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).

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.

"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] 6sense Study Provides Critical Insights on B2B Buyer Behavior

Source:  6sense

6sense published the findings of its "2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study" (the "2025 Study") earlier this month. The 2025 Study is the third edition of 6sense's B2B buyer experience research. Previous studies were conducted in 2024 and 2023.

The objective of the 2025 Study - as with the earlier studies - was to capture insights regarding how B2B buyers actually make business purchases.

Study Methodology and Participant Profile

The 2025 Study was based on two surveys. The primary study received nearly 4,000 responses from B2B buyers. 6sense also conducted a supplementary survey to specifically examine how artificial intelligence and economic uncertainty were affecting B2B buyer behaviors, and that survey produced an additional 766 responses.

Here's an overview of the survey respondents' attributes:

• Respondents represented a wide range of levels and roles in their organization, with nearly half (49%) being VP-level or above.

• Respondents were located in North America (46%), Continental Europe (20%), the UK and Ireland (20%), and Asia-Pacific (14%).

• Nearly half of the respondents (49%) worked for companies having from $10 million to $500 million in annual revenues.

• 80% of the respondents worked for companies providing technology (42%) or services (38%).

• Respondents included buyers of services (41%), software (33%), and physical goods (26%).

What Has Changed

The 2025 Study revealed two significant shifts in B2B buyer behavior compared to the earlier 6sense studies.

Buying Cycles Were Shorter

 Globally, the average length of the buying cycle in 2025 was 10.1 months, down from 11.3 months in the 2024 edition of the study. In North America, the length of the buying cycle was virtually unchanged - 11.1 months in 2025 vs. 11.4 months in 2024.

The shorter average buying cycle was due in part to a change in the mix of purchases represented in the 6sense studies. There were more purchases of physical goods in the 2025 Study compared to the 2024 study, and the buying cycle length for physical goods was shorter than for the other types of solutions represented in the research.

More importantly, the 2025 Study showed that economic uncertainty played a significant role in shortening the average buying cycle. Nearly half of the surveyed buyers (49%) said economic conditions had led to shorter buying cycles.

The study report states:  "Many organizations with approved budgets may have been eager to commit funds quickly, before potential pullbacks due to tariffs, cost-cutting, or other macroeconomic risks."

Buyers Engaged With Sellers Earlier

The second major shift in buyer behavior revealed in the 2025 Study was that buyers initiated contact with sellers earlier in the buying process. In the 2025 Study, the average "point of first contact" between buyers and sellers occurred when buyers were 61% through their buying process. That was down from 69% in the earlier 6sense studies.

Survey respondents pointed to two factors driving the earlier seller engagement.

• 58% of the survey respondents said their need to evaluate how prospective vendors were implementing artificial intelligence in their solutions caused them (buyers) to engage earlier.

• Nearly 62% of the respondents said they engaged earlier because of economic uncertainty.

What Hasn't Changed

The 2025 Study revealed that many of the B2B buying patterns and buyer behaviors identified by 6sense in its prior studies remained largely unchanged. For example, the 2025 Study found that:

• The surveyed buyers evaluated an average of five prospective vendors.

• Buying groups filled four of the five spots on their vendor shortlist on Day 1 of the buying process.

• 94% of the surveyed buyers said they ranked their shortlist vendors according to preference before contacting any vendor.

• 79% of the surveyed buyers said they initiated contact with prospective vendors. They contacted their top-ranked vendor first about 80% of the time, and they ultimately bought from their top-ranked vendor 77% of the time.

