B2B marketing in 2025: We ask the experts

As 2024 draws to a close, B2B marketers are looking ahead to the next year and considering how they will make their businesses stand out from the crowd.

While B2B may have a (deserved?) reputation for being slower to evolve or less innovative than B2C in the realm of marketing, there is a wealth of exciting things happening on the cutting edge of B2B. From reimagining customer experience and taking advantage of emerging technology, to communicating brand in new ways.

We spoke to four B2B experts:

• Lucy Watson, Managing Director at B2B comms agency Nelson Bostock;
• Matt Smith, Director of Creative and Brand at B2B creative agency Branded by Berkeley;
• Glyn Britton, Chief Marketing Officer at SME comparison service Bionic;
• and Fergal Reid, VP AI at customer service platform Intercom

Here’s their take on what lies ahead for B2B branding and customer experience going into 2025, including the impact of generative AI (and AI fatigue), how brands connect with audiences, and how to get the right outcomes when budgets are squeezed.

Real skills and curiosity are in short supply

Glyn Britton, CMO, Bionic:

Obviously genAI is coming to the fore, and will be genuinely transformative, but real skills and curiosity are in short supply. Too many teams are just flipping the switch on default LLM features without asking whether it’s right for their customers or their brand.

B2Bs need emotional resonance (cheerful, friendly brands are multiplying)

Lucy Watson, Managing Director, Nelson Bostock:

As audiences become more demanding of the brands that seek to capture their attention, the functional, feature-first messaging that has long been a hallmark of B2B brands is no longer enough – brands seeking a deeper connection with their audiences need to start embracing a more human and emotionally resonant approach.

Advanced audience insights capabilities, spurred on by AI integration, is giving marketers new fuel to supercharge their campaigns. Heading into 2025, we are seeing broad brush demographics-based marketing approaches replaced with much more personalised experiences – that go beyond ABM and reach a much wider potential customer base.

Brands operating in the same sector will often offer comparable product capabilities, so the need to lean into human motivations is crucial. Our analysis of 150 B2B brand personalities from Unlimited’s Human Understanding Lab showed that they are leaning into traits such as ‘cheerful’ and ‘friendly’ – which is a shift from the traditional ‘confidence’ and ‘reliability’ traits we typically see.

B2B marketing has never been more fun and bright

[I]t’s this emotional connection to people, places and things that B2B has the opportunity to unlock in its creative, campaigns and touchpoints. With a good dose of human understanding unlocking magic in our campaigns, B2B marketing has never been more fun and bright.

As AI impedes differentiation, storytelling has become an essential skill

Matt Smith, Creative Director at Branded by Berkeley:

While AI’s potential to revolutionise industries is undeniable, oversaturation has led to scepticism and diminished trust in its actual business impact. Brands can no longer rely on AI as a buzzword; instead, they must demonstrate its real-world value in ways that resonate authentically with audiences.

More importantly though, if every brand is shouting about AI, it is having a considerable impact on how much they can differentiate themselves from their competitors. … Consequently, storytelling has become an essential skill. With audiences bombarded by AI-generated content, brands must cut through the noise by crafting unified, emotionally resonant narratives reinforcing their values. Yet many teams are still missing the ability to scale personalisation effectively, a gap that data fluency and a customer-first mindset must address in 2025.

…stop overhyping AI as a revolutionary force, start empowering customers as brand storyteller…

Generative AI will continue to play a pivotal role, not as a crutch but as a tool to enhance efficiency and enable deeper personalisation. However, its greatest value lies in supporting brand distinctiveness, not replacing the human touch.

To thrive, brands must shift focus: stop overhyping AI as a revolutionary force, start empowering customers as brand storytellers through user-generated content, and continue prioritising authenticity in every interaction.

Efficiency is the only show in town

Glyn Britton, Bionic:

Efficiency is the only show in town [going into 2025]. Budgets are being redirected toward anything that drives it, and ways of working are being ruthlessly optimised to match.

Brands must balance creative ambition with measurable outcomes

Matt Smith, Branded by Berkeley:

Budget trends reflect [the] evolving dynamic [of a shift towards emotionally-resonant narratives], increasing investment in high-quality, impactful content, particularly long-form video. Such content fosters deeper engagement and builds thought leadership.

However, brands must navigate the challenge of tighter ROI scrutiny, balancing creative ambition with measurable outcomes. Short-form videos remain effective for capturing attention, but a successful strategy will blend both formats—short-form to attract viewers and long-form to nurture relationships and establish expertise.

Autonomous agents will finally kill off the white-collar busywork clogging most businesses

Glyn Britton, Bionic:

The elephant in the room at the moment in B2B is that ‘customer-centricity’ seems too often to have been degraded to a race to implement the same SaaS playbook — often at the expense of experience or differentiation.

GenAI will dominate in 2025, but all the chat about chat misses the bigger story. Autonomous agents will finally kill off the white-collar busywork clogging most businesses.

The businesses that win [in the coming year] will be the ones that answer emails and make things genuinely easy. The only outrageous thing is that this is still a radical idea in 2025.

Who is currently doing B2B customer experience particularly well? Investment banks and management consultancies. Like it or not, they still have a monopoly on senior exec attention. That’s a pretty remarkable B2B CX in action – consistently keeping their seat at the table, decade after decade.

Companies that haven’t deployed AI for customer service will seem behind

Fergal Reid, VP AI at Intercom:

This is the year the market turns on deploying generative AI for customer service. Companies that haven’t deployed one by the end of the year will seem behind, and the CEO and CFO will be asking why this is.

…Companies will start the process of connecting GenAI agents with all their other business systems – to issue refunds, change booking details etc. This will be a big lift, but will go from ‘speculative’ to ‘mandatory’ very quickly.

AI will continue to improve and consumers will start to expect the ability to deal with an advanced AI…

The solution sophisticated businesses are shopping for is going to change from just a genAI bot in isolation, to a whole customer service platform. But it won’t be what we currently think of as a customer service platform; it’ll be a new platform for managing the AI workforce.