LinkedIn report finds 75% of Indian B2B marketers facing longer sales cycles

Ahead of LinkedIn’s annual B2B marketing event, B2Believe, happening today in Bengaluru, the platform has released new insights to help marketers find success in a challenging macro environment. With shrinking budgets and pressure to do more with less, B2B brands are finding it harder to close deals. LinkedIn’s ‘2025 Global B2B Marketing Outlook’, a survey of 7,000 B2B marketers globally, reveals that 75% of Indian B2B marketers say it’s taking longer to make decisions and complete a sale.

Amid increased budget scrutiny, an integrated full-funnel marketing strategy is key to building trust, accelerating decision making, and driving measurable business outcomes. Upper-funnel tactics such as emotionally resonant ads, branded events, and video content from trusted voices, play a critical role in engaging decision-makers and effectively influencing performance. LinkedIn data reinforces this — an always-on and consistent brand presence to high-value, targeted audiences delivers a 10% conversion lift; and brand building content multiplies the effectiveness of driving leads by 1.4x. In fact, 88% marketers say that earning audience trust has become as important as driving reach.

Sachin Sharma, Director, Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn India, says, “As buyer groups expand and scrutiny tightens, full-funnel integration has become India’s most dependable path to B2B growth. When trust, relevance and action reinforce each other, outcomes compound. That’s the multiplier effect in motion, where momentum carries a buyer from first impression to final decision with confidence and speed. At LinkedIn, we’re enabling marketers to build this momentum by turning trusted engagement into real influence, and influence into measurable business impact, because in B2B, trust still decides the winner.”

Ganesh Kiran, Head of Growth and Digital Marketing, Zoho Workplace, said, “Our objective was very clear. We wanted to address common business frustrations with disconnected office apps, complex contracts, and privacy violations and highlight Zoho Workplace as a better, unified alternative. LinkedIn's targeted B2B audience and video first innovation like Connected TV allowed us to scale our message in a brand safe environment.”

“SMBs in India are becoming far more data-driven and outcome-focussed in their marketing. Today, 51% of Indian SMBs use LinkedIn Marketing Solutions to improve conversion rates and sales impact, their number one priority. What’s exciting is how AI is transforming their campaigns — 46% say it helps them target audiences better, 45% see improved measurement and cost-effectiveness, and 44% report greater creativity and personalisation,” Abhishek Srivastava, VP, Product, LinkedIn, told e4m.

This shows that Indian SMBs are leading the charge in using technology and trusted platforms like LinkedIn to drive measurable business impact, he added.

LinkedIn introduces enhancements to Events to turn every event into a growth engine

LinkedIn data shows that trusted brands that spark conversations and create buzz convert more leads, with events being one of the most powerful ways to nurture relationships. Ninety-seven per cent of B2B marketers say that online events are one of the most effective tactics to gain direct sales, followed by in-person events (95%)*.

The new whitepaper launched by LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, ‘Easy to Find: Being Where B2B Buying Happens,’ shows that expanding into underleveraged channels - like events - can unlock incremental reach and revenue. By ensuring their brands are ‘physically available’ - through events - marketers can make it easy for them to be found and therefore bought.

To make event management simpler and the results – from awareness to conversion – even stronger, LinkedIn has rolled out new enhancements to LinkedIn Events. These updates make it easy for marketers to efficiently scale events of any size, reach the right audience, and measure impact across the entire funnel - on or off of LinkedIn:

• Maximize event visibility: Easily create and manage ON24-hosted events through the new event management integration on LinkedIn, then promote the event by boosting at key moments to maximize visibility and drive bigger audiences.
• Target the right audience with precision: Drive stronger engagement and higher-quality leads by syncing Cvent registrant data, like contact and company lists, into Campaign Manager for effortless lead capture, retargeting, and audience expansion.
• Multiply event impact: To help B2B marketers turn event promotion into measurable ROI, they can now choose lead generation as an objective when running an event ad. Selecting this objective allows them to target their event to likely registrants and route leads from registration to their preferred CRM or marketing automation platform through new integrations with Integrate and ON24.

Sharper signals at every stage of the funnel equals smarter spend

With 84% of B2B CMOs in India saying that proving campaign return-on-investment (ROI) has become more important in the past two year**, the industry is shifting from vanity metrics to outcome-based measurement. As B2B buying cycles grow longer and involve multiple stakeholders, marketers need a measurement playbook that captures real influence that takes place across multiple touchpoints over months.

Here are three tips for marketers to rethink the B2B measurement playbook by Jae Oh, Head of Ads Measurement at LinkedIn:

1. Measure and invest in what truly moves the needle — focus on incrementality and business impact: Marketers are moving beyond last-click attribution to prove real business impact. The new B2B playbook endorses triangulation, with an emphasis on incrementality and company-level attribution — understanding what marketing activity actually drives new pipeline growth.
2. Redefine success with outcomes over optics: In a world where clicks and form fills no longer tell the full story, marketers are shifting from optics to outcomes. Defining lead quality means aligning with Sales on what high-value opportunities look like and tracking how marketing influences pipeline conversion, revenue, and lifetime value. This approach links upper-funnel awareness to bottom-line outcomes — transforming Marketing from a cost centre to a growth engine.
3. Focus on fully integrated and silo-free frameworks: True measurement reinvention means seeing how every stage of the funnel contributes to growth — from awareness to conversion. By integrating brand health metrics with performance KPIs, marketers can prove how consistent brand activity fuels lower-funnel efficiency. But success also depends on collaboration: breaking down silos between marketing and sales ensures everyone has a shared view of what success looks like.

LinkedIn is continuously innovating its measurement solutions to empower marketers with more actionable, business-level insights to guide marketing strategy and demonstrate ROIs. With the recent launch of Company Intelligence API and Conversion Lift Testing, alongside solutions like Conversions API and Revenue Attribution Report, the platform is helping marketers make smarter data-driven decisions to optimize their budgets and demonstrate measurable outcomes on the bottom line.