We all know that B2B purchasing often involves a complex decision-making process, with stakeholders juggling multiple responsibilities and interests. Engaging with each role helps ensure your offering is understood and valued from every angle, which increases the chances of a successful outcome.

To maximise your chance of success, it’s imperative to map the buying centre and journey, and to align messaging and initiatives with your sales teams. However, you will only ever meet a small selection of your audience, the majority will rely on information they find online or hear from colleagues and peers.

This means you must understand the full puzzle of the buying centre and communicate relevant, well-placed, and timely information that’s tailored to its stakeholders’ specific concerns.

If you don’t understand the pains and gains of your different target audiences and their roles in the buying decision making  process, then how can you create messaging that resonates? The answer is you can’t. True, the law of averages dictates that you will occasionally hit the right audiences. But relying on chance is hardly an efficient marketing strategy.

In this blog, we unpack the differences between the various decision-makers who make up buying centres, and examine their different roles in the buying journey.

Defining B2B buying centres and journeys

In B2B sales, a buying centre is essentially the group of individuals involved in the purchasing decision. Unlike consumer purchases, B2B decisions are rarely made by a single person. They are instead made by several roles, each of them with their own pains, gains, purposes and power in the buying decision-making process. Here’s a breakdown:

  • Initiators spot the need for a new product or service
  • Influencers shape the decision with their expertise and opinions
  • Deciders have the final say on whether to proceed with the purchase
  • Buyers handle the procurement details and negotiations
  • Users actually use the product or service and are concerned with its practical benefits

But it’s not enough to merely identify the stakeholders in the buying decision making process. It’s also critical to understand the different phases in the process, and how they – and the five groups of stakeholders – work together to form the buying journey.

From status quo to a new purchasing decision, the buying journey describes your B2B customers’ typical purchasing process, and how its phases interact with your actions and messages.

B2B buying journey model and stages

Different stakeholders perform different roles

Different stakeholders perform different functions throughout the typical buying journey. Initiators spot a need for a new product or service, and are active in the ‘Research’ stage where they start looking for suitable solutions.

Influencers are active in the ‘Evaluate’ phase. They shape the decision with their expertise and opinions, and engage in the ‘Evaluate’ state together with deciders, who have the final say on whether to proceed with the purchase.

Buyers are active in the ‘Buy’ phase, handling procurement details and negotiations. Users are those who actually use the product or service in the ‘Implement’ phase.

It is important to keep in mind that a single stakeholder can play various roles at different phases of the buying journey. For example, a scientist needing new and updated lab equipment would fall into both the Initiator and User categories. Likewise, Decider CEOs can also be Initiators, if they decided to investigate a new IT security solution that has been recommended by a peer.

Stakeholders also influence each other. And each role’s power to influence final decisions may differ from company to company, and from purchasing situation to situation.

How to identify and map your customers’ buying centres and journey

The first step in effectively engaging with a target audience or a specific client is to map out their buying centre. This involves:

  • Holding stakeholder interviews—engage with key contacts to identify who is involved in the decision-making process
  • Creating organisational charts—understand and analyse the hierarchy and roles within the company
  • Social listening—monitor online discussions and industry forums to gain insights into key players and their concerns

Mapping is the quickest, easiest way to get an objective and accurate picture of a company’s buying centre and its stakeholders’ roles and power along the buying journey. Sure, you can rely on anecdotal evidence, or ‘knowledge’ picked up by your own sales teams. But nothing compares to the solid data furnished by interviews and role analysis.

Why B2B success depends on understanding buying centres

Each role in the buying centre has distinct priorities, concerns, and interests. Understanding these dynamics enables you to tailor your messaging. You gain a strategic approach to effectively connect, engage and influence these diverse decision-makers. Here’s why:

  • Personalised messaging—by crafting tailored content that addresses the specific pain points and objectives of each role, you ensure your message resonates. For example, while a CFO might be concerned with cost savings, an IT Manager would be more focused on technical capabilities. Tailoring your messaging to these distinct needs significantly enhances engagement.
  • Enhanced relevance—relevant messages increase the likelihood of positive responses. By addressing the unique needs of each role—such as providing case studies on operational efficiency to a user, or ROI analyses to a commercial decision maker—your communication becomes more impactful and engaging.
  • Improved alignment—a deep understanding of the buying centre helps you better align your sales and marketing strategies. You’re much better able to ensure your tactical sales communications support strategic marketing and branding objectives.
  • Strategic content planning—by understanding the individual concerns and priorities of each role, you can plan your content strategically and create content that directly targets the needs of each stakeholder at each of the stages of the buying journey.

