The B2B sales process for acquiring a product or solution involves multiple activities — including conversations with experts from various areas and the exchange of in-depth knowledge about the business as well as the solution that will support the commercial proposal. It may require the evaluation of three or more competitors and, depending on the offer and include demonstrations of products or solutions and proofs of concept for stakeholders. As a result, the final decision depends on multiple points of view.

Accelerating the customer qualification process and the exchange of information with the potential suppliers can help the sales team transition opportunities from marketing to sales more efficiently.

B2B marketing works in sync with sales — qualifying leads before involving the sales team and developing strategies aimed at companies rather than individual consumers. Decisions are made collectively, requiring tailored approaches to engage multiple stakeholders, support informed decision-making and personalise communication for each participant in the buying process.

The key challenges in the B2B decision-making journey include:

• Long sales cycles
• Complex evaluation process
• Multiple areas of knowledge to assess
• Multiple decision-makers
• More than one process to evaluate different products or solutions

B2B marketing, with an eye on these challenges and the difficulty of qualifying complex leads, adopts strategies to educate the different profiles of decision-makers about their products and solutions — focusing on the team that will make the decision. This is where buying groups come in.

The concept of buying groups.

Buying groups consist of individuals within an organisation who collaborate in making purchasing decisions. They differ from individual leads, as these groups involve multiple stakeholders with different interests and levels of influence. Taking a MARTECH supplier, as an example, the decision group may include professionals from various areas such as marketing, data security, technology architecture, developers and data analysts.

Adding a bit more complexity — within the same company, there may be multiple evaluation processes. One team might assess solutions for content creation and digital asset management, another might focus on personalisation and activation of the next best offer. And there could be another team that evaluates tools for data analysis and customer journey insights across online and off-line channels.

In the B2B context, buying groups are essential as they reflect the reality of collective decision-making shaped by unique sales processes. Understanding and engaging these groups can significantly increase the chances of sales success. In the above example, we see there is a need to serve at least two buying groups — Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and Adobe Photoshop.

The benefits of using buying groups.

Focusing on buying groups allows companies to identify more qualified leads, as they consider the needs and influences of all stakeholders involved — ultimately increasing conversion rates. The interaction and nurturing process centres on the specific solution being evaluated, enabling personalised engagement across roles.

By engaging all members of the buying group simultaneously, companies can accelerate the sales process — reducing the time it takes to close deals and increasing efficiency.

Thus, we can list the main benefits of using this concept:

• Focus on the solution that must be presented to decision makers
• Personalised digital interactions for each decision-maker
• Nurturing cycles aligned with stakeholder profiles
• Reduction in future objections
• Information tailored to each decision-maker
• Shortened sales cycle
• Increased efficiency in interactions

Introduction to Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition.

Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition is an advanced application that uses artificial intelligence to optimise buying journeys. Its features include personalisation, automation and integration with other marketing platforms.

Journey Optimizer B2B Edition identifies and engages buying groups — creating personalised experiences for each member. This allows for a more targeted and effective approach, increasing the likelihood of conversion and customer satisfaction.

Practical application of Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition.

Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition helps you to create and manage personalised journeys, ensuring that each stakeholder within the buying group is provided with timely and personalised information throughout the decision-making process.

With advanced automation and personalisation capabilities, the tool improves the efficiency of marketing campaigns, allowing companies to focus on high-impact strategies that drive results.

This capability is based on the following functionalities:

Purchasing journey orchestration.

Journey orchestration: Allows you to create and manage personalised buying journeys for each buying group and its members — tailored to their role, product interest and lifecycle stage. This ensures that each stakeholder receives relevant information at the right time.

Real-time automation: Automate the progression of accounts and buying groups through journeys with real-time engagement triggers, qualification scoring and an extensive library of journey actions. This increases the efficiency and accuracy of marketing campaigns.

Omnichannel engagement.

Omnichannel engagement: Facilitates engagement with buying groups across inbound and outbound digital channels, including Adobe Marketo Engage campaigns, programmes and linked channels. This ensures consistent and effective communication across all touchpoints.

Personalisation and automation: Uses AI to quickly build and personalise journeys for accounts and buying groups — increasing engagement while automating the qualification process. This allows for a more targeted and efficient approach.

Sales intelligence.

Journey insights: Offers clear visibility into buying groups, helping you to discover and prioritise groups for specific products in seconds by using insights based on first-party intent data. This enables more accurate identification of sales opportunities.

Buying group management: Manage buying groups across the entire product inventory from a single application, providing a quick view of key stakeholders for each sales cycle. This simplifies co-ordination and tracking of sales interactions.

