[Book Review] How to Build the Strategic Human Relationships that Drive B2B Growth

Source:  Kogan Page

An old business adage states, "People buy from people." Other versions of the adage include:  "People buy from people they like" and "People buy from people they trust."

Whatever version, the adage makes the point that human relationships are vital to business success, just as much in B2B as in B2C.

This is the central theme of a new book by Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan. In Building B2B Relationships:  How to identify, map and develop key relationships to win more business (Kogan Page, 2025), Dr. O'Sullivan presents a compelling argument for the importance of high-quality person-to-person relationships in B2B, and he provides a detailed process for building such relationships intentionally and strategically.

Ryan O'Sullivan is a senior business executive, board member, business advisor, and university guest lecturer. He is currently a Global Account Manager at Introhive, a relationship intelligence and mapping company. Previously, he was a Regional Head (EMEA) at Infosys, a global IT services firm. Dr. O'Sullivan earned his PhD from the University of Portsmouth in 2022.

What's In the Book

Building B2B Relationships is structured in three parts.

Part 1 (Chapters 1-3)

In this part, Dr. O'Sullivan explains what trusted relationships are and why they matter in business. He also discusses the three attributes that are necessary to create trust - ability, integrity, and benevolence - and he describes how trust forms between organizations. Lastly, he introduces relationship mapping and explains why it's important.

Dr. O'Sullivan clearly states his view on the importance of relationships when he writes:

"It is my view, based on many years of experience, that strong relationships lie at the heart of successful B2B interactions. In a world where there is access to so much data and information, it is becoming harder and harder for many suppliers to offer a truly unique, differentiated product. Relationships are by definition bespoke and personal (even though of course they are often built in a business context), and thus continue to present the supplier with the opportunity to offer something different from their competition."

Dr. O'Sullivan also makes it clear that his book is focused on the importance of leveraging existing relationships. He writes:

"So, while there are many people out there today who can advise you on cold outreach strategies, this book takes a very different tack. It is focused on strategies to leverage your existing relationship network and will help to open your peripheral vision beyond what you might consider to be 'your network.'"

Part 2 (Chapters 4-6)

Part 2 of Building B2B Relationships describes Dr. O'Sullivan's three-step process for mapping relationships for business purposes, and he provides a simple but persuasive argument for each step.

• Step 1 is the initial identification and mapping of key stakeholders (". . . if you don't know who the key people are, how can you influence them?")

• Step 2 consists of research and intelligence gathering about the priorities of key stakeholders and other relevant factors (". . . if you know who they are but don't know what is important to them, why will they give you their time?")

• Step 3 involves the development of a detailed strategy for engaging the key stakeholders (". . . if you know who they are, and you know what is important to them, who is the best person to engage, through what channel, and with what message?")

Part 3 (Chapters 7-10)

Throughout Building B2B Relationships, Dr. O'Sullivan focuses on three specific use cases for relationship mapping - winning key deals, managing key projects, and managing key accounts.

In Part 3 of the book, he devotes a separate chapter to each of these use cases, and he concludes the book with a chapter discussing how to implement relationship mapping and how to take it to the next level.

My Take

Astute businesspeople intuitively understand the importance of creating and sustaining good customer relationships. But despite this recognition, relationship management doesn't always get as much attention as it deserves.

Many of us tend to think that strong customer relationships will naturally develop if we do the rest of our jobs well. We don't usually treat relationship management as a distinct "thing" that, in some circumstances at least, calls for a distinct, intentional strategy.

Building B2B Relationships provides a detailed roadmap for developing and executing an intentional relationship management strategy. As noted earlier, the book focuses on three use cases - winning key deals, managing key projects, and managing key accounts.

What these use cases have in common is that they are strategically important and can have a significant impact on a company's financial performance. Dr. O'Sullivan's relationship mapping process is clearly best suited for these kinds of game-changing scenarios.

Building B2B Relationships is well-written, but it often reads a little like an instruction manual. This is not a criticism of the author's writing style; it's simply a reflection of the book's subject matter.

Dr. O'Sullivan includes four case studies in the book, which help readers better understand how his relationship mapping process works in the real world. More case studies would have made the book even better.

