Half the budget, twice the slack – The brutal truth for B2B marketing leaders.

Half the budget. Twice the targets. Zero slack. Welcome to Q2 2025 in B2B marketing. If you’re a SaaS Marketing Director or Head of Marketing, you’re likely feeling the squeeze from all sides. Consider this your mirror – we’re about to lay out exactly what’s keeping you up at night, no sugar-coating.

Doing more with a hell of a lot less (and no, it’s not fair)

Budgets are in free fall, yet expectations keep climbing. You’re not imagining it – most B2B marketers are feeling intense pressure to deliver “more with less” amid challenging targets and shrinking headcounts. Surveys confirm that marketers are being handed heavier workloads and higher goals without additional resources.

For many SaaS companies, recent years have felt brutal: marketing budgets weren’t just trimmed – they were drastically reduced, with teams forced to operate on significantly smaller budgets than before.

“Budget is very limited, and our managers want us to do magic and expect results fast,” said one Marketing Director in a recent CXL survey of B2B marketing leaders.

The “do more with less” cliché has become an expletive. Less budget, fewer bodies, but pipeline expectations remain relentless. You’re probably running a team that’s understaffed and overworked, feeling guilty about pushing them so hard. Hitting targets was hard enough with full resources – now it feels nearly impossible.

This pressure has real consequences on team morale and mental health. Burnout isn’t a distant threat; it’s right at your doorstep. Marketing leads openly express fears about burnout, overwhelmed by demands without enough support. You’re likely fighting to keep your people motivated as they run on fumes. How long before your star performer calls it quits? How long before you do?

The AI whirlwind is rewriting your playbook (ready or not)

Just when you got your tech stack humming, along comes the AI tsunami. Generative AI is not some future trend – it’s here, and it’s upending how marketing works in real-time. Nearly all B2B marketers are already leveraging generative AI for content creation, and many plan to boost content budgets this year (with AI in the mix). The promise? Efficiency, scale, maybe even a secret weapon against those budget cuts. The reality? A whole new skill set to learn overnight.

A lot of us are asking the same uneasy question: am I falling behind? Many B2B marketers say they struggle to keep up with new tech like AI. It’s no wonder – the AI landscape shifts weekly. One week it’s GPT-4 writing blog posts, next it’s some AI tool optimizing your ads, and you’re expected to “constantly upskill” yourself and your team just to keep pace. “No surprise: AI. How do we keep up with what’s going on and what’s possible? How do I make sure my team upskills constantly while also having a lot on their plate?” confided one marketing head.

The annoyance with this is so thick you can taste it. You’re not just experimenting with AI – you’re under pressure to actually get results from it. Maybe your CEO is pestering you about why your team isn’t pumping out 100 AI-generated blog posts a week, or why you haven’t halved your PPC spend with some AI bidding tool. There’s a fear of missing out and falling behind: one leader flat-out said their priority is “keeping up with developments in AI (not yielding this advantage to our competitors).” No one wants to be the sucker whose company missed the AI train and got steamrolled by a savvier competitor. And yet, for all the hype, AI hasn’t magically solved marketing.

You might have more content, faster – but is it better? Are you actually hitting targets or just creating noise? Hard truth: a lot of marketing leaders don’t feel confident that their content is driving their primary business goals, even as they embrace AI. So now you’re cranking out AI-powered campaigns while secretly unsure if any of it moves the needle. Sound familiar?

Big targets, small comfort: performance anxiety on the rise

Even with fewer resources, the revenue target doesn’t budge. In fact, it likely went up. The board, the CEO, the investors – they all want to see growth, now. If you’re feeling intense performance anxiety, you’re in crowded company. Talk to B2B marketers and they’ll tell you they’re under pressure to deliver leads “regardless of quality.” That’s right: just get the leads in, who cares if they’re junk. Another common theme that comes up is that most marketers think their higher-ups don’t even understand marketing’s value beyond lead generation. When your CEO sees marketing as just a lead factory, it’s no wonder the only metric that matters to them is the pipeline.

This creates a vicious cycle. You need to hit numbers to justify your existence, but you don’t have the budget or team to drive the quality and depth of marketing you know you need. So what happens? You scramble. Maybe you lower the bar on what counts as a lead – free ebook download, sure that’s a lead. Maybe you recycle that stale email list one more time. You start doing things that feel desperate because the alternative is watching the quarter slip away. One survey respondent admitted they were 250k off their pipeline goal for Q1 and scrambling for any lever to pull, but noted that tactics like content syndication or third-party webinars were “more junk than helpful” in producing real opportunities. Imagine telling your sales team that half those “leads” you generated are basically random names – but hey, the dashboard looks good! It’s soul-sucking, and it erodes your credibility over time.

Let’s not forget the personal stake here. If marketing misses the target, all fingers point to you. Your job, your reputation, your team’s jobs – all on the line. One Head of Marketing listed their top worry bluntly: “Hitting revenue targets agreed upon by the CEO, myself, and the board.” Right up there with that worry was keeping the team motivated despite the crazy workload, and making sure careers (and sanity) aren’t destroyed in the process. So if you’re feeling that pit in your stomach each month as you check the pipeline report, you’re not alone. This is the pressure cooker we’re all living in.

