Why Mission Is the Critical Foundation of Effective Marketing Planning

The fourth quarter of 2025 is well underway, which means many B2B marketers have begun planning for next year.

Marketing planning processes vary considerably across companies. Planning in large enterprises can be quite formal, while the process in smaller companies tends to be less formal.

Whatever your approach to planning, one key to developing an effective marketing plan is to keep your planning process focused on the right things. Fortunately, a proven military planning technique can help marketing leaders keep their planning process on course.

For years, US military commanders at all levels have used a framework called METT-TC as an integral part of their planning process. METT-TC is a mnemonic that is designed to help commanders remember and prioritize what to analyze when planning a military operation.

METT-TC stands for mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time, and civil considerations. These six factors define the environment in which any military operation will be conducted, and commanders must thoroughly analyze each of these factors to develop sound operational plans.

When I work with a client to develop a marketing plan, we analyze five environmental factors, and I've created a mnemonic for these factors that serves much the same purpose as METT-TC. My mnemonic is MMCC-R, which stands for mission, market structure and dynamics, customer dynamics, competitive landscape, and resources available.

Mission Is "First Among Equals"

These five factors are all important, but mission is clearly the "first among equals" because it provides the "north star" guidance for the rest of the planning process. Mission occupies this pivotal position for two reasons.

First, to deliver maximum impact and effectiveness, all marketing activities must be aligned with and supportive of a clearly defined mission. With every proposed marketing initiative, you should ask:  "How will this initiative help us fulfill our mission?" Obviously, you can't answer this question if you don't have a clear picture of what your marketing mission is.

The second reason is equally important. To be a successful marketing leader, you need the support of your CEO and other senior company leaders. Your chances of gaining and keeping that support will be higher if you and the other members of your company's senior leadership team have a common understanding of marketing's mission.

Therefore, you need to have regular, open, and frank discussions with your senior company leaders about the core mission of marketing in your organization. The goal, of course, is to cultivate a shared understanding of marketing's mission across the entire senior leadership team.

The Core Mission of Marketing

So, what is the core mission of marketing? I'm always skeptical of marketing principles or methods that purport to be universal. Competitive conditions can vary considerably across companies, and that usually requires a company to develop business and marketing strategies that fit its unique circumstances. But, this is the "exception that proves the rule."

Every marketing organization in a for-profit company has a two-part mission, both aspects of which are linked to revenue growth. Marketing must create and run programs that will enable the company to achieve its short-term revenue objectives, and also design and execute programs that will lay the necessary foundation for long-term revenue growth.

The need to focus simultaneously on the short term and the long term is not unique to marketing, but it can be particularly challenging for marketers. For the past several years, marketing leaders have faced increasing demands to prove the value of their activities and programs. Overall, this has been a positive development, but it can have a dark side.

Marketing programs that produce a quick impact on revenue are relatively easy to measure, and their results can often be seen in a few weeks. However, programs whose impacts are several steps removed from the buying decisions that generate revenue are much more difficult to measure, and they may not produce visible results for several months.

Under these circumstances, marketing leaders often face pressures to shift resources to marketing programs that can deliver quick and easily measurable results. Unfortunately, such a shift can cause companies to under-invest in longer-term marketing activities and programs, thus placing future revenue growth at risk.

Producing both short-term and long-term revenue growth is the core marketing mission at any for-profit company, and the company's senior leadership team must understand and endorse this mission. Therefore, communicating this mission to your company's senior leaders and obtaining their buy-in is a vital step in your planning process.

Top image courtesy of DENAN Production via Flickr (CC).

[Book Review] A Practitioner's Guide to Brand Associations

Source:  Ullrich Appelbaum

After languishing in the shadow of demand generation marketing for more than two decades, B2B brand marketing is experiencing a renaissance. Several recent research studies have provided insights about B2B buyers and the B2B buying process that make the value of a strong brand abundantly clear.

Most of what we know about building strong brands originated in B2C companies. In the 1930s, Procter & Gamble invented the business function that would come to be called brand management, and by the late 1950s, brand management practices had been widely adopted by U.S. consumer package goods companies.

