The 5 largest challenges going through demand gen entrepreneurs embody personalization, price range constraints and sales-marketing alignment. That’s in line with the 2025 State of Demand Gen Report from The Advertising Geeks.
Entrepreneurs additionally recognized challenges round successfully scaling campaigns and knowledge integration within the report.
By now, we’re nicely conscious of the problems advertising groups face when growing inventive or personalised campaigns. So it’s no shock report discovered entrepreneurs throughout roles cited inventive and personalization and as main challenges. Practically half (48.8%) of director/VP roles stated growing inventive or personalised campaigns was a high problem, adopted by 32% of demand technology entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs within the survey additionally cited scaling campaigns successfully as a major problem. Once more, practically half (46.5%) of director/VP respondents cited scaling campaigns was a problem.
Happily, the 2025 State of Demand Gen Report gives some concepts for advertising groups making an attempt to as soon as and for all overcome these challenges. Maybe essentially the most fascinating idea is one the report calls “attraction-driven advertising,” or ADM.
Advertising with authenticity, belief and worth
ADM prioritizes authenticity, creativity and constructing significant relationships with clients. However to do that entails shifting away from transactional paradigms.
For advertising groups who’re discovering the standard metrics-focused strategy is not enough, specializing in understanding the distinctive wants, challenges and aspirations of shoppers looks like an acceptable various.
Within the report, 70% of respondents indicated a chance of prioritizing authenticity and storytelling, whereas 65% of respondents rated instructional content material as “essential” for viewers engagement.
The problem with such approaches is that they merely aren’t as measurable as MQLs and pipeline, that are among the many transactional metrics driving B2B advertising at many organizations. There may be some hope, nevertheless, that management is prepared to see issues otherwise. The report additionally discovered 60% of CMOs emphasised the position of trust-building via genuine storytelling.
AI instruments have the potential to assist entrepreneurs make positive factors towards a few of their acquainted challenges. AI may help enhance personalization, optimize person engagement and streamline choice making. The report discovered 55% of respondents stated AI-powered instruments helped them enhance marketing campaign efficiency.
However AI (like many martech instruments) depends closely on knowledge, each the info it creates and the info entrepreneurs feed it. That makes the correct administration, hygiene and integration of that knowledge critically essential, and that’s one other acquainted space the place entrepreneurs say the face important challenges.
Fifty p.c of respondents indicated stated an absence of information integration is a problem, notably for enterprises with fragmented instruments and knowledge silos.
Issues round knowledge are a typical chorus in advertising circles. The 2024 MarTech Substitute Survey (no registration required) discovered that after price, the options entrepreneurs stated have been most essential when in search of a alternative for a martech app have been typically associated to knowledge — knowledge administration, integration, APIs and knowledge centralization.
However for the entire issues with knowledge integration, advertising know-how itself ranked extremely amongst CMOs who have been requested what they believed was an important think about producing demand.
A well-known foe: Gross sales-marketing alignment
Thirty p.c of the respondents within the report emphasised misalignment between gross sales and advertising groups. Amongst heads of promoting, practically 43% stated sales-marketing alignment was a high problem.
The report goes on to counsel the creation of cross-functional groups that embody enter from product and gross sales groups. The query is: Does working extra carefully collectively enhance alignment?
Many organizations in B2B are consolidating into income departments that embody advertising, gross sales and buyer success, however the issue of misalignment continues to rear its head.
Obtain the 2025 State of Demand Gen Report from The Advertising Geeks web site (no registration required).
