Overall takeaways
- 1.
Most B2B marketing is “fine,” and fine is the problem.
Nearly every leader we surveyed calls their GTM strategy effective, but only a third call it extremely effective.
- 2.
The real gap is visibility.
Teams can’t tell which programs drive pipeline, so they can’t scale the winners or cut the losers.
- 3.
You need to fix the foundation before the funnel.
When data and reporting are siloed, every channel built on top of them is harder to read.
- 4.
AI speeds up the doing, not the seeing.
Heavier AI use eases many of the challenges in this report, but attribution clarity remains a need for roughly half of teams at every level.
- 5.
Measurement should focus on what pays the bills.
Pipeline contribution, cost per opportunity, win-rate lift, and cycle time tell you what to scale. Clicks and MQL volume don’t.
The most dangerous word in marketing is “fine”
97%
of B2B marketing leaders say their GTM strategy is effective
33%
say it’s consistently effective
The perfect marketing campaign doesn’t exist. ROI always has room to grow. Conversion rates always have room to improve. That’s motivating. It’s also an excuse.
When perfection is unattainable, “fine” can start to look acceptable. Sure, there’s room to grow. You’ll fix it next month. Or next quarter. Or, let’s be honest, next year.
Here’s the problem: “fine” isn’t fine for long, and when it breaks, you can’t see why.
We surveyed B2B marketing leaders at companies like AbbVie, SAP, Microsoft, Humana, and Cox, about what’s actually happening inside their GTM engines. 97% of these leaders told us their GTM strategy was effective, but only 33% described it as extremely effective with consistently strong engagement.
Who we talked to
The data in this report comes from a survey of 94 marketing leaders at enterprise companies fielded by Gatepoint Research. (n=94)
Digging into the data, the root of the consistency problem was clear: Marketing leaders can’t see what’s working well enough to build on it.
When you can’t say what’s driving a win, you can’t tell the difference between a real strategy and a lucky streak.
A campaign that crushes it in Q1 and stalls in Q2, with nobody able to say why, costs you the ability to plan the next quarter with any confidence. You end up re-litigating the same budget decisions every cycle instead of building on what actually worked.
So which parts of what you’re doing are actually working? That’s the real question.
Read this report to learn:
- Where the visibility gap shows up across paid media, content, and your website
- What AI is helping with, and the one gap it isn’t closing
- Which KPIs help you decide what to scale and what to cut
- Practical first steps for each problem, plus a seven-step plan to get unstuck
01 | The big picture
You can’t tell your winners
from your losers
Why are so many B2B marketing leaders working with marketing plans that are inconsistent? The 10,000 foot view is simple: Wins that can’t be explained can’t be repeated.
46%
Want more attribution clarity from paid media efforts
39%
Want to shift from volume to business-outcome metrics
35%
Can’t get timely data to make a call
28%
Say web analytics only tell half the story
This lack of visibility is causing problems in every tactical area. When we asked what would strengthen their paid media pipeline, 46% of B2B marketing leaders pointed to attribution clarity, actually knowing what’s driving pipeline, and 39% want to trade volume metrics for business-outcome metrics. Elsewhere in the survey, 35% said they don’t have the right data in time to make decisions, and 28% said their web analytics provide limited insights.
In the rest of this report, we’ll explore how these visibility problems show up in, and impact, key marketing activities across the journey.
Key takeaway
True visibility is a problem in every area we asked about: attribution, metrics, data timeliness, and analytics.
Why it matters
Misread signals compound every quarter they go unchecked, because nobody can trace the result back to the guess that caused it.
What to do about it
Before you fix any one channel, write down what each program is meant to prove: the audience, the message, and the pipeline metric that will tell you whether it worked. Review results against that note every month, so every win (or miss) traces back to a decision you can repeat or change.
02 | Where to start
The foundation, not the funnel
Before campaigns even start, most teams are already building on shaky ground. When we asked what’s getting in the way of GTM results, 49% of B2B marketing leaders told us they can’t get actionable audience insight, and 48% said execution is siloed by channel. Nearly three in four (72%) named at least one of those two challenges.
These numbers are connected. If Sales tracks registrations, Marketing tracks clicks, and Content tracks rankings, each in their own system, nobody can tell whether those channels are working together or even reaching the same audience — making it impossible to truly understand what messaging moves the needle and which activations are leading to deals.
