I have been covering the B2B marketing and sales space for four years. When I started in January 2016, I was instantly sent to cover my first industry event about a month and a half into my role. “Book your flight, ASAP,” they said. “We’re sending you to Arizona!” Full disclosure: prior to that, I was a beauty editor who covered Fashion Week, not large industry trade shows. To be honest, the only ones I did attend were because my husband dragged me to Auto and Motorcycle shows in NYC every year.

The challenges for CMOs in today’s B2B marketplace continue to multiply everyday as they struggle to promote digital transformation and customer-centricity to ultimately drive revenue. However, there has never been more opportunity for marketing to take a seat at the executive table as a respected business partner.

As digital marketing continues to evolve and change, the need to engage customers in unique ways becomes even more vital. While new tools and technology emerge seemingly every day, two trends are commanding the B2B world’s attention: augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). In fact, according to a report from Statista, the economic impact of AR and VR is forecast to amount to $29.5 billion in 2020.

B2B buying cycles are getting longer and more complex. According to Demand Gen Report research, 58% of buyers said their decision process was longer in 2017 than in 2016, while only 10% said purchase time had decreased. Most buyers are conducting more detailed ROI analyses before making a purchase decision (77%), using more sources for research and evaluation (75%) and increasing the number of buying group members (52%).

Customer experience is one of the hottest topics in business right now. Almost every journal you read or website you visit seems to be full of variants stating, “why the customer experience should be important to you” and “how your business will be at risk” if you ignore it.

Getting B2B buyers excited about a product or service requires one thing: cooperation between marketing and sales teams.

First there was direct-mail marketing, then came video and mobile marketing – and now we’re in the era of emojis. Emoji marketing isn’t just here, it’s here to stay. If you’ve already seen some emojis popping up in your inbox or taking over social channels, prepare to see even more.

Drift, a conversational marketing and sales platform, announced a $60 million Series C funding round, which was led by Sequoia Capital and included additional contributions from CRV and General Catalyst. This latest round of funding brings Drift’s total amount raised to $107 million.

As marketing budgets continue to rise—now up to 12% of revenue, according to Gartner—the scope of the CMO and marketing organization’s role continues to expand.

Close to 80% of all B2B marketers are now tasked with driving revenue, yet barely a third can demonstrate any credible financial results. Marketing is stuck and must hit the reset button to get out of its own quagmire.