An Important Resource

The 6sense study represents a genre of research that we need more of in B2B. Much of the popular research in the B2B space consists of surveys of marketers. While it's useful to know how other marketers are thinking and what they are doing, it's far more valuable to understand how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

That's what the 6sense study addresses, and I strongly recommend that you take the time to review the full study report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consumption and Use of Thought Leadership

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

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

Impact on Marketing/Sales Interactions

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

Attributes of Strong Thought Leadership

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

Two Controversial Findings

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

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

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

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

The Alternative View

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Take

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Sustainability Marketing Work - Part 1

(The political backlash against ESG and other aspects of so-called "woke capitalism" is creating a conundrum for some marketers. On one hand, the backlash is real, and marketers would rather not attract the attention of anti-ESG partisans. On the other hand, recent research continues to show that a majority of people are concerned about the environment and generally support actions aimed at improving sustainability. In this post, I'll discuss the current state of support and opposition to ESG, and in my next post, I'll describe how marketers can make sustainability messaging more effective.)

The ESG Backlash is Real . . .

The political backlash against ESG, the practice of using environmental, social and governance factors to assess a company's performance and impact on society, is undeniable.

• Earlier this year, President Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and end DEI performance requirements for federal contractors and grant recipients.

• At least 21 US states have enacted anti-ESG laws in some form.

• Several high-profile US companies - including Meta, Walmart, Target, McDonald's, Ford, Citi, Harley Davidson, and Tractor Supply - have scaled back or otherwise modified their ESG policies.

While various versions of "corporate social responsibility" have existed for decades, the modern ESG construct entered the business mainstream following the publication of an influential 2004 UN report titled "Who Cares Wins."

In the following decade, numerous research studies were published showing that sizable majorities of consumers and business buyers were placing great importance on the environmental and social track record of companies when making purchase decisions.

As a result, some marketing leaders became enamored with "purpose marketing" and began incorporating environmental and social claims and themes into their marketing campaigns.

It's not surprising that the current political environment is causing many marketing leaders to question the wisdom of using ESG-related messaging in their campaigns.

While a healthy dose of caution is warranted, most companies should not abandon ESG-related messaging altogether. That's because not all ESG-related marketing messages are equally polarizing.

But It's Not Universal

ESG is an umbrella concept that covers a wide range of issues and initiatives, and public attitudes toward those issues and initiatives vary greatly. So far, the most intense public opposition to ESG has tended to focus on social initiatives such as DEI.

In contrast, several recent research surveys have shown that most people are concerned about environmental issues and want to buy products and services that are environmentally sustainable. One of the more recent and most robust surveys I've reviewed is the "2025 Conscious Consumer Report" by Public Inc. (the "Public Inc. Survey").

The Public Inc. Survey

The Public Inc. Survey was an online survey of more than 3,000 adults (ages 18+) in the United States and Canada conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Public Inc. The survey was conducted July 11-24, 2004 among a nationally representative sample of 1.510 US adults and 1,508 Canadian adults. Survey data was weighted by age, gender and region using the latest available census data for each country.

The report states that the precision of the survey was measured using a credibility interval and that the survey is accurate (overall) to within +/- 2.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The results of the Public Inc. Survey reveal broad interest in environmental issues and widespread support for sustainability.

• 76% of US respondents agreed that climate change poses a serious threat

• 70% of US respondents said that companies should be doing more in terms of sustainability and ethical best practices

• 79% of US respondents believe that being purposeful in how they spend their money is one of the best ways to motivate companies to change

• 68% of all respondents agreed that sustainable products improve the health and well-being of their children and family

• 65% of all respondents agreed that sustainable products improve their own lives

• 58% of all respondents said they would pay more for products and services that are ethical and sustainable

Perhaps most important, fully three-quarters of the respondents identified themselves as environmentally conscious consumers.

At first glance, these survey findings suggest that using sustainability claims in marketing should be an easy decision. Unfortunately, however, these findings don't tell the whole story.

First, it's important to recognize that these findings may overstate the breadth (or at least the intensity) of public support for sustainability. And second, other findings in the Public Inc. Survey suggest that the sustainability claims marketers have been using have not been all that effective at driving increased sales of sustainable products and services.

I'll address these issues in my next post, and I'll describe four attributes that will make sustainability claims more effective at driving revenue growth.

