B2B marketing’s job is to make it easier for the buying group to agree 

LinkedIn and Bain & Company recently released some research in which they claim B2B marketers have one job: to give the buying group permission to agree. In a group purchase, they argue, the dynamics of the group matter more than individual preference. This insight gets to the root of how enterprise B2B marketing works and, if we run with it, it gives us a useful model for thinking about effective B2B marketing.

Why groupthink matters in B2B

The idea that the buying group is central to enterprise B2B is not new. Forrester has been banging the drum since at least 2020. Gartner, Challenger and others all track the number of people involved in buying groups and all agree on two things: one, the size of buying groups is increasing; and two, the bigger the group, the less likely they are to commit to a new purchase.

So what do LinkedIn and Bain add to the picture? Their study looks at the emotional needs of the buying group and splits them into two cohorts, the ‘Target Buyers’ – the domain experts, like a CIO in an IT purchase – and the ‘Hidden Buyers’ – the process people like procurement, finance and legal.

They claim that both groups have near-equal influence, that hidden buyers are even more emotively driven than target buyers, and that the brand being known to the whole group is a more important factor than price or product quality in many instances.

The insight here is that decision-making groups will follow a path of least resistance. Or, to put it another way, the outcome of a buying process is less determined by the preferences of the individuals involved than the ‘contingent circumstances’ in which the decision is made.

Why we do the things we do at work

In my old agency, one of the first things we would do with new recruits was a full day’s workshop in which we’d run everyone, from graduate to executive creative director, through an end-to-end process of building a campaign. To my mind, the most powerful exercise we did that day was on buying groups.

In the exercise, we would create a fictitious buying group for a CRM purchase. We’d ask people in pairs to take an individual from the group and make up their back story. We’d ask them to concoct something about the individual’s objectives, their business pains and about their personality, their home life, their peccadillos. Then we’d get everyone back together and go round the group, sharing our profiles.

As we went round the group I would try to tease out these ‘contingent circumstances’ – what was going on that set the context for this group’s behaviour. Might Gary the Porsche-driving sales director feel threatened by Rosanna’s quiet competence and eye for detail? Is it significant that Adnan is new in role and looking to make his mark, while George is winding down ready for retirement?

People would inevitably have a bit of fun with this. We’d uncover office affairs, rivalries that spilled over from their kids’ football matches and petty animosity aplenty. But when we paused and asked whether this stuff was just a bit of fun, or whether it really mattered, the penny would drop. Of course it matters.

The context in which people are buying is a malleable thing; we can do things to change it in our favour.

When we sat alongside the buying group and tried to see things from their perspective, we saw fallible people making decisions in pressurised and ever-changing circumstances. And it’s those circumstances that hold sway over the decision.

Happily for marketers, the context in which people are buying is a malleable thing; we can do things to change it in our favour. And the beauty of this simple idea is it holds true at all elevations, from the close-quarter combat of ABM to the long-term perspective of brand.

Optics and elevations

I spend a fair amount of time these days speaking to B2B marketers about ABM and I find myself repeating the same refrain. ABM is often less about persuasion than it is about improving the ‘optics’.

In ABM we get right down to the level of a specific buying group and buying process (in one-to-one ABM, at least). We might not be able to do much about office politics, but there are things we can do to change the context in which the decision is being made in our favour. We can be the brand that shows up most consistently throughout the process, that has the most engaging chemistry session, that makes sure the largest number of decision makers feel listened to, and so on. We make it easier for the group to agree, as LinkedIn say. We make sure the optics work in our favour and, since the margins are small between winning and losing, our efforts may be decisive.

Brand building is the same principle, taking place at a higher elevation and over a longer timeframe. We repeatedly show up, aiming to build salience and positive memory structures, so when the time comes to reach out for help or build a shortlist, we are first to mind. First to mind is a proxy for trust, hence why the LinkedIn research shows that in 81% of purchases ‘all or nearly all of the buying group’ knew the brand in advance, while only 4% bought a product that ‘only the recommending function’ knew of.

Buyers agree on ideas as well as brands

Buyers don’t only cohere around brands. This is a crucial build which the LinkedIn piece misses; they also need to agree on ideas or concepts. We don’t only choose which brand, we choose what in general terms is the right thing to be investing in.

Being ‘data-driven’ is a good example of a meme that has taken hold. AI is another. The terms become shorthand for ‘something-we-should-be-doing’ and so gain prominence in the buying group’s collective thought process.

If our job as enterprise B2B marketers is to make it easier for the buying group to agree, then it is a valid strategy to build salience not only for a brand but for a concept. A textbook example of this is how Eloqua and Marketo collectively stimulated demand for marketing automation in the late 2010s by building a groundswell of opinion around the idea of ‘modern marketing’, leading to overinvestment in what were effectively very high-end email platforms.

The buyer-friendly litmus test

In the end, the buyer-group friendly principle can become a litmus test. We can apply it broadly at multiple elevations.

Does our thought leadership make it easier for a group of buyers to choose, by reinforcing ideas which we are associated with? Does our positioning make it easier for a group of buyers to choose, by creating distinction between the choices? Does our brand make it easier for a group of buyers to choose, by reaching the whole group and building salience? Does our ABM make it easier for a group of buyers to choose, by creating the right optics around the deal? And does our sales process make it easier for buyers to choose, by giving them clarity? 

Try asking yourself these questions and look for where you can help the buyer at each step of the journey.