Shrinking budgets. Increasing lead targets. The race to adopt AI tools meaningfully.
Sound familiar? These common pain points brought me to the 2025 Forrester B2B Summit in Phoenix.
What I learned will change how you think about B2B marketing. Four key trends emerged that explain why some brands are breaking through while others struggle to connect. The statistics about buyer behavior might shock you, especially the numbers around what influences purchase decisions and what buyers find utterly useless in your current approach.
Why We Attended the 2025 Forrester B2B Summit
We pinpointed attending the Forrester B2B Summit for a variety of reasons, most notably the exposure to industry analyst research and predictions on where the focus of B2B marketing is shifting.
Before heading out, I reflected on the types of common questions our clients bring to us at Noble Studios:
- Where should we be marketing ourselves?
- How can our brand stand out?
- How can we get more leads?
What really excited me about the summit structure was the dedicated certification tracks offered to attendees. Based on the conversations we’re having with our clients, Embracing the New B2B Buying Landscape felt like the perfect learning track to enroll in.
Through the certification, I participated in roundtable discussions and got to hear from B2B marketing professionals from around the globe on shared pain points–shrinking budgets while increasing lead targets, a race to adopt AI tools in a meaningful way and needing to balance brand awareness with demand generation targets.
Key Insights from the B2B Marketing Summit
Through all of the sessions, chats and marketplace presentations, four key metric-backed points stood out as most important for B2B marketers to be hearing right now:
External Influencers are the New Reality
B2B Buyers are looking to trust signals and credibility far beyond the traditional buying committee. This requires a fundamental shift in marketing strategy: identify who truly influences your buyers and establish an authentic presence in these spaces months before the purchase conversation begins. Expanding the WHO we consider as influencers means we must think strategically about how to quickly and authentically engage with the network. The urgency is real. Forrester’s research shows 35% of B2B buyers already consult external influencers during their journey, with that number expected to reach 50% by year-end 2025 (Source: Forrester Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2024).
Buyers Are People, Too
We’ve been talking with our clients for a long time about speaking to their buyers in language that is jargon-free and easy to understand. CMOs are catching on to this, in study results from a 2023 brand and communications survey, 40% of respondents said they struggle to make brand messages relevant to buyers. (Source: Forrester B2B Brand And Communications Study, 2023) This idea of connecting on a human level came up time and again in breakout sessions and keynotes. As marketers, we need to be thinking less about B2B and more about B2P, Business to People.
What Value Are You Providing Your Buyers?
What’s equally important is remembering that buyers are people, not leads, and their experience with marketing, sales and customer success matters deeply. For leaders, having this discussion requires alignment on how we define and measure value across the entire buyer journey. The importance of this shift became crystal clear during a session on adapting data strategies for increasingly anonymous buyers. The presenter shared a sobering reality check: Buyers don’t love demos as much as you do. In fact, only 25% of surveyed buyers found online demos useful or helpful (Source: Forrester Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2024).
Personalization Isn’t a Background Singer
A point speakers drove home is that personalization fails when treated as an afterthought. Often, we see marketers look to layer personalization on top of other tactics or strategies. It’s a strategy that’s here to stay, in fact it was shared that 82% of global B2B marketing decision-makers agree that buyers expect an experience personalized to their needs and preferences across marketing and sales. (Source: Forrester Marketing Decision Makers Survey, 2024)
Effective personalization requires its own strategic framework complete with dedicated goals, KPIs and measurement protocols. At Noble, we champion a Valuable Personalized Experiences (VPE) approach that focuses on creating genuinely meaningful interactions that solve real user problems rather than simply recognizing their name or industry.
These takeaways are already informing the way we’re approaching strategy discussions with clients and optimizing for more human, value-driven engagement.
The B2B Evolution
Thinking about the expansive tools that modern-day B2B buyers have at their disposal can feel overwhelming but it’s a behavior shift that is unavoidable. The best thing that a B2B marketer can be right now is ready to try. Let’s test those new channels, let’s meet our buyers where they are in their research journey and let’s do some innovative thinking – the time is now!
I’ll leave you with a message that resonated deeply throughout the Summit: Accelerating your brand and high-growth performance are not mutually exclusive strategies. They’re increasingly interdependent in this buyer-controlled landscape.
Ready to align your B2B marketing with today’s empowered buyers? Contact our team at Noble Studios to discuss how these insights apply to your specific challenges.