Image courtesy of medicalofficecareers.com via Flickr (CC).

Why Motivation, Not Emotion, Is the Real Key to Marketing Effectiveness

Many marketing pundits are advising B2B marketers to connect with potential buyers on an emotional level. And at first glance, this advice appears to be sound.

In their often-cited paper, "The Long and Short of It," advertising effectiveness gurus Les Binet and Peter Field wrote:  "Emotional campaigns . . . produce considerably more powerful long-term business effects than rational persuasion campaigns."

But emotional messaging alone is not a guarantee of marketing success. While most successful marketing messages will evoke an emotional or psychological response in potential buyers, not all messages that induce an emotional response will produce desired business outcomes. Here's why.

Emotional Marketing that Missed the Mark

Budweiser's 2015 Lost Dog Super Bowl Ad 

Budweiser's Clydesdales have become one of the most iconic images in U.S. advertising. The Clydesdales debuted in a TV ad during the 1986 Super Bowl, and they've appeared in numerous Super Bowl ads since. Dogs (and puppies) have also been prominently featured in many of these classic ads.

Such was the case with the "Lost Dog" ad that aired during the 2015 Super Bowl. This ad featured the Clydesdales and an adorable yellow Labrador puppy. Here's the ad.

Source:  TrueColors via YouTube

The Lost Dog ad took top honors in USA Today's Ad Meter poll for the 2015 Super Bowl and made Budweiser a back-to-back winner. The 2015 ad was a "sequel" to Budweiser's 2014 Clydesdale/puppy Super Bowl ad, which won the USA Today poll for that year.

Given the popularity of the Lost Dog ad, you would think Budweiser considered it an overwhelming success. Well, not quite.

In a 2015 article in Advertising Age (subscription required), Jorn Socquet, then the USA Chief Marketing Officer at Anheuser-Busch InBev, offered this assessment of Budweiser's 2015 Super Bowl ads:  "Budweiser aired two very different spots in last February's Super Bowl, and we learned that content focused on the quality of our beer was most effective in generating sales."

Socquet went on to say that while everyone loved the puppies, "they have zero impact on beer sales. Those ads I wouldn't air again because they don't sell beer."

Coca-Cola's 1979 "Hey Kid, Catch" Ad

Coca-Cola's "Hey Kid, Catch" TV ad debuted in the fall of 1979 and was re-aired during the 1980 Super Bowl. It depicted an encounter between the Pittsburgh Steelers' Hall of Fame defensive end, "Mean" Joe Greene, and a young fan. Here's the ad.

Source:  stiggerpao via YouTube

This ad ranks high on the emotional content scale, and it was highly regarded in professional advertising/marketing circles. The ad won a Clio Award for being one of the best television commercials of 1979, and it has been listed as one of the top ads of all time by multiple sources. The ad gained international notoriety when it was re-filmed in several other countries using local sports figures. 

As with the Budweiser ad, you would think Coca-Cola viewed this ad as successful, but again, this assumption wouldn't be accurate.

Sergio Zyman was the Chief Marketing Officer of The Coca-Cola Company when the Hey Kid, Catch ad was aired. In his 1999 book, The End of Marketing As We Know It, Zyman explained his decision to pull the ad off the air.

"America loves it! People talk about it for weeks. The critics rave about it. . . The ad is so hot that Coca-Cola marketers all over the world want to translate it . . . The company should run it forever, right? Wrong. Coke doesn't run this ad forever. In fact, Coke pulls the ad altogether and launches a new campaign  . . . Why would Coke do that? . . . The answer is simple. I know because I am the person who did it. My job as a marketer for The Coca-Cola Company was to get people out of their houses and into restaurants and stores to buy more Coca-Cola products - and the ad just wasn't doing that."

Why Didn't They Work?

What went wrong with these highly popular and critically acclaimed ads? Both were designed to touch viewers' emotions, and they clearly succeeded. So, why didn't they drive increased sales for Budweiser and Coke?

