It’s time for B2B marketing to cast off some of the old ways of thinking that are holding it back and get the attention it deserves.
That was one of the overarching themes at ‘From Influence to Impact’, The Marketing Practice's event held at LinkedIn’s London HQ on day three of Media Week 2025.
Hosted by Sarah Stephenson, Head of Social Media at TMP, the day featured seven separate sessions and a panel Q&A, all considering the role of media in the age of attention.
Most of us have our own views on what makes B2B different from B2C. But the single biggest difference is that B2B marketers are addressing buying groups tasked with spending company money. It’s not the same as selling fizzy drinks, trainers, or perfume.
While that’s true, when our first speaker – Mimi Turner, Head of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn – turned that perspective on its head, a lot of interesting insights became clear.
More than 40% of B2B deals get stuck in some kind of corporate limbo because of indecision and fear among buying groups, she explained. That means that around $20 trillion of deals stall every year, with many of them fading away and never happening.
Feel the fear and don’t do it anyway
“Groups of people don’t choose what’s best; they choose the least bad option that protects them from negative repercussions.”
Gerd Gigerenzer, Emeritus Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development
The average buying group size has gone from 12 to more than 20 in recent years, as organizations attempt to reduce purchasing risk. It’s a logical assumption – the more people involved, the more likely we are to get it right. Right?
No, not always.
In today’s risk-conscious business environment, reaching any sort of consensus is challenging, according to Mimi Turner. No one wants to be the person who recommended a system that subsequently failed to deliver. As much as it has become a bit of a cliché, the old saying that no one ever got fired for buying IBM has more than a ring of truth to it.
Not getting fired is a significant motivator.
In praise of familiar faces
According to its own research, LinkedIn found that 81% of people involved in major tech purchases for large organizations were familiar with the winning brand before the RFP even began.
What that means is that if your brand is known to the buying group, you are 20 times more likely to be bought.
And if you’re hoping that your product’s superior features will win everyone over, think again. The same LinkedIn research found that 48% of people involved in tech purchasing will accept a less capable product just to reach a consensus.
Remember – no one wants to get fired.
Now, being known by everyone means you must build your brand with a group of hidden buyers – typically operations, legal, finance, and so on. They might not be your primary target, but they have the power of veto, and you don’t want to be vetoed.
Only 49% of shortlisted vendors make it through the initial review by hidden buyers.
Clearly, it’s time to build your brand in front of all the roles and functions likely to make up the buying group. Building brand awareness has never been fashionable in B2B, least of all with the people who allocated funds for marketing. They want to see attributable results, not vague and lofty brand vision.
But when more than eight out of 10 people prefer to buy from a known brand, it’s time to take branding more seriously in B2B.
Easier said than done, you might be thinking.
Thought leadership in action
The importance of having a clear brand story and a consistent approach to communicating it featured prominently across the rest of the sessions.
You need to be seen in the right places, with coherent messaging and stories, according to Nathalie Dorricott, Head of EMEA & LATAM Growth Marketing at Palo Alto Networks.
Along with Ashley Robertson, Senior VP of Global Accounts at TMP, Dorricott explained how Palo Alto Networks had focused on telling a different story to most of the cybersecurity market – emphasizing the benefits that flow from better security, rather than pushing negative tropes.
Telling the story of how cybersecurity can be a business enabler is a great example of thought leadership in action.
Joel Harrison, founder of B2B Marketing, told the audience that thought leadership activities are an important way of building trust. He gave an overview of some of the factors that can help transform your approach to thought leadership.
Tell great stories that are rooted in data, he recommended. The ability to take dense, fact-heavy material and craft a compelling story from it will help you stand out and give you credibility. If you can inject what he referred to as ‘consumer-grade entertainment’ into those stories, even better. High production values and human interest aren’t the preserve of B2C.
Sarah Stephenson did a deep dive into the role of social media as a channel for your thought leadership activity. One of the things she recommends is spending time on the demographic data available from platforms like LinkedIn.
That way, you’ll find out who is engaging with your content. It’s unlikely that you will be an overnight hit with the exact audience you had in mind – so you must be ready to learn and adapt. If you’re not clicking with the right audience, she said, you might have to make some adjustments.
Another of Stephenson’s recommendations is to familiarize yourself with channels and formats you haven’t experimented with. For example, video ads have become increasingly popular on LinkedIn. Wensy Antoli of LinkedIn had some statistics to prove it: there has been a 36% increase in video views on the platform, she said.
Getting noticed by the right people for the right reasons won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen by accident.
All of our speakers were clear that the need to raise brand awareness in B2B is very real and very pressing. Achieving that requires dedication and patience. But if being known by the whole buying group audience will push you into that cohort that 81% of buyers are instinctively drawn to, that’s got to be worth considering.
And if it can help to loosen up a proportion of that $20 trillion, sending it in your direction, that starts to look like a compelling argument to inject some difference into your B2B marketing efforts.
For more insights from Media Week 2025, you can watch all sessions on-demand now.
