Traditional advertising is losing effectiveness, and companies are cutting back on ad spend, reveals the Insight Track industry outlook report by Netprofile. However, the need for sales and marketing is certainly not in decline – in fact, standing out is a critical success factor. The question is, what will replace traditional advertising?
For the Insight Track report, Netprofile consultants interviewed 21 communications and marketing leaders from Northern European technology organizations. A key focus area was the shifting allocation of budgets over the next three years—and the drivers behind changes.
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant: a strategic framework for PR and marketing
In the B2B world, communication and marketing essentially serve two core purposes, which align with Gartner’s well-established Magic Quadrant analyses.
- On one hand, companies need to demonstrate that their products and services deliver measurable customer value (ability to execute).
- On the other hand, they must convincingly show that they understand market trends and that their product roadmap inevitably leads to long-term success (completeness of vision).
Traditional advertising built on concise claims and context-blind slogans fails to serve these goals, especially for the discerning B2B audience. These audiences demand more, far more. The key to success is credibility; to achieve that, it’s imperative to provide in-depth, substance-heavy, and forward-looking arguments that don’t fit into typical ad formats.
Case studies, technology achievements, and customer references are crucial pillars of B2B tech marketing, and many companies excel at this. Once potential customers are interested and engaged, convincing them about the ability to execute is often not a problem. The real challenge – and opportunity – lies in sparking that initial interest.
The Insight Track report confirms that visionary leadership, or communicating the completeness of vision, is at the core of B2B tech communication. In fact, 81% of the executives we interviewed expect to increase their investment in thought leadership over the next three years.
Shortcut to thought leadership? There are none.
Thought leadership is built on compelling views that earn the attention of target audiences, attracting interest and creating trust. You can’t be born or appointed as a thought leader – the position is earned through focused, systematic effort, and it’s rarely a solo run.
According to the Insight Track report, B2B buyers now look to engage in fewer but deeper and more strategic partnerships. From a sales perspective, this translates into a need to build trust in your company’s long-term prospects. Reflecting on the Gartner MQ framework, the key task of a thought leader is to offer a credible view of future market trends. Thought leadership therefore helps buyers justify their choice – that their selected partner is not only a good choice right now but for years to come.
Predicting the future is notoriously difficult, and relying on tools like ChatGPT to generate insights would be dangerously shortsighted. Thought leadership is the pinnacle of marketing communications, where the assumptions that underpin business strategy are articulated and refined into publishable, compelling insights.
Tools for the task: PR and content marketing are on the rise
To efficiently deliver appealing insights, thought leadership requires consistency. The increasing push towards thought leadership is clearly visible in the shift of methods and channels favored by B2B PR and marketing directors.
The executives interviewed for the Insight Track report plan to significantly increase their investments in public relations (81%) and content marketing (62%). These tactics arguably provide the ideal – and most efficient – platform for sharing and contextualizing industry insights.
While generative AI holds enormous promise and will continue to provide increasing benefits to PR and marketing operations, it’s hardly a Swiss army knife. The more mass-produced content AI creates, the more your B2B technology company will stand out with human-driven, crystal-clear, and pioneering thought leadership insights.