Why Motivation Is Critical

The short answer is that they were high on emotion but low on motivation.

The Budweiser and Coke ads illustrate a principle that is often underappreciated by marketers:  Emotion can be a powerful tool in marketing, but emotional messaging without a motivational message won't produce the desired business results.

Basic concepts from the decision sciences explain why motivation is so critical to marketing success.

The Science of Motivation

Recent advances in the decision sciences have established that motivation is the primary driver of all human behavior.

The American Psychological Association defines motivation as "a person's willingness to exert physical or mental effort in pursuit of a goal or outcome." In a business context, a goal can be to solve a problem, satisfy a need, or get a particular "job" done.

As humans, we are motivated to pursue a goal because we expect to receive a reward if the goal is achieved. Neuroscience research has shown that the human brain has a "reward system" that's activated when our brain processes sensory inputs that signal a reward we value.

Research has also shown that our brain automatically scans our environment for information that aligns with our goals. So, in essence, our brain causes us to pay attention to information that's closely related to our goals.

Goals can be categorized in several ways, but two categories are particularly important for marketers. First, goals can be functional or psychological.

• Functional goals relate directly to the core task or job a potential buyer wants or needs to get done. If my computer printer dies, my functional goal will be to determine what kind of printer I need and acquire a replacement. Functional goals can usually be described in terms of the features or attributes of an existing product or service category.

• Psychological goals are more general and arise out of basic psychological needs that humans are always motivated to satisfy. Such basic needs include security (safety, trust, etc.), autonomy (success, superiority, power, etc.), and excitement (adventure, fun, etc.)

Goals are also either explicit or implicit.

• Explicit goals are those we set and pursue at a conscious level.

• Implicit goals operate at a subconscious level. We are motivated to pursue implicit goals even when we aren't consciously thinking about them.

Implications for Marketing

These principles of human motivation and decision-making have major implications for B2B marketers. The most important lesson is that the ability of any marketing message to resonate with a potential buyer is determined not by how emotional the message is, but rather by how closely the message aligns with the buyer's goals.

Therefore, your most critical job as a marketer is to craft marketing messages that will build mental associations between your company/brand/product/service and the goals of your potential buyers.

Using emotion in marketing messages is powerful because it makes your messages more memorable. That's particularly important in brand marketing because at any given point in time, most of your potential buyers, usually more than 90%, aren't actively engaged in a buying process.

You're communicating with these "out-of-market" buyers in the present, and you're hoping they will remember your message at some point in the future when they're ready to begin a serious buying process.

The bottom line is that effective marketing will convey the right motivational message in an emotionally engaging way.

An Example of Motivation Well Used

W.W. Grainger, Inc., the Fortune 500 provider of industrial MRO supplies, is currently running TV ads that illustrate how marketing messages can effectively tap into the goals that drive human motivation in an emotionally engaging way.

Several Grainger ads use the same overall theme, and some of the ads are available on YouTube. I've included links to a few of the ads at the end of this post, and I suggest you take a few minutes to view these videos. Here's one of the ads.

Source:  Grainger via YouTube

To be clear, I have no relationship with Grainger, nor do I have any "inside information" about the strategy that led to the development of the ads. My comments are based on an analysis of the ads themselves.

The most important feature of all the ads is that front-line maintenance personnel are made the "heroes" of the narrative. The visuals show men and women in blue-collar working clothes, usually wearing hard hats, not executives or managers in business suits.

In the above video, the hero is portrayed as someone who always sees the big picture, not just a maintenance job, and who is capable of handling "whatever comes his way and has Grainger on his side."

This narrative appeals directly to the human psychological goals of being viewed as competent and having one's value to his or her organization fully appreciated. The ad also directly links Grainger to the achievement of those goals.

The tagline used in all of the ads - "For the ones who get it done" - captures the central theme of the ads in a memorable, concise, and effective way.

