Are you looking forward to 2026? According to Forrester’s recent survey, B2B marketing leaders are overwhelmingly bullish, with 83% of them expecting increased investment next year. While budgets may be increasing, so is the pressure to show results. Here are six tips for marketing success, based on our experience:

1. Make Sure Your Marketing is Optimized

Review your current marketing against each of the six core elements, and the four cornerstones, as detailed in the Revenue Tower marketing operating system. Identify the gaps and set your priorities. As budgets and time are always limited, and you may find you’re shortchanging some elements, or overemphasizing others.

For example, one client of ours had strong initial engagement, investing heavily in trade shows and generating solid leads. However, their ongoing engagement was weak, with leads not being nurtured as effectively as they could be. By shifting some of their investment from more shows to stronger follow up, their overall ROI increased significantly.

2. Budget Appropriately

According to Forrester, the average B2B firm invests roughly 8% of their revenue in marketing. This includes internal staff, agencies, technology tools, and advertising and promotions. The percentage varies by industry, and if you would like more information on your particular market range and competitor activities, reach out to us and we’ll be happy to share more statistics.

A benchmark like this is certainly a place to start, but more importantly, we recommend that you base your budget on your goals and what it will take to achieve them. You can look at benchmarks like the above for a comparison check, but investment levels should be strategically determined. Put simply, low growth goals might lead to a more maintenance-level budget and high growth goals would mean more aggressive investment.

3. Expand the Value of Your Marketing Technology

Marketing technology is increasingly important for B2B marketers. According to eMarketer, MarTech spend will increase roughly 15% per year. Plus, there are currently more than 11,000 different MarTech tools available. A functional MarTech stack is critical because it not only increases efficiency, but it delivers data, facts and insights that help demonstrate impact and drive elevated results. If you’d like to see what we recommend, here’s our outline of a core MarTech stack.

AI is also elevating B2B marketing. Whether as a brainstorming partner, content assistant, analyst, automator or researcher, the technology will continue to amplify human capabilities and enable marketers to tackle more complex and strategic work. Just be sure that there’s always a qualified, experienced human in the driver’s seat as it can’t replace strategic thinking, can’t innovate on its own, and it often gets things wrong. Plus, always make sure you maintain confidentiality, commercial safety and licensing.

4. Strategic Creativity Matters More Than Ever. Don’t Shortchange It.

It’s tempting to think that technology is going to replace the need to be creative, but in fact, the ability of your competitors to pump out loads of bland content makes creative differentiation more important than ever.

Plus, as web browsers move from click-based interactions to AI-mediated answers and endorsements, creating content that offers a new or unique perspective, and ensuring brand uniformity across all channels, are critical elements to win in this quickly evolving digital landscape.

Finally, the other half of the budget question besides “how much?” is “how well?” Creativity, which includes both identifying novel approaches, and coming up with smarter ways to execute, significantly impacts marketing effectiveness. A creative approach will increase the results you’ll get from every dollar of marketing investment.

5. Strive to Create Internal Alignment

A common challenge within organizations is that most employees don’t really understand how marketing adds value. Is it placing ads? Creating sales collateral? Or is it just an unnecessary cost? Plus, B2B marketing and sales teams, even though they are both critical revenue-generating functions, don’t always see eye to eye.

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s latest survey, nearly half of those who said their marketing effectiveness had increased, cited alignment with sales as a key factor. In our experience, simply helping sales teams understand what marketing is doing and how it is building value dramatically increases alignment. The Revenue Tower can communicate this, but regardless of how you get it done, moving towards stronger internal alignment will give you an advantage.

6. Get a Trusted, Outside Partner

You and your team are insiders. While this brings advantages and insights, it also can make it difficult to articulate your own value, to be fully objective and to see the complete picture.

In other words, it’s hard to read the label from inside the jar. Having an essential outside perspective is critical. A partner who can challenge assumptions, ask the right questions and bring fresh, proactive ideas can add incredible value and help you accelerate results. Even Pepper Group, a marketing agency, relies on outside partners to help us see what we can’t in terms of our own business.

If you are interested in talking about your growth goals and how to improve your marketing effectiveness, contact us. We have wealth of information, case studies, and experience that can help.