Given the B2C origin of brand management, it's not surprising that many B2B marketers don't have extensive experience with some of the core principles of brand building.

If you're a B2B marketer who wants or needs to learn more about one of the fundamental concepts of building strong brands, you should put Ullrich ("Ulli") Appelbaum's new book on your reading list.

The Science of Brand Associations:  Win Minds, Win Markets (2025) provides a practitioner-focused primer on the vital role that brand associations play in building a strong brand. 

Ulli Appelbaum has more than 30 years of experience in creating brand strategies and building brands. He is the founder of First The Trousers Then The Shoes, a brand research, strategy, and training boutique. Previously, he held senior strategy roles at several leading advertising agencies, including BBDO, Leo Burnett, Fallon Worldwide, and SapientNitro. 

What's In the Book

The Science of Brand Associations contains four major sections.

In the first section (Chapters 1-4), Ulli Appelbaum provides a scientific definition of "brand" and "Brand Association Networks," and he uses principles of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to explain how brands are formed in people's brains.

He then describes how brands can carry meanings that extend beyond their functional attributes, and he shares research demonstrating the benefits of building strong and rich brand association networks.

The second section (Chapters 5-9) discusses how to use brand association networks to build strong brands. Appelbaum describes the types of associations brands should focus on (Chapter 5) and the critical role that distinctive brand assets play in building a strong brand (Chapter 6). In Chapter 9, he lays out 14 proven principles of brand growth.

In the third section of the book (Chapters 10-11), Appelbaum describes the reasons brands fail, and he discusses five strategies marketers or brand managers can use to overcome negative brand associations.

The fourth section (Chapters 12-13) addresses how to research and measure brand associations.

 My Take

The Science of Brand Associations will be a valuable resource for any marketer who is responsible for driving revenue growth at their organization. The book is short - just over 100 pages - and Ulli Appelbaum's writing style makes the book easy to read.

Advances in neuroscience and the behavioral sciences over the past several decades have given us a deeper understanding of how humans learn, how our brains store and retrieve information, and how memories impact human decision-making. To be effective, marketing must be designed to leverage how humans think and make decisions.

Appelbaum forcefully argues that brand associations are the single most important concept in marketing. He writes:

"In fact, understanding how brands are formed in the mind of consumers . . . and how to create and nurture strong and rich association networks around your offering . . . is the foundation of everything else we do in marketing and successful brand building."

Appelbaum supports this central argument with numerous references to the work of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, as well as high-regarded research firms (including Ehrenberg-Bass, Ipsos, and Kantar) and respected marketing experts (including Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk, and Kevin Lane Keller).

The Science of Brand Associations is purpose-written for practitioners. Appelbaum describes his book as "a sort of operating manual" that translates scientific research and evidence-based marketing principles into "practical and applicable actions intended to help brand stewards make better strategic choices and decisions . . ."

To support practitioners, Appelbaum includes several detailed "scorecards" that marketers can use to apply the principles and techniques he discusses in the book.

Appelbaum also includes several real-world examples in his book to illustrate various points. However, these examples are not very detailed. I wish that he had included at least a few detailed and rigorous case studies to support his most important points.

Even with this caveat, I strongly recommend that you take the time to read The Science of Brand Associations.

What Has (and Hasn't) Changed in B2B Marketing

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version)

"Don't throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again."

"Everything Old Is New Again," Peter Allen and Carole Sager, 1974

In my last post, I argued that many of the criticisms of the 4Ps model of the marketing mix are unfounded because they are based on a flawed understanding of the model. To support my argument, I used several quotations from E. Jerome McCarthy's 1960 textbook, Basic Marketing:  A Managerial Approach (Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1960). 

McCarthy was the developer of the 4Ps model, and he introduced it in his 1960 textbook.

As I read McCarthy's book, I was struck by how relevant the core principles discussed in the book are today. Certainly, some portions of the textbook - particularly some of the case studies and examples -are outdated. But the central elements of McCarthy's model and his broader view of marketing's role in a business are as relevant today as they were in 1960.