The key point illustrated by the Budweiser, Coke, and Grainger ads is:  Emotion will make marketing messages memorable, but motivation is what makes them commercially effective.

Links to Other Grainger Ads Available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZAWOiE27aY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEzlATpn7Dw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6htzaHZyfI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9npk9WRHHGY

When the Most Important Goal in B2B Marketing Is to be Remembered

Over the past several months, I've come to believe that we need a new operating model of B2B marketing, one that more accurately reflects how businesspeople actually make buying decisions. My conclusion is based on four proven truths about B2B buying.

• At any given time, only a small percentage of a company's potential customers are actively engaged in a buying process for products or services like the company provides.

• A buying trigger is almost always required to prompt potential buyers to initiate a buying process, and marketing activities alone usually won't be sufficient to trigger a buying process.

• When a buying trigger occurs, most business decision-makers will create a mental list of potential vendors they believe are worth considering. This initial consideration set is formed before any research is done, and it's based on the mental impressions a buyer has formed from past interactions and experiences.

• Most business buyers make most of their purchases from companies in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)

These ground truths reveal some of the major disconnects between current B2B marketing practices and the real-world behaviors of business buyers. Today, for example, many B2B marketing programs are designed to persuade potential buyers to begin a buying process, even though the evidence shows such programs are largely ineffective.

Companies are also spending substantial resources on programs designed to engage decision-makers who have already begun a buying process. In contrast, B2B marketers are investing far less in programs designed to get their company into buyers' consideration sets, even though that's often decisive for winning business.

The Real Goal of Marketing to "Potential Future Buyers"

If marketing can't usually persuade out-of-market buyers to begin a buying process, what should marketers try to accomplish with these individuals, and what kind of marketing works best for this purpose?

Numerous studies have shown that a strong brand will significantly influence the future decisions of out-of-market buyers, but marketers need more specific guidance to create effective programs for this audience.

To achieve success with out-of-market buyers, the starting point is to recognize that the people we call out-of-market buyers aren't actually "buyers" in any meaningful sense of that term. They may become buyers in the future, but they aren't buyers today. Therefore, they shouldn't be expected to behave like people who are actively engaged in a buying process.

In these circumstances, your ultimate objective when marketing to potential future buyers is to have your company included in their initial consideration set when they become active buyers.

To increase your odds of achieving that objective, you need to use marketing messages and tactics that will increase the mental availability of your company.

The concept of mental availability is closely associated with Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In his book, How Brands Grow, Sharp defined mental availability as ". . . the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations."

Mental availability is, therefore, different from simple brand awareness. It refers to the likelihood that a business decision-maker will think of your company when he or she experiences a buying trigger and decides to begin an active buying process.

Message Attributes that Boost Mental Availability

Your marketing messages must exhibit three attributes to create mental availability.

• They must clearly link your company to the needs or challenges your potential buyers are most likely to experience.

• They must be memorable. You're communicating with out-of-market buyers at a given point in time, and you're hoping they'll remember your messages at a future point in time when they perceive a need and are ready to begin a buying process.

• They must be easy to consume, and most should be brief.* Remember that out-of-market buyers aren't actively looking for the information your messages are providing. So, they won't be inclined to spend much time or effort consuming content about a topic that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.

I discussed these attributes in more detail in this recent post.

The Takeaway

Initial consideration sets will include the companies that potential buyers mentally associate with specific needs. It's these associations that create mental availability. Therefore, your job when marketing to out-of-market buyers is to build and refresh the memory structures that link your company to the needs or challenges your potential buyers are most likely to encounter.

*****

*There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, and that applies to the rule that marketing messages for out-of-market buyers should be brief and easy to consume. High-quality thought leadership content can also be very effective with out-of-market buyers. In the 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report by Edelman and LinkedIn, over 75% of the surveyed B2B decision-makers and C-suite executives said that a piece of thought leadership content has led them to research a product or service they weren't previously considering, and 54% said that an organization's thought leadership content has prompted them to research the organization's offers or capabilities.

