Marketing has changed. The days of being a support function are over, and today if you are not driving the conversation about revenue, you're not driving the business. The most effective B2B marketing leaders aren’t just generating leads, they are shaping strategy and proving marketing’s direct impact on growth.
I recently attended the B2B Marketing Leaders Forum in Sydney. From the very first keynote, the energy in the room was electric. You could feel it. Six hundred passionate B2B marketers, all there to connect, learn, and share. This was their event, a rare day to stand shoulder to shoulder with peers who truly get the challenges that come from being a B2B marketer. It was a privilege to be part of it.
I watched with curiosity as the crowd absorbed the sessions from, the many faces of AI, to digital ABM, to RevTech and data-driven strategy. The room nodded along, clearly aligned on the urgency of keeping up with a changing market and how technology could help and most importantly how as marketers, they needed to contribute more than ever back to their respective organisations.
But under that enthusiasm, and through the questions coming from the audience, I sensed something else: hesitation. A quiet dread about where to begin. How to fit meaningful change into already full calendars. And, maybe most of all, how to get organisational buy-in to shift how they engage with customers and prove the real value marketing can bring.
It wasn’t resistance. It was a sense of being overwhelmed.
And that’s the challenge for B2B marketers today—not just knowing what needs to change, but finding the space, support, and conviction to make it happen.
It’s a big shift. One that feels career-defining, maybe even career-limiting.
But the stakes have never been higher, and the need to pivot has never been greater. There is broad awareness that the next generation of purchase decision-makers, are bringing a new mindset. They're thoughtful, research-driven (using AI to do it), and focused on making the right choice. This group of new B2B buyers aren’t just looking for solutions, they are looking for certainty, confidence, and connection. The emotional side of buying is no longer optional it is the differentiator. Yet few B2B marketing strategies in 2025 reflect this shift, let alone act on it.
I was struck by a conversation that I had with one of our clients who faces a significant challenge in the approach their organization has to marketing. Their model, he explained, was designed for “what got them here” not “what would get them there”. Sales and marketing were aligned, but only around an outdated model. One that no longer supported growth in their key markets, how their own product had evolved or reflected the way their customers now buy.
Marketing’s role isn’t just to support sale and revenue; it’s to drive it. Full stop. There’s no such thing as sales revenue or marketing pipeline it's all just revenue growth. And when you frame marketing’s role this way, it becomes a lot easier for the rest of the business to understand, value, and invest in it.
Now overlay that idea with your current B2B marketing approach. Think about your customers and the buying committees around them. Committees that now operate differently, they consume information differently and make decisions differently.
If marketing is already in flux, the question to ask isn’t how to change: it’s what’s the risk if we don’t?
Do you want to keep doing what got you here? Or are you ready to build what will get you there?
Too often, marketers get stuck in business inertia, clinging to the familiar, the “what got us here.” But that mindset won’t get us where we need to go.
Now is the moment to pivot. In B2B, playing it safe by default is the riskiest move you can make. Instead, take the leap. Create marketing strategies that energise your brand, align to your revenue goals, and build predictable, scalable growth.
As B2B marketers in APAC we are in our Nike moment—JUST DO IT. It sounds simple, but thoughts of change are rarely put into action.
Here’s a simple game plan to help you navigate the change and actually make it stick. A few smart steps now will set you up for real, long-term success.
1) Winning hearts (and budgets): Making the case internally
The number one priority is internal engagement. Once you have shaped the vision and strategy, your first audience isn’t your customers, it’s your internal stakeholders.
Framing the challenge in terms that your CFO, CEO, or CRO would use unlocks two powerful things: permission and accountability. Both are essential for driving transformation and embracing the inevitable lessons that come with it.
Spend time actively marketing the strategy across key teams: sales, finance, IT, and beyond. Changing language from marketing-speak to stakeholder-speak will make getting stakeholder consensus easier.
As an example, marketing language is “We need to invest in brand to improve awareness and perception in the market.” This sounds sensible to marketers, but it can sound vague or soft to your peers.
Your CFO doesn’t need to love your brand as much as you or your customers. They need to understand how it protects margin and accelerates revenue. Your CEO, CRO and CFO will respond more favourably to language like “Strengthening our brand improves market confidence and lowers price sensitivity. It gives our sales teams more room to hold or increase pricing to maximise deal extraction. It also shortens sales cycles because buying committees come to us with a clearer sense of our value to them.”
Language context matters.