Your buyers changed – your playbook didn’t

Here’s an inconvenient truth: while you’ve been juggling budget cuts and new tech, your buyers have been changing how they buy – and a lot of us haven’t kept up. B2B purchasing in 2025 is a whole different beast. Deals drag on forever; the typical B2B buying cycle now stretches around 11.5 months on average​

And the number of cooks in the kitchen has exploded – expect 10 or more stakeholders on the buyer’s side for any significant deal​

It’s not one senior decision-maker signing off anymore; it’s a football team’s worth of VPs, managers, and consultants all poking holes in your ROI case. No wonder sales cycles just keep getting longer (mid-market SaaS companies report ~9 months even for a ~$50k deal now)​

This means the old hit-and-run tactics are sputtering. That one webinar you did? It’s not moving the needle when your champion needs to convince nine other people over the next year. Your outbound cadence that used to land quick meetings is now lost in a sea of spam. Buyers are doing their homework (independently with content and even AI tools) and looping in more colleagues, making the funnel messier than ever. One marketing leader observed that in enterprise deals, the customer journey is longer and more challenging, and even the marketing team needs training to navigate it​

In other words, what got you MQLs in 2023 isn’t going to cut it in 2025.

Meanwhile, tried-and-true channels feel like they’re drying up. Your Google Ads that always delivered a steady trickle of leads might suddenly be underperforming. One leader confessed “I’m worried about lead flow given that some of our traditional channels are underperforming including Google paid ads and Capterra.”​

If you’re seeing diminishing returns on SEO, you’re not alone there either. With Google’s search being reshaped by AI and rich snippets, getting organic traffic is like squeezing water from a stone. “The search engine process we’ve been accustomed to for more than two decades has been disrupted by artificial intelligence.”​

In plain terms: SEO as you knew it is not a sure bet anymore – algorithms are changing, and content glut is at an all-time high. Oh, and remember email newsletters? You might be wondering if “email is dead” as one frustrated director asked after seeing their once-engaged list now ignore them.

So if it feels like your playbook isn’t working like it used to, you’re right. Buyers have moved on. They’re self-educating in new ways (some are even querying ChatGPT instead of Googling, gasp), they’re looping in more stakeholders, and they’re allergic to the old-school marketing noise. The onus is on us as marketers to adapt – fast. How do we re-engage jaded prospects? How do we influence a buying committee that’s twice as large and skeptical by default? Those answers aren’t in the 2010 edition of B2B Marketing for Dummies. We have to write a new playbook on the fly.

No easy button: no one else is coming to save you (not even that agency)

In past years, when you hit a wall, you might’ve thrown money at a problem – hire a pricey agency, bring in contractors, buy an expensive MarTech tool. This year, that’s a lot less feasible. Budget scrutiny is at an all-time high, and frankly a lot of you are skeptical of outside help right now (for good reason). One marketing head shared that their team is literally just them plus “1 intern, 1 mediocre and small-scope digital agency, and 1 freelance writer”​

– not exactly an all-star lineup of partners. Coordinating even those few external resources is a job in itself: juggling multiple agencies and contractors has become another headache​. You might be using an agency for PPC or SEO, but you’re lying awake worrying if they’re actually moving the needle or just burning cash. Odds are you’ve been disappointed before.

Let’s call it out: many B2B marketers don’t trust that agencies or vendors will truly understand the business or deliver results in this climate. Not when things are this volatile and internal knowledge is at a premium. You don’t have months for an agency to “ramp up” only for them to regurgitate the same playbook you could’ve done yourself. And with budget cuts, plenty of you had to fire agencies, not hire them. This leaves you in a tight spot – you either find the talent in-house or you go without. And since hiring is also frozen at many companies, that really means making do with the folks on your current team.

The silver lining? Your small, scrappy team knows the business intimately, and they can turn on a dime. The challenge is they might not have all the specialized skills you need right now (who the hell does, honestly?). That’s why upskilling internally is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s a must-have. Several marketing leaders explicitly said one of their biggest hurdles is skill gaps on their team, whether in SEO, analytics, or making the most of AI​. When you can’t hire a new expert, you’ve got to grow your own. And fast.

Fighting battles inside your own company (sales and execs don’t get it)

Hitting your goals with less is hard enough. But some days, the bigger fight is internal – dealing with a sales team that still isn’t satisfied and a leadership team that doesn’t quite get what marketing does. It’s like running a marathon with your own teammates throwing hurdles in front of you.

Marketing and sales alignment has been preached for decades, yet here we are in 2025 and 45% of B2B marketers still find aligning with sales to be a major challenge.​

Surprise, surprise. If you feel like there’s constant tension, you’re not alone. Maybe sales complains the leads are crap (and honestly, if they’re “leads regardless of quality,” they might be right​.)

