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Marketing Leaders: The Biggest Threats Facing B2B Marketing in 2026

By jili tutorial · September 8, 2026

Marketing Leaders: The Biggest Threats Facing B2B Marketing in 2026

The B2B marketing landscape is shifting at a pace few could have predicted even a couple of years ago. New technologies, shifting buyer expectations, tighter budgets and a constant flow of regulatory change mean marketing teams no longer have the luxury of settling into a comfortable rhythm. Instead, they must continuously adapt — not just to seize opportunities, but to avoid the mounting threats that now surround the discipline.

In the penultimate installment of our Marketing Leaders series, we hear from six senior marketers across the iGaming and B2B technology space: Martin Hodges (Co-Founder and CMO, BetComply), Robin Becker (Director of B2B Marketing, Hub88), Michael Baker-Mosley (Founder, Triumph B2B), Seda Baburyan (Marketing and Partnership Manager, PartnerMatrix), Dorota Gruszka (Head of Marketing, Booming Games) and Pierre Pulis (Marketing Director, BETBY).

Their combined insights paint a clear picture: marketing in 2026 will not look like marketing in 2021. And the threats are no longer just about competition or creative quality — they are about identity, credibility, and the very role marketing plays inside a business.

The AI Paradox: Powerful Tool or Creativity Killer?

Artificial intelligence is everywhere in B2B marketing. It writes drafts, generates images, personalises emails, translates content, automates reporting and shortens production timelines dramatically. But the leaders we spoke to are united on one point: AI is not the real threat. The way companies choose to use it is.

Using AI to Speed Up Thinking, Not Replace It

For Martin Hodges, AI is an incredible tool when treated properly. He points out that it helps marketers work faster and frees up time for deeper thinking, and that is where the real value lies.

The danger, he explains, is not AI itself but the sameness it encourages. When every company uses the same AI tools to generate the same polished, generic content, brands begin to lose their personality. Marketing becomes forgettable precisely because it all starts to sound like everyone else.

Hodges has also noticed a worrying trend among marketers who chase numbers rather than build relationships. It is easy to celebrate impressions, clicks and reach — but in B2B iGaming, most business still comes from trust, reputation and real conversations.

“I’d rather create something that starts five genuine discussions than something that reaches 50,000 people who’ll never become clients,” he says.

That core belief leads him to a broader warning: the biggest threat is losing the human side of marketing. B2B is still a people business. The companies that win over the next few years will be the ones that build trusted voices, encourage employees to share what they know, and create genuine relationships with their audience. Technology will keep evolving, but people will still buy from people they know and trust.

AI Cannot Replace the Human Soul of a Brand

Robin Becker agrees that AI presents one of the biggest challenges in B2B marketing today — but again, not because the technology itself is a problem. For Becker, the risk lies in how companies choose to deploy it.

AI can improve efficiency, speed up production and allow creative teams to work more effectively. At Hub88, Becker uses it to enhance videos, generate subtitles and streamline processes that previously took much longer.

However, he is adamant that AI should not, and must not, replace human creativity. AI does not understand humour, memorable branding or effective naming conventions in the way people do. Those elements come from human creativity and experience.

“Brands are built on personality – and personality comes from people, not technology,” Becker says.

He recalls a point made by Todd Haushalter from Evolution that resonated deeply with him: “You’re nothing without your brand, and your brand is your people.”

That idea extends beyond employees to the personality, relationships and culture that clients associate with a business. Clients do not connect with machine-generated content. They connect with people they have a relationship with — and they want content that shows genuine understanding and adds value to their world. If companies rely too heavily on AI, they will gradually lose the individuality that makes their brands memorable.

Oversaturation and the Race to the Bottom

Dorota Gruszka highlights a closely related threat: oversaturation. There is more content being produced than ever before, across social media, trade publications, events and direct communication. In iGaming specifically, every brand is fighting for the same attention, so there is a real risk of audiences simply switching off when everything starts to feel the same.