Content and personalisation.

Reusable journey fragments: Eliminate repetitive work and accelerate time to market with reusable journey fragments. This enables faster, more efficient campaign creation.

AI agent for journeys: An AI agent automates journey creation — including rule building and path splitting. This reduces the learning curve and improves the effectiveness of campaigns.

Unified account management.

Unified account lists: Integrate unified account lists from Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform to get the most complete account data for creating and managing buying groups. This ensures all relevant information is centralised and easily accessible.

Buying group coverage: Gain a comprehensive view of buying group coverage and missing members — helping prioritise sales qualification and engagement. This improves the accuracy and effectiveness of sales strategies.

Together, these capabilities make Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition a powerful application for optimising and personalising purchase journeys — boosting the efficiency and effectiveness of B2B marketing strategies.

Added value.

Leveraging buying groups with Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition delivers a competitive advantage by improving the accuracy and effectiveness of marketing strategies, resulting in greater customer satisfaction and retention.

With AI-powered capabilities, marketing teams can complete tasks faster and redirect their focus toward strategic development. Key benefits include:

• Journey automation: The application automates the creation and management of buying journeys using AI to efficiently identify and engage buying groups. This includes automating real-time engagement triggers, qualification scoring and journey actions, which significantly reduces the time and effort required to manage campaigns.

• AI assistant: The built-in AI assistant helps users quickly navigate and understand the functionalities of Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition. It provides operational insights, answers product-related questions and supports campaign set-up and personalisation — boosting operational efficiency.

• Dynamic personalisation: Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition enables real-time content personalisation by tailoring messages based on the profile, behaviour and interests of buying each group member. With generative AI tools, the platform creates unique email messages that reflect each stakeholder’s role and stage in the buying journey.

  In addition, you can provide guidance to the AI model to further personalise and refine messages — ensuring each stakeholder receives relevant content, increased engagement and a high likelihood of conversion.

Examples of companies that have implemented this approach show how the combination of relevant and timely content that drives technology and strategy can lead to success, highlighting tangible results such as increased sales and customer loyalty.

Lumen Technologies: Transforming revenue growth with buying groups.

Lumen Technologies is a B2B technology company that offers a broad portfolio of products and services — including telephone lines, networking, security and cloud solutions. The company operates as CenturyLink in the consumer market and Quantum Fibre for small businesses, while the Lumen brand serves large enterprises.

The Lumen challenge.

Lumen faces the challenge of aligning demand creation and pipeline with its products and sales teams. With nearly 600 different SKUs — ranging from phone lines to security and cloud solutions — the company must effectively organise and target its marketing strategies to engage the right customers at the right time. Additionally, Lumen seeks to avoid random marketing and maximise customers’ limited attention spans.

How Lumen is using Adobe.

Lumen has adopted several Adobe applications to tackle its marketing and sales alignment challenges. The company has implemented Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) and Adobe Real-Time CDP B2B Edition to unify its data and build richer customer profiles. Additionally, Lumen uses Adobe Marketo Engage for marketing automation and Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition to orchestrate personalised buying journeys.

Lumen is using a buying group approach to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of its marketing campaigns. With Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition, the company can create and manage buying groups, define roles and use templates to automate the identification and engagement of relevant stakeholders. The application allows Lumen to personalise buying journeys for each buying group member, using unified data from the CDP and Marketo Engage campaigns.

Benefits Achieved by Lumen Technologies with Adobe.

• Improved pipeline quality: By focusing on buying groups, Lumen generates a high- quality sales pipeline aligned with specific products and sales teams.
• Advanced personalisation: The ability to personalise content and messages for each member of the buying group, using generative AI, Lumen boosts engagement and increases the likelihood of conversion.
• Operational efficiency: Process automation and AI-driven insights reduce the time and efforts required to manage campaigns — freeing up the marketing team to focus on high-impact strategies.
• Alignment with sales: The integration of Adobe applications fosters closer collaboration between marketing and sales, driving more unified strategies and impactful campaigns.
• Performance measurement: Lumen can measure the performance of your marketing campaigns at the buying group level, allowing for adjustments and optimisations to maximise ROI.

The innovative use of Adobe applications has enabled Lumen to transform its revenue growth by leveraging buying group orchestration and generative AI to create more accurate and effective marketing campaigns. The company has been able to improve pipeline quality, increase personalisation, optimise operational efficiency and better align its marketing strategies with sales teams, resulting in significant and sustainable growth.

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