Maria runs marketing for a small software company targeting mid-sized businesses. She recently launched a campaign using LinkedIn event ads. After two months, the numbers look promising: strong impressions and good event registrations. But when she meets with sales, they say deals still aren’t moving. What challenge of B2B marketing could explain Maria's challenge?

Maria's challenge is best explained by lengthy sales cycles, a common characteristic of B2B marketing, especially when targeting mid-sized businesses with software solutions. While her campaign generated strong impressions and registrations, these are top-of-funnel metrics. B2B sales often involve multiple stakeholders, complex evaluations, and extended negotiation periods, meaning the impact of marketing efforts on closed deals may not be immediately visible within a two-month timeframe. Reliance on last-touch attribution is a measurement challenge, not a fundamental B2B marketing characteristic explaining the delay in sales movement. Data privacy changes primarily affect data collection and targeting, not the inherent duration of a sales process. Systems incompatibility could hinder data flow or campaign execution, but it doesn't explain why registered leads aren't converting into deals quickly.