Gartner: Two-thirds of B2B buyers prefer rep-free purchasing

Firstly, you’ll have access to the right contact information for your prospects, and your B2B marketing campaigns will be more personalised and effective. By following best practices, you can ensure your B2B strategy fits your sales goals for a united, more streamlined company. Customer case studies, webinars, and sales collateral are all vital approaches to B2B marketing, helping to encourage business audiences to buy. Many brands seek influencer marketing for a brand boost, while others are experimenting with Instagram and TikTok. Instead, brands are expected to create a social presence, building themselves as experts in their field.

Remove friction from the referral process, and brands see more participation. These points are what Champions strive to redeem, offering incentives such as discounts, complimentary passes, gift cards, VIP experiences, and more. By providing feedback and participating in case studies, customers earn Reward Points in the Blackbaud Champions Hub, which they can redeem from the Champions Rewards. When customers share experiences, the brand will reward them with benefits. The key is making participation easy and valuable for them, not just for marketing. They appear multiple times for the same query with different tactics, increasing their chances of capturing clicks from buyers at different stages.

“As buyers reevaluate how they engage with organizations, providers must ignite action and put buyers first to create meaningful experiences. At Forrester’s B2B Summit North America, Forrester analysts will help leaders navigate increased buying complexity and deliver better buyer satisfaction. Currently, 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process and 81% of buyers express dissatisfaction with their chosen providers. An overview of GDPR, how it applies to B2B businesses, and how to make sure…

More than four out of five B2B buyers include at least four stakeholders when making technology purchasing decisions

It’s worth investing time and money to make sure other businesses can find the business with ease. A B2B buyer spends 27% of the purchase journey independently researching online, potentially using at least one search engine. Also, when collecting testimonials, ask customers for specific metrics, outcomes, or before-and-after comparisons.

Early Vendor Shortlists Decide the Winner

By hosting workshops on industry shifts, a business positions itself as the expert that b2b buyer’s journey helps a buyer realize they have a problem early in their B2B buyer journey. To win in 2026, small businesses must align their presence with where the buyer is in their B2B buyer journey. Emotional factors like “reduced anxiety” and “career impact” play a massive role in moving through these jobs. To succeed, businesses must help buyers complete six “buying jobs.” It has been replaced by a “loopy” B2B buyer journey where buyers revisit stages multiple times. However, Forrester’s State of Business Buying highlights that while AI helps with research, it cannot replace the trust built through human interaction.

To keep prospects engaged, be honest and upfront about your pricing. With 77% of B2B buyers calling their recent purchase highly complex, understanding the drivers behind buying decisions is crucial for buyers and sellers. Nearly a third of buyers expect vendors to go the extra mile by delivering more personalised experiences, such as tailored demos, relevant content, and a clear ROI. To counter the silence, ensure you continue providing value to buyers through benchmark B2B reports, ROI snapshots, or relevant case studies. A third of businesses experience being ghosted by leads mid-cycle. We’re a B2B appointment setting agency that helps you connect with decision-makers and book qualified meetings that move your sales forward.

To stay on top of the game, your marketing approach needs to connect with this broader group, addressing varied concerns and priorities such as technical specifications and ROI. Buying complex B2B solutions is becoming more competitive, with a 21% increase in people’s involvement over the last decade. This means your marketing efforts should speak to a diverse audience and address key priorities such as technical details, budget constraints, and strategic goals. For B2B tech purchases, 6 to 10 stakeholders spanning IT, finance, operations, and executive leadership are typically involved in the decision-making process. Big decisions mean big teams; 7% of businesses involve 10 or more stakeholders in the decision-making process. B2B decision-making stats show that on average, 4.14 stakeholders weigh in on purchases.

The Access Group used product experiences to gain clear visibility into their buyers. It shows that while buying groups have grown more complex, stakeholder visibility hasn’t expanded at the same pace. “We’re initiating a transformation to redefine how businesses buy software. A steady 38% view rate shows buyer engagement has stabilized, even as deal complexity increases. The average view rate among all segments is 38%, with the highest view rates among SMB and Growth companies.

The Buyer Insights series includes interactive reports and custom data cuts that allow you to explore buyer behavior by industry, region, role, persona, and company size. Read about the key findings and how organizations can succeed with today’s wary buyers. Based on Forrester’s latest Buyers’ Journey Survey, this research reflects how real buyers — across roles, industries, and regions — think, research, and decide. Marketing isn’t effective unless brands keep the audience in mind, and no other audience is as fickle and critical as business customers. If asking customers to “tell their friends” hasn’t worked, try building a system that guides them through specific, rewarded actions instead.

AI helps buyers move faster, analyze more options, and customize their research. For businesses, purchase decisions are about solving a business challenge, reducing risk, and aligning with internal stakeholders. It encompasses multiple stages and touchpoints across several decision-makers, and it takes weeks or even months.

• This guide breaks down 15 of the most effective ways to optimize your B2B website for SEO, with a modern approach that goes beyond keywords and meta tags.
• Problem Identification is where marketing can have significant impact through thought leadership, content that reframes a business challenge, and demand generation that helps buyers articulate a problem they may not have fully recognised.
• Buyers do not move through these stages in a straight line – they frequently loop back as new information surfaces or stakeholder priorities shift, which is why Gartner describes the journey as non-linear and simultaneous rather than sequential.
• This emphasises how solution-oriented content is key to guiding buyers and helping them narrow down their options.

Run weekly sprints to launch campaigns quickly and acquire initial learning for your best chance at record-breaking marketing revenue. At Cognism, we’ve learned that the perfect B2B marketing strategy doesn’t exist. Customers remain loyal to consistent and transparent brands, so building a brand and creating awareness around it will only increase your position in the B2B market. Secondly, by using intent data, you’ll be speaking to people who are actually in the market to buy while following your local privacy laws.