Business-to-business (B2B) marketing has long been driven by rational propositions, delivered by hyper-targeting that can give the illusion of great efficiency – even if the reality is, at times, lacking. Over the last ten years, marketing technology has grown at pace. Marketing automation alone has doubled in size since 2017 and much of this growth has been driven by the B2B market. Look at any survey into B2B marketers’ priorities and you will see more investment in data and technology.
In recent years, however, this focus on ever more segmented messages, often supported by ever more sophisticated technology, has obscured...