Steps to Targeting a B2B buying group

Summary

In the past few years, buying behaviour has adapted to a changing market. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive growth in the tech sector, with B2B buying groups prioritising the sophistication of their tech stacks to enable digital transformation efforts. This scenario changed in 2022 and 2023, as companies decided to decrease their investments in tech and lay off staff.

Looking forward to 2024, the buying group is looking at a scenario of slow growth (Reuters, 2023), which means buyers are willing to spend but are still defensive regarding purchase priorities and proving a return on investment (ROI).

This article presents six steps based on this evolving behaviour of the buying group, with a playbook that considers the buying journey of today and how marketers and salespeople should engage the buying group as a whole to drive brand interest and conversions.

What is a buying group?

A buying group (or buying committee) is a group of B2B professionals who are responsible for a purchase on behalf of their organisation.

According to INFUSE Insights research, the average buying group (59%) consists of 4-10 members, with operational leaders and managers accounting for the majority of decision makers. This results in a complex buying journey, which according to the same research usually lasts over six months (55%).

The challenge for organisations is to demonstrate value and nurture leads during that buyer’s journey, to encourage the purchase of their solutions over competing offerings.

The four stages of the B2B
buying group journey

The buyer’s journey is typically categorised into four broad stages:

Awareness Stage: The buyer realises they have a problem at their organisation, which requires a solution.

Consideration Stage: Next, the buyer evaluates the scope of their problem and researches different solutions.

Decision Stage: Finally, the buyer chooses the solution that is the best fit for their needs, considering the budget, tech stack and other relevant criteria of their organisation.

Post-Purchase Stage: After buying, the client is onboarded to make best use of the solution and offered ongoing support through Client Success (CS) initiatives. This helps build brand evangelism and reduce churn.

Preparation for marketing
to a B2B buying group

When targeting a buying group, it is crucial to establish a strong foundation of knowledge on its members and their organisation. This is especially important for account based marketing efforts, such as account based experience (ABX).

Ensure the best outcomes with your campaigns by following these guidelines:

Research the Buying Committee

To establish a clear understanding of how to approach the buying group of each target account, it is beneficial to first identify and perform detailed research of its members. Gather as much information on each member’s preferences, both in terms of the type of content they consume and the channels they typically frequent (psychographics can be particularly useful for gleaning this data).

Your research should also include their background within the organisation and the authority they hold on buying decisions. This can help determine the role of each buyer within the group to guide your messaging and targeting strategy.

Create Buyer Personas

When targeting a buying group, it is crucial to identify if your buyers are aligned with your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Having multiple buyer personas for different roles and offerings can help determine the best product fit, as well as inform your outreach strategy to ensure relevance.

Read the B2B Guide to Buyer Personas
to create buyer profiles aligned to your ICP

Align with the Sales Team

The sales team interacts directly with nurtured buyers, which means they can provide valuable feedback on the quality of the campaign’s messaging as well as verify if their pain points are what you had envisioned in your buyer personas.

Thus, establishing clear information flows between marketing, sales, and other demand professionals is key for successfully targeting a B2B buying group.

Read 10 Best Practices for Sales and Marketing Alignment
to ensure data flow between teams

Build your B2B buying group
strategy in 6 Steps

The following steps dissect the buyer’s journey in greater detail and the individual tasks required of teams to create an effective and accurate targeting strategy:

1. Becoming aware of a need

This stage represents the buyer’s realisation of a problem and their evaluation of whether this problem warrants action and, if so, what solutions are available.

Marketing team: At this top of funnel stage, the focus should be on demand generation content that creates awareness of your products, services, and brand. The messaging should centre on the benefits prospects stand to receive and the specifics of how your products work.

Emphasising these benefits in relation to pain points is particularly effective, as these are the current focus of prospects at the top of the sales funnel.

Sales team: Adapt outbound marketing materials to match the common pain points of your prospects and support this knowledge with relevant industry trends. At the start of the sales funnel, salespeople should leverage subtle touchpoints and present themselves as an available expert to discuss business challenges, rather than push salesy messaging.

Read our top of funnel demand generation content guide

2. Investigating options

This stage marks the beginning of the buying group’s research on potential solutions for their business challenges. It is an exploratory stage, where many options are assessed to determine the best fit.

Marketing team: Prioritise educational, buyer enablement content to support the buying group’s research, such as whitepapers, case studies, and how-to guides. Consider your buyer personas’ different content preferences and focus on showcasing your company’s expertise and proof of results. This content can be used to fuel lead nurturing over an extended period.

Sales team: Whether informed by early interactions or research, sales representatives should use this time to form an accurate understanding of the buying group’s needs, considering each individual member. From this, sales strategies can be personalised with current solutions in mind, or a new solution can be created in-house to match requirements—a particularly effective approach for ABX.

3. Making a commitment to change

By this point, buyers have defined the specifics of their needs and have a clear challenge they need to solve. As they commit to making a change, buyers will likely revisit research and identify the company best suited to meeting their needs from a curated list.

This is a critical turning point in this strategy, as this is often when stakeholders or decision makers actively enter the B2B buying process to evaluate available solutions and how they match the goals of different aspects of the business (which can result in a short list of what the buying committee had already selected).