Or sales simply doesn’t follow up on half the MQLs you give them. Meanwhile you’re trying to run demand gen with one hand tied behind your back because you don’t trust sales to work the long-term nurture. It’s exhausting. Some enlightened folks talk about “embracing the tension” with sales, but most of us would settle for a basic level of cooperation and accountability. As one marketer quipped, “meeting business objectives” is hard enough without also “building relationships cross functionally to help align around marketing projects”​ – yet that’s exactly what we have to do.

And then there’s the C-suite. Ever get the feeling your CEO or CFO thinks marketing is just a cost center, a necessary evil? You’re not imagining it. Many senior B2B marketers you speak to believe senior leaders don’t truly appreciate anything beyond short-term lead gen​. It’s become an actual meme.

In some cases, leadership actively handicaps marketing. One marketing director vented that “our leadership doesn’t know marketing so we’re constantly being asked to explain and justify everything we do – starting from the basics of how a marketing plan or campaign works.”​ Dropping “it depends” does not help anything along.

Imagine trying to launch a sophisticated multi-channel campaign while explaining to your CEO why you need top-of-funnel content in the first place. It’s infantilizing. Another common gripe: leadership chasing shiny objects and lacking focus. How do you execute a coherent strategy when every other week someone upstairs is like “Why aren’t we on TikTok yet?” or “I read about a competitor doing XYZ, let’s pivot.” One respondent summed it up: “it seems like we lose focus on our actual strategy on a regular basis” thanks to distractions from senior leadership and the board​.

This internal struggle means you’re often spending as much energy managing up and sideways as you are executing marketing. You’re educating, persuading, sometimes outright fighting to protect your team’s focus and sanity. It’s draining, but it’s part of the job now. As a marketing leader, you’re not just the CMO or Head – you often have to be the Chief Explainer and Chief Diplomat, championing marketing’s value in every board meeting and steering sales and product teams toward true alignment. It’s a tough gig. But it’s the only way marketing is going to deliver real impact – with everyone on the same page about what actually matters (hint: not just more MQLs).

Turning the ship around: adapt, upskill, or else

Alright, deep breath. We’ve aired the dirty laundry – the budget nightmares, the AI scramble, the performance panic, the buyer evolution, the distrust of quick fixes, and the internal friction. If you’re feeling seen (or maybe attacked) by all of this, good. The point is to acknowledge the reality: this is one of the hardest moments to be a marketing leader. But it’s also an opportunity. When everything is in flux, the winners will be the ones who adapt fastest and smartest.

So ask yourself: how the hell can you turn these pressures into progress? The answer isn’t working 80-hour weeks – you’d just burn out faster. And it’s not throwing hail-mary money at the problem – you likely don’t have the budget anyway. The only viable path is to get more out of what you do have. That means your people (including you) and your processes. In short, leveling up your team’s skills, focus, and strategy to meet this moment.

Take a hard look at where your gaps are. Is your team equipped to leverage AI beyond just dabbling? Can they produce content that actually stands out in a saturated market? Do they know how to run an account-based play for a 12-month deal cycle? Can they prove marketing’s impact in terms the CFO cares about? These are the new table stakes. And if you’re not there yet, you need to build those capabilities – yesterday. The companies that thrive in 2025 will be those that invest in training their people to be adaptable, data-driven, and creative as hell despite constraints. As one marketing director put it, the goal is “upskilling a small team of 6 to help us perform like a team of 10+.”​ That is literally the game we’re in.

This is where CXL comes in. Yes, here’s the part where I tell you what can actually help (for real). At CXL, we’ve been hearing this chorus of pain from marketing leaders and teams. That’s exactly why we are building a B2B Marketing & Growth Minidegree program – to directly tackle these skill gaps and challenges. It’s crafted for teams like yours to get smarter and more effective, fast. We’re talking practical training on the stuff you and your team need right now: how to harness AI in marketing strategy (not just create fluff), how to optimize a B2B website for 2025 conversion realities, how to execute campaigns on emerging channels beyond the usual LinkedIn and Google playbook, how to nail “ask engine optimization” (yes, optimizing for AI-driven search results), how to do account-based marketing that actually shortens sales cycles, how to tighten up attribution and prove ROI – the works.

Remember those hard truths and pressures? We designed the curriculum to answer them. You’ll learn how to produce better results without needing a bigger budget or headcount – by leveling up the talent you already have. Think of it as turning your team into the special forces of B2B marketing: highly trained, versatile, and deadly effective. Instead of another agency contract that under-delivers, how about investing in making your own team the experts?

The bottom line: this year is not going to let up on you. But with the right training and mindset shift, you can turn “doing more with less” from a painful mandate into a point of pride. You can quiet the chaos, cut through the bullshit metrics, and drive real outcomes – even impress the skeptics in the C-suite. CXL is here to help make that happen. If you want your marketing team to crush targets and keep their sanity, equip them with the skills to get more from every dollar and every hour. That’s exactly what our courses and programs deliver.

Hard times create strong marketers. It’s time to invest in making yourself and your team sharper than ever. Check out CXL’s B2B Marketing training – let’s turn these pressures into a success story your CEO will brag about next quarter. Your team (and your pipeline) will thank you.