The usual response is to treat this as a Sales and Marketing alignment problem. Schedule a joint pipeline review. Workshop the ICP. Agree (again) on what counts as a qualified lead.
Those things matter. Sales and Marketing do need a shared definition of the ideal customer profile (ICP) and target accounts, agreement on what counts as a qualified lead, and regular data reviews together. But none of it sticks without a shared data foundation underneath. If each team walks into that review with numbers from its own system, the meeting turns into a debate about whose numbers are right, and nobody leaves with a decision.
A shared data foundation can start smaller than most teams expect: one place where account, contact, engagement, and pipeline data live together, with definitions everyone agreed to up front, and one owner who keeps it clean. When Sales, Marketing, and Product all pull from it, a “qualified account” means the same thing in every room.
The timing matters, too. Enrichment and signal tools like Clay make it easier than ever to find fresh data on the accounts you care about. But better data moves faster than most org charts. When we asked what keeps marketing teams from being more agile, the top answer was coordinating with Sales, Product, and other teams, at 48%. Without a shared foundation, a strong buying signal lands in one team’s tool and sits there.
So start with the foundation. Consolidate pipeline and audience data into one system everyone can access, agree on the definitions that matter, and give it an owner. Alignment gets a lot easier when everyone is looking at the same numbers.
How do you build a data foundation Sales will actually trust?
Make every signal traceable. Sales trusts data when they can see where it came from, when it was captured, and why an account was flagged. A score that can’t explain itself is easy to ignore.
Enrichment tools like Clay let you pull signals from multiple sources into your CRM, keep the source attached to each one, and refresh them automatically. Start with one signal your Sales team already cares about (say, a target account hiring for a role you sell to) and route it to the account owner with the source included.
See how this works in practice in our signal-based ABM webinar with Clay.
Key takeaway
Teams can’t align on data nobody shares. When each function reports from its own system, every team ends up with a different answer to the same question: What’s working?
Why it matters
When execution and reporting are split by channel, nobody can tell whether a result came from the message, the audience, the timing, or another team’s work. That turns every downstream decision into a guess.
What to do about it
Start with the data, then the insight. This won’t happen in a single sprint, but it’s worth doing before you build anything else on top of it.
- First, agree on one source of truth for pipeline and revenue data across Sales and Marketing, even if it starts as a shared spreadsheet pulling from your CRM.
- Then use that shared data to find audience insights, and make them available to every team that touches the customer.
03 | Compounding the issue
Paid media comes with data, not proof
Most B2B marketing organizations put a significant share of their budget into paid media. For years it’s been something you’ve “had” to do. And any doubts we had about its efficacy were pushed aside under the weight of the proof these platforms provided: so many impressions and clicks! So many leads!
Yet, when pressed on this point, 63% of our respondents say paid media only works inconsistently. Just 19% say it reliably drives high-value opportunities.
63%
say paid media only works inconsistently
19%
say it reliably drives high-value opportunities
These leaders don’t have confidence in the efficacy of their paid media campaigns because the metrics available within the paid media landscape are insufficient for demonstrating ROI. Ad clicks have never actually equaled conversions, not the ones tied to real sales conversations, and never told us what we really need to know — did the money spent on this campaign lead to new business? Was it worth it? And, more importantly, if not, what was the problem? Was it our segmentation, messaging, content, landing page design, or something else?
This problem is only getting bigger. In the new zero-click reality, the metrics we’ve attached our success to for so long, however imperfectly, are disappearing before our eyes. Pages don’t get visits, pixels don’t fire, and there’s often no clear trail back to anything you’re doing.
What’s the fix? Our respondents seemed to know that too.
While gaps in messaging and missing or incomplete tech integrations still plague many marketing organizations, the top two things respondents said would strengthen the paid-media pipeline were attribution clarity (46%) and business outcome metrics (39%).
That shift to business-outcome metrics is really important, because that’s the data that means something. Would you trade less web traffic for more recurring revenue? Absolutely. Fewer paid impressions for bigger average deals? Yeah, probably! And what about fewer form fills, if it meant more closed deals?
Letting go of the illusion of success that comes with volume metrics such as “leads” and “clicks” is terrifying. But our research shows that more marketing leaders are hearing the call. Those that don’t make the effort to shift now will soon find that they are not at all fine.
