Account-based marketing. Buying committees. Personalized, individual marketing.
Countless posts are published about each of them—often extolling a focus on one at the expense of the others.
So, who is right?
*Waves hands*. It depends.
Most B2B businesses should employ a combination of all three, but in practice their efforts are polarized toward the two ends: accounts and individuals.
We recommend the opposite: focus more effort in the middle, on buying committees.
Let’s explore why.
As a B2B vendor, you quote and sell your products and services to companies.
Your invoices are paid from company accounts, not with a personal credit card.
However, we understand that buying decisions are made by humans*. A company doesn’t buy anything for itself.
Similarly, we understand that B2B buying decisions are seldom made by individuals. Several people from across the business will have a hand in evaluating, recommending, and approving something for purchase.
We call this buying group a Buying Committee, since there are identifiable roles and responsibilities assigned to its members.
Depending on the size and nature of the business, and what is being purchased, that committee can include anywhere from 6 to 16 people, or more.
* For now. With AI-enabled processes proliferating, it might not be long before an algorithm is doing the buying, rather than a human.
Since you sell to buying committee members, shouldn’t they be the focus of your marketing?
Yes, but…
What happens if you don’t know who those committee members are—or don’t have contact with them if you do?
The practical answer is more nuanced: market to buying committee members whenever you can but turn to other forms of marketing whenever you cannot.
Which forms of marketing?
Once again, it depends.
One option is to focus on people who work for your ideal target customer. There’s a solid chance that some of them will be members of relevant buying committees.
Another option is to focus on people who perform roles that align with members of your target buying committee. There’s a chance that some of them will be working for companies fitting your ideal customer profile (ICP).
We call the first option account-based marketing.
The second one is targeted individual marketing, which should ideally be personalized to achieve maximum effectiveness.
The distribution of your marketing efforts and resources across these approaches will change over time as you learn more about your target customer.
We’ve sketched this in Figure 1, below.
In the beginning, without a clear definition of ICP and lacking contact with buying committee members**, your marketing will inevitably be skewed toward targeted individual marketing (Figure 1.a). For example, LinkedIn Ads to an audience of relevant technical professionals.
As your team refines its definition of ICP, you can begin directing more effort toward account-based marketing (Figure 1.b).
Then, as you research typical buying committees at those companies and begin to identify, connect with, and engage individual buying committee members, you can deploy effort toward buying committee marketing (Figure 1.c).
Finally, as your research and engagement efforts connect you with more and more buying committee members at ICP accounts, your distribution of marketing efforts should stabilize. Most of those efforts will be focused on buying committee members, with the remainder split between account-based and individual marketing (Figure 1.d***).
** This is usually an exaggeration because startup founders bring pre-existing contact networks to the business. This allows the company to sell to a small group of “captive” customers while working to expand that group through its marketing efforts.
*** Figure 1.d shows a slight preference for individual marketing over account-based marketing, but this will vary by business. In some cases, it is easier to target marketing efforts toward certain types of business while in others, it is easier to target individuals in particular roles or with specific qualifications.
Should B2B marketing focus on individuals, committees, or accounts?
The facetious answer is “yes”.
A better answer is “it depends on how much you know about them.”
Focus on individuals when you don’t know which accounts to target.
Shift your focus onto accounts once you’re sure which ones to target.
Then, shift your focus again, onto buying committees, once you’ve identified who is on them and established contact with the right people.
And remember, “focus on” isn’t the same as “devote all our resources to”.
While your efforts should be weighted according to your level of understanding, don’t put all your eggs in one basket—it makes sense to keep some activity going in the other areas.
This will help you to “mop up” relevant companies and contacts where you haven’t yet established the right contacts or where those contacts aren’t willing to engage.
Image credit: Adobe Stock
