Customer-centricity is a 2025 growth trend. Why? According to MarTech, 52% of B2B executives plan to replace their B2B CMOs with B2C CMOs in 2025-2026. What is behind the change? It boils down to knowing your customers on a much deeper level. I believe this is an early warning for B2B CMOs that customer-centricity is key to understanding customers beyond personas and intent data as a priority. The ability to tailor the entire marketing and sales process to mirror the consumer experience will enable marketing to survive and thrive.
What’s changed? CEOs and CFOs are frustrated with the B2B marketing and GTM processes because they feel that many B2B CMOs only understand promotion and placement. They want B2B CMOs to drive customer-centric marketing and deeply understand product and pricing impacts. However, to achieve this deeper understanding, forward-learning B2B CMOs must:
🔍 Invest in market research. In the era of AI, segmenting the customer down to demographic and firmographic levels is no longer enough. With longer sales cycles, it’s key to identify the progress the customer wants to make. Unlock the customer journey map to help predict the deal closure timeline. Unpack customer pains and gains, identify what’s stopping them from moving forward, and determine what is driving them to seek a potential solution. With only 5% of customers in the market at any given time, CMOs must invest in understanding the 95% who aren’t in the market.
📊 Train marketing teams in causal analytics. Forward-leaning B2B CMOs must begin investing in upskilling marketing teams in AI, analytics, and statistics. B2C CMOs have an advantage because they use these tools to understand customers, create products, and reimagine pricing.
The research insights could enable B2B CMOs to remove customer decision-making roadblocks, identify new products to deliver, and create new pricing to drive revenue.
💼 Business Strategy is marketing strategy. As the McKinsey study noted, marketing and sales are the two functions that AI will most impact. In fact, 33% of CMOs, second behind the CEO, own the implementation of AI in their firms. AI will permeate the firm’s business strategy well into the future. That means marketing is an integral part of the business strategy and serves as an early warning system to help the organization pivot as customers change.
Forward-leaning B2B CMOs recognize that GTM isn’t enough. Customer-centricity will help B2B firms develop long-term customer relationships and business growth. Those who understand the customer and their motivations, fears, anxieties, and goals will own the market. The speed at which AI will change the market means the winner will own more like 90%—10% of the market vs. 80%—20%.
As a B2B CMO, what investments are you making to ensure your firm deeply understands the customer? Schedule a Discovery Session, if you’re ready to pivot.