What KPIs should you use to evaluate GTM strategy success?
The KPIs that actually show whether a GTM strategy is working are pipeline-focused. For example:
- Pipeline contribution by program or channel
- Cost per opportunity (not cost per lead)
- Win-rate lift on assisted deals
- Cycle time from first touch to close
Key takeaway
Platform-level metrics aren’t enough to help marketing leaders understand how (and whether) their paid media efforts are really paying off, and what aspects of their strategy to fix.
Why it matters
Agentic research means potential buyers can remain invisible from your paid and web analytics from the very first touch. Those old metrics are about to get even less reliable.
What to do about it
Stop optimizing each platform against its own metrics, which can look great while pipeline stays flat. Take a portfolio view instead: Weigh every channel by what it contributes to pipeline and revenue, not by its in-platform numbers.
- Shift paid-media KPIs to pipeline-based measures: pipeline contribution and cost per opportunity, not clicks and impressions.
- Define what counts as a qualified opportunity across Sales and Marketing, then put attribution in place that traces spend back to that definition, not just to a form fill.
- Treat AEO (answer engine optimization) as a channel to track now, not an afterthought.
04 | Mantra for 2027
Understanding your audience can’t be an afterthought
Personalized, relevant experiences matter more than ever. Most teams already know this, and they know they’re short on the right content in important places.
In fact, 42% of B2B marketing leaders in our survey said they’re missing content for key stages of the buying journey, and 31% can’t repurpose what they’ve already got. Asked about their websites, 49% reported little to no personalization and 40% described journeys that are confusing or dead-end.
Content challenges
Website limitations
Addressing these issues can no longer be an afterthought. As B2B buyers complete more of the buying journey offsite within an LLM, companies without content that speaks to their specific needs may not even show up in their recommendations. And if those buyers do visit your site, they’ll be expecting to quickly validate that research — not wade through generic experiences that leave more questions than they answer.
Marketers may be tempted to put AI tools to work to rapidly fill these gaps, but doing so without taking the time to really understand your audience won’t solve the problem. Good content works as an accelerator. Unnecessary content just creates a speed bump for your target audience to navigate around.
Today’s tools make it ridiculously easy to gain a much more fine-grained picture of your audience’s needs and behavior. Take the time to do this groundwork, then audit your site and content to uncover what’s actually standing in the way before sending your human + AI team out to address it.
How do you map content to the buyer journey?
Start with your target audience: Map the questions they have at each stage of the journey, then evaluate whether your existing content actually answers them well enough to convince them your solution is the only one worth choosing.
Key takeaway
42% of B2B marketing leaders don’t have content for key stages of the buying journey, and 49% have little to no website personalization. Both are symptoms of a website that hasn't been built using a mapped audience.
Why it matters
Without the visibility into what works, more content and a redesigned site just move the guesswork downstream instead of fixing it.
What to do about it
Take a critical look at your website first, then fill the content gaps underneath it.
- Audit your website for drop-offs and dead-ends and add pathways to help buyers find relevant information. If web development is a blocker, use a personalization tool to optimize key pages right away.
- Map your existing content to journey stages and personas and make a plan to fill the gaps. Get our free content journey mapping template.
- Personalize your highest-traffic segment first, rather than trying to personalize everything at once. Get started with our personalization playbook.
05 | A look to the future
AI is already helping, but not with attribution
When we conducted our survey, 44% of respondents reported using AI for a handful of specific tasks and only 12% had it deeply embedded. Given how fast AI usage is moving, you can be sure those numbers have grown. But how much respondents were using AI wasn’t the most interesting thing we uncovered. It was what happens when they do: Among teams actively using AI, the further they go, the fewer problems they report.
28%
fewer overall challenges with extensive AI use
compared to teams with only limited use
Let’s look at paid media as an example. Among teams with limited AI use, 56% say they need to shift toward outcome-based metrics. That drops to 26% at moderate use, and just 18% at extensive use. That’s paid media specifically, but it’s not the exception. Teams with heavier AI use report meaningfully fewer challenges across GTM strategy, agility, content selection, and website performance too. Although the number of teams using AI extensively was small, the results were compelling: Teams with extensive AI use report roughly 28% fewer total challenges than teams with only limited use.
