The traditional image of a B2B buyer is an older member of the Baby Boomer generation who’s now occupying the C-Suite of a company. But how much does that image actually align with reality?
2014 might have been a tipping point for the rising Millennial generation. According to one study, 2014 was the first year when one-half of all B2B decision-makers using the Web to perform product research were actually Millennials. And in 2017, that figure skyrocketed to 75 percent. That’s right — according to a new Green Hat report (“B2B Marketing Outlook 2017″), Millennial buyers in Australia will be responsible for three-quarters of B2B purchasing decisions this year.
But let’s unpack a few things first. This doesn’t mean that 75 percent of all B2B decision-makers are Millennials. No, it’s a much smaller subset. First of all, you have to narrow the group to people who actually perform product research to make B2B purchase decisions. And then you have to narrow the group even further to people who use the Web to make B2B purchase decisions. Thus, a 55-year-old CEO who only uses print whitepapers, say, to make decisions wouldn’t be included in that group. Nor would a 30-year-old Millennial who doesn’t use the Web (however rare that might be).
However, that doesn’t mean that you can ignore the larger trend, which is the increasing appearance of Millennials in key decision-making roles. In short, more and more, young 18-to-34 Millennials are the ones who are going to be making key B2B purchase decisions.
That fact implies that a few key changes need to start being made in your B2B marketing strategy.
For one, social media has to be considered as a greater part of the overall marketing mix, because 18-to-34 Millennials are more likely than their older cohorts to be using social media.
And not just any social media, either. Generally speaking, the social media platform of choice for B2B marketers – LinkedIn – tends to skew much older demographically than other social media platforms. And the one social platform that seems to resonate the most right now with Millennials is Facebook. So that implies that Facebook needs to become an ever more important part of a B2B marketing strategy.
And you also have to take a closer look at consumption patterns across the broader web. Older Internet users are going to be visiting different sites than their younger Millennial colleagues. The 18-to-34 demographic, for example, is all about video: live video, streaming video and 360-degree video. That implies that companies should be making video a more integral part of their B2B marketing strategy as well.
Companies that can get an early start on this generational trend obviously have a competitive edge over their rivals. Just a few years from now, we may have a completely different view of who is the “typical” B2B buyer. More and more Boomers will be nearing retirement age, more and more Millennials will be moving into senior executive roles, and we might even be hearing about the rise of a new generation and how they are changing the way people make purchase decisions.
But for now, the lesson is clear: figure out the ways Millennials are using the web to make their B2B buying decisions, and then adapt accordingly.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.