Image courtesy of Mike Lawrence (www.creditdebitpro.com) via Flickr (CC).

[Research Round-Up] A Detailed Look at Real-World B2B Buying

(This month's Research Round-Up discusses the 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Study by 6sense. The 6sense study provides detailed insights regarding how business buyers make purchase decisions in real-world scenarios. This makes the study report a must-read for anyone involved in B2B revenue generation.)

2024 B2B Buyer Experience Report by 6sense 

Source:  6sense

• Based on a survey of 2,509 B2B buyers located in North America (37.46%). EMEA (29.77%), and APAC (32.76%).
• To qualify for the survey, participants must have bought at least $10,000 USD in annualized value within the 24 months preceding the survey. The average value of actual purchases made by the survey respondents exceeded $200,000 USD.
• More than 95% of the respondents were manager-level or above.
• Survey respondents were drawn from five industry verticals, with the largest cohort working at tech and software companies.
• 6sense released the study report on October 9, 2024; the report doesn't state when the survey was in the field.

The 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Study by 6sense is one of the most detailed examinations of B2B buying behavior that I've seen recently.

The study is based on a survey that produced more than 2,500 qualified respondents, and the researchers used various statistical techniques to analyze the survey data.

The study findings, combined with the insights from the statistical analysis, paint a picture of B2B buying that differs markedly from the conventional view. Therefore, this research should prompt B2B marketing and sales leaders to reexamine their strategies from the ground up.

The Basics

The 6sense researchers asked participants about several issues that earlier studies have also addressed. For example, the study found that for these survey respondents:

• The length of the average buying cycle was 11.5 months.

• The average number of individuals in the buying group was 10.9 people.

• The average number of prospective vendors considered by the buying group was 4.6.

• On average, the survey respondents were about 70% through their buying process before they engaged directly with representatives of prospective vendors.

These findings are similar to the results of numerous earlier research studies.

Extra Insights

What makes the 6sense study particularly valuable is that it also provides insights about issues that haven't been frequently addressed in previous studies. For example:

• 92.6% of the surveyed buyers had prior experience with at least one of the prospective vendors they considered. 84% had experience with the vendor that was ultimately selected, while 8.6% had prior experience with only a "losing" vendor.

• Buyers initiated contact with prospective vendors 81% of the time.

• In 85% of the buying scenarios represented in the survey, the buying group had their purchase requirements nearly or completely set before initiating contact with prospective vendors.

When Buyers Pick a Favorite

One of the most interesting topics discussed in the 6sense study report relates to when B2B buyers identify a preferred vendor.

At several places, the report's authors assert that most B2B buyers have identified a preferred vendor before they contact any prospective vendors. For example, on page 23 of the report, the authors write:

"Buyers devote nearly 70% of their buying journey to identifying a short-list of potential providers. They review content, have internal meetings and consult with outside resources to establish their requirements and agree on a shortlist and a favored vendor. Only then do they reach out to vendors to confirm that choice, starting with the preferred vendor. They end up buying from the initially preferred vendor 81% of the time."

While I suspect this statement is probably accurate, it's not clear from the study report that the survey data directly supports this conclusion.

The 6sense researchers asked survey participants ". . . whether their first interaction with a provider organization was with the ultimate winner or instead with one of the other providers." Eighty-one percent (81%) of the respondents reported that their first vendor contact was with the ultimate winner.

The focus of this question is who buyers contact first. However, it's not clear from the study report that the survey specifically asked participants (a) whether their buying group identified a preferred vendor before initiating content with prospective vendors, or (b) what percentage of the time the preferred vendor turns out to be the winning vendor.

I'm not sure why the researchers didn't ask these questions, and I hope they will be included in future editions of this research.

*****

The 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Report provides great insights into B2B buying behavior. I encourage you to take the time to review the full 65-page report.