One need doesn’t budge. No matter how much AI a team uses, attribution clarity holds essentially flat, at 56%, 48%, and 45% among limited, moderate, and extensive users.
Why doesn’t AI help with attribution clarity? AI can process more data faster, but it can’t define what counts as a qualified opportunity for your team. That definition has to exist before AI, or any reporting system, can act on it.
The impact of this gap will only increase as AI adoption accelerates. Companies that address it now will excel; those that don’t will soon find themselves irrelevant.
How do you measure the ROI of AI in B2B marketing?
The best measure of AI’s impact is not output volume or hours saved, but decision speed. Can your team spot what’s working faster? Test more variations? Catch a stalled campaign sooner? Some outcomes to pay attention to:
- Time-to-insight
- Testing velocity
- Win-rate lift on AI-assisted campaigns versus manual ones
Key takeaway
Heavier AI use eases many of the challenges in this report, but attribution clarity stays a need for roughly half of teams (45% to 56%) no matter how much AI they use.
Why it matters
AI can speed up testing and targeting, but it won’t hand you a shared definition of what counts as a win. That’s still a people problem.
What to do about it
Point AI at a measurement or analysis task this quarter, and judge it by whether it changes a decision, not by how much time it saves.
- Have AI flag which paid campaigns show rising cost-per-opportunity week over week, then decide whether to cut or scale based on that flag, not on click volume.
- Track whether the decision itself changed because of what AI surfaced. If nothing changed, you found a reporting problem, not an AI problem.
- Feed AI the shared definition of a qualified opportunity from your reporting fix, not the other way around.
06 | How to get unstuck
Creating a foundation for AI-enabled marketing in 2027
Teams get stuck at “fine” because they can’t see which efforts produce pipeline. They can’t double down on what’s working. They can’t cut what isn’t. Here’s how to change that.
Agree on your audience, and build a shared reporting system to match.
Unify audience data into one shared data foundation, with shared definitions across Sales, Marketing, and Product, and give it one owner. Once that’s in place, set up sales-marketing handoffs and agree on one shared ICP definition, so the signal doesn’t die in the translation. Learn how to use Clay to build an audience that’s uniquely yours.
Make paid media prove itself before you scale it.
Put pipeline-based attribution in place before you scale spend, and judge performance by opportunities and pipeline, not clicks or volume. Pick one pipeline metric, not a vanity metric, as next quarter’s scorecard. Here’s how to tell if your paid media agency can help you do this.
Treat AEO as a core demand-gen channel, not an afterthought.
Buyers are already researching inside AI tools whether you’re tracking it or not. Show up in those answers with the same intent you bring to search, and hold it to the same pipeline-based standard as every other channel. Budget for this now, not after AEO traffic outpaces organic search: A lightweight AEO audit plus a handful of optimized answer pages is a reasonable starting scope for most teams. Get your AEO questions answered in our AEO guide.
Map content to the buying journey.
Audit the content you have against the journey stages you already track. Close specific stage gaps starting with the stage where buyers drop out the most. Get started with our free content toolkit.
Personalize by segment.
Use the shared ICP and segments to tailor the site and content experience, and close that personalization gap. Pick your highest-traffic segment and build one personalized path for it before trying to do all of them at once. Get 10 personalization plays to start or add to your library.
Point AI at the problems, and be honest about its effectiveness.
Find ways to put AI to work on your measurement, testing speed, and audience intelligence. Judge its ROI by decision speed and win rate, not output volume. Hand AI one measurement or analysis task this quarter, not a content-production task, and track whether it changes a decision. Here’s our process for deciding when (and when not) to use AI.
Track KPIs that tell winners from losers.
Pick the one question leadership asks that you can’t answer today. List the platforms that hold the data and connect them into one view using a tool like Claude. For example, you might create a dashboard that shows site activity from ICP contacts (from your marketing automation platform) and accounts (from your ABM platform), as well as website metrics and pipeline numbers. Review it monthly so every win traces back to a decision you can repeat.
The Iron Horse approach: From “fine” to momentum
Iron Horse builds the strategy and execution to close this gap with audience definition, attribution, and a measurement framework built around the numbers that matter. Explore our services to see how we help B2B organizations get discovered and get chosen.
Ready to find out what’s working, and fix what isn’t?
Talk to Iron Horse about where to start.
Let’s talk