Emotion in B2B Marketing

October 29, 2025

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What role do emotions play in effective B2B marketing?

One way B2B marketers (and really, all marketers) can stand out in a crowded industry is to leverage authentic, poignant, and relatable emotions. Harnessing emotions into campaigns and marketing creative helps endear consumers to a brand, and can even connect them to a larger sense of community.

Consumers are people, and at the end of the day, consumers (whether clients or buyers), want to be in a real dialogue, not just marketed to; when in the market for a new service or product, consumer pain points need to be met with solutions that not only work, but provide ease and value. Ads should reflect this, rather than talking into an uncanny void.

Allen Adamson, co-founder and managing partner at Metaforce, discussed how B2B marketers need to create more human-first ads, stating that "what often gets lost is the individual behind the role. These are people with career goals, weekend plans, and inboxes overflowing with competing priorities. They're not just evaluating products — they're managing risk, navigating internal politics, and trying not to make a mistake that could haunt their résumés."

Adamsom went on to say that "instead of aiming for broad demographic generalizations, marketers should focus on "insights about individual buyers and influencers, what motivates them, what pressures they're under, and what will truly resonate both emotionally and rationally. When you understand those dynamics, you can craft messages that speak directly to each stakeholder in the buying center, evaluator, recommender, approver, and beyond."

For instance, Mack Trucks leaned into its mascot, a bulldog named Mack, to build brand love and garner more loyalty. Through a digital and OOH campaign putting Mack at the center, the company's web traffic double, as well as achieved a 34 percent higher engagement versus previous campaigns, a 26 percent increase in Class 8 truck orders, and a 60 percent increase in backlog orders.

Check out the resources below.

Best Practices

The Confident B2B Marketer. ANA, October 2025.
This research highlights a pivotal segment fueling B2B growth: "The Confident B2B Marketer." Their confidence isn't just attitude or personality. It stems from a critical capability: the ability to measure marketing's impact on financial performance. A Confident Marketer is defined as someone "extremely or very confident in their ability to measure marketing's impact on financial performance." This group makes up 39 percent of B2B leaders surveyed. In addition to their ability to measure financial impact, Confident Marketers are defined by the following characteristics:

Confident Marketers are nearly four times more likely than their peers to report a fully aligned relationship with sales, characterized by shared goals, joint planning, and strong trust.
Confident Marketers strike a balance between brand and demand investment.
Confident Marketers are ahead in Account Based Marketing maturity.
Confident Marketers demonstrate dramatically higher channel marketing effectiveness at a regional and account level.
Confident Marketers believe they are more effective at helping buyers achieve internal buy-in.
Confident Marketers possess superior measurement and attribution capabilities.
Confident Marketers have a much stronger data foundation.
Confident Marketers are far ahead of AI readiness.
Confident Marketers are far more assured that their data is ready for AI-driven personalization.
Confident Marketers are increasing focus and investment in brand.
For this research, ANA partnered with NewtonX, the leader in B2B research.

Are B2B Marketers Relatable? Their Future May Depend on It. ANA, September 2025.
For B2B marketers scrambling for relevancy in an increasingly fragmented universe, the questions are becoming more profound: What makes a B2B company feel confident in its decisions to engage with clients and prospects? How can marketers influence that sense of confidence? Can B2B marketers strike a new match when it comes to engaging clients and prospects? These questions are at the heart of a recent study, "Buyability — The Future of B2B Marketing Success," produced by ANA member LinkedIn in collaboration with Marcus Collins, clinical assistant professor of marketing at ANA member Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and author of For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.

The study was released in June 2025 by the ANA, the Global CMO Growth Council, Cannes Lions, International Advertising Association (IAA), and WARC. The contents will be shared in October at both the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference and the IAA Global B2B Brand Summit. Based on a survey of 750 global B2B buyers conducted by NewtonX, the research shows that buyers are largely influenced by external factors, such as relationships and advice from peer networks, to make purchases that they can justify to the C-suite.
Ditch the Scare Tactics and Brand Your Company with Optimism Instead. ANA, June 2025.
During a session at the ANA's 2025 Masters of B2B Marketing Conference, Palo Alto Networks' Navneet Singh urged marketers to appeal to consumers with optimism rather than scare tactics.
Leveraging Humanity, Behavioral Science, and Creativity in B2B Marketing: ServiceNow's Approach. ANA, May 2025.
B2B branding isn't broken, but the playbook most companies use is badly outdated. At this year's BRITE Conference at Columbia Business School, Jim Lesser, chief brand officer at ServiceNow, made a compelling case for why B2B brand building must evolve, and how his company is doing just that.

Lesser pulled back the curtain on what it really takes to build a brand in a B2B environment where the stakes are higher, the audiences are more complex, and the purchase paths are anything but linear. ServiceNow, a rising name in enterprise software, is showing what happens when brand is treated not as a nice-to-have, but as a business driver. Here are three lessons from Lesser's talk that show how ServiceNow is rewriting the B2B brand playbook, and what other marketers can learn from it.
More Than a Feeling: Evidence-Backed Emotion in Business Marketing. ANA, August 2023.
We've all probably seen countless thought pieces on why emotional connection is vital in B2B marketing. Many of these articles build an argument through speculation, or personal perspectives. We believe in hard evidence, so let's start by diving right into some of the research in this field. Given the higher stakes and deeper relationships intrinsic to B2B dynamics, emotions are often seen as the bedrock for overcoming perceived risks. This isn't just an abstract concept, but something that's been examined, measured, and validated through numerous studies. Emotion's potent influence is a driving force, not only in shaping global consumer brands but also in scaling B2B giants.