Once you are set on your messaging, share the plan early, invite feedback, and use that input to refine your approach. When your peers are part of the process, they become part of the solution.
Before going wider, bring in outside perspectives. An external review of your internal marketing strategy ensures objectivity, and this is something that’s hard to hold onto when you’ve invested heavily in the dream of what comes next.
2) Define success before you chase it
Success is subjective, which means you need to define and control that narrative within your organisation and ensure you are anchoring to a common language across departments.
As a marketer, it’s your job to manage expectations alongside the shift in strategy. Not every activity will deliver immediate revenue, but some will, and these need to be highlighted.
What matters is clearly articulating how this change will unfold and providing a reference point as it does. This level of transparency builds trust with internal stakeholders and helps ease uncertainty as the new approach starts to show up in the market.
That’s why defining what success looks like in the context of business performance is critical. Without it, you risk pointing to inflated engagement on a brand awareness campaign as a win even if it didn’t influence the right accounts or move buyers closer to a decision. A stronger marker of success might be increased engagement from in-market accounts, evidence that your efforts are creating momentum that sales can build on. That’s what shared success looks like.
3) Guesswork to clarity: Measuring impact
Before you move forward, make sure your business performance baselines are clearly documented. You can’t measure growth without knowing where you're starting from. Understand how your key metrics are performing today and that’s your foundation to measure success for the future.
Once you have the baseline and you have launched the new and improved strategy; evaluate, evaluate, and evaluate again.
Set up real-time tracking and regular checkpoints. Focus on KPIs tied directly to the strategy and prioritise revenue metrics like; pipeline velocity, lead quality and TAL engagement rates.
That is what peers inside your organisation and outside of marketing care about. Not clicks or impressions.
Over time, measure both the tangible outcomes like revenue, reach, retention, and the less visible but equally important ones, like brand perception and team confidence.
Share the results, keep the business in the loop and do it often. Document what’s working and what’s not. You are not just tracking performance you are building a reference point for the whole organisation and a playbook for what to do next.
One final point to note, if your dashboard doesn’t include revenue targets, you’re not yet where you need to be. Revenue isn’t the end of the process, it is always a shared starting point.
4) Don’t be too proud to pivot
This is a test! And never think your first hypothesis is right. Any shift in how, when, or where you engage your customers carries risk. Certainty doesn’t exist. If someone tells you otherwise, they are wrong.
The smartest marketers plan for what happens if things don’t go to plan. Having a clear strategy for less than ideal outcomes builds credibility, earns trust across the business, and shows you’re thinking like a commercial leader not just a campaign manager.
Failure isn’t the problem. Being unprepared for it is.
5) The smartest marketers listen
It might feel obvious, but this step is often overlooked and it’s the one that can make the biggest difference to long-term success.
You need to listen.
Understand how your internal teams and your customers perceive the shift in approach, especially when it comes to customer experience and brand perception. That level of inclusion builds trust in the process and feedback from the people on the front line is the best you will get.
I’m still surprised by what customers say about the campaigns we run. Their perspective has reshaped our thinking more than once.
The best marketers aren’t just great at creating. They’re great at listening, learning, and adapting. Always.
Brilliant strategies go nowhere without action
The best time to rethink your strategy was last year. The second best time is now. The question remains: are you ready to stop marketing in the past and start building for what’s next?
If you haven’t started yet, chances are you are the only reason why. The doubts, the excuses are just noise. There isn’t a CEO, CRO, or CFO in APAC who doesn’t want to hear how marketing can drive revenue growth.
In today’s business landscape marketing isn’t a cost centre, it is the key growth lever. The most forward-thinking marketing teams are not chasing leads; they’re building revenue machines.
They influence product positioning, expand customer lifetime value, shorten deal cycles, and increase pricing power through stronger brand perception. If you’re not part of the growth conversation, you’ll soon be out of the budget one.
Today, getting on the consideration list is everything. And to get there, you need to be known, valued, and trusted. The reality is what you are doing today is less likely than ever to get you there tomorrow.
Set aside time for what could be the most impactful thing you do this year, even if there’s no KPI on it yet. This is about future-proofing your business, building marketing strategies that earn marketing a seat at the revenue table, and proving marketing’s role as a strategic, respected driver of growth.
Yes, it will feel uncomfortable. Transformation always does. But the most important step is to begin - and keep moving.
Start now, wake up your B2B marketing strategy so it can take you forward, not keep you stuck where you are.
Kiaran Geen is chief executive officer of Grove B2B