AI accelerates this challenge. It makes it easier than ever to produce huge volumes of content quickly. But the result, Gruszka warns, is often more content with less personality. When brands lean too heavily on the same tools, formats and trends, their communication quickly becomes generic and interchangeable.

For Gruszka, another major threat is the focus on short-term visibility rather than long-term brand building. Clicks, impressions and engagement are easy to measure, but in B2B those numbers do not always translate into meaningful commercial results. For a slot provider like Booming Games, marketing ultimately needs to support relationships with operators, strengthen the reputation of the company and create genuine demand for the product — not just accumulate vanity metrics.

The MROI Trap: When Marketing Can’t Prove Its Worth

One of the quiet but persistent threats facing B2B marketing is the difficulty of demonstrating return on investment in a marketplace that keeps shifting. Seda Baburyan describes an environment where the industry moves fast enough to force strategy changes several times a year — and every change resets the clock on proving MROI.

Just as a campaign starts showing measurable return, the market shifts and the strategy has to adapt again. That makes it almost impossible to keep MROI stable over any meaningful stretch of time. The result is a chronic instability that undermines marketing’s credibility in the eyes of leadership.

The “Awareness” Defence Is Often a Smokescreen

That instability creates an opening for a dangerous habit: labelling spend as “awareness” when the real reason is that it cannot be tied to a number. Baburyan is blunt about this. Calling something an awareness play is frequently a way to avoid admitting that the spend is not linked to a commercial outcome.

That, she says, is the real threat. When brands compete with each other on budget size, and when spend cannot be clearly justified against business direction, marketing becomes the easiest line to cut. Every time growth targets tighten, the disconnect from commercial purpose puts marketing budgets and credibility at risk.

The lesson for marketing leaders is clear. If marketing cannot speak the language of business value — if it cannot connect its activities to revenue, pipeline or strategic growth — it will always be vulnerable. Awareness campaigns are not inherently bad, but they need to sit within a broader framework of accountability and commercial logic.

The Internal Threat: When Marketing Becomes a Communications Department

Michael Baker-Mosley offers a starkly different angle. For him, one of the biggest threats facing B2B marketing is internal, not external. Too many marketing teams, he argues, have become siloed into communications departments. They are told what to announce, where to announce it and how the message should be phrased. Then they push the communication out and report back on clicks and impressions.

That, he says, is not marketing. That is distribution.

Marketing Must Own Something Strategic

The danger emerges when marketing stops owning anything of strategic value. Baker-Mosley believes marketing should own the customer — understanding their needs and supporting their journey from start to finish. More than anyone else in the business, marketers should understand what customers think, feel, need and value.

If marketing becomes nothing more than a communications pipeline, it becomes transactional. And transactional work is increasingly easy to automate. There have already been cases where companies have tried to replace elements of that function with AI. Baker-Mosley is quick to point out that this does not always end well.

AI can generate content, but it cannot replace genuine customer understanding or the strategic insight that comes from owning customer relationships. Marketing that reduces itself to distribution is not just underperforming — it is actively making itself replaceable.

Owning Customer Insight, Market Intelligence and Positioning

The marketing teams that will thrive, Baker-Mosley argues, are those that own something no other department does. That could be customer insight, market intelligence or brand positioning. When marketing owns a unique source of strategic value, it becomes indispensable.

Without that ownership, marketing runs the risk of being seen as a cost rather than an investment. It becomes an execution function rather than a strategic partner — and execution functions are the first to be automated, outsourced or cut.

The External Threat: Barriers to Entry Are Falling Fast

Baker-Mosley also identifies a significant external threat: the falling barriers to building software and products. AI and vibe coding mean that more businesses than ever can build platforms and products that previously required substantial time, money and technical expertise.

The quality is not always there yet. But as technology continues to improve, new-age products are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from legacy platforms. That puts enormous pressure on B2B companies to justify why they exist.

Why Should Customers Choose You?

