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).

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.

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.

A Powerful (But Not Easy) Way to Boost the Influence of Marketing

In my latest three posts (here, here, and here), I've been discussing the widely-held perception among marketers that the marketing function in most companies has less influence than it should have - and less influence than it once had.

Some research studies (like this one) have shown that the influence of the marketing organization has declined over the past 2 - 3 decades.

In my previous posts, I've argued that the rise of business strategy has had a significant impact on the role of the marketing function. Over the past sixty years, strategy has become the primary mechanism senior business leaders use to make major decisions about the future of their business and create their gameplan for success.

This development has affected the marketing function for two reasons.

First, the formulation of a complete business strategy will require several decisions that most marketers would call "marketing" decisions. For example, strategy makers must decide how to segment their industry, what their target market will be, and how they will deliver compelling value to their target customers. Most marketers would say these are classic marketing decisions. Think Segmentation-Targeting-Positioning. 

Second, strategy development in most companies is the responsibility of the CEO and usually involves some or all of the company's C-level executives.

So, the bottom line is that the rise of strategy has transformed some "marketing" decisions into "strategy" decisions and changed who typically makes those decisions. This doesn't make the marketing function's loss of influence inevitable, but it does change what marketing leaders need to do to preserve - and even raise - that influence.

In essence, marketing leaders must recognize that how much influence they possess will be largely determined by how much they contribute to (a) the success of their company's strategy, and (b) the effectiveness of their company's strategy development process.

In my last post, I argued that marketing leaders must perform two core jobs well to raise their influence.

First, they must ensure that their teams are creating and running marketing communication programs and performing other marketing activities that support their company's business strategy. I discussed this task in detail in my last post.

Provide Strategy-Critical Intelligence

The second core job is equally important, but less frequently discussed, at least in a detailed way. To increase their level of influence, marketing leaders need to provide their company's strategy development team the information and insights they need to make sound strategic decisions.

The choices that senior business leaders make when developing a business strategy are high-stakes decisions that will have a major impact on their company's competitive success. Therefore, those choices should be made on the basis of detailed and reliable information about the company's capabilities and its competitive environment.

More specifically, strategy developers need detailed and reliable intelligence about their company's industry, its potential customers, and its competitors. I've use the term intelligence intentionally because what strategy developers need is not simply raw data, but data that's accompanied by a sound analysis of that data.

The following outline shows that major kinds of information marketing leaders need to provide to the senior business leaders who comprise their company's strategy development team. This outline is not exhaustive. It contains the types of information that apply to most companies, but additional or other information can be important based on a company's specific situation.

Providing the information shown in this outline, along with adequate supporting evidence, won't be a trivial undertaking for marketing leaders in many companies. The intelligence needed for strategy development differs from the data many marketers now routinely collect. Therefore, providing this intelligence will require a fairly significant amount of research.

The amount of work required to perform this job well can be substantial, but the payoff justifies the effort. When a company's strategy makers have access to relevant and accurate industry, customer, and competitor intelligence, they are more likely to make sound strategic choices, which will ultimately make the company more successful.

For marketing leaders, performing this job well will enhance their influence and, by extension, the influence and stature of the marketing organization. When the CEO and other company leaders view the senior marketing leader as a trusted source of the industry, customer, and competitor intelligence that will help them formulate better business strategy, they will place greater value on, and give greater weight to, the view and perspectives of the marketing leader.

Top image courtesy of Joshua Tree National Park via Flickr (Public Domain).

How to Elevate the Influence of the Marketing Function

Source:  Shutterstock

Many marketers believe that the marketing function in most companies doesn't have as much influence as it should have. In my last two posts (here and here), I discussed why this circumstance developed, and I argued that one of the main causes was the rise of strategy as a business discipline.

Over the past five decades, strategy development has become the dominant process senior business leaders use to create their gameplan for success. Developing a complete business strategy requires company leaders to make several decisions involving customers, competitors, and other market-related factors. 

As a result, the strategy development process essentially transformed a number of "marketing" issues into "strategy" issues.

So, how can marketing leaders increase the influence of the marketing function under these circumstances? To accomplish this goal, the marketing function must perform two core tasks effectively.

• It must create and run programs that support the company's chosen business strategy.

• It must provide the company's senior leaders information and insights that can enable them to make sound strategic choices.

At first glance, these tasks may seem obvious, but they are more nuanced than they first appear. And when they are done properly, they will boost the influence of the marketing function.

