How bad incentives ruin good marketing

Marketers have a toxic relationship with data. We love data, we fetishize data, we wax poetic about the glories of “data-driven marketing.” And don’t get me wrong, data is very important, especially in B2B. But not all data is created equal. We assume most data is good data. But it’s not. Most data is bad data. And sooner or later, our over-reliance on big bad data is going to cause a crisis.

Data shows B2B brands, like B2C, generally serve the same customers, which demonstrates the wisdom of marketing to every buyer in your category. Hyper-targeting might be the single most destructive idea in B2B marketing. This one bad idea has cost companies billions of dollars in lost revenue. According to hyper-targeting apologists, B2B brands grow best by targeting very specific customer segments with very specific creative. For example, hyper-targeters believe it’s wasteful to target all the IT professionals in Europe when instead, you could hyper-target IT directors in the pharmaceutical industry at companies with 10,000 employees in the UK.

What will define the future of B2B marketing? In this special edition of our B2B Trends series, Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo look beyond short-term uncertainty to explore the durable, contrarian ideas that will shape the next decade. The report highlights three major shifts that marketers can’t afford to ignore: The rising importance of brand building, creative strategies that cut through sameness, and distribution as the foundation of brand success. Grounded in timeless principles and a meta-analysis of past B2B Trends research, this report challenges conventional thinking and identifies strategies that will continue to drive growth through 2030 and beyond.