So, addressing the buying centre’s different stakeholders with individually tailored messaging and content during the buying journey is crucial for successfully reaching your B2B branding, marketing, and business goals.

B2B buying centre stakeholders and the B2B buying journey

CBC blog link: Influencing the influencers. Why stakeholder mapping drives better B2B marketing

Buying centre relevance in ABM

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B marketing strategy that targets specific high-value accounts rather than casting a wide net to attract a broad audience. An important ABM characteristic is alignment of sales and marketing efforts and to create personalised, tailored campaigns designed to address the unique needs, challenges, and goals of the targeted account.

The ABM approach ensures more meaningful engagement with decision-makers within those businesses, improving the chances of conversion and fostering stronger, long-term relationships. With its emphasis on quality over quantity, ABM often delivers higher returns on investment by concentrating resources on accounts with the greatest potential for revenue growth.

But for ABM to work, you need to first step back and perform some buying centre analysis. Only then can you identify, prioritise and target the most relevant buying centre stakeholders for your ABM campaigns.

CBC ebook link: Enhance your B2B strategy with Account Based Marketing

The tools and resources you need to map and analyse B2B buying centres

A range of tools and resources are available for enhancing the process of mapping and analysing buying centres. They not only offer valuable insights, but also streamline the often complex and nuanced task of understanding the dynamics within buying centres. By utilising these resources, you can gain a deeper understanding of the decision-making processes, the key stakeholders involved and the factors that influence purchasing decisions. Here’s our guide to what you need:

  • Leverage CRM systems to track interactions and analyse stakeholder roles and preferences. By analysing communication and engagement history, you can identify key decision-makers and influencers, and tailor your approach accordingly.
  • Implement marketing automation platforms to deliver personalised content based on insights specific to each role. By understanding how different members of the buying centre interact with your content, you can customise your outreach. As ever, it’s about the right information reaching the right people at the right time. For instance, if a certain role shows a preference for webinars over emails, you can adjust your content strategy to match this preference.
  • Utilise competitive analysis tools to gain insights into how competitors are engaging with similar buying centres. By understanding the tactics and messaging that resonate within your industry, you can refine your approach and differentiate your offerings. This competitive intelligence helps you anticipate market trends and adjust your strategies. To stay ahead, your messaging must remain relevant and compelling to each role in the buying centre.
  • Utilise data-driven insight to continuously refine and optimise your messaging. By analysing buyer behaviour and engagement metrics, you can gain valuable insights into what resonates with each role in the buying centre. You can identify patterns and preferences and then adjust your messaging in real-time for greater impact. For example, if data shows a particular role engages more with case studies than whitepapers, you can shift your content focus to match.

Pick the right communication channels

To ensure your messages reach all key players, engage with each role through a variety of communication channels. Different stakeholders may prefer different channels, such as email, social media, webinars, etc. Some roles, for instance, might respond well to detailed email campaigns, and others might prefer the interactive nature of webinars or the immediacy of social media updates. Adapting your approach to fit these preferences can improve engagement and influence across the buying centre.

CBC blog link: Unlock customer insights to improve your digital lead-gen

Ready to elevate your B2B buying centre expertise?

Understanding your customers’ buying centres – what they are and who does what within them – is becoming increasingly important in B2B marketing. After all, we can no longer rely on face-to-face meetings and personal relationships to ensure key messages reach the right people; labyrinthine procurement processes and impenetrable corporate bureaucracies have made such approaches almost impossible.

However, gaining such understanding does not come easily. It requires significant effort, some of which can be arduous. But don’t be disheartened. The payoff of understanding B2B buying centres can be substantial, with your targeted messages reaching just the right stakeholders at just the right time – ultimately leading to increased brand preference, engagement, and conversions.

Want to learn more about B2B buying centres and how understanding them can optimise your marketing efforts? Give CBC Managing Partner Ralph Krøyer a call on +45 35 25 01 60 or drop him a note at rk@cbc.dk. He’d love to discuss the topic with you and show how it helped CBC craft business-boosting campaigns for B2B clients across multiple industries.