I'll discuss the first task in this post, and I'll cover the second task in my next post.

Job 1 - Run Programs That Support Company Strategy

The first job of the marketing function in any company is to create and execute marketing programs that support the company's chosen strategy.

This job may seem easy to understand, but what does "support" the strategy actually mean in operational terms? How can we determine that any marketing program meets the "support" requirement?

In my last post, I introduced the strategy framework developed by Roger Martin, one of today's leading authorities on business strategy. Martin describes strategy as the answers to the five interrelated questions shown in the following illustration:

The answers to these questions constitute the five core elements of a complete business strategy.

• "What is our winning aspiration?" - A description of what strategic success looks like for the company.

• "Where will we play?" - A description of the company's target market.

• "How will we win?" - A description of how the company will deliver distinct and superior value to its target customers.

• "What capabilities must be in place?" - A description of the activities the company must excel at performing to be successful with its "where-to-play" and "how-to-win" choices.

• "What management systems are required?" - A description of the management and measurement systems the company needs to support its other strategic choices.

Martin has also written that the primary job of a company's functional units (e.g. marketing, human resources, manufacturing, etc.) is to provide the essential capabilities and the required management systems identified in the company's strategy.

Martin's approach is useful for marketers because it establishes boundaries or "guardrails" for marketing plans, and helps ensure that marketing programs actually support the company's strategy.

For example, this approach requires that:

• Every marketing communication program should be specifically designed to reach, or create engagement with, potential buyers in the target market(s) identified in the company's strategy.

• All marketing communication programs should describe and present the value provided by the company's products or services in ways that are aligned with the "how-to-win" element of the company's strategy.

• The metrics used to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs should be designed to measure performance in the target market(s) identified in the company's strategy.

The credibility and influence of the marketing function are enhanced when this task is performed well, and when the senior marketing leader effectively communicates the rationale for marketing's activities to the CEO and other senior company leaders.

Performing this job well demonstrates to the CEO and other senior executives that the senior marketing leader and the other members of the marketing team understand the company's strategy and are applying their marketing expertise to make the company's strategy successful.

What the Rise of Strategy Meant (and Means) for Marketing

Many marketers now believe that the marketing function in many companies has less influence than it should have - or once had.

As one example, they frequently point out that the marketing function is usually responsible for creating and running promotional programs, but often has little or no influence over the other three "Ps" of the marketing mix - product, price, and place.

The idea that the fundamental purpose of a business is to understand customer wants and needs, and create products or services to satisfy those wants and needs emerged in the 1950s. As this concept gained traction, many marketing scholars embraced the view that the marketing function in a well-managed company would direct much of what the company does.

In my last post, I explained that the marketing function in most companies never gained the broad authority that marketing scholars anticipated. What actually happened was that strategy development became the primary mechanism senior company leaders used to make major decisions about the future of their business.

Over the past six decades, the strategy discipline has become the dominant method for describing the purpose of a business and creating the "recipe" for its success. In the words of Walter Kiechel:

"Strategy's coming to dominance as the framework by which companies understand what they're doing and want to do, the construct through which and around which the rest of their efforts are organized, eclipses any other change worked in the intellectual landscape of business over the past fifty years." (Emphasis in original) [Walter Kiechel, III, The Lords of Strategy:  The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World (Boston:  Harvard Business Press, 2010)].

The rise of strategy to the dominant position in the hierarchy of business management tools effectively prevented the marketing function from gaining expansive decision-making authority in most, though not all, companies.

To understand how this happened, we need to look at what a complete strategy encompasses and where strategy is made in most organizations.

The What and Who of Strategy

Roger Martin, one of today's leading authorities on strategy, defines strategy this way:  ". . . strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely position the firm in the industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition." [A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin, Playing to Win:  How Strategy Really Works (Boston:  Harvard Business Review Press, 2013)].

Martin goes on to describe strategy as the answers to five interrelated questions. The following illustration shows Martin's five core strategy questions and some of the subordinate questions that business leaders must answer to create a complete strategy.

Veteran marketers will recognize that answering some of these questions will require strategy makers to use several marketing principles and methods.

For example, the "Where will we play?" question will require strategy makers to decide whether and how to segment their market and select their target market. And the "How will we win?" question will require them to determine how they will deliver value to customers that is distinct from, and superior to, the value offered by competitors.