Buyer Insights That Should Guide Your Planning for 2025

With the fourth quarter of 2024 less than two weeks away, many B2B marketing and sales leaders will soon begin planning for 2025. To develop an effective go-to-market plan, it's vital to understand how the decision-makers in your target market(s) prefer to engage with potential suppliers at all stages of the buying process.

Recent research by McKinsey & Company provides several important insights regarding B2B buyer preferences and behaviors that you should consider as you develop your go-to-market plans for next year. McKinsey's 2024 B2B Buyer Pulse Survey produced nearly 4,000 responses from B2B decision-makers across 34 sectors in eight industries from 13 countries.

Here are some of the key findings from the McKinsey survey.

B2B Buyer Archetypes

McKinsey's research identified three distinct archetypes of B2B decision-makers based on their varying preferences and needs.

• Adapters (44% of survey respondents) - These decision-makers are highly relationship-oriented. "While willing to try new channels, they tend to stick with patterns that they are familiar with and are slow to try new experiences, channels, and suppliers . . ."

• Innovators (20% of respondents) - These decision-makers ". . . are on the cutting edge when it comes to newer technologies . . . They are highly likely to be on any and all digital channels."

• Seekers (36% of respondents) - These decision-makers ". . . demand a seamless omnichannel experience. If they don't get it, they are quick to seek out a new supplier."

Planning Consideration - McKinsey found that all three archetypes are "consistently present" across geographies and economic sectors. Therefore, it's likely the potential buyers in your company's target market(s) will include all three archetypes, and your go-to-market strategy will need to contain elements designed to appeal to each buyer archetype.

The "Rule of Thirds"

McKinsey found that B2B decision-makers interact with potential suppliers in multiple ways. In the 2024 survey, respondents reported that on average, they spend about one-third of their "interaction time" engaging with suppliers via each of three types of interaction.

• Traditional - In-person meetings, direct mail, fax, etc.

• Remote - Phone calls, video conference calls, emails, etc.

• Digital self-service - Company websites, e-commerce, chatbots, internet searches, mobile apps, etc.

McKinsey observed that this "rule of thirds" is consistent across all stages of the buying process and that it holds true across all geographies, industries, company sizes, and buying scenarios (new vs. repeat purchases, high-value vs. low-value purchases).

Even more significant, McKinsey found that the "rule of thirds" is generally consistent across all three B2B buyer archetypes. Adapters have a slightly higher preference for Traditional interactions, but the difference is not great.

The most significant departure from the "rule of thirds" relates to buying scenarios. About 40% of the survey respondents tend to prefer Traditional interactions for "high-effort" purchases. High-effort purchases would include first-time purchases, high-cost purchases, purchases of complex products or services, and purchases from new suppliers.

Planning Consideration - The "rule of thirds" is nearly universal. Therefore, your go-to-market approach should include options for all three interaction types.

Omnichannel/E-Commerce

The findings of the McKinsey survey confirmed the importance of providing seamless omnichannel experiences, including robust e-commerce capabilities. Most survey respondents reported using ten or more ways to interact with potential suppliers during their buying process. This was up from five interaction channels in the 2016 edition of the Buyer Pulse survey.

Equally important, more than half of the survey respondents said they were likely to switch suppliers if they didn't have a smooth experience across channels.

The 2024 survey results also made the importance of e-commerce emphatically clear. Seventy-one percent of the respondents said they offer some form of e-commerce, and in those companies, e-commerce sales generate 34% of total revenue, on average.

The survey also confirmed that many B2B buyers are comfortable making larger purchases via e-commerce and other remote interaction channels. The survey asked participants this question:  "What is the maximum order size that you would purchase through end-to-end digital self-service and remote human interactions for a new product or service category?"

Seventy-three of the respondents said $50,000 or more, 39% said $500,000 or more, and 20% said $1 million or more.

