Who is truly driving B2B buying decisions? A look behind closed doors.

Introduction

Let us be real! If you are a business owner or a senior leader, do you personally decide every single detail of your company's operations?

Of course not; you depend on expert advice, and you delegate. Businesses thrive on collaboration, and major decisions almost always involve multi-functional teams, including technical specialists and professionals from legal, procurement, and finance departments or even external experts.

Take a look with us at the insights LinkedIn's recent article provides about Hidden Buyers: the behind-the-scenes stakeholders and influencers who have an almost equal role to target buyers in decision-making

In marketing, we often only focus on the assumed key decision-makers, and sometimes also the primary users or beneficiaries of a product or service as "target buyers" but mostly overlook the "hidden buyers".

Now, does LinkedIn simply want us to run more ads? No, their perspective is spot on and backed by scientific research!

Marketing must reach the entire ecosystem - the whole buying committee - including everyone who influences decisions, drives conversations, advocates for change, or has the power to veto a purchase. Risk plays a crucial role here, and hidden buyers are even more risk-averse than other members of the buying group.

LinkedIn's data show hidden buyers prioritise brand trust and vendor reliability over shiny features or the latest innovations. They hold significant influence in steering the procurement process and are likely to ask hard questions: Can we trust this brand? Will this partner deliver?

So why do we often focus our marketing efforts exclusively on the key decision-makers? Without broader team backing, even the most enthusiastic advocate will struggle to push a deal through, particularly against backdoor political behaviour and risk avoidance, both of which are pivotal in vendor selection.

Conclusion

The takeaway here is simple: Are you marketing to the whole room or just the one person you hope will sign on the dotted line?

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For further reading:
Brown et al., 2011 (link)
Lilien, 2016 (link)
Franke and Foerstl, 2020 (link)

The original LinkedIn article (link)
‍For a deeper look into LinkedIn's findings (link)