The old channel marketing playbook isn’t just outdated, it’s broken. Here’s how UK marketers and partners can adapt with authenticity, resilience, and humanity.
The playbook that once worked
For years, the channel had a reliable formula. Funded campaigns. Gated content. MQL handoffs. Attribution dashboards. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Predictable budgets, reachable buyers, and measurable outcomes. Now that world has shifted.
Marketing budgets have fallen from 11% to 7.7% of company revenue (Gartner), while costs per lead have soared past £150 for many B2B tech vendors. Partners are being asked to deliver more with less and to prove ROI in a system that no longer behaves predictably.
The old playbook hasn’t just aged. It’s cracked.
The rise of the invisible buyer
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the buyer journey has moved out of sight.
Around 70% of the buying process now happens anonymously; outside your CRM, marketing automation, or even awareness. By the time a lead shows up, the decision is often already made.
Buying groups now include 6–10 stakeholders (sometimes more), most of whom you’ll never track or target directly. They’re researching in communities, peer groups, and dark social spaces – places traditional campaign models can’t reach. For channel marketers, this means the metrics we’ve built success on no longer tell the full story.
System overload
Even the tools that once powered the channel are struggling to keep up. Cookies are disappearing. Privacy rules are tightening. Organic reach on LinkedIn is hovering around 1 -2%, and email engagement continues to decline.
Meanwhile, legacy marketing platforms have stagnated, raising prices while offering little innovation. The result? A noisy ecosystem where everyone’s shouting louder, but fewer people are listening. It’s not incompetence… it’s the inevitable breakdown of an overused system.
The human cost
Behind every dashboard and pipeline review are real people feeling the pressure. Marketers questioning their skills. Partners wondering why proven campaigns aren’t converting.
Teams running harder on less budget and less certainty.
The emotional toll is real. For years, we’ve tied our value to the predictability of a system that no longer behaves predictably. But that’s the key insight: the system broke; you didn’t.
Rewriting the human playbook
If the old frameworks no longer work, perhaps it’s time for something simpler, and more human.
- Measure what really matters
Pipeline volume isn’t the only signal. Brand trust, partner alignment, and influence in the buying group matter just as much, even if they’re harder to quantify. - Build community, not just campaigns
Engagement doesn’t only happen through gated assets. It happens in conversations, collaboration, and shared storytelling with partners and customers. - Be findable, not forceful
Buyers don’t want to be chased. They want to be understood. Focus on relevance, not reach. Meet the buyers where they are. Stop focusing on interrupting them, rather build trust and authority so they come to you when they need you.
- Stay human
The best-performing marketing today sounds like people, not programs. Empathy scales better than automation.
A system worth rebuilding
Marketing isn’t broken beyond repair, but it is evolving. As AI, automation, and data mature, there’s a real opportunity to rebuild the system around something more sustainable: human connection. Because while the tactics will keep changing, the fundamentals won’t – trust, credibility, and creativity will always cut through the noise.
Every marketer and partner I speak to feels some version of this shift: the budget squeeze, the invisible buyer, the exhaustion of doing more with less.
But maybe that’s our chance to hit reset, and take a fresh perspective. Go back to basics: talk to your customers, really listen to them, understand their challenges and needs, then do more of the things they want. Take out the overly complicated workflows and strip back the force-fed ads and gated eBooks. Reconnect with the value of the segment of one.
When the playbook breaks, it forces us to stop relying on the system and start relying on what made us good marketers in the first place: curiosity, empathy, and the courage to try something new.
What’s breaking fastest in your world? The budget, the buyer, or the system itself?
And what’s one human thing you’re doing differently because of it?
Louise Mahrra
Louise Mahrra is a marketing strategist and channel expert.
She is the founder of The Marketing Human, a blog exploring how real human connection powers better marketing, especially in the IT and channel space.
