Executive Summary: What Senior Marketing Leaders Are Saying About Planning

Tools and Time

Recent discussions with senior B2B marketing leaders show that most teams still rely on PowerPoint and Excel to create their marketing plans. More than nine out of ten participants continue to use these tools. A small number use project management systems such as Asana, Smartsheet, or Notion, but these have not replaced the old approach. The time lost maintaining and formatting plans is significant. On average, each marketer spends one to two hours every week updating slides, fixing spreadsheets, and re-entering data. This equals roughly two to three working weeks each year spent on administrative work.

Reporting Results

Most leaders said they struggle to link their marketing plans to budgets and actual spend. Many cannot easily attribute results to the specific programs or strategies in their plans. When asked questions such as “What is the return on marketing investment?” or “Which programs are driving performance?”, few can answer with confidence because their data is incomplete or fragmented. Many still confuse attribution with ROI (the former being useful to diagnose and fine tune marketing channels, the latter being more suitable to board-level conversations around investments and priorities).

Traditional Challenges

The same operational issues remain common. Marketers still find it difficult to align with sales, prioritize effectively, and manage trade-offs between activities. Plans, for different reasons, get made then almost immediately abandoned in favour of a good idea – there is a sense that there is a lack of confidence (or motivation) to stick with a plan with, as yet, unproven results.

Surface-level AI

Artificial intelligence appears in many teams’ workflows, but its use is limited to tactical tasks. Most see AI as a helpful productivity aid rather than a major shift in how marketing operates. Most focus is currently on content creation (many marketers knowingly trading speed and volume for quality). There were more than one statement around using AI generated content to stay relevant to the SEO machines, rather than designing for human consumption.

ABM Trials

Account-Based Marketing continues to gain attention, with many teams adopting or expanding ABM programs. Even so, few report that it has produced a measurable step-change in growth or predictability. Many are convinced it is a better way to market (especially in high value B2B), but are still in the first wave of execution.

Conclusion

In summary, B2B marketing leaders are advancing in areas such as targeting and automation, yet the foundations of planning, budgeting, and performance tracking remain largely unchanged. The industry continues to operate with tools that were never designed for managing complex marketing plans or measuring their impact.