The B2B marketing playbook that drove growth over the past decade is starting to show its age. Tighter targeting and incremental efficiency gains no longer deliver the same returns. Buyers surface later in the process. Costs rise faster than pipelines. Even when activity looks strong, results feel fragile.
This is not a temporary dip. It reflects how B2B buying works today, particularly in SaaS and fintech. Decisions happen quietly, often without visible intent signals, and are shaped by emotion and familiarity as much as rational evaluation. Teams that continue to treat B2B as a purely logical transaction risk optimizing for activity rather than progress.
What follows is not a list of tactics to try next quarter. These insights emerged from a working session among a cross-functional team of B2B marketers focused on what needs to change as teams plan for 2026. Together, they outline a different playbook, one built around how growth actually compounds over time rather than how it is traditionally measured.
Insight #1: Moving From B2B to B2P
The most foundational shift is also the simplest to state. B2B marketing works better when it is treated as business to people.
Every B2B decision starts with a person. Every meaningful conversion is the result of a connection that happened earlier, often long before a buyer enters the market. A human-first lens keeps strategy grounded in how decisions are actually made rather than how org charts suggest they should be.
This matters because many B2B brands are brand deficient. In SaaS and fintech especially, products are rarely as novel as teams believe. Features are easy to copy. Benefits sound interchangeable. Competitive landscapes fill up quickly. When multiple solutions solve the same problem in similar ways, differentiation at the product level, well, it collapses.
What remains is connection. Not surface level messaging about efficiency or cost savings, but emotional familiarity. The sense that a brand feels known, credible or aligned with how someone sees their role and their work. That familiarity often comes from point of view and creative choices, like tone, rather than straight feature lists.
A B2P approach pushes brands to connect before they convert. To build meaning with people who are not yet buying, so that when the moment arrives, the brand already feels like a safe and obvious choice.
Insight #2: The Tension Between Existing and Future Demand
Most B2B marketing efforts are still aimed at existing demand. Sales activation campaigns focus on buyers who are actively in market, comparing options and ready to make a decision. That approach works, but only for a small portion of the audience.
Research consistently shows that roughly 5 percent of B2B buyers are in market at any given time. When every competitor chases that same slice, demand is exhausted quickly. Acquisition costs rise. Differentiation erodes. Growth flattens.
The remaining 95 percent represents future demand. These buyers are not ignoring brands forever. They are simply not buying right now. When sales-focused messaging reaches them, it is usually scrolled past and forgotten because it is not relevant to their current mindset.
Modern B2B buyers research independently and avoid sales conversations until late in the process. By the time intent signals appear, a large share already have a vendor or a shortlist in mind.
Future demand is built during the long stretches when buyers are out of market. Brands that ignore that window leave growth to chance.
Insight #3: Running Brand and Performance Together
Performance marketing is still the most efficient way to drive short-term sales. It works well when demand already exists, and buyers are actively looking. What it cannot do on its own is create demand.
That role belongs to brand marketing. Brand strategy work builds familiarity and preference over time so that when a buyer enters the market, a brand already feels known and credible. This is not about awareness for awareness’s sake. It is about shaping memory and association.
“Future demand is built during the long stretches when buyers are out of market.”
Longer-term brand investment consistently outperforms performance marketing on outcomes that matter over time, including market share, pricing power, trust, loyalty and differentiation. Sustained brand campaigns are also far more likely to produce profitable growth than short-term activation alone.
Where many B2B teams struggle is in measurement. Engagement metrics like impressions and clicks are easy to track. Commercial outputs, such as leads and conversions, are also well understood. What often goes missing are the middle metrics that show whether people are thinking differently, feeling differently or behaving differently after exposure.
Those signals matter because they explain why performance works better later. Brand and performance are not opposing forces; they’re complementary forces. They are complementary systems that work best when designed together.
Insight #4: Flat Budgets and Strategic Divestment
Looking ahead, many CMOs expect budgets to stay flat or shrink rather than grow. That reality is forcing harder decisions about where to invest and where to pull back.
Consulting firms have started calling this “strategic divestment.” In practice, it means reducing spend in areas that do not show a clear near-term impact. The risk is that brand investment often falls into that category because its returns are delayed and harder to tie directly to pipeline.
An over focus on ROI is often a signal that brand has been underfunded for too long. When growth slows, teams double down on short-term activation. That can stabilize results briefly, but it rarely fixes the underlying issue.
“An over focus on ROI is often a signal that brand has been underfunded for too long.”
Startups offer a clear example. Early growth is often fueled by heavy paid media marketing investment. When that spend is reduced, demand dries up and growth stalls. Many burn out within a few years because they never built a sustained future demand engine.
Flat budgets make prioritization unavoidable. Brands that protect long-term investment while tightening elsewhere are better positioned to grow when conditions improve.
Insight #5: Where AI Actually Helps B2B Teams
AI is moving from experimentation to infrastructure in many B2B marketing organizations. One emerging use case is the AI notebook as a strategy enablement system rather than a content generator.
In this model, teams load vetted source material, such as recent benchmarks, research reports and trend analyses, into a closed system. The notebook becomes a place to pressure-test ideas, explore patterns, and map connections across sources.
The constraint matters. These systems do not scrape the web or pull in unverified information. They only work with what has been intentionally loaded and reviewed. That makes them useful for strategic thinking while reducing risk.
There is still a human cost. Sources need to be refreshed regularly. Insights need to be reviewed before use. The notebook supports thinking but does not replace it.
Used correctly, this kind of system helps teams move faster without sacrificing rigor. It creates a shared foundation for strategy discussions and reduces time spent reassembling the same information over and over again.
Building the Next B2B Playbook
The opportunity ahead is real. The teams that win in 2026 will not be the ones chasing every new tactic, but the ones rebuilding their playbook around how B2B buying actually works today. A more human approach, a longer view of demand, and smarter use of tools create room to grow even in tighter conditions.
If your team is ready to rethink how growth is built and wants a partner to help rethink and rebuild that playbook, let’s talk.
