As B2B brands continue to experiment with artificial intelligence, could they run into problems when the tech’s capabilities outpace the marketing skillset?
According to Marketing Week’s 2025 State of B2B Marketing research, three-quarters (75.9%) of the 450 respondents say focus on AI has ramped up in their business over the past 12 months. This is true in 77.6% of SMEs (250 employees and under) and 74% of large corporates.
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As B2B brands continue to experiment with artificial intelligence, could they run into problems when the tech’s capabilities outpace the marketing skillset?
According to Marketing Week’s 2025 State of B2B Marketing research, three-quarters (75.9%) of the 450 respondents say focus on AI has ramped up in their business over the past 12 months. This is true in 77.6% of SMEs (250 employees and under) and 74% of large corporates.
However, half of the total sample (51.5%) say there is an AI skills gap in their marketing department, which is far more of a concern to B2B marketers than a lack of data and analytics expertise (38.9%) or understanding of martech (32.8%).
Some 45.7% of B2B marketers working in SMEs highlighted an AI skills gap, rising to well over half (58.6%) of their peers in large organisations.
Despite acknowledging a skills gap exists, B2B marketers are still keen to experiment. Half (49.9%) of the total sample are currently using generative AI, while a far smaller percentage (2.2%) are trialling agentic AI – autonomous artificial intelligence systems that can independently make decisions and perform tasks.
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Under a fifth (15.3%) say their team is using a mixture of generative and agentic AI, while 17.9% claim their team use AI, but they are unsure of what type.
Over half (52.1%) of SME marketers are using gen AI and 3.2% are experimenting with agentic AI. By comparison, 47.7% of marketers working in large organisations are utilising gen AI, while 1% are using agentic AI.
When asked what type of gen AI tools they are using, most of the total sample (83.4%) are opting for ChatGPT.
Almost half (47.4%) of the B2B marketers surveyed are using Microsoft Copilot, while over a third (35.7%) are experimenting with Google Gemini. Just over a fifth (21.1%) are using Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude, while a smaller number of the total sample are using Midjourney (13.9%) and OpenAI image generation tool DALL-E (8.6%).
Some 92.1% of SME marketers are using ChatGPT, with over a third experimenting with Microsoft Copilot (36.3%) and Google Gemini (34.7%).
Most marketers in large B2B firms are also using ChatGPT (73.1%), while Microsoft Copilot (60.2%) and to a lesser extent Google Gemini (36.3%) are also proving popular.
Compelling use cases
When asked what they are using this tech for, most B2B businesses (79.8%) are using AI to write content, followed by developing creative/creative ideas (70.1%) and market research (56.2%).
Over two-fifths (42.7%) of the total sample are using AI to help in the development of internal presentations. B2B marketers are also using artificial intelligence for segmentation and targeting (21.9%), lead generation (13%) and to pre-test creative (11.9%).
Under a tenth of those surveyed are using AI to optimise creative mid-campaign (9.4%), for market mix modelling/econometrics (8.9%) and to plan (7.8%) or optimise (6.9%) media spend.
Almost eight in 10 SME marketers (78.4%) are currently using AI to write content, while over two-thirds (68.9%) use AI to develop creative ideas and more than half are using the tech for market research (57.9%).
Content writing is also the top AI use case (81.3%) for marketers in large B2B organisations, followed by creative ideation (70.8%) and market research (54.4%).
Half of marketers in large brands (50.9%) and over a third of their SME peers (35.8%) are using AI to develop internal presentations.
A quarter (25.3%) of marketers in smaller B2B firms and 18.1% of their counterparts in big businesses are using AI for segmentation and targeting. Over a tenth of those marketers in SMEs (14.2%) and large companies (11.7%) are using AI for lead generation.
B2B marketers are less likely to be using AI as part of their effectiveness work. Some 10.5% of marketers in big B2B brands and 7.4% in smaller firms are using AI for market mix modelling and econometrics.
Some 12.1% of SME marketers are using AI to pre-test creative, as are 11.7% of their peers in large firms.
Marketing Week will continue its coverage of the State of B2B Marketing research over the coming weeks.