Perceptions of Change

If we surveyed a representative sample of B2B marketers, an overwhelming majority of our survey respondents would probably say that the last two decades have been a period of unprecedented change in B2B marketing. In some ways, this view is completely accurate.

Over the past twenty years, we have witnessed the proliferation of marketing channels, the explosive growth of marketing technologies, and the appearance of several new marketing techniques, including content marketing, social media marketing, and account-based marketing.

During the same period, several major consulting firms introduced an array of concepts and models describing the B2B buying process and exploring the role that marketing can, should, or does play in revenue growth at B2B companies.

Most of these developments have felt new, and many have been presented as new. But in fact, many of these "new" models of B2B marketing and buying aren't new at all. They have antecedents that go back several decades.

Wisdom From the Past

This phenomenon is evident in Frederick E. Webster, Jr. and Yoram Wind's 1972 book, Organizational Buying Behavior (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972). Here's how Webster and Wind described the six distinctive attributes of "organizational" (a/k/a B2B) buying:

    1.    "First, and perhaps most important, organizational buying decisions are made more complex by the fact that more people usually are involved in them and different people are likely to play different buying roles."

    2.    "Second, organizational buying decisions often involve major technical complexities relating to the product or service being purchased."

    3.    "Third, organizational buying decisions typically take longer to make than consumer (individual) decisions."

    4.    "Fourth, the greater time required for organizational buying decisions means that there are significant lags between the application of marketing effort and obtaining a buying response."

    5.    "Fifth, each buying organization is likely to be significantly different from every other buying organization in the potential market in ways that may require viewing each organization as a separate market segment."

    6.    "Finally, the organizational members participating in the buying function are neither purely 'economic men' nor are their motives purely emotional and irrational. Rather they are human beings whose decisions and behavior are being influenced by both task- and nontask-related variables."

If I change a few words here and there, it would be easy to believe these six attributes were written this year instead of more than 50 years ago. For example, the first attribute captures the essence of what we now call a B2B buying group, and the fifth attribute is remarkably similar to the original concept of account-based marketing.

Organizational Buying Behavior also presents a thoroughly modern view of marketing's ultimate purpose and mission:

    "In a nutshell, the marketing concept as it exists today is a business philosophy that sees the fundamental purpose of the business as the creation of satisfied customers . . . The responsibility of marketing management, according to this philosophy, is to interpret conditions in the marketplace and to coordinate and influence the direction of company operations so as to ensure that the company's offerings of products and services have the highest probability of satisfying customer needs."

Again, with just a few word changes, this statement could have been written this year.

All this may seem like the ramblings of someone who has too much time to read old books, but this is just one example of a larger and more important truth.

The pace of change in some aspects of B2B marketing has been so rapid over the past twenty years that it's far too easy to lose sight of the fact that many of the core principles of marketing and buyer behavior have changed very little. The tools and techniques we use are certainly different, but the thoughts and emotions we need to evoke in customers and prospects are essentially the same today as they were decades ago.  

Long Live the 4Ps!

Source:  Shutterstock

The latest salvo of criticism aimed at the venerable 4Ps of marketing was fired by Joanne Seddon, the CEO of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board, in an article published last month at WARC. 

Ms. Seddon pulled no punches in her criticism. She wrote that the 4Ps are "hopelessly out of date," don't "truly reflect the basic principles of marketing," and are "wrong. Or, at the very least, dangerously incomplete." Therefore, she argued, the attempt by some to revive the use of the 4Ps, while "well meant," is "misguided."

Beyond these broad condemnations, Ms. Seddon offered five specific criticisms of the 4Ps in her article. In my view, these criticisms are largely unfounded because they are based on an inaccurate understanding of the 4Ps model.

The 4Ps model of the marketing mix was developed by E. Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor at Notre Dame. McCarthy introduced the model in his 1960 marketing textbook, Basic Marketing:  A Managerial Approach (Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1960) ("Basic Marketing").

As the developer of the 4Ps model, McCarthy is the authoritative source of information about what the 4Ps encompass and how they should be applied, and his textbook provides a detailed description of the model as he originally designed it. So, in the balance of this post, I'll address Ms. Seddon's specific criticisms of the 4Ps using material drawn from Basic Marketing.

