Why B2B Marketing Needs to Reach the Whole Buying Group

Summary: B2B purchases are rarely decided by one person. The decision to buy products or services often involves multiple stakeholders, some contacts who you’ll interact with throughout the sales cycle, and others you’ll never meet. These ‘hidden buyers’ hold significant influence over the final decision. For B2B businesses, that changes the role of marketing. It means being known by your main contact isn’t enough. You need to be known, understood and trusted across the full buying group to increase your chances at winning business.

Your buyer isn’t one person

Most businesses I speak to have a specific and tight set of senior job titles they’re trying to reach; often it’s the CEO, Managing Director, and/or heads of departments.

This makes sense. They are, in most cases leading the decision to move forward on purchasing a new product or service for their business.

Beyond this layer are influencers; not the ultimate decision maker, but involved through the process – i.e. sometimes a more junior team member who’s been tasked with the research and owns the initial reach out, even if they’re not holding the purse strings.

One layer deeper is where it gets interesting.

Behind the people you see and meet through the process are the contacts in the background who are being consulted, evaluating and weighing in on buying decisions – even if they haven’t sat in a single meeting.

This is an important point:

The person interested in buying from you isn’t necessarily the person, or people, who ultimately decide whether the business actually will.

For any significant B2B purchase, there’s likely to be a wider buying group behind them.

And many of those people will be invisible to you.

What is a B2B buying group?

A B2B buying group is the collective group of people involved in evaluating, approving or influencing a business purchase.

Depending on the purchase, that could include:

• The person who will use your product or service
• Their manager or director
• The CEO or another senior executive
• Finance
• Procurement
• Legal and compliance
• IT or technical teams
• Operations

Gartner’s research into B2B buying has previously found complex buying groups can involve multiple stakeholders from several different business functions.

That’s important because each of those people can approach the decision with a different question.

The end user might ask, “Will this solve our problem?”

Finance might ask, “Is it worth the money?”

IT might ask, “Will this create problems for us?”

Procurement might ask, “Is this supplier credible?”

And the CEO might simply ask, “Why these guys?”

Winning over your primary buyer only answers the first of those questions.

Hidden buyers holding half the influence

Beyond acknowledging that there is a group making buying decisions and not just one person, there’s one critical reason you should care.

LinkedIn & Bain research showed that the main contacts you’re used to dealing with through the sales process (‘target’) buyers, held 51% influence over the purchase. Meaning that ‘hidden’ buyers hold the remaining 49% – just as influential.

That means that half of the influence over whether you win a deal sits in the hands of people you’ll never meet.

That creates an obvious problem.

If your entire marketing strategy, thinking and efforts are designed to generate awareness and reach your target buyer, what about the remaining half, who are just an important and being ignored through this whole process?

Being known across the buying group matters

The same LinkedIn and Bain research had another great finding:

81% of purchases studied went to vendors that almost everyone in the buying group already knew.

Only 4% went to vendors known solely by the recommending function.

Knowing this changes the game. It means that familiarity across the buying group gives you a competitive advantage.

Thinking practically about how this plays out – you identify your target buyer and get their attention. Eventually you’re connected.

Now that person also has to take your business back internally, and sell you in on your behalf.

And if nobody else in that room knows who you are, you’re starting again.

Your internal champion has to explain what you do and why you could be a good fit.

They have to justify why they’re recommending you over another company.

Compare that with a competitor whose name several people already recognise.

Maybe the CFO has seen them on LinkedIn, the CEO has read something they’ve published, or their brand name is generally known in the office, even if not particularly well.

The degree of familiarity here matters because being known removes one of the questions the buying group has to answer.

They’re no longer asking, “Who are these people?”, they’re already on to “are they a good fit?”

Starting from square 1 is a much harder place to be.

This changes what good B2B marketing looks like

If buying decisions are made by groups, marketing can’t be designed solely for the person most likely to fill in a form.

You need to zoom out and think about what would be most likely to help get a whole group over the line – not just an individual.

This ladders down through:

• Your messaging
• Your content
• Your targeting tactics

Breaking these down:

Your messaging needs to work for more than your end buyer

Your main buyer might care about performance, features or solving an immediate problem. The CFO, CEO or procurement team may care far more about risk, credibility, cost and feeling confident that you’ve solved similar problems to the one they have in the past, for similar businesses.

Your language and framing needs to give the whole buying group reasons to say yes, not just make your primary buyer want what you’re selling.

Your thought leadership content is consumed just as actively by hidden and target buyers 

Edelman & LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Thought Leadership impact report showed that 56% and 55% of target and hidden decision makers use thought leadership as part of their vetting process.

Hidden buyers might never download an ebook or book a demo, but they do consume thought leadership, and it does influence how they think about businesses. Strong opinions, original research, useful expertise and credible perspectives give you a way to reach these people without expecting them to enter a sales process.

You’re building familiarity before they’re asked for an opinion.

Targeting needs to go wider than your ICP

If all your paid activity is targeting the person most likely to become a lead, you’re likely ignoring a big chunk of the people who will ultimately be influencing the deal.

LinkedIn is an obvious starting point because you can deliberately reach additional job functions, seniorities and roles within the types of businesses you’re trying to win.

Not necessarily to generate leads from them. To make sure you’re not completely unknown when the buying process reaches them.

Don’t measure everything by whether it generated a lead

The CFO who sees three of your LinkedIn posts, hears you on a podcast and then recognises your company when a proposal lands on their desk has been influenced by marketing.

They just aren’t a lead.

If marketing’s job is partly to build familiarity across the buying group, then these touchpoints need to be fairly evaluated in the overall role they’re playing to help build familiarity.

Otherwise you’re asking marketing to influence the whole buying group while only measuring the handful of people who put their details into a form.

Your brand needs to work in rooms you’re not in

There’s a simple question B2B business owners and leaders can mull over, and use to think about what comes next for you, particularly in the context of needing to be known, understood and trusted across a group of people:

When your company is discussed in a meeting you’re not at, what are they are saying about you?

Key takeaways

• B2B purchases are group decisions. Significant purchases can involve stakeholders across multiple functions.
• Hidden buyers matter. LinkedIn and Bain research attributes roughly 49% of buying influence to stakeholders outside the obvious target buyer.
• Familiarity affects purchasing. Their research found 81% of purchases went to vendors almost everyone in the buying group already knew.
• Different buyers assess different things. Your champion may focus on the opportunity, while hidden buyers are often more concerned with risk.
• Marketing can help create consensus. Reaching the wider buying group makes it easier for internal champions to build support.
• Not every influential buyer will become a lead. Thought leadership and brand activity can reach people who may never interact with sales.
• Being known has commercial value. The job isn’t simply to make your target buyer aware of you. It’s to make your business easier for the whole buying group to choose.

Sources and further reading

LinkedIn & Bain, The Principles of Buyability and related Buyability research.

Edelman & LinkedIn, 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report: Invisible Influence.

LinkedIn B2B Institute, The Hidden Buyer Gap and research into B2B buying groups.

Gartner, research into B2B buying groups and buying jobs.

Bain & Company, The B2B Elements of Value.

Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna, The JOLT Effect.

We design and execute B2B marketing strategies designed to reach the whole buying group, using our Blueprint, Authority, Reach framework.

Contact us if you’re keen to learn more.