There’s a fundamental truth about business-to-business growth: more alignment between sales and marketing teams drives more growth for B2B businesses. However, achieving this alignment has been a persistent challenge for many organizations. B2B purchases today are rarely made by individuals acting alone but by buying groups made up of multiple decision-makers within an account. The number of individuals that constitute these buying groups has greatly increased, encompassing new roles, departments, and seniority levels. This heightened complexity makes engaging today’s B2B buyers a challenging task, as traditional marketing strategies alone cannot correctly identify all stakeholders and their product interests.
The good news is that recent advancements in B2B marketing technology, particularly generative AI, provide brands with innovative tools to enhance their demand-generation strategies. By focusing on buying groups, these technologies enable more precise engagement and scalable business growth. Therefore, leveraging these advanced tools can help bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams, transforming how businesses engage with B2B buyers. Here’s how companies can improve their approach by effectively using marketing-qualified buying groups and aligning demand generation with broader go-to-market strategies.
Connect Sales and Marketing Teams with Marketing-Qualified Buying Groups
Despite sharing a common goal, marketing and sales teams have often struggled to achieve maximum alignment due to differences in how each function qualifies demand. Marketing teams typically focus on qualifying leads and accounts, while sales teams qualify opportunities within those target accounts. This misalignment has made it difficult to identify specific decision-makers within an account accurately and streamline the engagement process.
Traditional lead-based marketing strategies are beneficial for qualifying an individual’s product interests but often fail to contextualize these interests within their broader role within an account. Similarly, account-based marketing (ABM) strategies, while effective, lack the ability to identify key stakeholders for specific product offerings. Marketing-qualified buying groups build on these strategies by providing sales teams with a more detailed view, including information such as account associations, product interests, key decision-makers, and potential missing members. Focusing on marketing-qualified buying groups enables marketing and sales to operate as a unified team, leveraging real-time marketing data to foster collaboration, maximize conversions, and drive business growth.
Align Demand Generation with a Larger Go-To-Market Strategy
A shared focus on buying groups acts as a natural forcing function, enabling revenue teams to align their demand-generation efforts with priority go-to-market strategies. This process begins even before utilizing any software tools. To lay the groundwork, businesses need to define their objectives, such as increasing revenue from existing customers, and confirm relevant selling motions and target accounts, such as cross-selling a particular solution to specific accounts.
Defining key roles within the buying group, such as decision-makers, influencers, and practitioners involved in the purchase process is essential. It’s crucial to agree with sales teams on the criteria for each buying group role, which could include decision-makers like the chief marketing officer or the VP of marketing. Agreeing on a threshold for marketing-qualified buying groups can further ensure coordination—for instance, alerting account owners when the buying group engagement score reaches a certain level.
Generative AI technologies can drastically accelerate the creation of buying groups and help marketers scale personalized content to match buying group member preferences. By using unified marketing data that includes customer intent, sales opportunities, and marketing engagement, generative AI can intelligently provide insights into recommended buying group roles, solution interests, and role assignments. For example, the Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition, built on the Adobe Experience Platform, leverages generative AI and automation to create buying groups, generate personalized content, and orchestrate targeted journeys for each group member based on their roles, interests, and previous interactions with the sales and marketing teams.
Leveraging AI Tools for Enhanced B2B Buying Experiences
A fundamental truth in B2B growth is that better alignment between sales and marketing teams leads to more business growth. Yet, achieving this alignment has been a persistent challenge. Today’s B2B purchases are rarely made by individuals alone; instead, buying decisions involve multiple stakeholders within an organization. The number of people involved has increased, including various roles, departments, and levels of seniority. This complexity makes it difficult to engage modern B2B buyers since traditional marketing methods can’t accurately identify every stakeholder and their interests.
Fortunately, advancements in B2B marketing technologies, especially generative AI, offer brands new tools to enhance demand generation. These technologies help focus on buying groups, enabling more precise engagement and scalable growth. Leveraging these tools can bridge the gap between sales and marketing, transforming how businesses interact with B2B buyers. By effectively using marketing-qualified buying groups and aligning demand generation with broader go-to-market strategies, companies can significantly improve their approach and drive growth in the B2B landscape.