"The 4Ps Are Tactical, Not Strategic"

In reality, the 4Ps model is more strategic than tactical. McCarthy's extensive discussion of product, place, promotion, and price (Sections C - F in Basic Marketing) highlights the many strategic business issues that marketing managers must address when developing a marketing mix.

The following passage illustrates McCarthy's view of marketing's role in strategic decision-making:

"Are the activities of product development, product design, packaging, credits and collections, transportation, warehousing, and price setting included in 'marketing?' There is little doubt that personal selling and advertising are marketing activities, but many business executives would have marketing stop there. . . We must reject this view of marketing.

". . . Marketing should start with the customer, not with the plant. Thus, marketing should determine what products are to be produced . . . what prices to charge . . . and where they are to be available . . . - as well as selling and advertising." (Basic Marketing, p. 34)

The 4Ps Are "Purely Product-Focused" and "Miss Out" the Customer

McCarthy clearly states that marketing starts with the customer numerous times in Basic Marketing. It's noteworthy that he devoted 171 pages in his textbook to explaining the importance of choosing a target market and understanding the needs, preferences, and buying behaviors of potential customers before he began his detailed discussion of the 4Ps.

McCarthy's view of the centrality of the customer is evidenced by the following diagram, which appears on page 45 of Basic Marketing.

The "C" in the center of the above diagram stands for "consumer," and the diagram illustrates that all decisions regarding the 4Ps are centered on the customer.

The 4Ps Assume a "Static, Unchanging Marketplace"

This criticism is also unfounded. Near the end of Basic Marketing, McCarthy directly addressed the issue of changing conditions. He wrote:

"A 'best' solution can hardly remain 'best' for long . . . We are dealing, too, with a great range of ever-changing variables, and the movement of any one may change the final result. That makes our 'best' solution obsolete immediately. The marketing manager, then, must . . . make appropriate changes in his marketing mix. And this is a continuing process. He is continually analyzing, measuring, evaluating, and changing. (Basic Marketing, p. 671)

The 4Ps Don't "Touch on the Purpose of Marketing, Which Is to Drive Revenue, Profit, and Financial Value"

This criticism is accurate in the sense that McCarthy doesn't specifically address the measurement of marketing performance as a distinct topic. This shouldn't be surprising given how he sees the role of marketing in a business.

McCarthy defines marketing as follows:

"Marketing is the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer or user in order to satisfy consumers and accomplish the firm's objectives." (Basic Marketing, p. 33)

In McCarthy's view, marketing plays a leading role in most aspects of a company's business operations. Therefore, the effectiveness of the marketing strategy will be reflected in the overall company performance.

"The 4Ps Miss Out Brand!"

Ms. Seddon's final criticism is that the 4Ps model omits brand. In fact, McCarthy discusses branding in both the "Product" and the "Promotion" sections of his textbook.

It is fair to say that McCarthy's treatment of brand focuses on fundamentals, what we might expect to see in an introductory brand management textbook.

It's also fair to say that McCarthy, unlike today's brand marketing advocates, doesn't discuss the shortcomings of performance marketing, the pitfalls of "short-termism" in marketing, or how a strong brand affects the psychological aspects of buyer decision-making.

But, it's simply wrong to say the 4Ps omit brand.

Are the 4Ps Outdated?

Like any textbook, Basic Marketing reflects the state of knowledge about its topic that existed when it was written. So, there are aspects of Basic Marketing that are now outdated. To address this issue, popular textbooks are typically updated regularly, and Basic Marketing is no exception. The book is now in its 19th edition.

The 4Ps model itself is not outdated if it is properly understood and used, and most criticisms of the model are simply way overdone.

[Book Review] A Playbook for Leading Marketing in a VUCA (Volatile-Uncertain-Complex-Ambiguous) World

Source:  Greenleaf Book Group

Human beings are hard-wired to crave predictability and detest uncertainty. We all want to know that our decisions and actions will produce predictable outcomes or results.

The desire for predictability is equally strong among business executives, and for many years, business leaders have used management methods and processes designed to reduce uncertainty.

