Revisiting 7 Marketing Trends in B2B Tech

Introduction

AI’s influence and emerging role in tech marketing has been dominating conversations about tech marketing strategy in 2025. Although AI can accelerate the development and production of marketing campaigns and assets, there is still an important place for human-driven strategy and execution.

Aside from AI, shortened attention spans and a constantly shifting balance between remote and in-person work are other factors affecting buyer behavior. How do these shifts impact which marketing channels are most successful?

Can seasoned marketers reach into their tested strategy kits or is it time to come up with a new playbook?

Let’s look at seven tried and tested strategies to see if they're evergreen - or anachronistic.

Infographics

One of my personal favorites, infographics were a huge part of marketing campaigns in the 2010s. However, opinions appear to be divided on the usefulness of infographics in 2025.

While the popularity of infographics is likely down from its peak, firms such as RightBlogger share that these visualizations still remain powerful tools for digestible data storytelling, particularly for visual learners. Thus, it may not be surprising that infographics continue to drive engagement, with nearly 37% of readers clicking on the first link of an infographic.

Conversely, data suggest that 35% of organizations elect not to use infographics in their content strategies. One reason that has been cited for this is that the novelty of the format has worn off. As a result, many firms have determined that instead of investing in mass infographic production, their usage should be focused on targeted campaigns and account-based marketing.

Regardless, visual storytelling remains a critical marketing vehicle. According to the 2025 edition of The State of Marketing, HubSpot expects more merging between traditional data visualization content and written media. With tools like Canva lowering barriers to producing high-quality graphics, organizations of all sizes can capitalize on this opportunity.

I expect infographics to remain an important part of the marketing toolkit for now, but with the understanding that targeting, telling a compelling story, and working in the context of integrated, multimedia driven campaigns will drive their success.

Long-form content

I entered the technology industry at a pivotal time for marketing white papers. Readers had declared enough with the 40-page screeds containing paragraphs of technical jargon. I saw the length of my whitepaper assignments shrink rapidly: first to about 20 pages and then to 12. Today, white paper page counts are often in the single digits, redefining what we think of as long-form content.

This begs a couple of questions: does the move to shorter content blur the lines between whitepapers, briefs, e-books, and blogs? Even more, what is the role of long-form content in 2025 and beyond?

I believe the death of long-form content, particularly white papers, has been greatly exaggerated. Although down 9% from 2023, 55% of respondents to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProf’s Annual Content Marketing Survey reported leveraging white papers and e-books over the last 12 months. In the same report, 73% reported using general long-form articles and 40% published original research reports.

Although audience preferences have shifted toward more bite-size content, longer-form assets still have an important role in the middle to bottom of the marketing funnel. B2B buyers still seek educational content that provides more technical depth and evidence-based validation for their purchase decisions. For vendors, insightful white papers and research reports still generate high-quality SEO backlinks while strengthening brand equity.

I believe that long-form content, utilized in the bottom half of the marketing funnel, resonates in 2025. The keys to high-performing content lie with original ideas and research that answer pressing business questions and right-sizing content to hold attention while answering questions effectively.

Blogging

Despite scattered doubts about its continued relevance, blogging endures as a marketing channel. In fact, 84% of B2B marketers surveyed by Content Marketing Institute leverage corporate blogs as a marketing channel in 2025. In 2023, HubSpot reported that 83% surveyed for its State of Marketing read at least one blog per month.

As I wrote in my last blog, blogging is still effective when it’s focused and thematic. Smart blogging builds brands, promotes SEO, and facilitates storytelling. Leanne Russell, longtime corporate blogger and Senior Content Marketing Manager, says “You need to have a strategy for your blog channel. Whether you’re using it for top-, mid-, or bottom-of-the-funnel content, you should establish guidelines around the type of content you want to publish and goals for its performance.” She adds “there are many valid ways to use a company blog depending on an organization’s goals”, citing the need for a cohesive theme.

Blogging’s versatility and relatively low cost of production means that it should hold up for years to come. In a time where AI-generated content has become more ubiquitous, blogs that amplify human voices and authentic storytelling stand to perform very well.

However, you can’t completely leave AI out of the equation. Whereas blogs should have human narrators, they also need to be optimized for AI search. Enter AEO, AIO, and GEO. These paradigms for optimizing your brand’s visibility in LLMs and AI-driven search are imperative. If your organization already has strong SEO practices in place, building AEO and GEO into your marketing program should follow without extreme pain.

Thought Leadership

Perhaps one of the more poorly understood levers of modern B2B marketing, thought leadership is often characterized as vacuous self-promotion. True thought leadership promotes new ideas and paradigms that lead to more effective problem-solving and build brand credibility. However, dilution of the concept has led to a common conception of shameless self-promoters meaninglessly intellectualizing the banal.

True thought leadership still holds up. Rapid pendulum swings in what the modern workplace looks like has tech and business leaders alike seeking to engage with new ideas. Among other things, there is a desire for novel ways of thinking about how to lead businesses through shifting workplace dynamics, economic uncertainty, and the ascendance of a generation that has never known a world that wasn’t digital.