Marketing team: Lead scoring and buyer intent data should be leveraged to keep track of the buying group’s brand interactions. Following buyers’ progress this way allows for marketers to qualify leads and create strategies to keep and develop the interest generated thus far. Findings should influence the content that is shared to leads in the buying group on an individual level to ensure their relevance and encourage engagement.

Sales team: Leveraging credibility in the form of client reviews or feedback, as well as any relevant accolades, can be an effective way of building trust and communicating product value. However, generic statistics and jargon should be avoided. Instead, messaging should indicate attention to detail with the level of its specificity.

4. Selecting a solution

Buyers at this stage of the B2B buying process need to acquire permission from the stakeholders either within the buying group or upper management.

Marketing team: Content should speak directly to the buying group. Messaging should focus primarily on tangible, revenue-focused results rather than anything that could be considered as superficial or marketing 'fluff'. Marketers should leverage content to aid the evaluation process by making information easily accessible, such as providing product comparisons and one-pagers with product features.

Sales team: The role of representatives at this step should be consultative. Their main responsibility is to answer all queries, address objections, and prove the value of your solution above those of your competitors. Enable sales staff with up-to-date competitor comparisons and market surveys to ease this process.

5. Validating choice

With the support of decision makers, the buying group will be looking to finalise the last details of making a purchase and which option is most budget-friendly. Small details hold greater importance and may be the deciding factor between one solution and another.

Marketing team: Credibility should be the focus of marketing messaging at this stage. As buyers come closer to making a deal, marketers can leverage content such as case studies and client testimonials to encourage purchases. An emphasis on the achievements of existing clients after choosing your solution can be a powerful advocate to distinguish your brand and products from your closest competitors.

Sales team: Representatives should consider the unique biases and agendas of the decision makers making up the buying group. Providing buyers with a detailed breakdown of costs associated with each solution (including competitors) can help to start negotiations in your favour. Focus and relate the differentials of your product to the specific needs of each account to increase your likelihood of success.

6. Making a purchase

At this final stage before closing a deal, buying groups will likely enter negotiations to lower the cost of purchase and maximise benefits. However, at the same time, the buyers who will use your solution directly will typically research best practices to avoid losing time learning at the time of implementation.

Marketing team: Support and encourage the curiosity of bottom of funnel buyers by moving them into a new nurturing cadence. This can include useful content that teaches buyers what to expect during the first days utilising your product (pre-onboarding). Nurturing this way can increase the lifetime value of each account by facilitating product adoption and avoiding common usability challenges. Attention to detail is essential even after a purchase has been made.

Sales team: Representatives should focus on resolving any of the buying committee’s final objections as they seek to increase the value they stand to receive from making a deal. Sales teams should strive to match these buyers’ needs as closely as possible to avoid losing a sale. The challenge is to personalise your offering in a way that meets all buyer needs, yet still meets ROI goals.

Learn how to overcome 5 common
buyer pain points with demand generation

Create a B2B buyer journey map

Craft a B2B buyer journey map to help determine what outreach is required for all four stages of the buying group’s purchase process.

Below is a list of recommended content formats for each buyer journey stage to guide your own efforts:

Awareness Stage:

This content should be focused on enabling long-term brand awareness through demand generation and addressing the buying group’s pain points:

Checklists
Guides
Infographics
Videos

Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
Social media posts
Slide decks
Thought leadership articles

Consideration Stage:

Content at this stage should be more in-depth and focus on the features and benefits of solutions:

eBooks
Free tools

Webinars
Whitepapers

Decision Stage:

Conveying the unique value of products is the top priority at this point.

Case studies
Client feedback/reviews
Free assessments
Free product trial/demo

Product and vendor comparisons
Product guides
Slide decks
Video demonstrations

Post-Purchase Stage:

Even after conversion, clients should be nurtured with content to retain their interest:

eBooks
Whitepapers
Product guides
Thought leadership articles

Newsletters
Webinars
Social media posts
Expert/Consultancy programs and support

Each buyer journey map should vary depending on the audience it is targeting, their preferences, and the time taken to convert. If possible, tailor this map per buying group adopting an ABX approach.

Whereas buyer journey maps typically span across the entirety of the B2B buyer journey, maps can also be made per funnel stage to track a buyer’s progress as they gain information on your brand and their business challenges. This can provide detailed insights that lead to significant improvements to your buying group targeting and nurturing.

Overall, developing a map that categorises your buyer’s journey can help provide a better experience that is more accurate to buyer needs and keeps your brand top of mind.

Conclusion

The most important factor of creating a strategy for engaging B2B buyer groups is adapting your tactics to suit their needs. In such a competitive environment, companies must understand and demonstrate deep knowledge of their buyers’ preferences, pain points, and requirements.

This coupled with a tangible offer, evidence of results, and the appropriate content for each stage of the B2B buying process will likely increase the chances of success. It is also important to note the role of nurturing in the buyer journey. Even if buyers are not ready to commit to a purchase immediately, they may be encouraged with the proper nurturing program.

Whilst reaching a B2B buying group is far from an exact science and requires a significant investment into developing strategies, the steps outlined in this article are a solid foundation for expediting this process.

BUILD YOUR STRATEGY TO ENGAGE THE BUYING GROUP AND FUEL YOUR SALES PIPELINE

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