Unlocking B2B Buyer Journeys.

Four Game-Changing Insights for B2B Marketers

The art and science of B2B marketing is rapidly changing – research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute, 6sense and even our recent APAC B2B Buyer Journey Research Report has uncovered and solidified key insights for marketers.

I recently hosted an illuminating Green Hat webinar on the subject, Understanding B2B Buyer Journeys.

Three industry marketers,

• Kerry Cunningham, Head of Research and Thought Leadership at 6sense
• Fraser McNaughton, Chief Marketing Officer at Grant Thornton Australia
• Tanya Mas, Vice President Marketing, Korn Ferry

all shared key insights and how they are putting this understanding of the B2B buyer journey into practice.

You can watch the full webinar below:

Below are four key takeaways from the session:

1. Buyers are 73% through their journey before engaging with your brand.

According to Kerry Cunningham from 6sense, B2B buyers are defensive and don’t engage with vendors until they are 73% through their journey that might last more than 10 months. “Buyers have already seen our big white papers,” he explained, urging marketers to allow ungated content access so buyers can self-educate before engaging. Content should be available at all stages of the buyer’s journey to influence them before they make contact.

Actionable Insight: Don’t rely on gated content to capture leads. Allow buyers to access your best content freely to build trust early and help buyers gather the information they need to prepare their requirements and RFPs.


2. Account-Based engagement is the future – focus on the entire buying party.

Fraser McNaughton of Grant Thornton highlighted the growing complexity of B2B buying parties, which now often involve up to 13 decision-makers in his professional services sector. He emphasised that "sales and marketing need to work more closely together" to influence buyers earlier in the process. 

Instead of focusing on Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Kerry Cunningham recommended tracking engagement across multiple people within a buying group to gauge true interest and readiness. 

Actionable Insight: Have you built out a full picture of the entire buying party for your target accounts? Research has shown that just under half the buying party are ‘process buyers’ for whom brand, trust and reputation are more important than features and functions. Marketers often only create content and target the ‘functional buyers’ – end users of the product but are missing out on making sure they seek true buyer group agreement by doing so. 

Shift your focus from individual leads to broader account-based engagement, ensuring you reach all stakeholders involved in the decision-making process.


3. Build brand trust to win the first engagement!

Fraser McNaughton discussed the importance of brand-building, referencing Grant Thornton's investment in brand ambassador and three-time Olympic gold medallist canoeist Jessica Fox. By connecting with audiences on an emotional level and through storytelling, McNaughton shared how Fox “embodies the values we hold at Grant Thornton – authenticity, perseverance, and excellence,” which helped the firm foster trust with buyers. This is pertinent as it comes at a time when trust in professional services has come under scrutiny in Australia.

Tanya Mas of Korn Ferry stressed the importance of quality content and brand awareness in the buyer journey. On the importance on brand, "buyers are looking for partnerships, not just products," Tanya noted. 

Actionable Insight: Develop strong brand-building initiatives to ensure that your brand trust and recall is top of mind with your audience before they even reach out. Buyers engage first with brands they trust, and 82% of the time, the first vendor contacted wins the business.


4. Use data and insights to orchestrate sales and marketing activities. 

Tanya Mas also highlighted Korn Ferry’s use of data and intent signals to prioritise high-value accounts and coordinate marketing and sales efforts. "We use this data to tailor our approach and align activities," she shared.

Though building a dashboard that integrates various data source – media, intent, engagement, CRM, etc – Korn Ferry is able to uncover actionable insights on key accounts in their account-based experience program. 
Further, by focusing on accounts with the greatest growth potential and uncovering hidden personas, Korn Ferry can effectively allocate resources and ensure their strategies are highly targeted. 

Marketers should use such data to build personalised content strategies and identify hidden personas within buying groups, ensuring they target the right people. "It’s critical that we stand out with content that builds brand awareness and keeps us top-of-mind when buyers are ready to make decisions," Tanya added. 

Actionable Insight: Leverage actionable data to orchestrate your marketing efforts. We often speak with companies whose data is siloed across various marketing platforms (e.g.: CRM, MAP, CDP etc.) and whose data may not be updated. 

There is a fundamental need for marketers to get their (data) house in order. Once you get your data in order, you can start to draw out insights to help orchestrate more effective sales and marketing action. 

The B2B buyer journey is evolving, and marketers must adapt or fall behind. B2B marketers need to take a new approach – ungated content, account-based engagement, brand-building and effective use of data for insights are key to success. 

The good news is: you’re still early in this new B2B buyer narrative. The marketers we’ve spoken and worked with who have taken action are already starting to see promising results – time to get cracking!