Moreover, according to Edelman and LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, thought leadership opens doors with an organization’s “hidden decision makers” who often do not interact directly with sales. In fact, Edelman reports that 64% of these hidden decision-makers trust thought leadership more than marketing materials when assessing vendor capabilities. This is especially true in mature markets where relative feature parity blurs the lines between competitors.

Ultimately, thought leadership can provide insights into your vision and build credibility as a vendor that can adapt to whatever the future brings. To do this successfully in 2025 and beyond, your thought leadership voice must be personable, yet bold enough to stand out from the crowd. Most importantly, it needs to be attuned to the topics on your customers’ minds.

Mobile-First Strategies

From the first SMS-based ad in 2000 to the endless refrain of “there’s an app for that” in the 2010s, mobility’s role in marketing has gone from novelty to table stakes. Since then, we’ve seen the rise of native mobile apps and the optimization and personalization of content for mobile.

Some companies went a step further, leveraging location-based services within their apps to deliver highly targeted promotions and content. These stoked understandable privacy concerns but also generated a lot of hype for their potential to drive personalization and enhance customer experience.

Mobility trends created major concerns not only about the future of marketing and content, but also the trajectory of business models as we know it. On the B2C front, there were doubts about the long-term viability of bricks and mortar businesses. Traditional businesses needed to adapt to an omnichannel approach to survive in the new era.

Similarly, many B2B organizations not only evolved their marketing for the mobile era, but also their operating models, giving employees the flexibility to work from anywhere because of the rising capabilities of connected mobile devices.

After the last decade’s boom, things might feel quieter on the mobile front. This belies the importance of an agile mobile strategy. Some of today’s most relevant mobile marketing opportunities include:

Small business differentiation. According to Jonathan Schwartz of Bullseye Strategy, 42% of small businesses have deployed a mobile app. Having a clean and simple mobile app personalized to the needs of target customers can help small businesses stand out in crowded markets.

Content experience. Often, content pieces are still not sufficiently optimized for mobile. With significant web traffic coming from mobile devices, it is imperative that all forms of content are optimized for any device.

Video marketing. Video is expected to occupy 60% of US-based users’ time on social media applications in 2025. The “TikTokification” of content consumption is a very real trend, meaning video content that is snackable while impactful has the potential to perform very well.

AI optimization. AEO, GEO, and AIO principles also apply to mobile. AI-driven campaign and sentiment analysis tools are also as useful here as they are on the desktop.

Events

Like many other marketing tools, in-person events have been declining in popularity as the world becomes more digital. Even before the pandemic, I witnessed many trade shows move to smaller venues as attendance and sponsorship declined. Then, COVID happened.

Almost overnight, COVID lockdowns converted many tradeshows, user conferences, and other industry events to online-only. Many wondered if the traditional in-person marketing event would ever make a comeback. Meanwhile, organizations took note of the cost savings from not supporting in-person events while many attendees breathed a sigh of relief for not having to travel.

At the same time, virtual events are not without their drawbacks. Virtual event software could be confusing, clunky, and a strain on home networks. As someone who worked both in-person and virtual events, I could see that attendees were less likely to interact in virtual booths as the user experience did not replicate an in-person experience. Attendance at breakout sessions suffered as well. Asynchronous attendance opportunities somewhat helped with overall engagement, but overall results left a lot to be desired.

Today, in-person events (particularly user conferences) have made a comeback. Similar to retail, an omnichannel strategy appears to be the way forward, providing a cohesive experience between online and offline channels. For events, this means providing invaluable in-person networking opportunities while accommodating those who cannot be physically present, with consistent communication and branding throughout.

ROI Validation

ROI validation reports such as Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) report and IDC’s Business Value Research have had a hold on B2B tech marketers for over twenty years. And it’s easy to understand why. By studying a selection of a technology solution’s most successful users, analysts are able to generate eye-popping numbers to illustrate a solution’s potential for other organizations.

But with the big numbers generated and the small sample sizes, these reports are bound to have skeptics. Even still, their continued popularity speaks to their value as a content marketing vehicle. It is important to remember that many of these reports are illustrating best-case scenarios featuring perfect-fit, highly motivated users. Given this, it is important to remember that good outcomes are not the result of magic and position these reports accurately.

With many organizations looking to maximize their technology investments, a well-executed ROI validation report can be a very smart content marketing choice in 2025. Before embarking on an ROI study, work with your customer marketing and success teams to meticulously vet potential participants. You don’t want an analyst research call to be an opportunity for unresolved complaints to surface.

As budget uncertainty is a nearly evergreen concern and as validating the business case for new technology should be a perennial best practice, ROI validations should be considered in marketing strategies for years to come.

Conclusion

Trends come and go — and some will re-emerge. All seven of the trends above still exist in some form today but have evolved tremendously over the last several years as our world has changed. What’s more important than chasing trends is creating a strong message and value proposition that can adapt to the marketing channels of today and the ones still to come.

Are you looking to create timeless content that supports the marketing channels of this moment and the next? Connect with Greenefield Consulting to chat about working together to create high-performing short and long-form content.