The rise of strategy also constrained the marketing function's decision-making authority because of who formulates strategy. In most companies, strategy development was (and still is) led by the CEO, and usually involves some or all of the company's C-level executives.*

So, as senior company leaders increasingly used strategy to define the purpose of their business and create their gameplan for success, they absorbed several market-related decisions into the strategy development process. As a result, those decisions became "strategy" decisions rather than "marketing" decisions.

Under these circumstances, the influence of the marketing function across the company will be largely based on the contribution it makes to the success of the company's strategy.

To maximize the influence of the marketing function, most marketing leaders will need to reframe the function's mission and objectives to make clear that the function's first priority is to support the company's strategy and strategy-making process.

In my next post, I'll explain how marketing leaders can use this approach to increase their influence with other senior company leaders and enhance the influence of the marketing function throughout the company.

*****

*In larger enterprises with multiple business units or brands, each business unit and brand will likely require a distinct strategy. These strategies are typically developed by each business unit leader or brand manager with input from his or her leadership team.

Top image courtesy of  Stefan Erschwender via Flickr (CC).

Has the Influence of the Marketing Function Declined?

(David Packard, the co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, once said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department." This post explains why Packard's view is accurate but why it's also not necessarily an indictment of the marketing function.) 

A Perceived Loss of Influence

There is a widespread perception in the marketing community that the marketing function has been marginalized at many companies, that the influence of the marketing organization is not as broad or as strong as it once was.

Marketers frequently cite two circumstances as symptomatic of marketing's diminished stature and influence.

First, marketers often describe the lack of influence in terms of the 4Ps of the marketing mix. They note that in many companies, the marketing function is responsible for designing and executing promotional activities and programs, but has little influence over product, price, or place.

Marketers have also observed that senior marketing leaders often don't play a prominent 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 circumstances exist at many companies.

So, has the influence of the marketing function actually declined over the past several years, as many marketers believe? Or, is this perception the result of an inflated view of marketing's influence in the past?

To answer these questions, we need to take a brief tour of marketing history beginning about seven decades ago.

The Emergence of the Marketing Concept

In the 1950's, companies began to adopt a new guiding philosophy for achieving business success. This philosophy came to be called the marketing concept, and its core principle was what we might today call "customer centricity."

According to the marketing concept, business leaders should first develop an in-depth understanding of customer needs and wants, and then use that understanding to create products or services that will meet those needs and wants better than competitors. Furthermore, all organizational functions of the company should be aligned on the primary purpose of satisfying customer needs and wants.

Management icon Peter Drucker provided an early statement of the marketing concept as a management philosophy in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management, when he wrote:

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose:  to create a satisfied customer. It is the customer who determines what the business is. Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions:  marketing and innovation."

By the 1960's, the philosophical principles of the marketing concept had become well established in business thinking, and many marketing scholars had embraced an expansive view of the role and authority of the marketing function.

In his 1960 marketing textbook, Basic Marketing:  A Managerial Approach, E. Jerome McCarthy, the creator of the 4Ps model of the marketing mix, described the authority of the marketing function in exceptionally broad terms when he wrote:

". . . marketing should determine what products are to be produced (product development, design, and packaging) what prices to charge (credits and collections and pricing policy), and where they are to be available (warehousing and transportation) - as well as selling and advertising."

Other marketing textbooks soon began describing the role and authority of the marketing function in similar terms, and as a result, many marketers came to believe that a powerful marketing function was the norm in well-managed companies.

What Actually Happened

This belief, while widespread, was never completely accurate,* and it's clearly not accurate today. Recent research suggests that the marketing function in most companies does not have the broad authority and responsibilities the marketing scholars of the 1960's described.

A study published in the May 2023 issue of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science found that only 17% of the companies included in the study had marketing functions that controlled all marketing decisions and set their company's growth agenda.

The influence of the marketing function may have declined in some companies over the past several years, but in most companies, the marketing function never wielded the broad authority many marketing scholars had anticipated.

What actually happened in most companies is that strategy became the preferred way for senior company leaders to make major decisions about the future of their business. And because a sound strategy must address several important marketing issues, senior company leaders began making major marketing decisions as part of the strategy development process.

