B2B marketing is in a wicked transformation. Buyer behavior exposes the fallacy of the obnoxious idea that B2B buying follows a funnel. Traffic to your website is down because buyers are asking LLMs for answers to their questions. Your email campaigns get anemic engagement. Your ads float past your buyers’ periphery vision, unclicked. Those landing pages that add contacts to your CRM for a guide or white paper are seeing dwindling engagement. Posts on your company’s LinkedIn page still rack up impressions but earn fewer “likes” and comments.
Yet marketers are under increasing pressure to do more and drive more — campaigns, leads, pipeline velocity, events, sales enablement… revenue. And to prove it.
Buyers are in control. And they know better than to openly engage with your marketing and sales plays.
Or do they?
B2B Buyers in Stealth Mode
In a series of conversations I’ve had with CISOs, Heads of IT and infrastructure, and engineering leaders at enterprise companies recently for persona and ICP projects, most of them admit talking to vendors isn’t on their to-do list until they’ve decided their top options and need to validate their choice. You’ve seen the research from 6Sense and others.
But here’s the interesting part. Stealth mode is a thing. Not just for start-ups. For buyers.
These leaders agreed they notice messaging that’s relevant to them. They read content. They want information that helps them think differently about a problem they’re grappling with — or messaging that confirms their perspective. Buyers have problems to solve, and they need help. They just want to lower their risk and, more importantly, protect their time.
They may not:
- Download graphics in emails to pop that pixel, but they do read or scan them.
- “Like” your LinkedIn posts, but they will read them and often read the comments.
- Leave their real name and corporate email, but they do download your resources.
- Identify themselves when they visit your website or blog.
- Click on an ad but remember it because the message sparked curiosity.
Your buyers are not flailing around in the dark, putting their careers at risk. They’re stealthily scouting the landscape, gathering information, and hedging their bets.
Getting back to those buyer conversations. Those I spoke with unanimously favored peers and colleagues for referrals and opinions about vendors to consider in relation to a specific solution. They’ve been around this block before. They don’t trust easily.
When I asked what they do look for, they said vendors speaking at events, along with the video of the session they could watch on demand. Thought leadership that said something new and, well, thoughtful. Something they couldn’t find elsewhere, but also backed by data to prove it isn’t just wishful thinking. Information that helps shape their thinking about a problem or achieving an objective.
Many referenced communities, like Reddit, can help to learn what others say about a vendor they might consider. LinkedIn was in that camp. They also mentioned private Slack groups and local community meetups with peers consistently.
None of these insights are new. I’ve heard variations of them for years, working on B2B buyer persona projects. What’s different is the intensity buyers now apply to keeping vendors at arm’s length until they’ve decided to engage — on their terms.
So, what do you do when confronted with buyers who cherish their anonymity?
Acquiring Mental Real Estate with B2B Buyers
B2B marketing is making a return to the old school of Brand. Performance marketing isn’t what it used to be. With Zero-Click buyers, we’ve got to get back to the fundamentals.
That means building awareness and affinity…trust. Winning against anonymity means taking the long view. Having the patience to acquire that plot of mental real estate in the minds of your buyers. Putting in the effort to create meaningful, relevant content and buyer experiences that compound over time.
The goal has shifted from generating contacts to getting on the short list.
And that doesn’t happen without concerted effort.
B2B marketers need to build brand equity with target audiences. It’s one thing to create awareness. It’s another to build affinity that leads to trust. You need to continuously show up with:
- Relevant insights that address problems or sticky objectives they need to achieve, but have stalled on how to get there. And that means for those across the buying committee, not just for one of them.
- Perspectives with that emotional tinge that has them nod and internally say “they ‘get’ me.”
- Proof that you walk your walk and that your talk translates to outcomes they seek, along with admitting the sticky points along the way and how you helped to solve them.
- Self-guided content pathways that lead buyers through the story of problem to solution, so they know who to reach out to when the time comes.
One of the things said to me in those buyer interviews was that they wished vendors would just admit that things go wrong and then show how they work through those challenges. One VP said, “While the rep is selling this ‘magical outcome,’ I’m calculating how heavy the lift will be, doubling or tripling their timeline, and wondering what it is I don’t know.”
He went on to agree that there are always unknown unknowns. That’s life. But it’s about how much risk he thinks the vendor will expose him to and whether they’ll step up when things get stuck to help his team move forward.
This means that in addition to enabling your reps to have real conversations, your content needs to quit trying to manipulate perfection. Your buyers know. You know. So why is it that we strive to create perfection in the stories we share? Rather than making us look invincible, it damages our credibility. Forced perfection raises skepticism. You don’t need to throw more fuel on that impression.
Instead, show your buyer how you’ll help them become the hero delivering the outcome. It’s not about making us look good. It’s about making them better. Their outcomes reflect back on us. That’s what matters. That’s when that mental real estate builds enough equity to pay it forward with retention, loyalty, and advocacy that drives more demand.
Consistency — Even Amidst Silence — Pays Off with Proof
I know what you’re thinking… “Yeah, this sounds great BUT how do I prove it to my executive team? Where are the metrics?”
First off, I hear you. No, it’s not easy. That’s why we shunned brand in the first place, because vendors led us to believe that form fills were tangible. That clicks indicated a sale was imminent because buyers were moving through our stages in the funnel. That MQLs represented valid pipeline.
How’s that working these days?
Here’s what I can tell you I’ve seen recently with two clients that’ve hunkered down to play the long game as the ground keeps shifting beneath their buyers’ feet:
- Dormant contacts who received nurtures over a 4-month timeframe with no signs of activity are now answering SDR outreach calls and booking follow-up meetings with a services provider.
- Five accounts a platform provider interacted with at an event a year ago have submitted RFPs, yet they hadn’t actively engaged with the stream of nurture emails they’d received since that event. Questions in the RFPs frame ideas shared in the nurture emails.
- Three lost deals are now back to considering the services provider again because it’s renewal time — 2 years later. At least one person from each account has subscribed to the weekly LinkedIn newsletter.
- Website traffic is down, but session time and engagement are up for both companies.
Most of those outcomes won’t show up on the marketing dashboard. The reason I know about them is because these companies were open to building an interactive ecosystem between marketing and sales.
They talk to each other and establish feedback loops. Both marketing and sales practice consistently showing up with perspectives that resonate with buyers because they’ve done the work to understand them and put their customers first. Yes, I’m referring to direct buyer research, personas, and ICPs they put to work to guide their go-to-market strategy.
Playing the Long Game
There’s your recipe for building mental equity with Zero-Click B2B buyers. The effort and patience required to engage buyers in stealth mode is proving out, even if you can’t point to short-term metrics.
It doesn’t hurt that the recipe increases the relevance needed to build equity with the LLMs, making your authority more visible to your buyers.