Co-founder @Fullfunnel.io| ABM & full-funnel marketing for B2B tech companies with high ACV and long sales cycle
The Reality of B2B Marketing in 2025: 1.LONGER AND MORE COMPLEX SALES CYCLES. If you're going upmarket or selling to enterprises, here is a sad reality. Sales cycles: What used to be 6 months in 2023 is now 9 months. Buying committee: What used to be 3–5 stakeholders now includes 6–8+ decision-makers across multiple departments. Every purchase requires broader consensus, slowing down the entire process. 2.VENDOR RESEARCH HAS TRANSFORMED Wynter interviewed B2B executives and published fresh research: - "Dark social" dominates (72%). The buyer journey starts in private communities BEFORE moving to Google or Review websites. - Reddit is rising as a trusted source. 12% of B2B leaders cite Reddit for unfiltered feedback, with many saying "Reddit reviews are more honest than G2." Your buyers trust anonymous strangers more than your case studies. - AI usage in vendor research has skyrocketed. As Peep Laja reported: "Our data shows that in 2024, almost 0% of C-Suite used LLMs in vendor research. In 2025, it's around 20%." 3.MEDIOCRE CONTENT GETS IGNORED. If your content is produced by ChatGPT, you have already lost. If your messaging doesn't clearly articulate your differentiation and value, you've already lost. In 2025, you don't compete with your competitors first. You compete for attention first. 3. RESOURCES ARE TIGHTER THAN EVER. With all the hysterical hype about AI, companies slash budgets and resources. B2B marketing teams must focus, prioritize and learn how to do more with less while using AI wisely. 4. COMPETITION HAS INTENSIFIED. What took years to replicate is now a few clicks away with AI. If you don't have strong brand, customer success, and product improvements, you're doomed to experience churn. HOW YOU SHOULD ADAPT 1. FIX THE MARKETING AND SALES SILOS. Turn them into a cross-functional team with unified GTM and goals. Align on revenue metrics, ICP criteria, buyer journey playbooks, and personalization activities. 2. INVEST IN CUSTOMER RESEARCH. This is non-negotiable to understand what topics matter to your buyers, what channels they use, what triggers their buying process, and how their journey unfolds. 3. QUALITY > QUANTITY. Invest in ICP-first activities aligned with the level of demand and intent: unique research, expert content, educational events, and content that addresses actual buyer questions. 4. CO-CREATE WITH PEERS AND AMPLIFICATION AUDIENCES. To get into "private" channels, partner with communities, brands targeting the same audience, micro thought-leaders, and customers who can share authentic experiences. 5. BUILD A FULL-FUNNEL MARKETING MODEL ALIGNED WITH THE BUYER JOURNEY. Create awareness in the right channels, define engagement thresholds, map buying committees, enable your champions with personalized content, and invest in customer experience. --- We'll be sharing more on our Full-Funnel Summit. Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/ddZ6Qyk8
Andrei, this is a masterclass in understanding the evolving B2B marketing landscape! The shift towards longer sales cycles and buyer-led research means businesses can’t rely on outdated playbooks anymore. The rise of Reddit and dark social as trusted sources is fascinating, buyers want unfiltered, peer driven insights over polished vendor content. Your point on quality over quantity is key. AI-generated content floods the market, but differentiation comes from unique insights, customer research, and strategic amplification. 👏
What's amazing is how fast the AI adoption by the buyers is happening, from 0 to 20% in a single year! Can't for for this year's summit. I think lots of the talks are coming just at the right time.
The events side is super powerful
You always bring fresh perspectives to the market. Is it something you're going to cover more in depth on the podcast?
The core message of this post won't change anytime soon :) way beyond 2025
Very informative
Exciting insights! Looking forward to the Full-Funnel Summit for more actionable strategies!
Solid resource Andrei Zinkevich! Have you tried Reddit for paid distribution to combat Dark Social?
Great breakdown. Thank you. It’s interesting to see how integral events and webinars can be in this framework. Great speakers, with the right expertise, experience, authority, trust and a network can play a big role in breaking through the noise. With Google weighting E.E.AT. Based content in search, these SME’s, thought leaders and influencers can play a huge role. Speakers are the B2B influencer. Marketing teams just need to do a better job of consolidating them in one system, so they can efficiently leverage this great resource.
Founder Gotomarketers.co | We help B2B tech companies with LinkedIn-first Content & Demand Gen campaigns that build awareness, trust & credibility ,and revenue
3dI definitely observe that companies are lacking major gaps in converting attention to SQL’s. Problems are due to lack of alignment, tools not fully functioning together to provide better clarity on buyer intent, copied strategies, missing their own creative MOAT’s and low retention volumes causing high pressures up the funnel. Nothing new but needs a engineered, infra, full funnel creative cleanup and execution strategy.