Therefore, in companies with a mature strategy development process, the marketing function doesn't fully control all marketing decisions. I frequently hear or see marketers complain about "non-marketers" making marketing decisions, and clearly the risk for mistakes increases when the people making marketing decisions don't understand basic marketing principles. However, when marketing is defined broadly, such decision making is probably inevitable and may, in fact, be necessary and beneficial.

Peter Drucker viewed marketing as a general management responsibility. In his 1973 classic, Management Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Drucker 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."

To maximize the influence of the marketing functions in these circumstances, marketing leaders must develop capabilities and perform activities that are specifically designed to support their company's chosen business strategy and strategy-making process. I'll discuss the ascendancy of strategy in more detail and explain how marketing leaders can accomplish these tasks in my next two posts.

*****

*Marketing functions with broad responsibilities and decision-making authority did exist, primarily in large consumer package goods (CPG) companies that had adopted brand management structures and processes. Proctor & Gamble invented the brand management function in the 1930's, and by the late 1950's, it had been widely implemented by U.S. CPG companies. These companies may have inspired the view of the marketing function advanced by marketing scholars.

Image courtesy of Virtual EyeSee via Flickr (CC).

Looking Back, Looking Forward - 2026 Edition

Source:  Shutterstock

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

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

Like many marketers, I used the final few weeks of 2025 to reflect on what happened during the year and plan for 2026. For the past few years, I've used my first post of the new year to review a few of the major developments that occurred in B2B marketing during the year just ended, and preview some of the topics I'll be writing about in the year ahead.

So, here's a look back at 2025 and a look forward to 2026.

Looking Back - Another "Year of AI"

Artificial intelligence was one of the hottest topics in marketing in 2025, as it was in 2024 and 2023. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022 ignited an arms race of epic proportions among the mega-cap technology companies.

As a result, the performance of the large language models that power generative AI has been increasing at an exponential rate, and the number of software applications incorporating AI in some form has exploded.

Despite the obvious importance of the subject, I did not publish a single post in 2025 that focused primarily on AI. I decided to steer clear of the topic because an abundance of information about AI is available from other reliable sources.

If you want to stay on top of what's happening in the AI space, I strongly recommend that your subscribe to Christopher Penn's newsletter. Penn is my go-to resource for insightful and pragmatic commentary on the latest advances in AI. His December 14, 2025 newsletter contains an excellent review of the major developments in AI that occurred in 2025.

Looking Back - B2B Brand Building Gains Traction

After languishing in the shadow of demand generation/performance marketing for nearly two decades, B2B brand marketing seems to be on the cusp of a renaissance. The volume of content highlighting the importance of having a strong B2B brand has increased dramatically over the past couple of years.

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

In addition, several recent research studies have provided insights about the real-world B2B buying process that make the value of a strong B2B brand abundantly clear. The most recent research addressing this issue is the 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Study by 6sense, which I wrote about in November.  

We are still in the early stages of the resurgence of B2B brand building, but the momentum is real, and I expect it will continue to build in 2026.

Looking Forward

Each year, I try to identify a small group of issues or circumstances that I believe will play a prominent role in B2B marketing during the coming year. These issues or circumstances will provide the themes for many of my posts here.

In 2026, one set of issues I plan to focus on relates to the scope of authority and responsibility of the senior marketing leader and the marketing organization in a B2B company.

There is a widespread belief in the marketing community that the role and influence of the marketing function are more narrow today than they were in the past. Many marketers describe this issue in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix.

In Marketing Week's 2025 Career & Salary Survey, over 88% of the responding marketers said they or someone within their team have influence over advertising (promotion). But:

• Only 48.5% said they have influence over product development
• Only 34.1% said they have influence over price
• Only 32.7% said they have influence over place

Others describe the issue in terms of marketing's lack of involvement in the business strategy development process at many companies. For example, in a 2024 survey by McKinsey & Company, only half of the surveyed CMOs said that marketing executives are involved in the strategic planning process at their organization.

In my upcoming posts, I'll discuss this issue, and I'll explore what the role and primary responsibilities of the marketing organization should be in a well-managed B2B company.

Here's to a year of successful marketing in 2026.

Long Live the 4Ps!

Source:  Shutterstock

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

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

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

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

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

"The 4Ps Are Tactical, Not Strategic"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 4Ps Assume a "Static, Unchanging Marketplace"

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

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

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

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

McCarthy defines marketing as follows:

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

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

"The 4Ps Miss Out Brand!"

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

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

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

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

Are the 4Ps Outdated?

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

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

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).