It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that many CEOs and CFOs think that marketing should be reasonably predictable and become frustrated when marketing leaders can't answer what they see as straightforward questions.

Nor should it be surprising that many CMOs manage the marketing function in ways that are intended to reduce uncertainty, or that they lean into marketing methods and tactics that produce more predictable results.

These are the major issues that Kathleen Schaub addresses in her new book, Marketing in the (Great, Big, Messy) Real World:  Rewire Your Marketing Organization to Navigate Anything (River Grove Books, 2025) ("Marketing in the Real World").

In this important book, Schaub explains why the outcomes of most marketing activities are largely unpredictable, and explores what that inherent uncertainty means for managing the marketing function.

Kathleen Schaub is an author, speaker, and strategist on the future of marketing management. She led IDC's CMO Advisory practice for nine years, and she previously held senior marketing positions at several technology companies, including Sybase, Cadence Design Systems, and Vanstar. Schaub's extensive marketing leadership experience enables her to speak authoritatively about the intrinsic nature of marketing and the principles of effective marketing management.

What's In the Book

Marketing in the Real World contains a brief Introduction and three major sections.

In the Introduction, Kathleen Schaub argues that markets are what scientists call complex systems, and these systems have several characteristics that make them inherently unpredictable or, at best, only semi-predictable.

However, many CEOs, CFOs, and other senior leaders cling to the belief that the outcomes of marketing activities should be predictable. This view causes many senior leaders - including many marketing leaders - to attempt to bring marketing's uncertainty under greater control, something Schaub argues is essentially impossible.

Schaub contends that marketing leaders need to adopt new mindsets and management methods that embrace marketing's complexity and uncertainty and thus better enable marketing to succeed in the real-world environment. The rest of the book lays out Schaub's "playbook" for the necessary changes.

Part I of Marketing in the Real World (Chapters 1 and 2) sets the stage for the material in the balance of the book. Chapter 1 discusses the rapid rise of Taylor's "scientific management" methods in the early years of the twentieth century and explains why those methods don't work well when applied to today's marketing.

Chapter 2 introduces the new mindsets and operational shifts that Schaub argues are needed to enable marketing to thrive in a complex and uncertain environment.

In Part II of the book (Chapters 3-6), Schaub discusses the four mindset shifts that marketers and business leaders need to make to manage marketing effectively in the real world.

• Think Like an Investor (Chapter 3) - View marketing expenditures as investments that put funds at risk today with the objective of reaping significant gains in the future.

• Think Like a Navigator (Chapter 4) - View the market environment as constantly evolving, which means that marketing plans and the interpretation of marketing performance must be frequently adapted.

• Think Like a Statistician (Chapter 5) - Recognize that all future outcomes of marketing activities can only be described as probabilities.

• Think Like an Ecologist (Chapter 6) - Recognize that the performance of individuals on the marketing team is greatly influenced by the social, cultural, and economic context in which they work, and focus on developing an ecosystem that will facilitate high performance.

In Part III of the book, Schaub covers four operational processes or capabilities that have a significant impact on marketing success in a volatile and uncertain environment. She discusses the importance of leveraging both human intelligence and technological capabilities, the role of agile work processes, the use of integrated teams, and the importance of leveraging the attribute of complex systems known as emergence.

My Take

Marketing in the Real World will be a worthwhile read for anyone involved in leading or managing marketing in today's economic and competitive environment. The material in the book is insightful and well-organized, and Kathleen Schaub's writing is clear and engaging.

Schaub's book is particularly valuable in light of recent developments in B2B marketing. It's no secret that B2B brand marketing is experiencing a renaissance. A growing number of B2B marketers are recognizing the importance of having a strong brand, and several recent research studies have confirmed that importance.

Despite the increased attention, however, many B2B marketers continue to report that it is challenging to win support from their CEO and CFO for increased investment in brand marketing. This resistance usually stems from the difficulties involved in predicting and measuring the financial impact of brand marketing activities. In Marketing in the Real World, Kathleen Schaub provides perspectives marketing leaders will find useful in planning discussions with their CEO and CFO.

