How Under-Pressure Marketing Leaders Can Avoid Bias-Driven Disaster

Marketing leaders are under ever-increasing pressure to do more with less while grappling with smaller budgets and a tidal wave of change. Earlier this year, research from Gartner’s Annual CMO Spend survey suggested that marketing budgets dropped to 7.7% of overall company revenue in 2024 - down from 9.1% in 2023, against the backdrop of a fall from 9.5% in 2022.

To add to the pressure, most B2B marketing leaders are facing the prospect of longer sales cycles and are grappling with the seismic upheaval to both operations and buyer behaviour brought about by the start of the AI era. 

When faced with having to make decisions at lightning speed, assumptions and bias can overrule or even obfuscate data insights - and now more than ever, marketing leaders need to question every assumption that used to hold true. 

Understanding bias

Biases are mental shortcuts we rely on to expedite decision-making, but they can make us blinkered and become barriers to innovation, growth, and meaningful customer engagement. 

Whether it's confirmation bias (the tendency to favour information that confirms pre-existing beliefs) or the availability heuristic (relying on easily recalled examples), biases shape how we see the world. For B2B marketers, these mental shortcuts can often seep into marketing strategies, product development, and even customer insights, creating blind spots that can steer product development and marketing campaigns off course.

Research published by CASS Business School suggests up to 90% of technological innovations fail, often because decisions were influenced by unconscious biases, leading to misguided product or marketing strategy development.

One of the biggest traps B2B marketers can make is assuming they already know what their customers want. 

This could be caused by unwittingly biasing customer data collection through biased question sets or focussing on data that aligns with the existing narrative and strategy. It could also be through the overconfidence bias—the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our predictions.

Overcoming bias with data and diversity

The good news is that marketers and leaders can take steps to minimise biases and make better-informed decisions.

1. Leverage AI and data-driven insights: AI tools can analyse vast amounts of customer data, providing objective insights that humans might miss.
2. Embrace ethnographic research: One of the most effective ways to discover deep customer insights is through hidden needs analysis – through direct ethnographic observation of how customers interact with products in use. This method helps reveal discrepancies between what customers say they need and what they actually need.
3. Build diverse teams: Cognitive diversity is a powerful antidote to bias. Teams made up of individuals with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences are more likely to challenge each other's assumptions and bring fresh ideas to the table.
4. Create feedback loops: Encouraging feedback from customers and employees at every level is critical. Don’t just use pro forma questionnaires; ensure you provide the opportunity to gather unbiased data that enables the organisation to test assumptions and adjust strategies to ensure alignment with market realities.

Leadership’s role in mitigating bias

Leadership sets the tone for how an organisation navigates biases. Leaders who promote a culture of questioning assumptions and regularly audit decision-making processes are better equipped to prevent biases from clouding decision-making. 

As marketers, it’s essential to remain vigilant and open to challenging our own perceptions. Only then can we create strategies that are not only data-driven but truly customer-centric.