Building B2B Relationships will be a valuable resource for anyone in a customer-facing role at a B2B company. The book will be particularly valuable for anyone involved in developing or managing a strategic account-based marketing or key account management program. If you're in such a role, you should put Building B2B Relationships on your reading list.

Cracking the Code on Strategic ABM Success

 The Story of ABM

Over the past two-plus decades, account-based marketing (ABM) has evolved from a niche marketing discipline used mainly by large IT services firms to become a core component of marketing at many B2B companies.

The Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) (now part of Momentum) coined the term "account-based marketing" in 2003, and ABM soon became a central focus of its research and consulting.

ITSMA defines account-based marketing as ". . . a strategic approach to designing and executing highly-targeted and personalized marketing programs to drive business growth and impact with specific, named accounts." [Source]

The popularity of account-based marketing has grown dramatically because B2B marketers perceive that ABM is highly effective. In the 2023 Global State of Account-Based Marketing survey by ITSMA and ABM Leadership Alliance, 81% of the respondents said ABM programs deliver a higher return on investment than "traditional marketing initiatives."

As originally conceived, ABM was viewed as a special approach to marketing that would be used with a company's most valuable customers. Within a few years, however, the successes achieved by early ABM adopters prompted marketers to look for ways to scale account-based marketing so that it could be cost-effectively used with a broader range of accounts.

In its 2016 Account-Based Marketing Benchmarking Survey, ITSMA documented the rise of three distinct types of ABM - strategic ABM (a/k/a one-to-one ABM), ABM Lite (a/k/a one-to-few ABM), and programmatic ABM (a/k/a one-to-many ABM).

This three-part framework has become the standard way to describe account-based marketing, but the reality today is that one-to-few and one-to-many ABM aren't materially different from state-of-the-art conventional outbound B2B demand generation marketing.

This is not true for strategic ABM, which embodies a very different marketing approach. With strategic ABM, marketing activities and programs are components of a multi-faceted management plan for a single customer account, and they are customized for that account.

Strategic ABM Still Rules

While one-to-few and one-to-many ABM have broadened the reach of account-based marketing, the linchpin of any successful ABM initiative is still strategic ABM.

Strategic ABM remains the most widely-used type of account-based marketing, and most ABM thought leaders and practitioners agree that strategic ABM - if done well - will generate a higher ROI than one-to-few or one-to-many ABM. Put simply, it's hard to have a high-performing ABM program if don't master strategic ABM.

The functional centerpiece of a successful strategic ABM initiative is the account management plan. With strategic ABM, a separate plan is developed for each account in the initiative. This is the first distinguishing characteristic of strategic ABM. It's truly one-to-one.

An effective strategic ABM account plan is also distinguished by the process used to develop it and the content it contains.

Developing the Plan(s)

Strategic ABM is often implemented in companies that already have a key account management (KAM) program. Key account programs have existed in some large B2B companies since the late 1950s. Early KAM programs were usually led by a sales executive, and their primary focus was managing sales opportunities.

The discipline of key account management has evolved substantially over the past six decades. Many companies now have well-developed KAM programs that are designed and executed by cross-functional account teams, and led by dedicated, senior-level account managers.

Today, the best KAM programs are focused on identifying longer-term growth opportunities in the account and maintaining the long-term health of the customer relationship, as well as on shorter-term sales opportunities.

In these circumstances, strategic ABM is essentially synonymous with key account management. A marketer becomes a member of the account management teams (usually no more than 5) and brings marketing expertise to the formulation of the account management plans. ABM activities are fully integrated into the account management plan so that the company has a single, cohesive strategy and plan for each key account.

Content of the Plan(s)

An effective strategic ABM/KAM account management plan is essentially a full-fledged business plan that is focused on an individual customer. The objective of the account planning process is to formulate a strategy and set of actions that will (a) protect the current revenue you are earning from the customer, and (b) enable you to grow the revenue you earn from the customer.

I used the term "business plan" intentionally because an effective strategic ABM/KAM plan is similar to the kind of business plan you would develop for any strategic move, such as the introduction of a new product or service, or an adjacent market expansion.

You can easily find dozens of business plan templates by performing a simple Google search. The framework that I've found works well for an account management plan contains six major components.

Customer Description

The objective of this portion of the plan is to provide a comprehensive picture of the customer's business operations, competitive position, organizational structure, and financial performance.

This portion of the plan should describe:

• The market(s) the customer serves and the economic attractiveness and growth potential of those markets
• The products and/or services the customer offers
• The types of individuals and/or organizations the customer primarily serves
• The customer's principal competitors
• The customer's current and recent financial performance
• The customer's business strategy and strategic priorities
• Any recent or planned structural changes (expansions or contractions)
• The customer's senior leadership team

If the customer is a public company, much of this information, including financial performance data, can be obtained from the customer's regulatory filings. If the customer is privately owned, financial data can be more challenging to obtain.

A mindset that I've found useful when preparing this portion of an account plan is to imagine that you are a stock analyst who is preparing an evaluation of the customer for investment purposes.

Current Relationship

This portion of the plan is where you describe your current position with the customer. What products and/or services do you sell to the customer? How long have you been doing business with the customer? How has the revenue you earn from the customer changed over the past 2-3 years? Who are your principal competitors for the customer's business? How strong is your current relationship with the customer? Most importantly, what "share of wallet" are you currently earning from the customer?

Relationship Objectives

This portion of the plan details your objectives for the relationship with the customer. Most of these objectives will be about increasing the revenue you earn from the customer, and those objectives are usually best expressed in terms of increasing the share of customer spend you earn in relevant areas.

You may also want to include more "operational" objectives. For example, if the customer has several business units and you are currently doing business with only some of those business units, you may have an objective to win business from a new business unit.

Threats/Barriers to Success

This is where you identify the events or circumstances that could throw a wrench into your plan. Obviously, you can't foresee every possible threat or barrier, but if you have deep customer insights and a realistic picture of your company's capabilities, you can identify many of the plausible events or circumstances that could derail your success.

Measurable Outcomes and Milestones

Every account management plan should include specific outcomes that are quantitatively measurable. Obviously, these outcomes will include your ultimate relationship objectives. For example:  "Increase the revenue we earn from XXX by 15% in our next fiscal year." You should also include measurable outcomes that are milestones or leading indicators of progress toward your ultimate objectives.

Action Plan

This portion of the account plan details the actions you will take to achieve your relationship objectives. Your account plan should identify who is responsible for each action and specify a target completion date. This level of detail will enable the members of your account management team to organize their work, hold each other accountable, and track progress toward success.

Final Thoughts

It should be clear that developing this type of account business plan isn't a trivial undertaking. It requires a significant amount of time and effort, especially the first time it's done for a customer. That's why strategic ABM/KAM initiatives should be reserved for your most valuable customers.

The deep customer insights and level of focus resulting from the account planning process also go a long way to explaining why well-designed and executed strategic ABM/KAM programs deliver outstanding value and ROI.

Image courtesy of emiliokuffer via Flickr (CC).

[Research Round-Up] Two Surveys Take the Pulse of Senior Marketers

(This month's Research Round-Up features two recent surveys that examine the attitudes and plans of senior marketing leaders. While both surveys included B2B and B2C respondents, they provide several interesting insights particular to B2B marketing leaders.)

"2024 Global CMO Navigator - CX Edition" by Merkle (a dentsu company) 

Source:  Merkle

• A survey of 1,934 chief marketing officers from 13 countries (22% from the United States)
• Respondents represented more than 14 industry verticals
• 65% of the respondents worked at hybrid B2B/B2C companies, 19% were with B2C companies, and 16% were with B2B companies
• More than half of the respondents (54%) were with companies having at least 250 employees
• The survey was conducted in August 2024

The Merkle survey was designed to capture the attitudes and plans of global CMOs regarding several topics. One group of questions addressed economic and business conditions, and the surveyed CMOs were optimistic about both. For example:

• 88% of the respondents said the economy is in good or excellent shape

• 86% expected the economy to get somewhat or significantly better over the 6-12 months following the survey

• 87% said their company's revenue had increased compared to the previous year

• 89% expected their market budget to increase in the year following the survey

When the researchers asked survey participants what business results they are primarily responsible for as marketers, the top two results identified by the respondents were customer satisfaction and advocacy (54% of respondents) and growth of customer base (53%).

CMOs at B2B companies were 17% more likely than the average to say they are accountable for growing the customer base. B2B CMOs were also 6% more likely than the average to say they are accountable for median and long-term brand health.

The survey also asked participants what they expect the primary role(s) of the marketing function to be over the following 12 months. The top two roles identified by the survey respondents were understanding consumer/market trends (38% of respondents) and delivering business growth (36%).

B2B CMOs were 8% more likely than the average to identify delivering business growth as a primary role and 20% more likely than average to identify ensuring effective brand management as a primary role.

These findings are particularly interesting given that B2C marketers are usually seen as more focused on branding than B2B marketers.

Fall 2024 Edition of "The CMO Survey"

Source:  "The CMO Survey"

• A survey of 260 marketing leaders at U.S. for-profit companies
• 97.2% of the respondents were VP-level or above
• 58.3% of the respondents were with B2B companies
• The survey was in the field September 4-25, 2024

"The CMO Survey" has been conducted semi-annually since 2008. It's directed by Dr. Christine Moorman and sponsored by Deloitte LLP, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and the American Marketing Association.

For several years, each edition of the survey has asked participants about overall economic conditions, current marketing spending patterns, and future spending expectations. Here are some of the findings on these topics from the Fall 2024 survey.

Economic Outlook

The Fall 2024 survey found that marketing leaders were somewhat less optimistic about the economy than a year earlier. The survey asked participants to rate their optimism regarding the overall U.S. economy on a 100-point scale, with "0" being the least optimistic, and "100" being the most optimistic. The mean rating given by respondents was 63.8, down slightly from 66.7 in the Fall 2023 survey.

The survey also asked if participants were more or less optimistic about the U.S. economy compared to the previous quarter, and 37.0% of the respondents reported being more optimistic. That was down significantly from 49.0% in the Fall 2023 survey.

Marketing Spending

In the Fall 2024 survey, respondents reported that marketing spending represented 7.7% of total company revenue, which was down from 9.2% in the Fall 2023 survey.

Respondents also said that marketing spending increased 5.8% over the 12 months preceding the survey, and they expected spending to increase 8.6% over the 12 months following the survey. In the Fall 2023 survey, respondents expected marketing spending to grow 7.2% over the following 12 months, which shows that forward-looking expectations aren't always accurate.

The relative change in spending on digital marketing vs. traditional advertising remains significant. In the Fall 2024 survey, respondents reported that spending on digital marketing grew 11.1% over the prior 12 months. In contrast, respondents said they expect spending on traditional advertising to increase by only 0.8% over the 12 months following the survey.

An Emphasis on Brand Building

The survey also asked participants how much they expected their marketing spending to change over the following 12 months in five specific areas. The fastest-growing areas identified by respondents were marketing activities relating to new product introductions (8.1% expected growth) followed by brand building (7.0% expected growth).

One notable finding is that B2B marketers expect spending on brand building to grow at a faster rate than B2C marketers. Respondents with B2B product companies expected spending on brand building to grow 9.5%, and respondents with B2B services companies expected 6.2% growth. This compares to expected growth of 5.7% at B2C product companies and 4.8% at B2C services companies.

These findings suggest that B2B marketers are recognizing the importance of building strong brands.

The Recipe for Content That Creates Mental Availability

 

Key Takeaways

• If your company isn't in a potential buyer's initial consideration set, your odds of making a sale are no greater than 17%.*

• To improve your chances of being included in buyers' initial consideration sets, you must increase your company's mental availability with prospective buyers.

• Boosting mental availability requires marketing messaging and content that links your company to buyer needs and is memorable and easy to consume.

Why Initial Consideration Sets Matter

Creating an initial consideration set is an integral part of most B2B buying decisions, but most popular models of the B2B buying process ignore this pivotal step.

When a business person perceives a need to address an issue that may require a purchase, about 80% of potential buyers will create a mental list of companies they feel are worth considering before they do any research. And 90% of those buyers who purchase will ultimately buy from a company in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)

A potential buyer's initial consideration set is based on mental impressions that he or she has formed through touchpoints such as previous experience with a company, marketing messages, news reports, and conversations with colleagues and friends.

So, the perceptions that determine which companies will be included in the initial consideration set exist in the buyer's mind before he or she starts an active buying process.

What Is Mental Availability?

To increase the odds that your company will be included in your buyers' initial consideration sets, you must reach those buyers with the right messaging and content before they become active, in-market buyers.

More specifically, your objective is to increase your company's mental availability with your potential buyers.

The mental availability concept has been popularized by Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In his landmark book, How Brands Grow, Sharp provided a simple definition of mental availability:  "Mental availability/brand salience is the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations."

Mental availability is different from general brand awareness. It describes the likelihood that a potential buyer will think of your company in the context of a specific buying situation.

Many marketing thought leaders argue that effective brand marketing is the key to creating mental availability. While this is generally true, it doesn't provide specific guidance about what kinds of messages and content will be effective for increasing mental availability.

Messaging and content must meet three requirements to boost mental availability.

Link Content to Buyer Needs

First, the messaging and content must clearly link your company to specific buyer needs. As noted earlier, when a potential buyer perceives a need that may require a purchase, the buyer will create an initial consideration set of companies that he or she believes may be able to address the need.

The initial consideration set will include companies the potential buyer mentally associates with the specific need he or she is experiencing. It's these associations that create mental availability. Therefore, your job is to build and refresh the memory structures that connect your company to the specific needs your potential buyers are most likely to experience.

You can't predict what specific need will prompt a particular buyer to move into the market. Therefore, to increase mental availability, you need to build and refresh memory links that will connect your company to all the important buyer needs your company can address.

With broader mental availability, you increase the likelihood that your company will be included in the initial consideration sets of a larger number of potential buyers.

Make Content Memorable

Marketing messaging and content must also be memorable to increase mental availability. When your goal is to boost mental availability, most of the potential buyers you are targeting won't be ready to begin a buying process.

You communicate with those potential buyers at a given point in time, and you hope they will remember your message at a future point in time when they perceive a need and are ready to start a serious buying process.

As discussed earlier, your messaging and content must clearly link your company to the needs your potential buyers are likely to experience, but how you express those associations is critical to making your messaging and content memorable. 

In B2B, we tend to describe the benefits of doing business with our company in rational, "businesslike" terms - and sometimes in technical, quantitative, or economic terms.

To make your messaging and content more memorable, you need to capture in a visceral way what a potential buyer with a particular problem is experiencing, and you need to describe how your company can make that problem "go away."

Make Content Easy to Consume

The third important requirement for content that will effectively increase mental availability is that it must be easy to consume. By "easy to consume," I mean that the content doesn't require potential buyers to expend much cognitive energy.

This attribute is important because most members of your target audience are not actively engaged in a buying process and therefore won't be inclined to spend much time and effort consuming content that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.

As a practical matter, this means that most mental availability messages and content should be relatively short. That's why the 30-second or one-minute TV ad has been a staple of brand marketing for decades.

In B2B, we have the leeway to use somewhat longer content to build mental availability because most business people believe that keeping current on industry trends and innovative business practices is important for their career progression. Therefore, many business people will be willing to invest more time and effort to consume content if it's relevant to their work or career objectives.

The Bottom Line

If you want to drive revenue growth, you need to get your company into the initial consideration sets of more potential buyers. To accomplish this goal, you must boost your company's mental availability with potential buyers, and that requires the right kind of marketing messaging and content.

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*Research has shown that between 40% and 60% of prospective B2B deals do not result in a purchase. (Dixon and McKenna, 2022) Research has also found that about 80% of B2B buyers have a set of prospective vendors in mind before they do any research. And 90% of those buyers ultimately buy from a vendor in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)

Let's be optimistic and say that only 40% of prospective deals do not result in a purchase. Of the 60% that do result in a purchase, 48% of the prospects will create an initial consideration set (60% x 80%), and 43% will ultimately buy from a company in the initial consideration set (48% x 90%). That leaves only 17% of prospects that will buy from a company that was not in the initial consideration set. (60% - 43%).

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Image courtesy of Affen Ajlfe (www.modup.net) via Flickr (PD).

[Book Review] A First-Rate Guide to Optimizing the Value and Performance of Content

Source:  Content Science

Effective content has become critical to business success, as companies have faced successive waves of disruptive digital technologies. Therefore, the planning, creation, and management of content needs to be a core business competency.

This is the central message of Colleen Jones' new book, The Content Advantage, Third Edition:  Succeed at Digital Business With Effective Content (Content Science Publications, 2024).

The Content Advantage provides a detailed, evidence-based roadmap that business leaders and their teams can use to formulate a compelling content vision and strategy, design and implement efficient content operations, and optimize the performance of their organization's content.

Colleen Jones can speak with authority about content-related topics. She is the founder and president of Content Science, a professional services firm that works with companies in diverse industries to successfully implement content-dependent initiatives such as AI-enabled digital transformation, marketing automation and content technology selection and implementation, and customer experience improvement.

Before founding Content Science, Jones served as the fractional head of content and Mailchimp, and she has also led teams at Cingular Wireless and AT&T to improve customer experience across various touchpoints.

What's In the Book

The Content Advantage is about planning, creating, and managing all forms of content, or at least all forms of customer-facing content. It's not a book that focuses on content marketing per se, nor does it focus on specific types of functional content - e.g. marketing content, sales content, or customer success content.

Colleen Jones forcefully argues that content needs to be a core business competency and that content management should be a distinct business function.

Jones makes her views on this subject absolutely clear when she writes:

"This point bears repeating:  every company will need content as a core competency. And that competency will frequently cut across business functions . . . I now believe strongly in content as its own competency and that, at ideal maturity, it does not belong in other competencies or functions. Content is not design. Content is not marketing. Content is not product. Content is not information technology or engineering. Content is not support. Content is not public or media relations. Content is important to such competencies and functions, but content ultimately belongs in content." (Emphasis in original)

The topics covered in The Content Advantage will be familiar to readers with extensive content experience, but Jones brings a fresh perspective to many of these topics. Here's a brief overview of the major topics covered in the book.

Chapters 1-2 - How digital technologies are continually changing the requirements for business success, why many traditional approaches to content don't work, and why effective content is essential if a company wants to survive and thrive in a digital world.

Chapters 3-5 - Why having a vision for your content is important, and how to construct a compelling content vision and effective content strategies and tactics.

Chapters 6-7 - Understanding and leveraging the five dimensions of content effectiveness, and how to use principles of rhetoric and psychology to make your content more influential.

Chapters 8-9 - Why "content intelligence" is important, how to set up a content intelligence system, and how to use your content intelligence system effectively.

Chapters 10-11 - How to model the maturity of your content operations, and how to take your content operations to the next level.

Chapters 12-13 - What a "content system" is, why content systems matter, the three content systems that are critical for all companies, and how to successfully start an end-to-end ("E2E") content initiative.

Chapter 14 - An overview of the types of artificial intelligence, and a review of the important issues to consider when incorporating AI into your content operations.

My Take

The Content Advantage is an excellent book that will be a valuable resource for anyone involved in planning, creating, or managing content for their company.

Colleen Jones speaks authoritatively about content, and the book includes several graphics and tables that contain findings from research conducted by her firm, Content Science.

The book is well-organized and clearly written. It isn't exactly "light reading," but Jones' writing style makes the material approachable and easy to understand. She also includes several real-world examples in the book, which makes the material more engaging and relatable.

Jones makes a strong argument for placing content management in a separate organizational function with dedicated leadership and resources. However, this approach will create some challenges.

The most significant challenge is determining how the relationships between the "content department" and other functional business units will be structured and managed. For example, how can company leaders ensure that their content strategy is aligned with their marketing strategy? Who ultimately decides what types of content will be developed, and what messaging will be embodied in those content assets?

These types of issues are critically important, and they aren't easy to resolve. If anything, this reveals the vital role that content plays in business success. And that is the core message of The Content Advantage.

Why We Need a New Model of B2B Marketing

The marketing model currently used by most B2B companies has significant flaws, and most of the tactics used to improve B2B marketing performance have been only modestly successful. What's really needed is a different paradigm of B2B marketing, one that is grounded in a clear, evidence-based understanding of how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

Embracing a new marketing model will be difficult for some B2B marketers. To understand why, consider the following thought experiment.

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Suppose you've recently been hired to be the CMO of a B2B company, and you've been tasked to reinvigorate the company's marketing efforts. Through market research, you've identified several attributes of the potential buyers in your company's target market.

• Most of your company's potential buyers are not actively evaluating products or services like your company offers at any given time.

• A trigger of some kind is almost always required to motivate the potential buyers to begin a buying process. In this context, a trigger is an event that causes a potential buyer to feel a need or desire to fix a problem or seize an opportunity.

• Except in rare cases, marketing messages or content alone will not cause potential buyers to begin a buying process.

• When a trigger event occurs, most of your company's potential buyers quickly create a mental list of companies, products, or services that they believe are worth considering, i.e. an initial consideration set.

• This initial consideration set is created before most potential buyers have conducted any research and is based on the mental impressions they've formed from a variety of touchpoints, such as their past experiences with companies, products or services, marketing messages, news reports, and conversations with colleagues and friends.

• Almost all of your company's potential buyers make almost all of their purchases from companies that were in their initial consideration set.

Given these buyer attributes, what marketing strategy would you use?

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The buyer decision-making attributes described in this thought experiment make two strategic decisions rather clear. First, it would make no sense to emphasize marketing programs designed to persuade potential buyers to initiate a buying process because such programs would be largely ineffective.

Second, it's clear that a primary focus of your marketing strategy should be to increase the likelihood that your company will be included in the initial consideration sets of as many potential buyers as possible because that greatly increases your odds of success.

These strategies differ significantly from what most B2B companies are currently doing. Today, most spend a lot of money on marketing programs designed to entice potential buyers to start a buying process, while they spend far less on programs to get their company into buyer initial consideration sets.

This disconnect is important because research has shown that the buyer decision-making patterns used in our thought experiment accurately describe how many business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

What Really Triggers a Buying Process?

For example, in a 2021 survey of business decision-makers by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International, researchers asked survey participants what kinds of events triggered their decision to search for a new vendor/solution provider. The following table shows the percentage of respondents who selected each of 12 trigger events.

These survey results illustrate that a wide variety of events can trigger a B2B buying process, but they also show that events involving the consumption of marketing/sales/news content (shown in red in the table) won't be sufficient to trigger a buying process in most cases.

Why Being On the "Day-One List" Matters

Research has also confirmed the importance of being included in a potential buyer's initial consideration set.

In 2022, Bain & Co. and Goggle surveyed 1,208 people at U.S. companies who had been involved in buying several kinds of business products and services. From 80% to 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research. And 90% of those respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor that was on their day-one list.

The military concept of "decisive point" is a good analogy for the role and importance of the initial consideration set. A decisive point in a military operation is "a geographic place, key event, critical factor, or function that, when acted on, allows commanders to gain a marked advantage over an adversary on contribute materially to achieving success." [Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Operation Planning (Washington, D.C.:  U.S. GPO, 2011), GL-8.]

Being included in a potential buyer's initial consideration set is a decisive point in B2B marketing because companies that are in the initial consideration set have a significant advantage over those that aren't.

Two Critical Changes

The findings of these research studies (and others) make it clear that we need to change some long-standing and widely-held beliefs about how B2B marketing can effectively drive strategic business outcomes.

First, we need to recognize that marketing's ability to persuade potential buyers to begin a serious buying process is limited at best.

And second, we need to focus more of our efforts on ensuring that our company is included in our potential buyers' initial consideration sets. After all, you've got to be invited to the party before you can be asked to dance.

