach target audiences and buying groups effectively, versus just 12% of low performers. Over half of global respondents say they are dissatisfied with their ability to do so.
They can improve things by developing more sophisticated segmentation—potentially leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to do so— and generally improving their understanding of potential customers. Third-party experts can step in to help with buyer persona development.
The resulting set of enriched, granular data is something that sales and marketing teams could coalesce around— spurring much-needed efforts to improve alignment. By also taking common ownership of shared metrics that matter to both teams, with the ultimate goal of driving revenue, it’s possible to improve alignment and, in turn, close more deals.
Improving Lead Nurturing with Branded Demand
The truth is that B2B buyer journeys are much changed from how they were even a few years ago. High performers know this and have restructured traditional sales-marketing processes to drive collaborative ownership of the entire customer journey, especially lead qualification and nurturing.
Some 59% of B2B marketing teams admit to performance gaps in their nurturing capabilities. So what’s the answer? Most marketing leaders recognize the importance of engagement tracking, improved lead qualification and scoring, enhanced alignment, and data-driven content personalization. But fewer might have heard of a new approach gaining traction: Branded Demand.
Branded Demand is a fresh way to drive performance, by combining brand awareness and demand generation. It does this by distributing compelling content to a relevant audience through a network of publisher channels, and then layering in targeted display ads to reinforce brand awareness. The result is higher quality leads familiar with the brand who are ready to nurture or engage. In short, it focuses on fewer accounts and prospects, but does more for them.
A Virtuous Cycle
This kind of approach shifts sales to a more value-added role where they can provide additional content and resources to drive a reason to buy, instead of continually pushing for meetings and demos. It could also help to amplify the kind of virtuous cycle that high-performing marketing teams are able to create, where effective data utilization drives better decision making and audience targeting/engagement. This, in turn, improves content relevance, which enhances lead nurturing. Stronger sales-marketing alignment also feeds into this cycle, enabling more effective identification and management of buyers.
Ultimately this means more conversions. A Branded Demand approach has shown to generate performance improvements of 40%.
High performers didn’t get to where they are by chance. They’re adapting to a difficult set of macroeconomic circumstances with a laser focus on revenue, and excellence across the board—strengths in one area reinforcing another. With Branded Demand, they have a springboard to do even more.
Matt Hummel serves as the Chief Marketing Officer at Pipeline360, where he leads the development and execution of strategic marketing initiatives to enhance the customer experience, accelerate growth, foster cultural evolution, and deliver on the company vision. Drawing from his extensive experience as a multi-time customer of Pipeline360, Matt brings a unique perspective and a deep passion for delivering exceptional business and customer value. After starting his career in advertising and public relations, Matt found his passion for B2B marketing, spending more than a decade at leading global financial services organizations including Deloitte. Most recently, Matt led Digital Marketing at Demandbase, and prior to that had senior leadership roles at leading SaaS companies including RealPage, Social Solutions, and Thomson Reuters, where he built and led teams that consistently drove profitable growth. Matt is a graduate from the University of North Texas where he holds a degree in Marketing.
