For over a decade, B2B marketing teams have invested heavily in marketing automation platforms such as Marketo, Pardot, or Hubspot. They built strong lead generation and demand generation strategies: inbound campaigns, nurturing, scoring, digital events…
These efforts were essential. They structured modern marketing and created volume.
But in 2025, many organizations are hitting a growth ceiling:
- declining open and click rates,
- lower-quality leads,
- longer sales cycles,
- and stagnant advertising ROI despite rising budgets.
👉 What you’ve done so far was necessary. But it’s no longer sufficient to sustain growth.
Why Your Demand Generation Campaigns Are Flatlining in 2025
The B2B Playbook Has Changed
The B2B marketing playbook of the 2010s no longer works. As Jon Miller, CMO of Demandbase, explains in his “new B2B marketing playbook,” buyers behave differently today — and what worked yesterday won’t help you grow tomorrow (read the full article here).
95% of Your Market Is Not Buying Today
According to the 95:5 Rule by John Dawes (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute), at any given time only 5% of your market is in active buying mode.
Result: without effective targeting of those 5%, you waste 95% of your lead generation budget. And you burn out your audience’s patience in the process.
80% of Buyers Choose a Brand They Already Know
Research from Bain & Company on the “Day One List” shows that nearly 80% of B2B buyers choose a brand they already know when they enter a buying cycle. In other words: if you’re not visible before demand emerges, you may never even get invited to the table.
Consequences for Your Campaigns
- Your forms capture buyers far too late — often after they’ve already made up their mind.
- You target individuals, while buying groups of 6–10 people actually make the decision.
- Your ad budget funds impressions that don’t reach the right accounts or the right personas.
Why Lead Generation Alone No Longer Works
A Useful but Incomplete Approach
Lead generation helped structure B2B marketing. But in 2025, it falls short for three main reasons:
- It only captures the very end of the journey — when someone finally raises their hand.
- It isolates individuals, while decisions are made collectively.
- It wastes budget by casting too wide a net without prioritizing high-potential accounts.
The “All Leads” Trap
Focusing only on leads is like trying to fill a leaky bucket: lots of effort with little impact on actual pipeline or revenue.
The Alternative: Account-Based Advertising
Target Strategic Accounts, Not the Masses
Account-Based Advertising (ABA), powered by Demandbase, flips the script:
- Target strategic accounts defined jointly with sales,
- Reach the right roles and personas within each buying group,
- Adapt messaging to the buyer journey stage: awareness, engagement, MQA, opportunity.
Optimize Every Impression
Unlike consumer-focused DSPs, Demandbase optimizes each ad impression based on intent signals and the buyer’s profile.
Measure What Really Matters
ABA doesn’t stop at clicks. It measures account progression through the buying cycle, opportunities created, and revenue influenced.
👉 The result: less waste, more pipeline.
How to Reinvent Your Advertising Budget in 2025
Start Small, Scale Smart
- Top of Funnel: modest budgets, designed to test and initiate engagement.
- Mid/Bottom of Funnel: higher investments, as accounts are mature and closer to pipeline.
Prioritize by Tiers and Deal Size
- Tier 3: test campaigns.
- Tier 2: mid-level budgets.
- Tier 1: maximum investment in strategic accounts with high ACV.
Keep a Reserve for “Burst Campaigns”
- Product launches, major events, end-of-quarter pushes.
- Best practice: set aside around $10,000 per burst campaign.
Measure the Right KPIs
- Retire CPC and CTR as final success metrics.
- Focus on:
- % of strategic accounts reached,
- engagement from target accounts,
- opportunities created,
- revenue influenced.
Conclusion
Your marketing automation and lead generation strategy was necessary. But in 2025, it’s no longer sufficient.
To break through the ceiling and return to growth, you need to evolve toward an Account-Based GTM strategy where advertising, content, sales, and marketing align on the same accounts.
Account-Based Advertising is the first concrete step: a lever to turn your ad budget into measurable pipeline and tangible revenue.
👉 At Merlin/Leonard, we help companies shift from lead generation to an account-based approach that’s more effective, more strategic, and aligned with their sales teams.
