2024 B2B Marketing Trend Predictions: Marketing Forecasting

The fifth and final installment in our 2024 Marketing Trends series has arrived! Not to be too “meta” in a story about predictions, but we’re talking about forecasting!

New to the series? Get caught up now!

Part 1: AI | Part 2: First-Party Data | Part 3: Video | Part 4: Personalization

Trend #5: More Marketing Forecasting, Please

I wanna know what ROI is. I want you to show me. We talked about the ever-increasing role of predictive and prescriptive analytics way back in our 2021 predictions, but we continue to see this trend bubble up to the top of both executive and marketing leader wish-lists across the B2B marketing landscape. As much as we care about what happened, we care even more about what will happen, what should happen and how we can reach our goals.

Maybe it’s the fact that we survived “unprecedented times” together and we collectively desire more “precedented” experiences.

Maybe it’s that as our tried and true methods of tracking seem to be getting slowly stripped away, we are all seeking more ways to tell the story of the power of marketing to drive business results.

Or maybe it’s that 75% of marketers report being under pressure to cut costs to deliver better ROI while 71% of CMOs believe that they lacked sufficient budget to execute their marketing strategies in 2023.

But whatever the reason, we know the predictive modeling is getting better and leaders are looking towards solutions that help them forecast marketing results on business KPIs with confidence prior to making big decisions, especially where budget is involved.

To give ourselves credit: that’s totally fair! With global ad spend expected to surpass 1 Trillion Dollars in 2024, it makes sense that leaders want to anticipate their return of their carefully allotted investments.

What’s Next?

We hope you enjoyed our take on the top five emerging B2B marketing trends we expect to take center stage in 2024. The bottom line is really nothing new—embracing innovation, technology and customer-centric strategies are increasingly pivotal for business success. Of course, getting there requires careful strategic planning.

Download our handy-dandy free report to share with leadership teams across your organization to get the ball rolling. Or revisit the individual trends below. And if you need a little (or a lot) of help, reach out. We’d love to chat.

Explore the Rest of the Trends

Trend #1: Obviously It’s AI, Right? Obviously.
Trend #2: It’s the First-Party Data Party!
Trend #3: Video: It’s Still Totally Dominating.
Trend #4: Personalized Content: It’s Here to Stay.

We love music here at Simantel, so you might notice some pop song lyrics sprinkled throughout the report. Did you catch the one in this trend? It’s I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreigner.