Why Strategy Should Always Come Before Planning

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (King James Version)

The fourth quarter of 2026 will begin in four days, which means that many business leaders are already engaged or will soon be engaged in planning for 2027. Over the next several weeks, they will be evaluating how well their business performed this year and looking for ways to improve performance next year.

This annual ritual is usually called strategic planning, and the output of the process (in larger companies at least) is often a lengthy document that describes what company leaders want to accomplish in the coming year and what actions they intend to take.

Unfortunately, many business leaders confuse planning with strategy. They assume that the development of a "strategic" plan is equivalent to the formulation of a strategy.

In reality, formulating a strategy and developing plans are fundamentally different tasks. They require leaders to address different issues and, more importantly, they demand different types of thinking.

The Differences Between Strategy and Plans

In June 2022, Harvard Business Review published the following video featuring Roger L. Martin, the co-author of Playing to Win:  How Strategy Really Works, and one of today's leading authorities on strategy:

In this video, Martin discusses several important differences between strategy and plans.

As of a couple of days ago, the video had been viewed more than 6.7 million times, which almost certainly makes it one of the most widely viewed videos about business strategy ever published. If you haven't already seen the video, I strongly recommend you watch it, particularly if you're about to start your planning for next year.

Strategy and Planning Are Both Needed

While it's important to understand how strategy and planning differ, it's equally important to recognize that both are critical to business success.

A strategy is the result of making several closely-related choices that are intended to enable a company to establish competitive advantage.

To create a strategy, business leaders must choose where their company will compete (in what product or service categories, for what type(s) of customers, in what geographies, etc.), and they must describe how they believe their company can create value for their target customers that is superior to the value offered by competitors. Then, they need to identify the capabilities their company will need to be successful with their "where to compete" and "how to win" choices.

The strategy development process will usually reveal that a company needs to develop new capabilities or improve existing ones to enhance their odds of achieving success with their chosen strategy. This realization will cause business leaders to launch a set of initiatives or projects to develop or improve the necessary capabilities.

It's at this point that planning becomes critically important. Thorough planning enables company leaders and managers to effectively manage initiatives and projects by establishing clear objectives, timelines, and responsibilities for each initiative and by committing adequate resources (people, budget, etc.) to each project.

So, business success requires both a sound, market-informed strategy and thorough planning, but these management techniques must be used in the right sequence. Strategy formulation should always precede planning because every plan developed should be based on, and designed to support, the choices that define the company's strategy.

For example, a company's strategy will embody choices about what types of customers the company will seek to serve and how the company will create value for its target customers. It's impossible to develop a sensible marketing plan until those strategic choices have been made.

Having a strategy in place makes planning easier because the strategy provides guidance and "guardrails" for the planning process. The content of the strategy enables company leaders to identify the initiatives or projects that are necessary for the strategy to work and therefore are most likely to produce the desired outcomes.

To riff on a quotation usually attributed (probably incorrectly) to Sun Tzu:  "Strategy without planning is the slowest route to victory. Planning without strategy is the noise before defeat."

[Research Round-Up] Thought-Provoking Insights on the State of the CMO

Source:  Lippincott and Bloomberg Media

(This month's Research Round-Up features the CMO Outlook 2026 survey by Lippincott and Bloomberg Media. This research examines several important marketing issues from a unique perspective, and this approach makes the 100-page report well worth reading.)

Lippincott and Bloomberg Media recently published the results of their "CMO Outlook 2026" survey. The objectives of this study were to identify the major challenges today's CMOs are facing, and to "help marketers see their challenges differently."

The researchers contend that, while most CMOs face similar high-level challenges, the shape of the challenges faced by an individual CMO and how he or she responds to those challenges are largely determined by the organizational context in which the CMO is working.

About the Survey

The CMO Outlook 2026 survey produced 541 responses from CMOs or equivalent senior marketing leaders. Seventy-one percent (71%) of the respondents identified themselves as the "primary and senior-most marketing decision-maker" in their organization, while 29% said they were "amongst the senior-most marketing decision-makers" in their organization.

Thirty-three percent (33%) of the survey respondents were from the United States and Canada, and the balance were from Europe (22%), Asia-Pacific (22%), Latin America (20%), and the Middle East (2%).

The survey was conducted by NewtonX, an independent B2B market research firm.

Four Types of CMOs

What separates the Lippincott/Bloomberg study from others on similar topics is its focus on how the organizational context in which a CMO works affects the particular challenges they face and the actions they take to respond to those challenges.

The researchers identified four distinct cohorts of CMOs. Two of those cohorts consist of CMOs who are "organizationally empowered," and the other two cohorts include CMOs who are "organizationally constrained."

Organizationally empowered CMOs are those working in organizations where the value of marketing  is understood and recognized by the CEO and other senior leaders, and where the CMO can influence the strategic direction of the organization.

Organizationally constrained CMOs are those working in organizations where the strategic value of marketing is not widely recognized, and where marketing is generally viewed as a support function.

The researchers identified two types of organizationally empowered CMOs - Transformation Leaders and Revenue Drivers.

• Transformation Leaders - "Transformation Leaders are future-oriented marketers focused on transformation at scale, AI adoption, and long-term capability building . . . these CMOs tend to hold significant strategic authority within their companies and see marketing as a driver of broader business direction."

• Revenue Drivers - "Revenue Drivers are commercially oriented operators focused on measurable growth, demand generation, and business accountability . . . these CMOs have earned organizational trust by speaking the language of performance:  Revenue, pipeline, and attributable impact. They . . . excel at balancing immediate business pressures with longer-term growth mandates."

The researchers also identified two types of organizationally constrained CMOs - Credibility Builders and Institutional Navigators.

• Credibility Builders - "Credibility Builders are marketers fighting to establish credibility and strategic standing within their organizations. More likely to be . . . in organizations where marketing is viewed primarily as sales enablement, these CMOs spend a disproportionate amount of time proving marketing's value internally."

• Institutional Navigators - "These CMOs often hold respected positions within the business, yet operate in environments slowed by fragmented decision-making, excessive approvals, and rigid structures . . . they are not fighting to earn a seat at the table; they are fighting to make the table move."

Unfortunately, the study report does not indicate the percentage of survey respondents who fall into each of these four CMO cohorts or what criteria were used to place each respondent in the appropriate cohort.

Other Findings

The Lippincott/Bloomberg study also addresses a range of other important issues. For example, the study report identifies five primary challenges today's CMOs are facing.

• Driving growth
• Navigating bureaucracy
• Measuring impact
• Technological enablement in the age of AI
• Culture-based marketing

The study report does not discuss how these challenges were identified, nor does it provide any data supporting their selection. It does include a thoughtful discussion of how CMOs are addressing these five challenges.

*****

The Lippincott/Bloomberg survey report provides several important insights about the "state of the CMO." While the report does not include some data points that I think should have been included, the views expressed in the report are well-reasoned and thought-provoking. For that reason, I recommend that you take the time to review the full report.

Strategy Has Assimilated Many Aspects of Marketing, and That's Not Necessarily Bad

"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

Over the past half century, strategy has become the primary mechanism senior company leaders use to make decisions about the future of their business and design their gameplan for success. During that period, the strategy discipline has assimilated many marketing principles, methods, and tools into the strategy development process. 

This post discusses why the assimilation occurred and why it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Just over five years ago, Roger L. Martin, the co-author of Playing to Win:  How Strategy Really Works, wrote that marketing and strategy have become one discipline. He reiterated his position earlier this year. 

Martin argued that, during its formative years, the marketing discipline was primarily focused on the interactions between a company and customers. Competitors weren't completely absent from marketing, but they weren't a primary focus.

Meanwhile, during its early years, the business strategy discipline was primarily focused on the interactions between a company and its competitors, with little attention being given to customers.

Martin gives Michael Porter credit for triggering the intellectual convergence of marketing and strategy. In his two seminal books, Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985), Porter identified differentiation as one of his three generic strategies. 

To successfully implement a differentiation strategy, company leaders must deeply understand their customers, and that requirement, Martin wrote, "brought customers formally into the strategy equation."

Martin argued that the evolution of both disciplines has made marketing and strategy virtually "indistinguishable." He wrote:

"The full addition of competitors to the marketer's focus and of customers to the strategist's focus has caused the jobs of marketers and strategists to converge on the same thing . . . They now have the same job - just with different titles."

Overlapping Issues, Principles, Tools, and Processes

I don't think marketing and strategy have converged quite as much as Martin suggests - at least not yet. But, there is no doubt that both disciplines now deal with many of the same issues and use many of the same principles, tools, and processes, as the following diagram illustrates.

This diagram shows that several consequential business issues, decisions, and actions now reside in both disciplines. But, the diagram doesn't tell the whole story.

Strategy Has Assimilated Many Aspects of Marketing

As I noted earlier, the seminal work of Michael Porter in the early 1980's made customer-related issues an integral part of the strategy discipline. Over the ensuing four decades, the strategy discipline has assimilated many marketing principles and methods and incorporated them into the strategy development process. Think of the Borg in "Star Trek."

As a result, many core marketing concepts and practices, such as market segmentation, targeting, and customer needs analysis, are now widely seen as essential elements of the strategy development/strategic management process. In essence, the evolution of the strategy discipline over the past 40-plus years has transformed  numerous important marketing concepts and actions into strategy concepts and actions.

Several marketing scholars have expressed views about the relationship between strategy and marketing that aren't too dissimilar from Roger Martin's.

For example, in an article appearing in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, George S. Day, now the Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote:

"Paradoxically, the deeper marketing is embedded within an organization and becomes the defining theme for shaping competitive strategy, the more likely is the role of marketing as a distinct function to be diminished . . . Perhaps marketing and strategic planning will merge into a single core function responsible for keeping the firm focused on the changing marketplace . . . In this scenario, the responsibility for understanding customers and making sure the firm delivers superior value to them will become part of everyone's job description."

Ironically, this is close to the outcome Peter Drucker had in mind in 1973 when he wrote:

"Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function . . . it is, first, a central dimension of the entire business . . . Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise."[1]

Assimilation Isn't Necessarily Bad

The assimilation of marketing principles and methods into the strategy discipline isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can, in fact, be a net positive for a  company if the "assimilated" marketing concepts and methods are used correctly. Here's why.

First, when a company's strategy-makers incorporate marketing principles and methods into their strategy development process, the resulting business strategy is more likely to embody a sound market and customer orientation.

And second, business strategy is usually formulated by the CEO and other members of a company's top management team, and these senior executives will typically make a concerted effort to ensure their chosen strategy is instilled in all parts of their organization. Therefore, when a market and customer orientation is embedded in a company's business strategy, there is a greater likelihood such an orientation will, in Drucker's words, "permeate all areas of the enterprise."

Top image courtesy of JamesinOregon via Flickr (CC).

[1] Drucker, Peter F., Management Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1973).

Why You Shouldn't Rely Too Much on Best Practices

Many marketing leaders and frontline marketers have a "thing" for marketing best practices. And, it's easy to understand why.

Marketing success is difficult to achieve and even harder to sustain because the marketing environment is always changing and because it's incredibly hard to predict what marketing methods and messages will resonate with potential buyers.

Under these circumstances, it can feel immanently reasonable to identify the marketing tactics successful, high-performing companies are using and then emulate those practices. So, it shouldn't be surprising that many marketers are enamored with "proven" best practices.

Marketers often see best practices as effective and reliable tools for achieving marketing success, but the reality is more complicated.

Best practices can be helpful when they're understood correctly and used appropriately, but it's easy for marketers to become enthralled by their benefits and forget about their limitations. Two of those limitations are particularly important.

They Don't Tell the Whole Story 

Most marketing best practices come with an explicit or implicit promise:  Use this practice and your marketing performance will improve significantly. However, the reality is rarely that simple.

A marketing best practice typically describes a single aspect of marketing or a small set of related marketing activities. But, marketing success usually results from the combined effects of numerous factors, many of which the best practice doesn't address. Therefore, a best practice rarely provides a complete "formula" that will guarantee a large-scale improvement in marketing performance.

Francois Bazini discussed this issue in a column published last month in Marketing Week. Bazini wrote:

"One of marketing's most persistent habits is to turn successful outcomes into portable principles. We see a company win, a brand grow or a challenger break through, and immediately begin asking what others can learn from it . . .

More often, the useful question is not whether the example is impressive, but what exactly made it work.

This is how many best practices are born. We look at successful companies, list what they did, and start connecting the winning dots . . . Each observation may be true. The mistake is to assume that each one explains the success or think it will produce the same results somewhere else."

Our tendency to treat best practices as "portable principles" and all-inclusive formulas for success is what Phil Rosenzweig called "The Delusion of Single Explanations" in The Halo Effect . . . and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers. 

These days, many of the products we buy come with warning labels highlighting the bad things that can happen if we don't use the product correctly. Most marketing best practices should come with this warning label:

WARNING:  Marketing success results from the interplay of numerous activities and conditions, not all of which are addressed in this practice. Therefore, the use of this practice may produce less-than-expected results if other factors required for success are absent.

Widespread Use Reduces Effectiveness

One of the most paradoxical characteristics of marketing best practices is that the more widely they are used, the less effective they tend to become.

Marketing best practices can derive their effectiveness from several sources. A practice can be effective because it is based on sound business principles, or because it resonates with how potential customers make decisions, or because it leverages the capabilities of a particular medium of communication.

But, best practices are also often effective because they are exceptional. When a best practice is new, it tends to be used by only a few companies. Therefore, the practice stands out in the marketplace and more effectively captures the attention of potential customers. The distinctiveness also serves to differentiate the company using the practice from its competitors.

Unfortunately, though, as more and more companies adopt and use a best practice, it will lose some of the distinctiveness that made it highly effective.

Image courtesy of James Whatley via Flickr (CC).

Why Your Marketing Tactics May Be Out-of-Sync with How Your Customers Actually Buy

Marketing WITHOUT Market Research

The results of several recent surveys of business buyers suggest that many of the marketing tactics currently used by B2B companies are based on an inaccurate picture of how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

Here are four of the most noteworthy surveys:

• The 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study by 6sense

• The "buyability" research by LinkedIn and Bain & Company[1]

• A 2022 survey by Bain & Company and Google

• A 2021 survey by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International

Taken together, these surveys paint a picture of B2B buyer behavior that differs significantly from the model used by most B2B marketers. For example, they suggest that:

• Most of a company's potential customers are not actively evaluating the kinds of products or services the company offers at any given time. A trigger of some kind is usually required to motivate a potential customer to begin an active buying process, and marketing programs alone are rarely sufficient to cause a potential customer to initiate a buying process.

• At or near the beginning of a buying process, most buying groups create a list of potential vendors they believe are worth considering, i.e. an initial consideration set. The initial consideration set is created before most members of the buying group have conducted any research and is based on the mental impressions they've formed from a variety of touchpoints such as their prior first-hand experiences, marketing messages, news reports, and conversations with colleagues and peers.

• When a buying process begins, most members of the buying group are likely to be familiar with the product or service category involved in the prospective purchase. Many will have already been involved in several buying processes involving the same category.

• Many buying groups not only create an initial consideration set, they also rank the potential vendors in their consideration set in order of preference before they engage with any of the potential vendors.

• Most buying groups make almost all of their purchases from vendors in their initial consideration set, and most buy from the vendor they ranked at the top of their shortlist.

These survey results indicate that many of the marketing tactics used by B2B companies are out-of-sync with real-world B2B buyer behaviors. For example:

• B2B marketers frequently run marketing programs designed to persuade potential buyers to begin a buying process, but the research suggests that such programs are largely ineffective.

• Most B2B marketers assume that most members of the buying group are not familiar with potential solutions when the buying process begins, and therefore they create a significant amount of "educational" content. However, the research suggests that most buyers are already familiar with most potential solutions at the beginning of the buying process.

• Most B2B marketing efforts are focused on buyers who are engaged in an active buying process. But, the research suggests that most business buyers identify a shortlist of preferred vendors at the beginning of their buying process and almost always purchase from one of those vendors. Therefore, most B2B marketers are largely ignoring potential future buyers when they are forming their opinions about vendors.

If these survey results are accurate, it's clear that many B2B marketers need to make significant changes in their strategies and tactics. But, there's a catch.

None of the surveys described above claimed to use a representative sample of all B2B buyers. Therefore, the findings of these surveys cannot legitimately be "projected" to all business buyers. This explains why market research is vital for all B2B companies.

To develop effective marketing programs, a marketing leader must have an accurate view of how their company's potential customers make purchase decisions, and primary research is usually the only way to obtain this critical information. While data on this issue is scarce, it appears that most B2B companies are not investing sufficiently in this type of research.

In a column for Marketing Week, Mark Ritson made a compelling argument that companies should invest 5% of their marketing budget on market research.

Ritson argued that spending 5% of the budget on research is essential to ensure that the remaining 95% of the budget is invested appropriately. He wrote, "If you cannot invest 5% of your marketing budget on research you do not know what you are doing and you will not be able to make the right moves."

Image courtesy of Jeff via Flickr (CC).

[1]  The LinkedIn/Bain & Company research is described in two LinkedIn articles by Mimi Turner, the Head of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn. Those articles can be found here and here.

What Would Peter Drucker Say?

Peter Drucker is universally regarded as one of the most influential voices in the field of business management of the past 80 years. During a career that spanned more than seven decades, he authored 39 books and wrote dozens of articles for both academic journals and popular publications.

Shortly after his death in 2005, Businessweek magazine called Drucker "The Man Who Invented Management." Writing for Businessweek, John Byrne observed, ". . . it is frustratingly difficult to cite a significant modern management concept that was not first articulated, if not invented, by Drucker."

Drucker never devoted an entire book to marketing, but he discussed marketing in many of his books and other writings. Philip Kotler once wrote, "Occasionally, I have been carelessly called the father of modern marketing. If that is so, then Peter should be described as the grandfather of modern marketing."

Because of Drucker's profound influence on modern management and marketing thinking, I have often wondered what he might say about the current perception among many marketing academics and practitioners that the influence of the marketing organization has declined in many companies.

Unfortunately, we no longer have the ability to ask Drucker this question, but we can use what he wrote about marketing to make some reasonable predictions.

The Preeminence of Marketing

Peter Drucker strongly believed that marketing (as he described it) is absolutely essential for long-term business success. In his 1954 book, The Practice of Management, Drucker described the importance of marketing in unequivocal terms:

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose:  to create a customer .  . . Therefore, any business enterprise has two - and only two - basic functions:  marketing and innovation."

Drucker doubled down on the importance of this customer/market orientation in his 1973 book, Management:  Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices when he wrote:

"A business . . . is defined by the want the customer satisfies when she buys a product or a service. To satisfy the customer is the purpose of every business. The question:  'what is our business?' can, therefore, be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of the customer and the market . . . And management must make a conscious effort to get answers from the customer herself rather than attempt to read her mind."

In Drucker's view, the primary objective of marketing is to enable company leaders to gain a deep understanding of the customer and the relevant market. With these insights, company leaders can then use innovation to create products and services that will fit customer needs and wants and market conditions.

This point of view explains why marketing and innovation are the key ingredients in Drucker's formula for business success.

Many CMOs will undoubted welcome the ability to cite Peter Drucker when they're arguing that marketing should have greater influence in their company. But, there's another aspect of Drucker's thinking that CMOs must also consider.

Marketing is a Management Responsibility

Peter Drucker viewed marketing as a guiding business philosophy and an essential enterprise-wide capability. Therefore, he saw marketing as a general management responsibility that could not and should not be confined to any single organizational unit.

Drucker made this aspect of this thinking clear in Management:  Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices when he wrote:

"Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function . . . it is, first, a central dimension of the entire business .  . . Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise."

David Packard, the co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, may have been "channeling" Peter Drucker when he said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."

The bottom line for Drucker was that understanding the customer and the market is vital for business success, and therefore such understanding must be the foundation of a company's business strategy. It must be embraced by every function in a company, and it should inform everything the company does.

What Would Drucker Say?

So, what would Peter Drucker say about the perceived loss of influence of the marketing organization?

First, I think he would be highly critical of any company whose leaders don't make understanding customers and markets their top priority.

Second, I think Drucker might say that business strategy decisions - which should be based on a deep understanding of customers and markets (i.e. on the essence of marketing) - should be made by a company's top management team. This increases the likelihood that a customer- and market-driven strategy will, in Drucker's words, "permeate all areas of the enterprise."

And lastly, Drucker might point out that a company's senior marketing executive should be part of the company's top management team and an active participant in the strategy development process. He might also note that the members of a company's marketing organization should be well-suited by education and experience to collect and analyze the necessary "intelligence" about customers and markets.

When these circumstances exist, it's really not accurate to say that the influence of the marketing organization is diminished. 

Image courtesy of Wide World of Work via Flickr (CC). 

How to Win With Buyers Before They Become Buyers

In my last post, I introduced the concept of opportunistic learning. I wrote that information has become so abundant and easily accessible that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they become involved in an active buying process.

As a result, most business buyers don't begin a buying process with a "clean slate." In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.

Several recent research studies have shown that most business buyers have a small number of potential vendors in mind when they begin a buying process and that they almost always buy from one of the vendors on their "Day One" shortlist.

These research findings demonstrate that reaching opportunistic learners is critical because the opinions they form while engaged in opportunistic learning have a major impact on buying decisions.

To accomplish this goal, B2B marketers need to understand the mindset of opportunistic learners and then use marketing tactics and content that are specifically designed for these potential future buyers.

The Opportunistic Learning Mindset

When business people engage in opportunistic learning, they have different objectives and a different mindset than when they are seeking information relating to an ongoing buying process.

Opportunistic learners are not performing focused research, and they aren't looking for information about a particular topic.

They are scanning trusted sources of information for ideas that are relevant to their business or job or beneficial for their career development. When they encounter content that appears to fit this description, they will pause to read, watch, or listen to it.

Antonia Wade, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of PwC, provided a compelling perspective on the mindset of opportunistic learners in her recent book, Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey.

In her book, Ms. Wade proposed a new B2B buyer journey framework that has five phases - Horizon Scanner, Explorer, Hunter, Active Buyer, and Client. Her names for these phases symbolize the buyer's needs and thought processes that are important during each phase of the buying journey.

Ms. Wade's Horizon Scanner phase is similar to my concept of opportunistic learning. She wrote that Horizon Scanners are people in strategic roles who are always assessing how big market trends and/or innovations will impact their business. Horizon Scanners, Wade wrote, ". . . aren't looking for answers and they're certainly not looking for  a sales message: they're looking for ideas."

In the Wade framework, Horizon Scanners are usually senior-level executives. However, people at all business levels engage in opportunistic learning in some form.

Connecting with opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form about companies or brands during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become active buyers. Therefore, if marketers can nurture positive impressions in the minds of opportunistic learners, they will have a competitive head start when those opportunistic learners become true buyers.

The Overall Goal Is Mental Availability

So, what kinds of marketing tactics can B2B marketers use to connect with opportunistic learners?

In marketing terms, your primary goal with opportunistic learners is to create and then enhance your company's mental availability.

The mental availability concept was popularized by Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In 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."

Marketing content must meet three basic requirements to create mental availability with opportunistic learners.

Address Appealing Topics

As simplistic as it sounds, the first requirement is that your content must be about topics that opportunistic learners will find appealing. It's vital to remember that opportunistic learners are not looking for information relating to an active buying process. They are seeking ideas that will help them improve their business or perform their job better or easier.

This means most content intended for opportunistic learners should focus on business or job-related problems, challenges, or opportunities for improvement.

Be Memorable

Marketing content must also be memorable to create mental availability with opportunistic learners.

By definition, opportunistic learners are not engaged in an active buying process. You make content available to opportunistic learners at a given point in time, and you hope they consume the content. But equally important, you hope they will remember your content and your company at a future point in time when they are ready to begin a buying process.

There are several techniques you can use to make your content more memorable to opportunistic learners. To learn more about these techniques, I recommend that you read Impossible to Ignore by Dr. Carmen Simon.

Be Easy to Consume

The third basic requirement for content that will effectively create mental availability with opportunistic learners is that it must be easy to consume. By "easy to consume," I mean content that doesn't require the people in your audience to expend a lot of cognitive energy.

As I've indicated, opportunistic learners are not engaged in an active buying process and therefore won't be inclined to expend much effort consuming content that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.

As a practical matter, this means most content intended for opportunistic learners should be relatively brief. In B2B, we have the leeway to use somewhat longer content because opportunistic learners believe acquiring information about industry trends and innovative business practices is important for their career progression.

Two Additional Considerations

In addition to the basic content requirements just discussed, there are two other issues you should keep in mind when marketing to opportunistic learners.

First, when business people engage in opportunistic learning, they usually turn to trusted sources of information. These often include respected general business publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review, and publications focusing on specific industries or business functions.

While some of these publications don't accept content from "outside" contributors, some do, and you should look for opportunities to create content that will appear in those publications.

Second, opportunistic learners tend to pay more attention to content created by journalists and other third parties than to content created by your company or by someone related to your company. Therefore, you should aggressively pursue opportunities to have your company leaders and subject matter experts interviewed for content being developed by professional journalists and other third-party creators.

 Top image courtesy of John Donges via Flickr (CC).

Why B2B Marketers Need to Know About "Opportunistic Learning"

One of the most profound developments in B2B marketing of the last quarter century has been the emergence of empowered and independent business buyers.

The proliferation of readily available online information has been the driving force behind the increased power of business buyers. Easy access to a wealth of information about almost any conceivable topic has enabled business decision-makers to find most of the information they want or need on their terms. And now, artificial intelligence is making it even easier for buyers to access information.

Information abundance has fundamentally changed how business buyers engage with potential vendors and how they make buying decisions. Overall, B2B marketers have done a reasonably good job of adapting their methods and practices to address most of these changes.

However, there is growing evidence of an important change in B2B buyer behavior that marketers have only recently begun to appreciate and focus on.

A Flawed Model of B2B Buyer Behavior

For most of the past twenty-five years, the accepted paradigm  of B2B buying has assumed that a buying process begins when a company's leaders or managers recognize that a need or problem exists and decide to address the issue in some way.

These "buyers" then gather information about the need or problem, evaluate the available options, and may or may not decide to purchase a product or service to address the situation. So, the conventional paradigm of B2B buying behavior holds that most information gathering and buyer "learning" occurs after an intentional buying process has started.

Several recent research studies have shown that this widely-accepted paradigm is not accurate in many instances.

The 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report by 6sense describes one of the most recent studies regarding B2B buyer behavior. This study consisted of two surveys of business buyers that together generated nearly 4,800 responses. The survey respondents were located in North America (46%), Continental Europe (20%), Asia-Pacific (14%), and the UK and Ireland (20%).

The respondents to the 6sense surveys evaluated an average of five vendors per purchase, and they filled four spots on their vendor shortlist at the very start ("Day One") of their buying process. They also said they purchased from one of the four vendors on their Day One shortlist 95% of the time. In addition, 97% of the respondents said they had prior experience with at least one of the vendors on their Day One shortlist.

Earlier studies have produced similar findings. For example, in a 2022 survey of business buyers by Bain & Co. and Google, 80% - 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research, and 90% of the respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor that was in their initial consideration set.

A 2021 survey of business buyers by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International also illustrated the importance of the vendor preferences that B2B buyers bring into a buying process.

In this study, the survey contained several questions about a recent purchase and asked the participants to reflect on the vendor they ultimately selected (the "winning vendor") and on a vendor they considered but did not select (the "losing vendor").

The researchers divided the purchase journey into three stages and defined the "Pre-Decision stage" as ". . . the time between when they had selected a supplier (for a given product/service category) and when the 'trigger' occurred that prompted them to actively begin searching for and deciding on a new supplier."

The survey findings revealed that the mental impressions of vendors held by buyers during the Pre-Decision stage exerted significant influence on purchase decisions. For example, survey respondents were more then twice as likely to say they were very familiar with the winning vendor versus the losing vendor before their active buying process began. Respondents also said that during the Pre-Decision stage, they had a higher level of pre-existing trust and confidence in the winning vendor than in the losing vendor.

Enter Opportunistic Learning

These results clearly demonstrate that most business buyers do not begin a buying process with a "blank slate." In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.

These pre-existing opinions develop because information has become so abundant and readily available that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they have formed anything close to "buying intent" or started an intentional buying process.

I call this type of information consumption opportunistic learning, and it occurs because humans are naturally programmed to seek rewards. We all have a mental radar system that is constantly scanning our environment to identify reward opportunities.

In a business setting, our radar system is always scanning our environment to identify information that may help us improve our company's performance and/or advance our career.

Opportunistic learning has important implications for B2B marketing, and some marketers have started to recognize its significance. The research findings discussed above show that reaching opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become involved in a buying process.

Making an impact on opportunistic learners requires marketers to use a particular approach to marketing messaging, and in my next post, I'll discuss the kind of messaging that's needed to connect with opportunistic learners.

Image courtesy of onewaystock.com via Flckr (CC).

How CMOs Can Cultivate Strategic Influence

Many marketing pundits and practitioners now believe the marketing function in most companies has less influence than it should have.

Marketers often describe this loss of influence in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix. They frequently observe that in many companies, the marketing department is responsible for running promotional campaigns and programs, but has little influence over product, price, and place.

More broadly, many marketers complain that senior marketing leaders often don't have a meaningful role in the formulation of their company's business strategy.

Recent surveys by Marketing Week and McKinsey & Company have shown that one or both of these situations exist at many companies.

Virtually all marketers agree that rebuilding the strategic influence of the marketing function is important, but it's not always clear how this goal can be achieved.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the ultimate solution is for the CMO* to be seen as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor intelligence the company's senior leaders need to formulate a sound business strategy.

However, this level of trust doesn't develop overnight. Therefore, a critical question for the CMO of an organization where the marketing function has little influence on business strategy is:  "How can I begin building this level of trust?"

The short answer is that the CMO should identify the elements of their company's business strategy that are based on inadequate information about markets, customers, or competitors and begin providing that information to other senior company leaders.

To execute this approach, a CMO needs to perform three tasks.

Describe the Strategy

The first step is to describe the major components of their company's business strategy. Every company's competitive situation is unique, so every company's business strategy will also be unique. However, all complete strategies will address a core group of issues that are common to most companies.

For example, a complete strategy will describe how the company segments the market for its products or services and identify the company's target market. The strategy will also describe how the company's products or services will deliver value to customers that is superior to the value provided by competitors.

A complete strategy will also describe how the company will price its products or services and why its current pricing levels are competitive in the relevant market.

The goal of this step is for the CMO to develop an accurate and detailed description of the elements of their company's business strategy that collectively determine competitive success.

Identify Sources of Information

The second task the CMO must perform is to identify the information that was used to make the choices embodied in their company's business strategy.

For example, what information did company leaders rely on to define the company's target market? What data or information did they use to determine what the company's primary customer value propositions should be? How did they determine what new product or service features or capabilities to develop and bring to market?

The goal of this work is to enable the CMO to identify areas where more accurate or comprehensive information about relevant markets, customers, and competitors will enable company leaders to make more informed strategic choices.

Share Strategy-Critical Information

Once CMOs have identified the areas of greatest need for better insights about markets, customers, and/or competitors, they can begin to gather relevant information and share that information with other senior company leaders.

The most effective way to share this information will largely depend on the nature and quality of the CMO's relationships with the other senior company leaders, particularly their CEO.

Most CMOs will probably want to avoid any suggestion that they are criticizing their company's current business strategy. Instead, CMOs should position their work as providing information that may be useful and valuable during the next strategy development cycle.

This low-kay, indirect approach is primarily intended for situations where a company's CMO is not playing a prominent role in the development of the company's business strategy. When they have strong relationships with other C-level executives, CMOs can use a more direct and aggressive approach.

The approach described in this post will require a fair amount of work, and it won't always produce immediate visible results. But, the long-term payoff more than justifies the effort.

When a company's CEO and other senior leaders view the CMO as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor insights that will help them formulate better business strategy, they will place greater value on, and give greater weight to, the CMO's views and perspectives.

*****

*In this post, I've used the term "CMO" to mean the senior marketing leader in a company regardless of the specific title that individual holds.

Image courtesy of SMcD22 via Flickr (CC).

NetLine's Latest Data Reveals How Business Professionals Actually Consume Content

Source:  NetLine Corporation

NetLine Corporation recently published its "2026 State of B2B Content Consumption & Demand Report." NetLine has been conducting this research for ten years, and its annual reports have consistently provided a wealth of real-world insights about how business professionals actually consume marketing content. 

NetLine operates a content syndication platform, and the 2026 report is based on data from 7.2 million content registrations on the platform in 2025. The NetLine research is particularly valuable for two reasons.

First, it captures the real-world content consumption behaviors of business professionals. The data used for the NetLine report was not derived from surveys or interviews, but rather from actual engagements with B2B marketing content.

And second, the report is based on first-party data. The business professionals who use the NetLine platform voluntarily share information about themselves and the organizations they work for in exchange for access to the content resources available on the platform.

For these reasons, the NetLine report provides detailed information about the business professionals who are consuming B2B marketing content and the actual consumption behaviors of those professionals. I encourage you to review the full 35-page report.

Content Consumption Declined in 2025

Overall B2B content consumption fell 8.6% in 2025 compared to 2024, as measured by registrations on the NetLine platform. However, NetLine's data shows that total demand for B2B gated marketing content has grown 57.6% since 2021.

Content consumption by C-level executives increased in 2025, up 4% year-over-year. In 2025, C-level executives accounted for 14.5% of the total demand on the NetLine platform.

Demand for content about artificial intelligence continued its dramatic growth in 2025. The explosive growth began in 2023 when demand for AI-related content increased 6.6x compared to 2022. In 2025, demand for such content grew 28.5% year-over-year.

Most Popular Content Formats

The ten most requested content formats in 2025 were:

1. eBooks
2. Cheat Sheets
3. Guides
4. White Papers
5. Research Reports
6. Articles
7. Tips and Tricks Guides
8. On-Demand Webinars
9. Live Webinars
10. Playbooks

NetLine noted in its report that six of the ten most popular content formats saw year-over-year declines in registration volume in 2025. Registrations for eBooks, the most popular format, fell 16.7% last year, but they still accounted for nearly half (48.8%) of all 2025 content registrations.

Among the ten most popular formats, on-demand webinars had the largest increase in demand in 2025, with the number of registrations growing by 46.2%

The Consumption Gap Widens

One of the most useful insights provided by the NetLine report relates to the consumption gap, which is defined as the time between the moment a content resource is requested and the moment it's opened for consumption. This data point is important because it provides a guide for timing follow-up contact with potential buyers.

In 2025, the average consumption gap was 47.7 hours, up from 38.5 hours in 2024. The consumption gap has varied over the years. Before 2024, the largest gap recorded by NetLine was 33.3 hours in 2021, and the smallest was 27.1 hours in 2018. The lesson here is that you should wait at least two days before you try to follow up with people who have requested your content via NetLine. 

Purchase Timing

Overall, the B2B professionals using the Netline platform in 2025 were 17.7% more likely to indicate they would probably make a purchase within the next 12 months, compared to 2024. The purchase time frame that saw the largest year-over-year increase was 6 - 12 months, which grew 78.6% in 2025.

Content Consumption and Buyer Purchase Intent

For the past few years, NetLine's research has revealed correlations between the content format a potential buyer chooses to consume and purchase timing. In the 2025 report, NetLine identified five content formats that are more likely to be associated with a buying decision within the next 12 months - trend reports, playbooks, case studies, newsletters, and infographics.

One format that is notably absent from this list is eBooks. Despite being the most frequently requested type of content in 2025, eBooks were not strongly associated with shorter-term purchase intent. This shouldn't be surprising because most eBooks are designed to appeal to potential buyers who are in the earlier stages of their buying journey.

Surveyed CEOs Paint a Mixed Picture of CMO Performance

Source:  Boathouse Group, Inc.

Surveyed CEOs gave their CMO high marks for alignment with CEO and business objectives, effectiveness at building cross-functional relationships, and understanding company financials. But, on the critical business issues of strategy and growth, the reviews were more mixed.

That's the central message of "The Boathouse Fifth Annual CEO Study" by Boathouse Group, Inc., a marketing agency based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

About the Study

Boathouse has been conducting this research since 2021. The fifth edition (2026) of the study is based on a survey of 150 CEOs at U.S. companies. Survey respondents led companies having annual revenue that ranged from $250 million to more than $1 billion.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of the respondents were with companies having more than 1,000 employees. Respondents were affiliated with companies operating in 16 industry verticals, with healthcare being the largest cohort (19% of all respondents).

The survey was conducted January 6 - 26, 2026.

The primary goal of this research was to capture the perspectives of CEOs regarding their CMO and their company's marketing organization. The 2026 survey also included questions about how CEOs shape strategy and about their investment in, adoption of, and objectives for artificial intelligence.

The Boathouse study has two obvious limitations. First, the study is based on a survey with a relatively small number of respondents. And second, Boathouse does not claim that its survey panel is a representative sample of all CEOs. Therefore, the quantitative survey findings cannot be "projected" to all CEOs.

Where CMOs are Performing Well

Most of the CEOs surveyed by Boathouse were positive on several aspects of their CMO's performance. For example:

• 79% of the survey respondents said their CMO shows a strong commitment to the CEO and Board of Directors. That was up slightly from 76% in the 2025 survey.

• 72% said their CMO understands their company's financials, up substantially from 61% in the 2025 survey.

• 85% said their CMO builds trust within their company, down only slightly from 87% in the 2025 survey.

In addition, 59% of the surveyed CEOs said their CMO understands their company's business goals, and 70% said the metrics used by marketing are fully (12%) or mostly (58%) aligned with their company's primary business metrics.

Mixed Reviews on Strategy

 The CEOs participating in the Boathouse survey gave mixed reviews to their CMO when it comes to strategy.

First, the good news. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the survey respondents said their CMO leads (8%) or actively contributes to (60%) the formulation of their company's strategy. This finding suggests that many CMOs have successfully won a seat at the strategy table.

However, just under 20% of the surveyed CEOs gave their CMO a grade of "A" on strategy. That was down from nearly 35% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

The survey report doesn't provide an explanation for the declining percentage of "A" grades, but it may be due to rising expectations. As more CEOs include their CMO in the strategy development process, some will have high expectations for the quality of the CMO's contribution.

The Good and Not-So-Good News on Driving Growth

The CEOs surveyed by Boathouse also gave mixed reviews to their CMO (and their marketing organization) on driving revenue growth.

The survey findings clearly show that CEOs view growth as a critical business issue. Thirty-two percent (32%) of the survey respondents identified "growth performance" as the area of their business where they feel most personally exposed or vulnerable as CEO. The next highest percentage (21%) was for "competitive threats."

CEOs also see growth as the primary mandate of their marketing organization, with 65% of the survey respondents citing "drive sales growth and/or grow market shares" as marketing's top priority.

The good news is that 59% of the surveyed CEOs indicated they are "confident" in marketing's ability to make a "meaningful" contribution to growth.

The not-so-good news is that only 13% of the survey respondents said they are "very confident" that their marketing organization can demonstrate the incremental lift provided by marketing investments.

While a general feeling of confidence is good, it may not be sufficient to persuade CEOs to prioritize marketing spending when difficult capital allocation decisions must be made. So, CMOs and other marketing leaders must keep working to provide credible proof of the financial impacts of their marketing activities and programs.

[Research Round-Up] Notable Insights from the 2026 Edition of "The CMO Survey"

Source:  "The CMO Survey"

(This month's Research Round-Up focuses exclusively on the 2026 edition of "The CMO Survey." This research has been conducted since 2008, and it consistently provides valuable information about marketing spending, practices, and trends.)

The findings of the 35th edition of "The CMO Survey" were published near the end of last month. "The CMO Survey" is directed by Dr. Christine Moorman and is sponsored by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Deloitte, and the American Marketing Association.

From 2008 through 2024, the survey was conducted semi-annually. In 2025, the research shifted to an annual survey.

The 2026 survey results are based on responses from 308 marketing leaders as U.S. for-profit companies. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents (65.0%) were affiliated with B2B companies, and 97% were VP-level or above. Respondents worked at companies operating in 15 industry sectors. The 2026 survey was conducted January 7 - January 29, 2026.

In addition to overall response data, "The CMO Survey" provides response data by four economic sectors (B2B product companies, B2B services companies, B2C product companies, and B2C services companies), 15 industry sectors, company size, and percentage of online sales.

The data discussed in this post is based on the responses of all survey participants unless otherwise indicated. The percentages and other numerical values in this post are the mean of applicable survey responses, also unless otherwise indicated.

A Tale of Economic Concern

Concerns about the health of the U.S. economy echo throughout the 2026 edition of "The CMO Survey." In every edition of the survey, the researchers have asked participants to rate their optimism about the U.S. economy on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the most optimistic. The 2026 survey respondents put their level of optimism at 56.8.

To place this optimism rating in context, the rating given by respondents in the June 2020 edition of the survey (at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic) was 50.9. The lowest optimism rating ever given in the 18-year history of "The CMO Survey" was 47.7 in both the February 2009 survey (during the "Great Recession") and the February 2013 survey.

There was little difference in the level of optimism expressed by marketers at B2B companies and those at B2C companies.

Economic concerns seem to have had a substantial impact on marketing budgets. The marketing leaders participating in the 2026 survey reported that marketing budgets represented 9.0% of total company revenue. That was down from 9.4% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

The 2026 survey respondents also reported that marketing spending increased by only 1.7% over the 12 months preceding the survey. That was the slowest growth of marketing spending since 2021.

Economic uncertainty also appears to have prompted changes in some marketing priorities. When participants in the 2026 survey were asked how they are changing their customer targeting strategies in response to recent changes in economic conditions, the most frequently selected change - chosen by 43.7% of survey respondents - was "increase our focus on building loyalty / retention of existing customers."

The percentages of B2B marketers who indicated they were making this change were very similar - 43.3% of marketers in B2B product companies and 42.0% of those in B2B services companies.

It's noteworthy, however, that about one-third of B2B survey respondents said they were making no change in their customer targeting strategies, compared to only 26.5% of all survey respondents.

Other Notable Findings

Here are a few other findings from the 2026 survey that I found notable and interesting.

Importance of Marketing Capabilities and Talent - Survey respondents viewed their marketing capabilities as critical to their company's business success (5.9 on a 7-point scale), and 34.5% of the respondents said that "having the right talent" is the most important factor for driving future revenue growth. But . . .

Spending on Training & Development Is at a 9-Year Low - Survey respondents said they currently devote only 3.8% of their marketing budget to training and development. This is the lowest percentage seen in "The CMO Survey" since the February 2017 edition of the research.

Use of Generative AI - Survey respondents said their company is using generative AI technologies in 22.4% of its marketing activities, up from 15.1% in the 2025 edition of the survey.

*****

"The CMO Survey" does not claim that its survey panel is a representative sample of all marketers. So the survey findings cannot be "projected" to all marketers. Nevertheless, "The CMO Survey" provides valuable insights about the current state of marketing, and I recommend that you read the full survey report.

Why CMO Candidates Should Uncover and Confront Mismatched Expectations

A recent post at LinkedIn described a situation that occurs far more that it should. The post author wrote that he had been contacted by a CEO who was planning to replace his CMO because "marketing isn't working." The CEO asked if the post author could recommend someone for the job.

By asking a few questions, the post author identified several circumstances that were contributing to the CMO's perceived underperformance. While all these circumstances were important, one was particularly significant. The post author wrote:

"She [the current CMO] had made smart budget calls six months ago, killed low-performing channels, and shifted spend. But pipeline from these decisions won't land for two more quarters. And she's being judged on the lagging output of a strategy she already replaced."

After his conversation with the post author, the CEO decided to address the problematic circumstances and stick with the current CMO, but this isn't the typical outcome. More often, CEOs decide to "fix" their "marketing" problem by replacing their senior marketing leader, which usually leaves the real problems unresolved.

A Revolving Door of Senior Marketing Leaders

The short tenure of chief marketing officers has been well documented. According to the most recent research by Spencer Stuart, the average tenure of CMOs at S&P 500 companies in 2025 was 4.1 years, down from 4.3 years in 2024. CMO tenure is even shorter if we include a wider range of companies.

Marketing academics have attributed the high level of churn among senior marketing leaders to a variety of factors, but most of the "involuntary" churn ultimately results from mismatched expectations.

When the CEO and the senior marketing leader have mismatched expectations regarding the role or performance of marketing, the odds of developing a long, mutually-satisfactory relationship are not good.

Dealing With Mismatched Expectations

The story recounted at the beginning of this post illustrates what can happen when a CEO and a senior marketing leader have different expectations regarding when marketing programs will produce desired results.

Making these mismatched expectations visible before accepting a marketing leadership position with a new company can help a marketer avoid beginning a relationship that has little chance of long-term success.

So, if you're a candidate for a senior marketing leadership role, there are four questions you need to answer before you accept a job offer.

• What are the most important results your prospective CEO expects to see from marketing within the first 12 months that you're in the job?

• When does your prospective CEO expect to begin seeing those results?

• Are your prospective CEO's expectations for beginning to see those results realistic given the economic and competitive conditions in the market(s) the company serves and the resources (budget, people, technology, etc.) you will have available to conduct marketing programs?

• If you determine that those expectations aren't realistic, can you persuade your prospective CEO to modify his or her expectations to make them more realistic?

The answers to some of these questions can be obtained during the interview process, while others will require you to perform some research. The amount of research needed won't always be trivial, but neither is it out-of-line with the importance of the career decision you're making.

If you're a candidate for a senior marketing leadership role, you probably have several years of marketing experience. Therefore, you should be able to use your experience, combined with a moderate amount of research, to come up with a reasonable approximation of how long it will take sound marketing programs to deliver various kinds of results.

For example, suppose that your prospective CEO says that pipeline contribution is the marketing result he deems most important and that he would expect increases in pipeline contribution to begin within 3 or 4 months after you start work.

If you're confident that you can deliver increases in pipeline contribution within 4 or 5 months, this would not be a huge mismatch of expectations. On the other hand, if you judge that it will take 6 to 8 months for your marketing programs to begin having a meaningful impact on the pipeline, this would be a significant mismatch of expectations that should be addressed during the interview process.

There are several other issues where mismatched expectations can undermine the relationship between a CEO and a senior marketing leader. I'll cover some of those issues in a future post.

Top image courtesy of Heather Paul via Flickr (CC).

"Buyability" Isn't Really New, But It Is Really Important

For the past several months, I've been following developments relating to a research and thought leadership initiative launched by LinkedIn in collaboration with Bain & Company. The goal of the initiative is to identify what causes a B2B buying group to purchase a particular company's offering.

This initiative has been led primarily by Jann Schwarz, the Senior Director, Marketplace Innovation & Strategy at LinkedIn, Mimi Turner, the Head of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn, and Jamie Cleghorn and colleagues at Bain & Company.

The researchers at LinkedIn and Bain have coined the term Buyability to describe what business buyers need to believe to have the confidence to make or recommend a purchase.

A survey of 750 B2B buyers conducted by the initiative's researchers identified five main factors that business buyers need to feel confident about. When the researchers analyzed the survey results, they found that the most important factor buyers identified is to feel confident they can defend their decision if the purchase goes wrong. This was slightly more important to buyers than feeling confident the product or service they recommended could do the job.

These research findings strongly suggest that an essential element of Buyability is that business buyers must perceive a prospective vendor's product or service to be a "safe" choice.

Buyer Risk Aversion Isn't New

The bias of business buyers toward "safe" purchases is not new. It has been discussed frequently in the B2B marketing literature for many years.

For example, in his 2009 book, The BuyerSphere Project, Gord Hotchkiss emphasized the importance of buyer risk aversion in the B2B buying process. He wrote:

"B2B buying decisions are usually driven by one emotion - fear. Specifically, B2B buying is all about minimizing fear by eliminating risk . . . The importance of risk aversion on the part of the buyer cannot be overstated. It's the essence of B2B buying. To state it in plainer terms, '99% of B2B buying is about covering your butt.' "

The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) (now part of Gartner) and Google also pointed to the importance of buyer risk aversion in their popular 2013 white paper, "From Promotion to Emotion:  Connecting B2B Customers to Brands." CEB and Google observed that B2B buying often exhibited greater emotionality that B2C buying and offered this explanation.

"B2B purchases entail personal risk - far more than most B2C purchases. B2B purchase stakeholders fear:

• Losing time and effort if a purchase decision goes poorly
• Losing credibility if they make a recommendation for an unsuccessful purchase
• Losing their job if they are responsible for a failed purchase" (Emphasis in original)

Unbalanced Incentives Cause Buyer Risk Aversion

Most business buyers are predisposed to favor "safe" purchases because of unbalanced incentives. Most buyers perceive that they will receive only minimal rewards (tangible or emotional) if they recommend buying something that works well, but they also believe they can significantly damage their career if they recommend a purchase that goes badly.

As a result, most buyers are inclined to choose what they perceive to be the safest solution that meets basic performance requirements, rather than one that appears to be "better," but more risky.

Buyability Has Great Potential

So, the buyer risk aversion component of the Buyability model isn't really new, but that doesn't diminish the importance or the potential value of the LinkedIn/Bain initiative.

The initiative has already generated a significant amount of interest in the B2B marketing community, and several industry organizations - including, among others, WARC, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and the International Advertising Association (IAA) - are supporting the initiative, which should further increase interest among B2B marketers.

In addition, during a recent presentation, Jann Schwarz and Mimi Turner stated that they are now beginning the work needed to operationalize the Buyability model. This probably means they will soon be providing examples of actions that B2B companies can take to nurture a perception of safety in the minds of their potential buyers.

While we await these examples, the research already done by the initiative's leaders makes three things abundantly clear.

• The most influential factor for building a B2B buyer's confidence in purchasing from a prospective vendor is having previous personal experience with the vendor.

• The second most powerful confidence-building factor is recommendations from colleagues or from similar customers with similar needs and use cases.

• Negative feedback from a buyer's colleagues or peers in the buyer's network, or from other similar customers will usually stop a deal in its tracks.

These research findings suggest that, when performance and cost factors are generally equal, what influential third parties say about you becomes critical for making potential buyers feel confident enough to do business with you.

[Research Round-Up] B2B Marketing Benchmarks, a CMO Outlook, and How Humans Decide

(This month's Research Round-Up features three reports that address a wide range of issues relevant to marketing. Two of the reports (by Benchmarkit and NielsenIQ) are based on surveys designed to capture the perspective and practices of marketers. The paper by WPP Media is based on an analysis of the firm's extensive database of purchase journeys.)

"2026 Brand vs Demand Benchmark Report" by Benchmarkit

Source:  Benchmarkit

• Based on a survey of individuals working at 168 B2B technology companies
• The job title or job role of respondents was not provided
• Respondents were affiliated with companies having annual revenue of less than $5 million to more than $500 million
• The survey was conducted throughout September and October, 2025

The primary objective of this research was to benchmark how marketing budgets and other resources are currently allocated and would ideally be allocated between demand generation marketing and brand and awareness marketing. The survey also addressed current measurement practices and respondents' views on several related issues.

Here are some of the major findings from this research.

• Respondents reported that they are currently allocating 70% (median) of their total marketing budget to demand generation and 25% (median) to brand marketing.

• Respondents said their ideal budget allocation would be 50% (median) to demand generation and 40% (median) to brand marketing.

• The two metrics most frequently used to measure demand generation performance are the dollar value of pipeline generated (79% of respondents) and the number of opportunities created (70%).

• 73% of the respondents said that brand building is a long-term investment that makes demand generation marketing more efficient, and 63% said brand investments directly fuel demand generation performance.

• But . . . only 28% of the respondents said their company can link brand investments and activity to pipeline generated.

"CMO Outlook:  Guide to 2026" by NielsenIQ (NIQ)

Source:  NielsenIQ

• Based on a survey of ". . . more than 250 CMOs and senior marketing decision-makers from influential companies across regions, industries, and organizational sizes . . ." 
• Also based on qualitative interviews of ". . . chief marketing officers (CMOs) across industries . . ."
• A detailed description of the research methodology is not provided
• The guide does not indicate when the survey and interviews were conducted

NielsenIQ (NIQ) (formerly known as AC Nielsen) is a market research firm that primarily focuses on consumer research. However, NIQ's "CMO Outlook:  Guide to 2026" describes several research findings that are relevant for B2B marketing leaders.

For example, NIQ's survey and interviews revealed a growing tension between the pursuit of long-term vs. short-term marketing goals.

• 69% of NIQ's survey respondents said their CEO and CFO believe in the value of long-term brand building, but this was down sharply from 80% in last year's NIQ research.

• 55% of the survey respondents said they were allocating 60% or more of their marketing budget to long-term brand building. That was down slightly from 59% in last year's research.

Other interesting findings from NIQ's 2026 guide include:

• When asked where their organization was performing well, 39% of the survey respondents said media planning and optimization, 37% said content/creative generation, 35% said understanding customers, and 35% said measuring ROI.

• 58% of the survey respondents said they are using up to 5 tools to measure media performance, and another 34% said they are using 6 to 15 tools.

• When asked what methods they use to measure marketing ROI, 81% of the survey respondents said marketing attribution, and 77% said marketing mix modeling.

"How Humans Decide:  What Drives Consumer Choice and How Brands Should Respond" by WPP Media (in association with the University of Oxford's Said Business School)

Source:  WPP Media

• Based on an analysis of WPP Media's database of 1.2 million purchase journeys
• The WPP Media database covers purchases in over 200 product categories in 47 countries
• The white paper provides a detailed description of the research and analysis methodology in the Appendix (page 9)
• The white paper was published in October 2025

The central argument of this white paper is that knowing how people make buying decisions is essential to understanding how brands grow. The researchers describe the essence of their study findings early in the white paper.

"When the complexities of human decision-making are understood, the missing pieces of the equation are revealed:  influence and receptivity. Once influence and receptivity are understood, any assumptions that consumers are equally influenceable, or that media channels are interchangeable tools for reaching them, no longer make sense." (Emphasis in original)

Here are a few of the study's major findings.

• 84% of purchases involve people choosing brands they're already biased towards before they begin shopping.

• The proportion of purchases that are governed by this bias varies across product categories, but never falls below 70%

• Receptivity is a measure of how likely a person is to be influenced by marketing messages. On average, unreceptive consumers make up 23% of all category buyers.

• On average, owned, shared, and earned touchpoints (such as word-of-mouth recommendations and customer reviews) are nearly 3 times more powerful than paid media alone at converting a consumer from bias to purchase.