In this environment, marketers need to work much harder to articulate why customers should choose them instead of building, buying or switching elsewhere. Simply having a product is no longer enough. B2B companies need to demonstrate unique value, defensible differentiation and a brand that people trust.

Baker-Mosley believes B2B marketing has spent too long focused on performance and short-term vanity metrics, and not enough time building long-term brands. The companies that succeed will be the ones that build brands with meaning — brands that stand for something, that are recognised and remembered, and that give customers a reason to stay.

Budget Pressure and the Danger of Going Quiet

Robin Becker introduces another urgent threat: the increasing pressure many businesses are under to reduce costs. Marketing is often one of the first departments affected when budgets become tighter, whether due to financial pressure, changing markets or restructuring.

Some companies choose to step back during these times. Becker believes that is a dangerous approach. In an overcrowded B2B market, visibility matters. If companies reduce their marketing activity too aggressively, they risk disappearing from customers’ minds — and someone else with a larger budget or stronger market presence will quickly fill that space.

Marketing Is a Long-Term Investment, Not a Cost

Marketing, Becker argues, is not just about generating leads immediately. It is about maintaining long-term confidence in your brand and ensuring that you can continue to deliver value for partners. If customers stop seeing you at industry events, in the media or across your usual marketing channels, they may begin to question the stability of your business.

That is why marketing needs to be viewed as a long-term investment. Maintaining brand visibility and consistency is essential if companies want to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace. Treating marketing as a discretionary cost is one of the fastest ways to erode brand equity and competitive position.

What Marketing Leaders Can Do: Building a Resilient B2B Marketing Strategy

Across all six perspectives, a clear set of principles emerges. The threats facing B2B marketing are real, but they are not inevitable. With the right approach, marketing teams can protect themselves, build credibility and deliver real commercial value.

1. Treat AI as an Accelerator, Not a Replacement

The most effective marketing teams will use AI to increase speed, efficiency and capacity — but they will never let it dictate their voice. Human creativity, humour, empathy and experience are still the core ingredients of memorable branding.

Practical steps:

2. Guard Your Brand’s Personality Relentlessly

Sameness is a silent killer in B2B marketing. When every competitor uses the same AI tools, the same content formats and the same trends, audiences stop noticing any of them.

Practical steps:

3. Connect Marketing Activity to Commercial Outcomes

The MROI challenge is not going away. The solution is not to ignore measurement but to build a stronger link between marketing activity and business results.

Practical steps:

4. Own the Customer, Not Just the Content

Marketing teams that thrive in 2026 will be those that own a strategic domain — customer insight, market intelligence or brand positioning — rather than simply executing communications.

Practical steps:

5. Keep Marketing Visible — Especially in Tough Times

Cutting marketing during a downturn or budget crisis can feel like a quick win, but it often weakens long-term brand health. Visibility, consistency and presence are essential to staying relevant in crowded markets.

Practical steps:

6. Build a Brand That Survives Product Parity

As barriers to software development fall, products will become harder to differentiate. The brand, its reputation and the relationships it builds will become the true moat.

Practical steps:

The Bottom Line: B2B Marketing’s Future Is Human

The B2B marketing landscape in 2026 will be more competitive, more crowded and more complex than ever. AI will continue to transform how content is produced and how campaigns are executed. Budget pressures will test marketing’s ability to prove its worth. And the falling barriers to product development will force companies to work harder to justify their existence.

But the biggest threat is not any of these things individually. It is the gradual erosion of the human side of marketing. B2B has always been, and remains, a people business. The companies that win will be those that manage to hold onto their personality, build genuine relationships, own real strategic insight and keep their brand visible when others go quiet.

Technology will keep evolving. The strategies will keep shifting. But the fundamental truth will not change: people buy from people they know, like and trust. Marketing leaders who remember that — and who build their teams, brands and strategies around it — will be best positioned not just to survive the threats ahead, but to turn them into advantages.