The B2B Buyer Journey Has Changed. Has Your Marketing?

That sequence hasn’t necessarily disappeared, but it increasingly describes only the part of the buyer journey you can see. Today’s buyers can identify a problem, research potential solutions, compare providers and build a shortlist before filling out a form or contacting a salesperson.

Buyers can search Google, ask colleagues, read industry publications, scour reviews and case studies, follow subject matter experts on social media, and now, they can also ask AI to synthesize all of it. In fact, 94% of B2B buyers have adopted generative AI as a leading source of self-guided information throughout the purchasing process. Additionally, twice as many buyers named generative AI or conversational search as a more meaningful or important source of information than any other source, including vendor websites, product experts and sales.

That’s a significant shift, but the bigger story isn’t AI, though. It’s that buyers have more control than ever over how much of the decision they make before they’re willing to engage sales.

For marketers, that changes where the work of earning a customer actually begins.

Buyers Are Delaying the Sales Conversation

B2B buyers aren’t necessarily avoiding sales altogether, but they are avoiding sales interactions before they’re ready to have them.

A prospective customer may want to understand the problem they’re facing, learn how others are solving it, identify potential partners and determine which options deserve serious consideration before opening themselves up to the sales process. With so much information readily available, they no longer need a salesperson right away to answer many of those questions.

‍That means the buyer journey can now be well underway before an organization has any indication that someone is even considering them.

This changes the role marketing plays in the early stages of the decision-making process. If the primary goal is to lead someone to “contact us” as quickly as possible, we may be asking buyers to take a step they’re not quite ready to take yet. Instead, marketing has to help them make progress independently by giving them enough information to correlate their pain points with the actual problem at hand, evaluate their options and decide whether a conversation is worth having.

In other words, the first sales call is no longer where you begin marketing your case. It’s where buyers begin testing the case you’ve already made with your reputation.

More Information Has Given Buyers More Control… But Not Necessarily More Clarity

It used to be that B2B buyers often relied on salespeople to get the information needed to make the right decision for them. But today, access is rarely an issue.

NRG and Google’s recent research found that B2B buyers are learning about brands across a growing number of sources, including:

• Google (94%)
• AI platforms (60%)
• YouTube (59%)

Additionally, Reddit reaches 59% of business decision-makers in the U.S.

Add industry publications, social media, peer recommendations, podcasts, review sites and even the content organizations publish themselves, buyers have more ways than ever to conduct research on their own terms. 

But more information =/= more clarity for the buyer.

Every one of your credible competitors has a website — that’s a given. 

Most of them likely publish their own content. 

Nearly everyone claims qualities like expertise, responsiveness and excellent customer service, too. 

And now that AI can produce more content at unprecedented speeds, simply adding to the volume isn’t much of a competitive advantage.

What remains scarce is clarity.

Buyers now have to determine which organizations actually understand their pain points (and have the capability to remedy them), what meaningfully separates one option from another and, ultimately, which choice feels least likely to become a costly mistake.

That’s especially important for companies where the person doing the research (the influencer) may not be the only person making hiring decisions. They may need to explain or defend their recommendation to the buyer within their organization — typically leadership, finance or other stakeholders. The more complex or expensive the purchase, the more evidence they'll likely need to build consensus around it.

So while buyers have greater access to more information, what they’re really searching for is something more valuable: a clearer path to a decision.

The New Job of B2B Marketing Is to Help Buyers Decide

Marketers have spent years being measured on their ability to generate traffic, clicks, conversions and leads. Those metrics still matter, but they tell an incomplete story when so much of the buying process now happens independently.

For example, if a prospect reads three of your articles or case studies, comes across your organization via ChatGPT or Claude research or visits your website several times before finally reaching out, how do you pinpoint which interaction generated the lead?

Rather than trying to figure out the source of a customer lead, the more useful question may be whether all those interactions collectively helped the buyer decide that your organization belonged on the shortlist.

That requires your marketing to perform several jobs particularly well.

First, you have to be visible.

Search engine optimization (SEO) still plays a critical role in helping buyers find you, while answer engine optimization (AEO) is becoming more and more important as buyers use AI tools to research categories, compare approaches and identify potential providers.

The channels may be evolving, but the underlying requirement hasn’t changed: you can’t be considered if you aren’t taking up space where buyers are looking.

Then, you have to be differentiated.

Visibility might put your name in front of a buyer, but generic category language won’t give them much reason to remember it. Clear positioning should help buyers quickly understand who you’re best equipped to help, what you do differently and why that difference should matter to them.

You also have to build authority and prove what you claim.

Case studies, client results, testimonials, original research, boasting a deep bench of SMEs, reviews and third-party validation aren’t simply supporting marketing materials. They give buyers evidence they can use to evaluate your credibility and, importantly, help make the case for you internally.

Finally, you have to reduce uncertainty.

Think about the questions prospects repeatedly ask during early sales conversations:

• “What does this process look like?”
• “How long will it take?”
• “What does implementation require?”
• “How is your approach different?”
• “What happens if something goes wrong?”
• “What does the investment look like?”
• “Who is and isn’t a good fit?”

Those questions shouldn’t necessarily have to wait to be answered by a salesperson.

Pre-answering common questions and objections doesn’t eliminate the need for sales. It gives buyers enough information to continue moving toward you without forcing an interaction before they’re ready.

Together, visibility, differentiation, authority and transparency accomplish something more important than generating another touchpoint. They reduce the perceived risk of taking the next step.

The First Sales Call Shouldn’t Have to Start at the Beginning

Don’t panic: the rise of self-directed research doesn’t mean your sales development team is becoming irrelevant. For complex products and services, buyers still need someone who can understand the nuances of their organization and connect them with a solution that will actually work for them.

But now, the expectation is that a sales conversation will add something they couldn’t learn on their own.

When marketing has already done the work to explain the basics, demonstrated expertise, established differentiation and addressed common concerns, sales doesn’t have to spend the first call reciting the website. Instead, the conversation can begin somewhere more valuable: with the buyer’s specific situation:

• What are they trying to accomplish?
• What’s standing in their way?
• What have they already tried?
• Where are the risks?
• Is there actually a fit?

That’s better for the buyer, and it can be better for the business, too — B2B organizations that get the buyer experience right close deals 31% faster.

Your Buyers Are Already Doing the Research. Are You Helping Them Decide?

The modern B2B journey starts long before a prospect reaches out. It’s raising the expectations for what marketing needs to accomplish before sales ever enters the conversation.

Highland Group helps organizations build brands and marketing strategies designed for the way people actually make decisions today. From positioning and messaging to content strategy, digital experiences, SEO and AEO, we help create a connected marketing ecosystem that earns attention, builds credibility and gives prospective customers a reason to take the next step.

Ready to strengthen the journey from first search to first conversation? Let’s talk.

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