Top image courtesy of R/DV/RS via Flickr (CC).

Looking Back, Looking Forward - 2025 Edition

Source:  Shutterstock

The beginning of a new year is what behavioral scientists call a temporal landmark, a date that is more meaningful than others. Temporal landmarks often prompt us to make significant life changes or commit to pursuing new goals. 

If you doubt the power of temporal landmarks, just consider how often we make "New Year's resolutions" to lose weight or begin a regular exercise program.

Like many marketers, I used the final few weeks of 2024 to reflect on what happened during the year and plan for 2025. My objective for this blog has always been to provide information and insights that are timely, thought-provoking, and useful. To achieve this goal, the content of this blog needs to evolve to account for the always-changing landscape of B2B marketing.

Another Year Dominated By AI

Artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI, was the hottest topic in marketing in 2024, as it had been in 2023. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022 triggered an arm's race among technology companies to develop generative AI capabilities.

Spending on AI exploded in 2023 and continued at a blistering pace last year. In a November Forbes article, Beth Kindig, the CEO and Lead Tech Analyst of I/O Fund, wrote that AI-driven capital spending by four tech industry behemoths - Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon - will total about $240 billion in 2024, an increase of more than 50% compared to 2023.

Ms. Kindig's article also noted that AI-related capital spending will likely continue at these nosebleed levels into 2025 as the big tech companies build out AI infrastructure to meet demand that currently exceeds supply.

The capabilities of the large language models that power generative AI also improved exponentially in 2024. For a great overview of these technological advances, I recommend you watch this video by Christopher Penn, the Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights.

Generative AI is already having an impact on many aspects of business including marketing, even though we are still in the fairly early stages of AI adoption. AI will have an even greater impact on marketing this year as more AI-enabled software applications become available, the adoption of AI increases, and marketers become more adept at leveraging AI's capabilities.

How This Blog Will Change in 2025

I plan to make a few changes in my approach to this blog in 2025. Most of these changes are based on my decision to apply greater selectivity to the content I publish here. This means I will probably publish fewer posts in 2025 than in previous years.

Since 2023, I've published three types of posts here - research round-ups, book reviews, and general information/opinion posts. Here's what I'm planning for each of these types of posts in 2025.

Research Round-Ups

These posts typically include brief descriptions of two to four research studies. In 2024, my three most popular posts were research round-ups.

Most of the generally available research about B2B marketing consists of surveys of marketers. While this kind of research can be useful, research that focuses on the thinking and behaviors of business buyers is even more valuable.

This year, I'll be looking for surveys of business buyers, and I'll also be looking for studies based on research methodologies other than surveys, such as the study I discussed in my most popular post of 2024.

Book Reviews

I published eight book reviews in 2024, and while no book reviews made the 2024 "top 10" list, I believe books remain an important knowledge resource for marketers. I'll continue to publish book reviews this year, but I plan to be more selective when choosing books to review. Therefore, I'll probably publish fewer book reviews in 2025 than in 2024.

General Information/Opinion Posts

In January 2023, I published a post that made the following argument:

"Marketing success in 2023 and beyond will depend on marketers' ability to leverage the capabilities of technology and data science and to effectively apply the principles of behavioral science that describe how people make decisions. These two distinct, but complementary, abilities now constitute the yin and yang of high-performance marketing."

This argument is even more true today than it was two years ago. The smart use of artificial intelligence has the potential to drive remarkable gains in marketing productivity, but those gains won't be realized unless marketers also design and implement strategies that reflect how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

I've published several posts discussing the cognitive aspects of B2B buying over the past few years, and I'll continue to address those topics in 2025.

Leveraging behavioral science principles in marketing is necessary, but some marketers believe more is needed. A relatively small but growing cadre of B2B marketers are arguing that the current paradigm of B2B marketing is out-of-step with how most B2B buying decisions are actually made.

These marketers contend that we need a fundamentally different approach to B2B marketing, one that is grounded in an accurate understanding of real-world market dynamics and buyer decision-making.

I largely agree with this point of view so I'll be discussing this topic in several posts over the next few months.

Here's to a year of successful marketing in 2025!