Six Growth Imperatives
In the face of economic uncertainty, evolving buyer behaviours, and increased pressure on marketing performance, the most successful and progressive B2B organisations are fundamentally rethinking how they engage with their customers, prospects and the market.
According to Gartner, 75% of B2B buyers now expect a completely digital buying experience, and McKinsey reports that over 70% of B2B decision-makers are open to making new, fully self-serve or remote purchases in excess of $50,000, 27 percent would spend more than $500,000.
In this environment, the ability to connect marketing efforts directly to revenue outcomes is critical. Inspired by recent research by Gartner, McKinsey, IDC, and other thought-leading institutions, Gilroy has identified six imperatives for B2B marketing leaders to drive sustainable growth.
Embracing these six growth imperatives, B2B organisations can enhance operational agility, improve customer experience, and increase marketing ROI.
Growth Imperative 01
Connect the entire customer buying journey
Gartner research shows that the average B2B buying group involves 6 to 10 decision-makers, each armed with four or five pieces of information they’ve gathered independently. This fragmentation of the buyer journey means that linear marketing models are no longer effective.
To address this, B2B organisations need to move away from siloed thinking and towards orchestrated buying journeys that reflect the non-linear, cross-functional paths buyers actually take. These journeys must be consistent across digital, human, and hybrid interactions especially as Forrester notes that 63% of B2B purchases now involve four or more channels.
Strategic actions
- Develop connected customer buying experiences that reaches across every touchpoint: digital, human, and hybrid.
- Implement orchestration tools that harvest and organise customer engagement data to understand and respond to cross-channel engagement.
- Integrate sales enablement content to ensure that everyone from marketers to deal makers to service agents deliver consistent messaging from first touch to post-sale.
Business impact
According to IDC, companies that optimise customer journeys see a 30% increase in customer lifetime value and a 25% improvement in customer satisfaction scores. The ability to create a seamless experience across fragmented buying groups builds trust, reduces friction, and increases conversion velocity.
Growth Imperative 02
Adopt a data-led approach to targets, forecasts, and optimisation
Precision marketing relies on data integrity and analytics maturity. Gartner notes that by 2026, 65% of B2B organisations will shift from intuition-based decision-making to data-driven processes, powered by advanced analytics and real-time insights.
In high-consideration sales cycles, gut feel targeting just doesn’t cut it anymore. Data must flow across systems from CRM and marketing automation to intent data and business intelligence tools, and be actioned quickly to inform targeting, budget allocation, and campaign optimisation. According to Salesforce, 75% of marketing organisations are either experimenting with or have fully implemented AI in their operations.
Strategic actions
- Utilise predictive analytics to refine targeting and identify high-propensity accounts specifically, those demonstrating buying intent for larger deals.
- Build dynamic forecasting models that incorporate sales velocity, lead quality, and conversion trends.
- Establish a centralised data hub that connects CRM, marketing automation, and business intelligence platforms into a finely tuned sales engine that acts as a single source of truth.
Business impact
A study by Demand Metric found that data-driven marketing organisations are six times more likely to achieve competitive advantage in customer engagement and loyalty. Data maturity enables more agile, confident decision-making and creates a virtuous cycle of testing, learning, and scaling.
Growth Imperative 03
AI and MarTech to unlock automation and personalisation at scale
MarTech adoption is expanding rapidly, but many organisations still underutilise their stacks. According to the CMO Survey, 86% of CMOs say a lack of resources or capabilities is holding their teams back from driving revenue and customer acquisition. Meanwhile, AI is transforming the ways that we can use personalisation and automation to initiate and maintain customer conversations.
There’s a growing gap between those who simply implement tech, and those who operationalise it. AI-powered platforms, from CDPs to automated content generation, allow brands to react in real time, at scale, without compromising relevance.
To unlock the full potential of MarTech, it’s crucial to map your customer journeys and audit your existing stack to identify where the gaps lie, and where MarTech can provide scale, automation, and personalised engagement. This process ensures that you’re not only using the right tools, but you’re also aligning them with your customer’s buying journey for maximum impact.
Personalisation is no longer optional: McKinsey found that 71% of customers expect personalised experiences, with 76% expressing frustration when they don’t receive them.
Strategic actions
- Deploy AI-powered tools for content generation, predictive lead scoring, and dynamic content delivery.
- Leverage customer data platforms (CDPs) to create unified customer profiles, build audiences and power personalised experiences.
- Integrate real-time behavioural triggers to initiate automated responses based on buyer signals and engagement.
