My career didn't begin in marketing. It began in tech. A decade in, though, a series of technical project and product management roles led me to a pivotal moment.

I began working for a VP of Marketing, and unlike many before him he recognized something in me that I hadn't fully articulated myself—a fierce focus on people and experiences. He gave me a title to match, and in doing so shaped the trajectory of my professional life.

My story, like so many others, is a reminder that careers aren't the rigid progressions we often imagine them to be. They're malleable, responsive, and deeply human. And that malleability—the capacity to take what we've learned and apply it in unexpected contexts—is precisely what B2B marketers need in today's landscape of systemic uncertainty.

The marketing function sits at a fascinating inflection point. As generative AI and agentic systems reshape our work with breathtaking speed, we face a pivotal question: How do we navigate this uncertainty while advancing both our organizations and human potential?

The answer, I believe, lies in what I call the Now-Next Continuum.

What Is the Now-Next Continuum?

The Now-Next Continuum isn't another marketing framework to memorize. It's a mindset that acknowledges we exist simultaneously in two realities: the operational demands of today and the emerging possibilities of tomorrow.

Most organizations struggle with that duality. Either they become so consumed with quarterly targets that they miss transformative opportunities, or they chase technological futures without grounding them in present human needs. Either extreme leads to misalignment.

True alignment—the kind that creates sustainable value—happens when we treat the present and future not as separate concerns but as a continuum.

Three Principles for Navigating the Continuum

1. Measure what matters to humans, not just what's easy to count

B2B marketers excel at measurement. We track leads, conversions, engagement rates, and dozens of other metrics. But those traditional metrics often measure business outcomes without capturing human outcomes.

As we move headlong from the generative AI era into the agentic AI era, we face an unprecedented expansion of what I call "preference surveillance"—the ability to observe, predict, and influence human decision-making at increasingly granular levels

According to Gartner research, by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, allowing 15% of day-to-day decisions to be made autonomously without human intervention. That capability brings enormous responsibility.

Ask yourself: Are you measuring success solely by business metrics, or are you also tracking how your marketing creates value for the humans on the receiving end?

The most innovative B2B marketers are developing metrics that capture both.

For example, cybersecurity organizations might benefit from measuring "anxiety reduction" among client security teams rather than just lead volume. That shift in metrics could drive different—and potentially more effective—marketing decisions that align both with business goals and with human needs. It also aligns with the finding that 71% of sales employees spend their time on nonselling tasks, according to 2024 Salesforce data—a clear indication that we need metrics that capture both operational efficiency and human impact.

This human-centered approach is gaining traction. According to research from FocusVision, B2B buyers now consume, on average, 13 pieces of content during their purchasing journey, including 8 vendor-created pieces. Yet what's measured isn't content volume but how the content shapes the buyer's experience and decision-making process.

2. Use technology to amplify alignment, not just efficiency

AI tools can generate more content, analyze more data, and automate more touchpoints than ever before. But technology that merely amplifies business goals without considering human goals creates misalignment.

The true power of AI in B2B marketing comes when it amplifies the alignment between what your business seeks to accomplish and what your human customers seek to accomplish.

Think about how you're deploying AI in your marketing stack. Is it merely making your existing processes more efficient, or is it creating new forms of value that better align your success with your customers' success?

Recent data shows that such alignment is becoming increasingly crucial: A 2024 ON24 survey of more than 500 B2B marketers revealed that organizations using AI in their marketing operations reported significantly higher success rates than their non-AI-adopting counterparts. More tellingly, the highest ROI came not from cost reduction but from creating new capabilities that drive customer value.