Six Key Steps to Winning CFO (and CEO) Support for Increased Investment in Brand Marketing

After languishing in the shadow of performance marketing for more than two decades, B2B brand marketing is experiencing a renaissance. The number of blog articles, LinkedIn posts, and other forms of content highlighting the importance of having a strong B2B brand has increased dramatically over the past couple of years.

This growing interest in B2B brand building can be attributed to several factors. For one thing, many B2B marketers are finding that demand generation/performance marketing tactics that worked well only a few years ago have become less and less effective.

In addition, recent research studies by The B2B Institute, Bain & Company, Google, 6sense, and others have provided insights about the B2B buying process that make the value of a strong B2B brand abundantly clear.

Despite the increased attention on B2B brand building, many marketers are reporting that it's still difficult to win support from their CFO and CEO for increased investments in brand marketing programs.

In response to this challenge, several marketing pundits have published articles or guides advising marketing leaders on how to "sell" brand marketing to senior company leaders, particularly the CFO.

One of the better resources I've seen recently is "Selling brand marketing budgets to the CFO:  proof, not promises" by Wynter, a provider of B2B brand tracking and research software. This article describes five steps B2B marketing leaders should take to make their proposed brand marketing spending more likely to win support from their CFO.

Here are Wynter's five steps:

• Link brand investments to improved financial outcomes such as increased revenue, market share, and profit margin.

• Incorporate specific, quantifiable KPIs and targets in the budget proposal.

• Include competitive benchmarks whenever possible. What are your primary competitors spending on brand marketing? How does the health of your brand compare to that of your competitors?

• Make the risks of under-investing in brand explicit.

• Spell out when the proposed brand investments will produce results. In other words, provide a realistic ROI timeline that's supported by credible evidence.

I agree with these specific recommendations, but I have a couple of concerns about the section of the Wynter article that discusses "modeling brand ROI."

First, the article makes developing a credible, evidence-based quantitative model that shows the financial benefits of brand marketing appear to be simpler than it actually is.

And second, this portion of the article uses the term "brand ROI" in an overly broad way, which can make it more difficult for marketing leaders to win the support of their CFO for greater investment in brand marketing.

When You Say ROI . . . Mean ROI (The Sixth Step)

For years, many marketers have used "ROI" as a catch-all term to describe the value of a wide range of benefits produced by marketing activities, including brand marketing activities. Unfortunately, this practice has been perpetuated by marketing pundits and other industry participants who should know better.

Advocates of brand marketing forcefully argue that a strong brand produces several valuable benefits, including:

• Increased share of branded search (an indicator of brand awareness and possible purchase interest)

• Increased response and conversion rates from "performance marketing" programs

• Increased presence in "day-one consideration sets"

• Lower customer acquisition costs

• Increased market share

• Increased revenue (total revenue, not gross margin)

When some or all of these benefits are supported by credible evidence, marketing leaders should include them when discussing increased investment in brand marketing with their CFO. However, none of these benefits constitutes ROI.

Return on investment is a specific financial metric that has a well-established meaning among management and financial professionals. It's a ratio that compares the incremental financial gain from an investment (the "return") to the amount of the investment.

When marketing leaders use "ROI" to describe anything else, they can quickly lose credibility with their CFO, and probably with their CEO as well. If a marketing leader displays a fundamental misunderstanding of this basic financial metric, why should a CFO rely on any other financial estimates or projections the marketing leader provides?

The lesson here is clear:  If you're a marketing leader, you need to be careful to calculate and use financial metrics in ways that trained financial professionals (like CFOs) will see as proper. This will enhance your personal credibility with your CFO and make it more likely that he or she will support your proposed marketing plans.

Image courtesy of Limelight Leads via Flickr (CC).

Thought Leadership or Brand - Which Matters More to "Hidden Buyers"?

Edelman and LinkedIn recently published their 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, which was based on a survey of 1,934 management-level business professionals from a wide range of industries and company sizes. The survey was conducted March 17 - April 3, 2025.

The primary focus of this year's study was "hidden buyers" - people in the buying organization who influence a purchase decision even though they are not a primary user of the product or service being considered.