Business impact
According to McKinsey, over three-quarters of customers (76%) say personalised messages are crucial for brand consideration. By moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches and activating technology to scale relevance, B2B leaders can drive efficiency, performance and reputation.
Growth Imperative 04
Extract value and whitespace potential from existing customers
Customer expansion strategies represent a significant and often underutilised opportunity. Gartner highlights that most B2B organisations focus the majority of their time on growing and retaining existing accounts, yet many fail to fully capitalise on the revenue potential of these relationships. In fact, 85% of B2B marketers believe there are untapped growth opportunities within existing customers, but resource allocation doesn’t always reflect this priority.
Meanwhile, retention and expansion efforts are often underfunded. According to Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey, marketing budgets have dropped to just 7.7% of company revenue, and only 24% of CMOs believe their budgets are sufficient to execute their strategy. As rising CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) continues to put pressure on acquisition-led growth, expanding within your existing base offers one of the most reliable and cost-effective paths to revenue.
This is where trust, familiarity, and data give you a competitive edge. Strategies like whitespace mapping, voice-of-customer insight, and cross-sell enablement should be staples in any growth blueprint, not afterthoughts.
Strategic actions
- Implement account-based marketing (ABM) programmes focused on identifying and closing down expansion opportunities within key accounts.
- Utilise whitespace mapping, taking in internal and external data, to uncover and understand the untapped potential within existing accounts.
- Create customer engagement strategies that focus on building advocacy, driving renewals, and growing revenues, which track and feed customer sales plans.
Business impact
According to Bain & Company, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Investing in your base drives compound growth – and creates brand advocates who fuel your future pipeline.
Growth Imperative 05
Prove success with leading performance metrics
B2B marketers are under pressure to demonstrate the impact of their work. Gartner research indicates that many CMOs face challenges in communicating marketing’s value to the C-suite. Shifting from vanity metrics to revenue-focused KPIs is essential.
In today’s environment, impressions and clicks alone aren’t enough. Marketing leaders must tie campaign performance back to pipeline and revenue contribution, and do this in a way that’s transparent, traceable, and aligned with commercial outcomes. Metrics like velocity, pipeline influence, and opportunity-to-close ratios are increasingly replacing traditional campaign metrics.
Strategic actions
- Build dashboards that link marketing activities directly to revenue, opportunity acceleration, and pipeline contribution.
- Use marketing attribution models (multi-touch, weighted, time-decay) to capture true performance.
- Track velocity metrics, including lead-to-opportunity time and opportunity-to-close ratios.
Business impact
A clear, aligned measurement framework enhances marketing’s seat at the table and accelerates investment in the growth strategies that work.
Growth Imperative 06
Leverage external expertise to streamline operations and accelerate time-to-value
The operational demands of modern B2B marketing are increasing. Yet, Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey indicates that a significant majority of marketing leaders face resource constraints, with 64% lacking sufficient budgets to execute their strategies and 73% being asked to achieve more with less. Strategic partnerships with external experts can help bridge these gaps.
Whether looking to achieve marketing transformation, access new skills, access new platforms, or to pivot quickly in flight, specialist partners bring proven frameworks, cross-sector expertise, and agile delivery capacity.
External support has become a vital growth lever. In fact, A 2024 UK survey conducted by Marketing Week, involving over 3,000 marketers, found that 48.7% of respondents cited a lack of in-house skills as a primary reason for outsourcing marketing activities. Additionally, 14.4% indicated cost savings as a motivating factor. This data underscores the strategic role outsourcing plays in addressing skill gaps and budget constraints within marketing teams.
Strategic actions
- Partner with agencies that offer industry-specific expertise, rapid execution capabilities, and integrated strategy support.
- Outsource non-core activities e.g., MarTech operations, creative production to free up internal bandwidth.
- Co-develop agile go-to-market programmes that align with both short-term revenue goals and long-term brand equity.
Business impact
The right partners help marketing leaders focus on what matters most – building value, not just capacity.
Maximise growth with data-driven, agile marketing
The demands on B2B marketers have never been higher. Buyers are more independent, the tech landscape is more complex, and internal stakeholders demand measurable results. Yet those who embrace data-driven, agile marketing are best positioned to lead, not just react.
These six imperatives are more than a framework, they’re a blueprint for marketing teams to thrive in a dynamic, digital-first world. From evolving buyer journeys to AI-powered personalisation, success will depend on how quickly organisations can translate insight into action.
Designing connected customer journeys to leveraging MarTech for personalisation at scale, Gilroy works with many of the world’s leading B2B brands to build high-performance engines of growth- with speed, precision, and measurable impact.
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