Examples

Care for Care Providers: How CareCredit's LinkedIn Campaign Humanized B2B Healthcare Marketing With a 270 Percent Engagement Boost. ANA, September 2025.
While CareCredit enjoyed significant brand awareness among its consumer audience, Synchrony's in-house team needed to establish and reinforce the brand's commitment to healthcare providers in the B2B space through LinkedIn, where providers were often told what marketers thought they wanted to hear rather than addressing their actual day-to-day experiences. The team developed the "Care for Care Providers" campaign that positioned CareCredit as an empathetic partner by creating content that addressed providers' real pain points — including burnout from uncomfortable payment conversations, billing issues, long hours, and staffing shortages — through a mix of uplifting messages, practical tips, insights, and unique partnerships like a soothing Spotify playlist and wellness reminders.

Hilti's B2B Push Redefines Brand Loyalty on the Job Site. ANA, September 2025.
Hilti's B2B campaign celebrated construction professionals through an experiential, multi-channel approach. Focused on emotional connection and authenticity, it positioned Hilti as a trusted partner and drove strong engagement across North America.
How Zoetis Used Brand to Build a Stronger Bond with Its Customers. ANA, August 2025.
Facing a series of challenges, Zoetis, a producer of medicine and vaccinations for pets and livestock, redefined its brand around emotional connection with its core audience — livestock producers. By shifting from product-focused messaging to a purpose-driven platform, Zoetis launched heartfelt campaigns that resonated deeply with customers.
How Mack Trucks Drove Brand Love with a Bulldog. ANA, August 2025.
Jim Leon, director of brand management at Mack Trucks, and Kate MacNevin, global CEO at Stein, highlighted how their two organizations shifted Mack Trucks' marketing strategy from product-focused messaging to emotionally driven storytelling, aiming to deepen its connection with truck drivers and fleet managers.
Carhartt's B2B Campaign: Workforce Pride You Wear on Your Sleeve. ANA, June 2025.
In today's B2B landscape, complexity is the norm — misaligned teams, overwhelming martech stacks, and messaging that drowns in its own detail. But the brands that break through don't add to the chaos. They create connections. Carhartt Company Gear did just that by listening, not just to procurement, but to the decision-makers to unlock what they needed to see, feel, and believe to outfit their workforce with confidence. With Mower's "More Than a Uniform" campaign, the brand transformed workwear into a symbol of pride, purpose, and performance. By focusing less on specs and more on shared identity, Carhartt built more than awareness. It built mental availability in the moments that matter.

The Humans of B2B. ANA, July 2024.
By earning a "best event ever" reaction from the B2B marketer community — and a 100 percent "would recommend" rating "Humans of B2B" firmly established ANA NYC as a go-to for B2B. "Humans of B2B" set the highest possible bar for live event marketing. The concept, the content and the amazing creative campaign were magnets for B2B's thought leaders, who together advanced this essential dialog.
Sparking an Emotional Connection in B2B Marketing. ANA, April 2024.
Ruth Stevens, president of the B2B marketing consultancy eMarketing Strategy, has some sharp opinions regarding where the B2B market is headed and what B2B firms are missing when it comes to marketing innovation and rattling the lead-gen cage. Stevens, who held director-level marketing roles at IBM and Time Warner before starting her own firm in 2000, has worked with clients — including American Express, Xerox, and the medical devices company Welch Allyn — navigating the topsy-turvy world of B2B marketing.

ANA magazine spoke with Stevens about some of the overlooked opportunities in B2B marketing for driving leads, bolstering customer retention, and building long-lasting relationships with trust at the core.
Taking a Human-Centric Approach to B2B Marketing. ANA, December 2023.
Dean Aragon, CEO and vice chairman of Shell Brands International AG Shell, discussed how, regardless of being labeled as B2B or B2C, every business fundamentally operates as a Business to Human (B2H) or a Business for Humans (B4H) highlighting the critical need to engage consumers on an emotional level.

Podcasts

How B2B Brands Take Relationship Marketing to the Next Level. ANA, September 2024.
As the traditional sales call goes the way of the woolly mammoth, B2B brands are ramping up their social media investments to develop a healthy mix of organic and paid advertising. But when it comes to relationship marketing — which emphasizes customer retention, satisfaction, and lifetime customer value — social media only goes so far. To build on their relationship marketing efforts, B2B marketers must reclaim social from social media.

Jamie Gier, CMO at DexCare, which provides software that manages the logistics of digital care, says emotional intelligence is at the heart of relationship marketing. As Gier makes clear, it's not about transactions or angling for the top, bottom, or middle parts of the sales funnel. Rather, it's how marketers tap into their Spidey-sense to help a client, cohort, or community tackle a problem, drive an important conversation, or plan an event in which marketers press the flesh without the pressure of having to close a sale. Guyer provides some salient examples of relationship marketing efforts and explains why it's such an increasingly critical engagement strategy for B2B companies.

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Source

"Emotion in B2B Marketing." ANA, 2025.