That model has delivered results for years, but it’s starting to show cracks. When carriers rely solely on intermediaries, they risk becoming invisible a name on a quote sheet rather than a brand with meaning. Meanwhile, business customers now expect the same personalization and digital ease they experience in B2C settings.
The answer isn’t to simply “do more marketing.” It’s to redefine what marketing means to turn it from a support function into a genuine driver of strategy, growth, and customer connection. The Modern CMO’s Challenge: Steering Through Complexity
1. Adapting to Growing Expectations
Marketing has not kept up with the rate of change in many B2B insurance companies. While top B2C companies have adopted automated engagement, mobile-first interactions, and real-time customisation, B2B insurers are frequently burdened by fragmented data and old infrastructure.The challenges facing CMOs attempting to modernize are real: limited funds, antiquated technology stacks, and compartmentalized organizational structures that make change difficult and slow.However, the true barrier is frequently cultural. Marketing lacks a clear mandate in addition to the appropriate instruments.2. Handling a Stakeholder Maze
B2B insurance marketing oversees an ecosystem rather than a single client. Brokers, advisors, and other intermediaries have a great deal of power. If they are given the right treatment, they can become strong supporters; if they are not, they can become doubters just as easily. Therefore, the role of the CMO encompasses more than just campaigns and content. I
t’s about orchestrating relationships ensuring that every voice across underwriting, sales, and distribution feels connected to a coherent story and purpose.
3. Earning a Real Seat at the Strategy Table
Too often, CMOs are brought in after the big decisions are made asked to promote plans they didn’t help shape. They’re expected to “drive results” without ever having a say in defining them.
That needs to change. Marketing earns its credibility when it can prove its impact—linking efforts directly to growth, retention, cross-sell, and brand strength. Once the CMO can clearly quantify that value, they move from messenger to decision-maker.
How to Unleash Marketing’s True Power
To put marketing at the heart of B2B insurance strategy, leaders need to focus on three critical actions.
1. Define the Role with Clarity and Courage
Every insurer’s marketing organization looks different, which is why defining the role is non-negotiable. Without clarity on what marketing owns, the function can’t be measured or managed. CMOs should start by asking four questions that cut through the noise:
What exactly does marketing own?
Marketing, sales, and product lines often overlap. Clear boundaries—along with explicit reporting lines and decision rights prevent confusion and create accountability.
Which time horizons matter most?
Some CMOs must first rebuild the basics: consistent branding, modernized tech, and usable data. Others can go further, positioning marketing as an incubator for customer-led innovation.
How do real decisions get made here?
Influence in complex organizations isn’t about titles it’s about trust. Knowing who shapes opinions and how consensus forms can make or break a marketing leader’s success.
What kind of control and accountability does marketing have?
Whether the CMO owns a P&L or acts as a strategic partner, the link between responsibility and results must be explicit. Ambiguity here is the enemy of progress.
2. Make Marketing Strategic and Data-Driven
A recent McKinsey study of more than 2,000 executives showed a clear pattern: companies with strong marketing and sales capabilities grow revenues two to three times faster than their peers. But for B2B insurers, that kind of performance only happens when marketing aligns tightly with the rest of the organization.
Start with measurement. Marketing needs to prove its value in business terms—sales, retention, cross-sell. Dashboards that make these links visible can shift internal mindsets from “marketing as cost” to “marketing as growth engine.”
Create shared ownership across teams. Marketing can’t operate in isolation. CMOs should establish governance models that allow the function to influence every customer interaction even those outside its formal scope. Centralize where scale creates advantage; localize where relationships matter most.
Adopt agile ways of working. Agile marketing isn’t a buzzword it’s a discipline. Teams can use it to quickly test concepts, gauge their impact, and make adjustments in real time. For example, in only six weeks, a U.S. asset management established four cross-functional agile teams, generating over 20 assets and establishing a customer-first mentality throughout the organization.
Speed is only one aspect of agility. It is responsiveness the capacity to hear, understand, and take action before rivals even recognize a change in the market.
3. Create Momentum and Support Throughout the Company
Aligning the entire organization behind marketing entails redefining its role. To make that change actual, follow these four steps:
Prioritize the client in all of your decisions.
CMOs must to be in charge of thorough consumer segmentation and advocate for the direct correlation of financial results with metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS).
When customer advocacy links to growth, marketing earns organizational respect.
Turn data into a shared advantage.
Many insurers have mountains of untapped data. CMOs should lead the charge to integrate internal and external sources creating one unified customer view that supports smarter marketing, sales, and broker engagement.
Build marketing capabilities that endure.
Skills like data analysis, storytelling, and digital experience design can’t always be outsourced. CMOs should decide which capabilities must be built in-house and show how those investments pay off within two to three years.
Rethink the relationships between intermediaries.
Although brokers and agents are valuable collaborators, marketing should be in charge of the plan for how those relationships grow. Through insight-driven segmentation and tailored engagement, intermediaries can evolve from transactional conduits into enduring allies.
Product sheets and eye-catching images are no longer the mainstays of B2B insurance marketing.
