Key takeaways
- Nearly three-quarters of B2B marketing teams have not grown in the past two years even as shorter timelines and AI-driven change increase pressure on output.
- The research suggests AI is changing execution and search strategy, but human judgment, creativity and owned digital channels remain central to marketing performance.
New research from Demandbase finds that as AI reshapes how marketing operates, B2B marketing teams are facing growing pressure to deliver on tighter timelines without adding people.
Nearly three-quarters (72%) of teams are the same size or smaller than they were two years ago, even as 70% of marketers report facing shorter timelines. Company leadership is the biggest source of that pacesetting, according to the research revealed today at the Demandbase’s annual GO conference in New York City.
The research shows that distinctly human skills are becoming more valuable in the AI era. Among marketers surveyed, 56% said strategy, creativity, judgment, communication and leadership matter more today than they did two years ago, compared to 38% who said AI, prompting, tool fluency and data literacy matter more. Only 21% said they rarely or never have to correct AI output, highlighting the crucial need for human judgment and oversight as AI becomes more integrated into marketing.
AI Increases Pressure On Leaner B2B Marketing Teams
The report lead Gabe Rogol, CEO of Demandbase, to conclude that marketing teams are being asked to produce more, faster and with fewer resources, said
“AI has already driven system-level change in areas like engineering, but marketing hasn’t made the same leap due to the complexity involved in bringing products to market,” said Rogol in a statement. “Agentic marketing is the only way to give marketers the capacity they need to move at the speed they’re expected to, by pulling them out of the weeds and freeing them to do more creative and strategic work.”
Human Skills Gain Value As AI Use Expands Across Marketing
Half of marketers expect their jobs to look more like a creative director’s in the future and 58% say it now takes more creativity to produce work that stands out, while just 16% believe creativity matters less because AI handles more execution.
AI is becoming part of the buying journey, but it isn’t replacing brands’ own channels: only 35% of marketers systematically track how their brand appears in AI search, a surprising finding after more than three years of heavy adoption of these engines. However, 62% have already changed their search strategy for AI search and 64% have attempted to influence how AI describes their brand.
At the same time, company websites remain resilient as 44% of respondents said their site traffic increased over the past year, compared with just 15% who saw a decline, while 25% saw flat traffic and 15% could not say.
Together, the findings suggest marketers need to treat AI search as another audience in the buying journey. They need to build capabilities to market to the AI systems that are shaping buyers’ decisions while continuing to invest in their owned platforms where buyers build preference and trust.
AI Search Changes Strategy, But Brand Websites Still Matter
The new industry research from Demandbase follows its recent push into agentic marketing with the launch of Mojo, a B2B marketing agent that turns strategy briefs into cross-channel campaigns, freeing marketers to spend less time managing the mechanics of a launch and more time on strategy and creative work. Additional key findings:
- The biggest bottleneck is how work moves among teams: Processes and cross-functional workflows were cited by 56% of marketers as their biggest organizational challenge, compared with 21% who named the tech stack, data and tools. This suggests that adding another tool to move work across marketing, sales, product and legal won’t help unless it eliminates a handoff.
- Junior and entry-level marketing roles have largely held steady: Nearly half (49%) of respondents say junior and entry-level headcount was unchanged over the past two years. At the same time, 50% said their company was outsourcing less or bringing more work in-house, suggesting AI may be helping shift some work from agencies to internal teams rather than simply eliminating entry-level work.
- Teams expect the pace of change to continue accelerating: Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents expect their jobs to change more over the next two years than they did over the past two, while only 2% expect to see less change, suggesting the effects of AI on the industry are still unfolding.