The 2025 report includes several survey findings for "hidden buyers" and "target buyers," defined as follows:

• Hidden Buyers - "People who . . . are a final decision-maker in group purchasing decisions and are primarily involved as a representative of a function that does not require in-depth knowledge of the specific product or service. These functions might include finance, operations, legal, compliance, procurement, and others."

• Target Buyers - "People who . . . are both a final decision-maker and are primarily involved as an expert in the service or product being offered."

Here are some of the major findings from the Edelman/LinkedIn report.

Consumption and Use of Thought Leadership

 Hidden buyers consume as much thought leadership content as target buyers. Sixty-three percent (63%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents said they spend an hour per week (on average) consuming thought leadership, compared to 64% of target buyer respondents.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents reported using thought leadership content to evaluate potential vendors, compared to 56% of target buyer respondents.

Impact on Marketing/Sales Interactions

Seventy-one percent (71%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents reported having little or no interaction with vendor sales reps. However, 95% said that strong thought leadership content made them more receptive to marketing and sales outreach from companies producing such content.

Attributes of Strong Thought Leadership

Ninety-one percent (91%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents said that a key attribute of high-quality thought leadership content is that it helps them uncover challenges, needs, or opportunities that they hadn't previously recognized.

Two Controversial Findings

The Edelman/LinkedIn report contains two somewhat controversial findings. In this study, the researchers asked participants to rate the importance of several considerations when selecting a vendor.

The following table shows the percentages of hidden buyer respondents who rated each consideration as very important or moderately important.

As this table shows, hidden buyer survey respondents rated "Vendor is the 'safest choice'" as less important than five other considerations.

The second controversial finding relates to the importance of brand. The researchers asked study participants how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement:  "In vetting vendors, if an organization produces high-quality thought leadership, it matters much less to me how well known they are." Fifty-three percent (53%) of both hidden buyer and target buyer survey respondents somewhat or strongly agreed with this statement.

The Alternative View

These two findings differ significantly from the results of other recent research. One example of this research is a recent study by The B2B Institute, Bain & Company, and NewtonX (the "B2B Institute Study").

(Note:  This study is described in a 2024 LinkedIn article written by Mimi Turner and Jann Schwarz, both with The B2B Institute. I understand The B2B Institute is planning to publish  a report or paper discussing this research later this year.)

The B2B Institute Study examined the attitudes and behaviors of hidden buyers and target buyers using definitions of those terms similar to those used in the Edelman/LinkedIn study. The study found that making a "safe" purchase decision is a primary driver for hidden buyers.

• Hidden buyers care more than target buyers about factors such as brand reliability and "peace of mind." (See the graphic accompanying "Finding #2" in the LinkedIn article.)

• About two-thirds of hidden buyers and target buyers said they would prefer products or services that "provide peace of mind without career advancement" over products or services that offer "business growth that involves potential career uncertainty."

The B2B Institute Study also found that a strong, well-known brand is important to both hidden buyers and target buyers, but is more influential with hidden buyers.

• Eighty-one percent (81%) of the study participants said the brand they ultimately bought was known to everyone or almost everyone in the buying group at the start of the purchase process.

• Hidden buyers are 31% more likely to reject brands they don't know and 70% more likely to reject brands that aren't well-known to other members of the buying group.

My Take

These two studies present starkly different perspectives regarding the tendency of B2B hidden buyers to make "safe" purchase decisions and the influence that brand has with hidden buyers.

I suggest that most of these differences can be attributed to differences in the focus and design of the underlying surveys. The B2B Institute Study focused on high-consideration, high-value technology purchases by large enterprises. Sixty-four percent (64%) of the survey respondents in this study were with companies having more than 10,000 employees.

The survey used in the Edelman/LinkedIn thought leadership study had very different survey demographics. In fact, 48% of those survey respondents were with companies having 200 or fewer employees.

Several other recent studies have highlighted the preference of most B2B buyers for safe purchase decisions and the important role that brand plays in B2B buying decisions.

Under these circumstances, I think the findings of the B2B Institute Study provide a more accurate picture of real-world B2B buying.

Top image courtesy of Hans Splinter via Flickr (CC).