Missing the Moat
B2B Media/Events/Marketing service providers risk missing the moat. The Outsell Value Pyramid combined with our proprietary study about how buyers buy paves the way for B2B leaders navigating the journey to a thriving AI future.
After three decades of tracking this industry and seeing four platform transformations – print to digital, mobile, cloud/SaaS, and now AI there are uncomfortable truths with every cycle. But one thing is for sure: designing the business around the next wave is so much better than bracing for it, trying to wait it out, or wondering how to re-create the old way when the old way is never coming back.
Just ask the 225 buyers we surveyed, mostly VP and above with significant budgets. Last week, they pointed the way for media operators to address their unmet needs.
Here are a few more truisms from them and what’s ahead in B2B.
- Zero click is here to stay.
- “Audiences” are anything but; engagement now requires an entirely new approach.
- Buyers are buying differently. Generative AI is their first port of call for researching the market, identifying solutions and alternatives, prioritizing vendors, and looking at less of them. GenAI is replacing search engines, industry sites, and vendor webinars in that order.
- ChatGPT and Gemini are the GenAI tools most widely used to support their buying process; only 65% use an enterprise-licensed version.
- Intent models aren’t working; the signals aren’t capturing the right information, marketers don’t have the right systems to consume it, so they are showing up too late.
- Buyers have a workflow, and that buying process is supported by systems. It’s not just Excel; think ERP, procurement solutions, and supply chain management too. The buyer workflow has been totally disrupted by AI, and AI needs to talk to their systems of choice.
- B2B marketers have a workflow; they also have systems and solutions that support them like media brands, HubSpot, Salesforce, Omeda, DemandScience, Bombora, Apollo, and hundreds of other companies. They are all part of an integrated stack that is part of the value chain in which they operate. And they too are staking out their place on the Outsell Value pyramid – just check out the DemandScience announcement this week, also covered in the Outsell Doorway.
Top-of-funnel interactions by marketers don’t mean as much in the now AI-driven purchase workflow of buyers. There is a mismatch; in a nutshell, our study is showing that B2B workflows are breaking. Media providers have a role if they plot their course. It requires a complete rethink.
That rethink starts with considering your organization’s place on the Outsell Value Pyramid. Every company in the sector (and we do mean every) is someplace on this pyramid.
Our CEO Network members are working with us to map their journey thru different scenarios on that pyramid – plotting their course on where to play and how to win and whom to partner with. We have written a full analysis about Navigating the Outsell Pyramid regardless of whether the business is funded by advertising and marketers or is funded by end users and their enterprises for paid information solutions.
This, combined with what buyers are telling us, ensures that Outsell CEO Network members don’t miss the moat but maintain and actually fortify it. That moat isn’t where conventional wisdom puts it.
We are hosting private consultations with our individual CEO members and their top team to review what this means for their business.
We’re also convening private Outsell CEO Network meetings in non-competing groups to problem-solve and prioritize what’s hitting from all sides. Case studies in the context of what’s working and not, and based on what real buyers and marketers experience is priceless.
Not a member? Contact us for a complimentary consultation about what our proprietary survey of buyers says about your media, events, and marketing services business and securing a future in the value chain of buyers and marketers and their needs and workflows. For a short time, we’ll make a consultation available to non-clients too. It’s too important to miss.
These topics and more will also be front and center at the Outsell CEO Summit, by invitation, October 1 in London. Contact us to request your invitation. Don’t miss your moat.