Inside the buying group: How to market to every stakeholder

Read time: 7 minutes

The problem isn’t reach. It’s resonance.

Most demand generation teams are doing a decent job of reaching the right companies. The targeting is sound, the audience lists are clean, and the channels are optimised. But here's the catch: just getting in front of the right logo doesn’t mean you’re making progress.

The real challenge is this: you’re not speaking to the right people in the right way.

In today’s B2B landscape, the idea of a single decision-maker is long gone. Buying groups are bigger, more layered, and more unpredictable than ever. You might be engaging someone in research mode while another stakeholder is already weighing budget implications, and a third is sitting quietly in the background, waiting for a reason to say no.

In fact, our 2025 B2B buyer report found that 76% of buyers say there are 3 or more stakeholders involved in every purchasing decision. That means you're not marketing to one person, you’re marketing to a conversation.

This complexity creates pressure for marketers to deliver messaging that lands across a wide spectrum of roles and expectations. But too often, campaigns are still built around a single persona or a tidy funnel stage. And that’s where things fall apart.

It’s time to shift from generic reach to strategic resonance. Let’s fix that.

One buying group, many perspectives

Our buyer research found that 30% of early-stage researchers prefer to evaluate vendors independently via the website, while final decision-makers are far more likely to download gated content than any other stakeholder. That’s a communication gap waiting to happen.

Imagine a software buying group made up of five stakeholders: a Marketing Manager, a Head of IT, a CMO, a CFO, and a Procurement Lead.

They’re all working toward the same purchase decision. But they each bring different priorities, perspectives, and pressure points to the table. They enter the process at different moments, ask different questions, and interact with content in different ways.

• The Marketing Manager wants to understand features and usability.
• The Head of IT needs to validate security and integration.
• The CMO is looking for strategic value and ROI.
• The CFO wants clear, upfront pricing.
• Procurement is focused on risk, terms, and compliance.

They might even define success differently: the CMO might be looking for marketing effectiveness, while the CFO is eyeing cost savings and risk. When your messaging doesn’t acknowledge these differences, your campaigns risk falling flat or—even worse—creating confusion inside the buying group.

The content that appeals to one stakeholder may be completely irrelevant to another. And yet, many campaigns still rely on one-size-fits-all messaging.

Messaging mismatches that stall deals

Even well-intentioned campaigns can fall flat when they miss the mark on stakeholder expectations. Some of the top frustrations cited by buyers in our research included:

• Lack of transparent pricing (69%)
• Poor understanding of business needs (56%)
• Generic or irrelevant communication (51%)

These aren’t minor complaints. They’re signals of deeper disconnects between vendor messaging and buyer needs, and they often point to a broader issue: content that’s designed around the seller’s process, not the buyer’s experience.

When buyers encounter a lack of transparency or relevance, it introduces friction and undermines trust. If a CFO can’t find a clear cost structure, or an IT lead doesn’t see technical documentation, they may assume your solution isn’t a serious contender—or worse, that you're hiding something.

Recommended reading: From cold outreach to closed deal: How buyers engage with vendors [based on research]

For buying groups that are already managing competing priorities, these moments of misalignment are enough to stall or even derail the deal entirely.

The takeaway? Every missed expectation is a missed opportunity. And in a competitive buying environment, those moments can make the difference between being shortlisted and being dismissed.

How to fix it: Messaging by stakeholder

To keep buying groups aligned and moving, your messaging needs to flex by role. That means understanding what motivates each stakeholder, what kind of content they trust, and how they prefer to consume it. A CFO scanning for pricing clarity has very different expectations than a marketing manager who’s exploring usability, and treating them the same only creates noise.

Here’s a quick guide:

The more your content ecosystem reflects these distinct needs, the easier it becomes for the group to align around your solution.

It’s not just about ticking the boxes for each role; it’s about creating a cohesive experience where every stakeholder can see how your solution addresses their individual concerns while supporting the bigger picture. When messaging feels relevant at every level, alignment happens faster, objections are reduced, and momentum builds more naturally across the entire group.

Recommended reading: How to map content to the new buyer journey

Turning insight into action (without the guesswork)

When you're dealing with multiple stakeholders, timing and relevance matter just as much as the message itself. And yet, many campaigns are still built around assumed stages or static personas, rather than real-time behaviour.

That’s where buyer intelligence comes in. With the right signals, it becomes possible to:

• Spot when different roles within an account are active
• Understand what topics they're engaging with
• Prioritise messaging based on where each stakeholder sits in the decision-making process

According to research from Forrester, buying groups average 27 interactions with seller-related content over the course of their journey, including both known and anonymous touchpoints. That means marketers aren’t dealing with a lack of data, they’re dealing with a lack of alignment between content and context.

For example, let’s say a researcher in one of your target accounts is reviewing product comparison content on your website. At the same time, a senior decision-maker at that same account downloads an ROI calculator from a gated landing page. These two signals suggest that different members of the buying group are engaging independently but around the same solution.

That’s not just a coincidence; it’s a strong sign of coordinated interest within the account. Recognising this group-level engagement gives you the chance to tailor your next steps: deliver more technical resources to the researcher, while offering the decision-maker a personalised case study or an invitation to a demo. Each interaction moves the buying group forward, but on their own terms.

The key is to move beyond “lead capture” and start building campaigns that adapt to what buyers are already doing. When you can see those signals clearly, mapping the right content to the right person becomes a lot less complex and a lot more effective.

Rebuilding the journey: What good looks like

Let’s go back to that fictional buying group.

This time, the marketing manager discovers an ungated explainer guide that matches their initial questions. They share it internally.

The Head of IT receives a follow-up email with a technical overview and a security checklist. Meanwhile, the CMO is invited to a virtual event where you present a case study on how a similar company increased campaign ROI by 45%.

The CFO is sent a transparent pricing sheet and a total cost of ownership breakdown. And when procurement downloads a contract template, a follow-up message includes a client story and an onboarding timeline.

Each step feels natural, relevant, and low friction. No one is waiting for information. And no one feels like an afterthought.

That’s what it looks like when your messaging is designed for a buying group, not just a buyer.

From reach to relevance

Modern B2B marketing is about helping real people in complex organisations make confident, informed decisions that stick. Because behind every buying group is a mix of motivations, concerns, and pressures, and effective marketing needs to acknowledge that complexity, not flatten it.

When you start thinking in terms of groups and focus on relevance over reach, you create more than just engagement. You build trust. You empower teams to reach consensus faster. And you make it easier for every stakeholder to say yes—with confidence.

That’s the shift that turns demand generation into meaningful momentum.