For years, B2B marketing has obsessed over the “ultimate decision-maker” — the CMO, the CIO, the CFO. And sure, these roles are important to influence. But the truth is, they’re rarely the only ones making the recommendations.
In today’s complex B2B buying environment, focusing your budget and creative solely on the most senior role is like fishing with one hook when you could be casting a net. The most successful demand generation and paid media programs are now built to target the entire buying committee: the mix of leaders, influencers, and practitioners who all shape the final decision.
Large and Diverse Buying Teams are Now the Norm
Gone are the days when one senior executive could greenlight a major purchase in isolation. Today’s B2B deals are shaped by cross-functional committees that span departments, seniority levels, and even geographies. From C-level executives and finance leaders to department heads, IT managers, and end users, multiple voices now weigh in on vendor evaluations and purchasing decisions.
TechnologyAdvice’s 2024 IT & Cybersecurity Buyer Insights Report shows that 86% of IT tech purchases involve 3+ stakeholders with 43% involving 6 or more. Large enterprises go even higher with more than 60% of deals involving 6+ stakeholders and nearly 30% involving 10+ stakeholders.
Additional industry data backs this as well. Forrester recently found that, on average, 13 people are involved in enterprise B2B purchase decisions with 89% of purchases having cross-departmental buying committee members.
In today’s B2B tech buying landscape, buying groups are larger, more cross-functional, and more diverse than ever before. And that has a direct impact on your targeting, messaging, and media mix.
Why Multi-Stakeholder Targeting Matters More Than Ever
Targeting multiple stakeholders isn’t just about finding multiple entry points into an organization. It’s an important strategy for building your brand affinity with different voices who may influence buying decisions, and to maximize your chances of getting on the shortlist for vendor evaluations.
1. Different roles, different needs
A CFO might want ROI and total cost of ownership. A director might care about implementation complexity. An engineer wants to know about integrations and performance. And they all care about brand reputation and independent market validation. If you only pitch the boardroom story, you miss the chance to influence and build trust with the people who will champion your solution internally.
2. Influence happens at every stage
Research shows that mid-level managers and directors are often the ones shortlisting vendors, even if the final budget approval comes from above. Ignore them, and you risk being cut before you even reach the executive meeting.
3. Better odds of staying in the deal
Targeting multiple personas increases your “surface area” within an account. If one deal influencer has a personal preference for a different vendor, you can still have others advocating for you.
Implications for Content Syndication Campaigns
Too many content syndication programs fail because the targeting is set too narrowly: one job title, one seniority level, one department. That can be a costly mistake:
- If you only syndicate to CIOs, you’ll miss building your brand and educating directors, managers, and architects who are doing active research and making recommendations.
- Broader role targeting gives you more lead volume and a higher probability that at least one engaged contact will influence the final purchase.
- Leveraging different content assets for different roles and seniority levels enables you to build a more holistic narrative that drives brand affinity and preference at multiple levels of the organization, increasing your chances of being shortlisted for evaluation.
Pro Tip: When setting targeting criteria with your syndication partner, include a range of job functions, including decision makers, influencers, and end users – and map each to the right content asset.
Implications for Paid Media Targeting
Paid media platforms like LinkedIn, Google, Targeted Display Advertising, and Programmatic Display often give you the precision to segment messaging by persona, seniority, and/or role. Leverage that to your advantage:
- Build persona-based ad groups: For example, one ad set for CFOs with ROI calculators, one for IT directors with integration guides, and one for practitioners with how-to content.
- Layer intent data: Combine role-based targeting with buyer intent signals to focus spend on accounts actively researching your category.
- Use sequential messaging: Nurture each persona with a tailored sequence — awareness content first, deeper solution content later.
Tips for Building Multi-Persona Campaigns
Engaging and influencing multiple members of buying teams with the right messages at the right time is a challenging proposition, and one that many B2B marketing teams still struggle with today. But with the right planning and intentionality around it, any marketing team can make the leap from lead-based marketing targeting prescriptive titles and roles to account-based marketing targeting buying teams and purchasing influencers. Here are a few steps to get moving in this direction:
1. Map the buying committee
Identify the different roles likely to influence the purchase decision of solutions like yours, from end users to executive sponsors. Use internal win-loss data, customer interviews, and third-party research to help build out this information.
2. Build content for each role
Create a library of content assets that can be used for influencing different types of stakeholders.
- Executives: 3rd party validation, market research, ROI stories, industry trends
- Directors/Managers: Research reports, comparison guides, customer stories and use-cases
- Practitioners: Product reviews, tutorials, demos, case studies
3. Match channels to roles
Leverage different digital (and analog!) channels to reach diverse stakeholders where they’re at.
- Reach senior executives via trusted analysts, media publishers, newsletters, executive communities, and in-person events or executive roundtables
- Reach managers and mid-level leaders via syndicated thought leadership and research reports, social media, industry newsletters, and industry events
- Reach practitioners via online communities, webinars, technical blogs, and role-specific or topic-specific media sites
4. Adjust your KPIs to measure influence and account engagement
While the number of leads generated and MQLs are a simpler way to track performance, it’s important to adjust your measures of success when embracing multi-persona targeting. Track your performance against what you’re really trying to accomplish as a business, such as:
- Contacts/leads influenced within target accounts
- Meetings booked and pipeline produced with target accounts
- Opportunity or deal progression with key accounts
- Overall revenue impact of marketing campaigns
Driving Real Revenue Outcomes
If you want your demand generation and paid media strategies to perform in 2025 and beyond, you can’t afford to target just the C-suite. The most effective campaigns are built to influence everyone in the buying committee, from the CIO to the system admin.
By expanding your targeting criteria and delivering persona-specific messaging and content you’ll increase your reach, have greater influence over buying decisions, improve your win rates, and build a more efficient long-term demand engine.
In other words: stop fishing with one hook. Cast the net to catch more big fish (and a few whales!) faster.