Planning Consideration - Unless your company is an outlier, your go-to-market strategy needs to include a major focus on providing seamless omnichannel interaction experiences, and e-commerce should be the centerpiece of your omnichannel strategy.

*****

Every company's competitive environment is unique in some ways. Therefore, not every finding in the McKinsey survey will be literally and precisely applicable to your situation. However, the broad trends identified in the survey should be carefully considered during your planning process.

Image courtesy of Mike Lawrence (CreditDebitPro.com) via Flickr (CC).

Why B2B Marketers Need to Care About "Opportunistic Learning"

One of the most profound developments in B2B marketing of the past two decades has been the emergence of empowered and independent buyers. When I launched this blog in 2010, my second post was about "The Age of the Self-Directed Buyer."

The explosive proliferation of readily available information has been the driving force behind this development. Because of easy access to a wealth of information about almost every conceivable topic, business decision-makers now believe they can find whatever information they want or need, whenever they want or need it, on their terms.

Information abundance has altered many aspects of how B2B buying decisions are made, and B2B marketers have done a reasonably good job of adapting to most of those changes. There is, however, one impact of information abundance that has been (and still is) underappreciated.

The Rise of Opportunistic Learning  

Most models of the B2B buying process assume the process begins when a company's leaders or managers recognize a need or a problem and decide to address the issue in some way.

These "buyers" then gather information about the need or problem and possible solutions, evaluate the available options, and may or may not decide to purchase a product or service to address the situation.

So, the conventional view of B2B buying behavior is that most information gathering occurs after an intentional buying process has started. While this view may still be accurate in a strictly quantitative sense, it misses an important aspect of B2B buying.

Information is now 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," and long before they have started an intentional buying process.

I call this type of information-gathering opportunistic learning, and it occurs because humans are naturally programmed to seek rewards. We all have a mental radar system that constantly scans 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 professional careers.

The growth of opportunistic learning has important implications for B2B marketing, but some marketers haven't fully appreciated its significance.

Most B2B marketing tactics and programs are designed to identify and reach people who are ready to begin a buying process or to encourage those already involved in a buying process to move toward a buying decision. At any time, however, most of the people affiliated with potential customers are more likely to be opportunistic learners than true buyers.

Engaging with opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become involved in a buying process. Therefore, if marketers can create and sustain positive relationships with opportunistic learners, their company will have a competitive advantage when those opportunistic learners turn into buyers.

How to Successfully Engage with Opportunistic Learners

Antonia Wade, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of PwC, has offered a compelling perspective on how B2B marketers can successfully engage with opportunistic learners.

In her recent book, Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey (Kogan Page Limited, 2023), Ms. Wade proposes a new B2B buyer journey "framework" that contains 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 journey phase.

Ms. Wade's Horizon Scanner phase is similar in several ways to what I have called opportunistic learning. In her book, she writes that Horizon Scanners are people in strategic roles who are always assessing how big market trends and innovation will impact their business. Horizon Scanners, Wade writes, ". . . aren't looking for answers and they're certainly not looking for a sales message; they're looking for ideas."

Ms. Wade makes two major points about successfully engaging Horizon Scanners. First, she argues that high-quality thought leadership content is critically important. Wade contends that compelling thought leadership is what earns your company a seat at the table in the later stages of the buying process.

Second, and equally important, Ms. Wade argues that most Horizon Scanners tend to seek information from respected and trusted sources. Therefore, she contends, your thought leadership content needs to be available in channels you don't own, such as third-party publications or events. This also means, she argues, that public relations plays an important role in reaching Horizon Scanners.

The Takeaway

Whether you call these individuals "Horizon Scanners" or "opportunistic learners," it's vital to remember they are not yet "buyers," and they shouldn't be treated like decision-makers who are engaged in an intentional buying process. Your goal with these individuals is to position your company as an expert and a reliable authority, while also making your company memorable.

Illustration courtesy of Naval Surface Warriors via Flickr (CC).