There’s a familiar pattern in B2B marketing planning that we are seeing more and more this year. A campaign brief lands. The audience insight work is sharp. The segmentation is considered and sensible. The paid media plan is well-researched and detailed.
Then the creative briefing part of the process – and the budget - gets squeezed. Not because anyone thinks it’s unimportant. Everyone wants the campaign to look good, sound right and stand out. But by the time budget has been allocated to media spend, martech, reporting, automation, landing page development and lead generation activity, the actual creative idea development can end up fighting for whatever time and money is left in the allocated pot.
And that’s a problem. Because better targeting cannot rescue weak creative. Today’s audiences expect more from B2B brands. They want clarity, personality and authenticity, as well as original content and opinions based on real lived experiences. Whether they’re researching a new software provider, choosing a marketing agency or comparing the capabilities of potential logistics partners, decision-makers are still people and people tend to connect with brands that feel human, and that tap into a level of emotional connection.
The brands winning attention aren’t necessarily the loudest or the most innovative. They’re the ones communicating in a way that feels believable and real, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to hold onto this in a generative-AI world.
Then the creative briefing part of the process – and the budget - gets squeezed. Not because anyone thinks it’s unimportant. Everyone wants the campaign to look good, sound right and stand out. But by the time budget has been allocated to media spend, martech, reporting, automation, landing page development and lead generation activity, the actual creative idea development can end up fighting for whatever time and money is left in the allocated pot.
And that’s a problem. Because better targeting cannot rescue weak creative. Today’s audiences expect more from B2B brands. They want clarity, personality and authenticity, as well as original content and opinions based on real lived experiences. Whether they’re researching a new software provider, choosing a marketing agency or comparing the capabilities of potential logistics partners, decision-makers are still people and people tend to connect with brands that feel human, and that tap into a level of emotional connection.
The brands winning attention aren’t necessarily the loudest or the most innovative. They’re the ones communicating in a way that feels believable and real, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to hold onto this in a generative-AI world.
We have become very good at reaching B2B buyers
Digital marketing has given B2B brands more precision than ever before. We can build audiences around job roles, sectors, account lists, search intent, website behaviour, engagement signals and CRM data. We can run LinkedIn advertising to very specific decision maker profiles. We can use PPC to capture active demand. We can use ABM campaigns to focus on priority accounts and to hyper-personalise with the help of AI .All of that is useful. But somewhere along the way, many B2B marketing teams have started treating targeting as the main event, rather than the delivery mechanism. The thinking becomes: “If we get the media strategy right, the campaign will work.” Except it will only work if what you put in front of people cuts through, is memorable and compels them to act by igniting their interest. Targeting can put your brand in the right place. It can reduce waste and sharpen relevance. But it cannot make a dull idea interesting. It cannot make generic copy distinctive. It cannot make a forgettable visual system memorable.
Media gets you seen. Creative gets you remembered.
The evidence is hard to ignore
This is not just a fluffy agency opinion, although naturally we do enjoy a good creative hill to stand on.Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ analysis of nearly 500 campaigns found that creative contributed 47% of sales impact overall. Kantar’s CrossMedia database has also found that creative quality accounts for nearly 50% of media impact. Circana’s 2023 meta-analysis reached a similar conclusion, finding that creative drives 49% of incremental sales. So, if the evidence keeps pointing to creative as one of the biggest drivers of marketing effectiveness, why does it so often get treated like the bit we can just “sort later”?
Especially when weak creative usually means the rest of the campaign has to work harder. More media spend. More retargeting. More optimisation. More pressure on cost per lead and conversion rates.
Digital has made creative more important in B2B, not less
For a long time, digital marketing over indexed on the technical side of performance. Targeting. Attribution. Bidding. Automation. Conversion tracking. Martech stacks. Dashboard optimisation. All important, but not the full story.The shift now is that platforms are becoming more automated. Google Performance Max, Meta Advantage Plus, LinkedIn AI delivery and TikTok optimisation are all moving more of the media mechanics into the machine. That means the strategic difference between one campaign and another is less likely to be whether someone has manually tweaked a bid by 17p on a rainy Thursday afternoon.
It is more likely to be the strength of the creative. The idea. The hook. The visual impact. The copy. The message hierarchy. The emotional pull. The distinctiveness. The reason someone stops, watches, clicks, searches, remembers or talks about it later. In fast moving feeds, attention disappears quickly. If the creative does not earn attention almost immediately, your targeting does not really matter. You have paid to reach the right person but given them no reason to care.
B2B buyers are people before they are job titles
One of the biggest traps in B2B marketing is assuming that because the buying decision is complex, the creative needs to be overly rational.Yes, B2B buying involves committees, procurement teams, budgets, risk, compliance, operational impact and long sales cycles. But the people inside those buying groups are still people. They respond to clarity, relevance, confidence, emotion, humour, storytelling and visual distinctiveness.br>
The IPA, Ehrenberg Bass Institute and LinkedIn B2B Institute have all helped build the case for long term brand building, mental availability and memorable creative in B2B. The old assumption that B2B buyers are purely rational has been well and truly challenged.
That is where creative quality matters so much. Weak creative may explain what you do. Strong creative helps people remember why you matter.
It builds memory structures. It makes the brand easier to recall. It creates associations around problems, needs and buying moments. It gives your business a more distinctive place in the buyer’s mind before they are actively in market.
And in B2B, where purchase cycles are long and buyers are often risk averse, that matters hugely.
Better creative does not always mean bigger production
Investing in creative does not always mean spending more on production.It does not mean every B2B campaign needs a cinematic video, a huge photoshoot or a brand character in a velvet smoking jacket. Although, let’s be honest, stranger things have happened. Better creative means giving the idea the time it needs. It means thinking harder about what will make the audience stop and pay attention. It means writing resonating copy that reflects the pressures of different personas, rather than simply swapping a job title in the first line. It means developing a visual system that feels distinctive enough to recognise across LinkedIn ads, email marketing, landing pages, sales decks and video assets.
That is the craft. And craft matters.
Alex Bandaranaike
Client Services Director
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So yes, target better. But create better too.
None of this is an argument against media strategy, targeting, data or digital optimisation. Great B2B campaigns need smart targeting and strong creative working together.But the balance needs correcting. If most of the effort goes into reaching the audience, and not enough goes into what we actually say to them when we get there, we should not be surprised when performance falls short. Better targeting can make a strong idea travel further. It can make a relevant message work harder. It can make your media budget more efficient. But it cannot save weak creative.
So, before the next campaign goes live, it is worth asking one simple question: Are we investing enough in the thing that people actually see, feel and remember?
Because that might be the bit that makes all the difference.
