LinkedIn Reveals 5 Trends Shaping B2B Marketing

A new LinkedIn report has highlighted five key trends that are reshaping B2B marketing, placing a strong emphasis on revenue metrics, AI attribution, and strategies focused on ROI.

One significant shift is that marketers are increasingly focusing on revenue-based metrics, moving away from traditional vanity metrics. This change reflects the growing pressure to demonstrate the direct impact of marketing activities on revenue generation.

In addition, Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are now demanding clearer proof of brand ROI. This shift is pushing marketing teams to refine their strategies and demonstrate the tangible financial benefits of their efforts.

The report also points to the rising adoption of AI-powered attribution models, which are helping businesses map out the complex and non-linear buyer journeys. These advanced models allow marketers to track interactions across multiple touchpoints, providing more accurate insights into what drives conversions and revenue.

A new report from LinkedIn sheds light on how businesses are rethinking and refining their approach to measuring the success of their marketing efforts. As the marketing landscape evolves, companies are recognising the need to adapt their measurement strategies to reflect new challenges and opportunities.

The report, which draws on insights from industry leaders at global firms such as Microsoft, ServiceNow, PwC, and others, identifies five key trends that are significantly reshaping how businesses assess the impact of their marketing activities. These trends not only highlight shifts in measurement practices but also reflect broader changes in the way businesses are aligning their marketing strategies with overarching revenue goals. As businesses continue to navigate an increasingly complex marketing environment, these emerging trends offer essential guidance on how to optimise and future-proof marketing measurement strategies.

Revenue-Centric Metrics

Marketers are increasingly shifting their focus from traditional metrics like cost-per-lead to more revenue-related measures. This change reflects a growing recognition that revenue outcomes, rather than just lead generation, are the true indicators of marketing success.

Leaders in the field are adopting tools that integrate CRM data with campaign engagement, which allows businesses to bridge the gap between marketing activities and tangible business outcomes. These tools provide a clearer picture of how specific marketing efforts drive deals, moving beyond vanity metrics.

Other significant changes include the diminishing importance of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), which are now seen as unreliable due to inconsistent conversion rates. Instead, there is a stronger emphasis on metrics like “sourced pipeline” — which tracks deals generated directly by marketing — and “influenced pipeline,” which measures the impact of multiple touchpoints in the buyer journey.

Vivek Khandelwal from ServiceNow explained this shift by stating: “You can talk about click-through rate, cost per click, and cost per impression all day long, but what eventually matters to the business are the revenue metrics. It’s all about how many customers we’re winning, how many opportunities we’re creating, and the ROI we’re generating on marketing investments.”

Similarly, Alex Venus from Personio shared: “Our North Star metric is qualified pipeline, which means an opportunity that your salespeople care about, which should be converting at a rate of 25% or more.”

ROI Frameworks for Brand Marketing

CFOs are now demanding proof that brand-building efforts actually lead to financial returns, requiring marketers to demonstrate how their awareness campaigns result in measurable sales. This shift is changing the way marketing teams approach brand strategy and performance measurement.

The report highlights that the focus is moving from the cost of marketing activities to the value those activities generate. Marketers are now expected to report on key performance indicators (KPIs) that clearly correlate with revenue in a way that resonates with both sales and finance departments. The emphasis is on demonstrating results in a clear, consistent manner, at a rate that all stakeholders can trust.

In response to this demand, marketing teams are adopting several strategies to justify brand spending. One of the main approaches is to separate brand and demand budgets, allowing for more precise optimisation of spending. Teams are also running campaigns targeted at high-value accounts, tracking deal timelines to identify any correlations with their efforts. Finally, they are balancing engagement metrics — such as growth in branded search — with the more concrete influence these actions have on the sales pipeline.

AI-Powered Attribution Models

The composition of B2B buying groups is changing, with groups now often consisting of 6 to 10 members. As a result, marketers are moving away from outdated last-touch attribution models and adopting machine learning-based models to better capture the complexities of modern buying behaviour.

Julien Harazi, Head of Lead Generation at Cegid, commented on this shift: “As B2B marketers, our world has become a lot more complicated. All of the touchpoints are intertwined and it can be difficult to understand the buyer journey and identify where the value comes from in terms of your marketing.”

In response to these challenges, emerging solutions are helping marketers gain a clearer view of the buyer journey. These include:

Lifetime value (LTV) analysis by channel or segment
Media Mix Modelling to assess synergies across multiple channels
Integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to map journeys at the account level

Multi-Timeframe Measurements

Another trend identified in the report is the shift towards measuring performance across multiple timeframes. Leaders in B2B marketing are adopting a more balanced approach by considering both immediate optimisation and long-term growth.

Marketers are now using a three-tiered performance measurement system:

Real-time: Optimising cost-per-qualified lead metrics
Mid-term: Assessing pipeline return on ad spend (ROAS) over a 3–12-week period
Long-term: Calculating lifetime value (LTV)-adjusted ROI, which includes brand investments

This multi-timeframe approach ensures that teams do not over-emphasise short-term gains at the expense of long-term brand-building efforts.

Sveta Freidman, Global Data & Analytics Lead at Xero, shared her goal in the report: “One of my goals is to build an understanding of lifetime value by channel, segment level, and by platform so that we can optimise our approach around the best outcomes for our business.”

Unified Real-Time Dashboards

With 73% of marketers highlighting siloed data as a major challenge, there is an increasing demand for integrated analytics tools. These solutions allow marketers to gain a comprehensive view of their data and make more informed decisions.

Some of the tools gaining popularity include:

LinkedIn Insight Tag, which helps track cross-website behaviours
Hybrid metrics that balance brand engagement with demand signals
Predictive AI models that identify revenue influences that are typically untracked

These unified, real-time dashboards are proving crucial for marketers looking to streamline their analytics processes and create a more accurate and actionable view of their marketing efforts.

What This Means For Marketers

The report highlights the growing importance of measurement when it comes to driving brand growth in B2B marketing.

Three key priorities emerge as essential for B2B marketers to focus on:

Linking metrics to revenue – Marketers are placing a greater emphasis on metrics that are directly tied to revenue, ensuring that their efforts can be measured in terms of business outcomes.
Using advanced tools – Tools like multi-touch attribution and brand lift studies are becoming critical for assessing both demand and the impact of brand marketing efforts. These methods provide a clearer picture of how various touchpoints influence customer decisions.
Balancing real-time optimisations with long-term value – Marketers are now striving to strike a balance between immediate optimisations and the longer-term goal of maximising customer lifetime value. This approach ensures that short-term tactics don’t overshadow long-term growth.

The report concludes that success in B2B marketing hinges on the ability to translate data into language that resonates with CFOs and other business leaders, making it clear how marketing activities drive tangible business results.