Don’t let the age of AI make you forget the B2B buyer is human

Today, as I look across tech, industrial, and professional services, I see hundreds of companies doing extraordinary work. However, far too often, their most persuasive, human stories are hidden from current and prospective customers.

I see marketing leaders holding onto outdated assumptions about why B2B buyers really make decisions. And I see executives, marketers, and customers missing the point about what AI does well and what it can never replace.

It’s clear that B2B marketers have never had more sophisticated tools at their disposal. Here are three myths they need to bust if they want to get the most out of those tools, and the people who use them.

Myth #1: Long sales cycles can be measured with short-term metrics

B2B purchases are frequently made by multiple decision-makers, after extensive research, over months or even years of consideration. Yet the marketing to influence them is often managed by short-term metrics.

The key to better B2B sales outcomes—and better decision-making along the way—is to focus on what matters most in long-haul buying cycles: creating a memorable brand.

When I was at GE, where long cycle was the name of the game, the goal was not to explain every technical detail in our marketing. It was to create meaning and differentiation so future customers knew and trusted GE. 

Had we measured ourselves on the number of demos requested or clicks to our site, we’d have targeted only the comparatively small number of buyers in the market for a solution rather than influencing buyers for the long term. 

With this north star always in mind, we made early bets on new platforms, channels, and storytelling formats.

Long before the creator economy, we invited popular YouTubers to come to our historic Global Research Center and tell the story of a new material coating using slow-motion photography. 

We won our first Cannes Lion for a simple user-generated content campaign on Vine, the short-form video predecessor to TikTok. 

And we created a chart-topping, eight-episode sci-fi thriller podcast long before “branded entertainment” was a popular concept. 

None of these efforts were designed to replace product marketing. But every one of them, and scores of others, created a memorable and emotional framework that reinforced GE’s history and future promise of innovation.  

Myth #2: Buying is a purely rational decision

Long before chief marketing officers were saying that brands needed to be “authentic,” a handful of big companies showed up in American households as a person, not simply as a company. In the 1940s, the silver screen star Betty Furness demonstrated Westinghouse appliances on TV, humanizing the brand for millions of American women. Ronald Reagan and GE took it a step further with General Electric Theater in the 1950s. And by the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, TV commercial breaks were full of celebrities lending their warmth and charm to financial services, automotive, consumer products, and eventually technology companies who wanted their brand to inspire emotions. 

That principle shaped how we kept the GE brand relevant and fresh. We didn’t focus on the turbine, but the power it generated for homes. We didn’t talk about healthcare technology, but the patient lives it saved. Whenever we could, we made the story about people.

Many B2B executives don’t see the opportunity or value in appealing to buyers on an emotional level. But when businesses and brands communicate like manuals or faceless corporate giants instead of people, they’re leaving money on the table. 

Gartner reports that B2B buyers are nearly three times as likely to demonstrate high brand commitment when they perceive personal benefits from a supplier rather than functional benefits alone. Research by Les Binet and Peter Field for LinkedIn’s B2B Institute similarly found that emotional B2B campaigns generated seven times as many “very large business effects” over the long term as campaigns built primarily around rational appeals. Appealing to the emotions is very, very good for business.

Myth #3: AI makes brand storytelling less important

When an artificial intelligence assistant can compare specifications, features, and create detailed summaries of a company’s claims before the buyer ever visits a supplier’s website, what’s left to sway a B2B buyer? The brand story that a company has built up over time.

Product marketing, defined as the battle of specifications between niche products, will always be important, especially since AI needs an endless supply of fresh data to feed on. But for the human on the other side of the screen, brand association is now more likely than ever to cast the deciding vote.

Generative AI works by identifying patterns in what already exists and repeating them. Brand differentiation works the opposite way. It requires departing from those patterns at precisely the right moment, as only a human being can determine.

AI can provide an endless stream of ideas, but only human decision-making, born of experience, creativity, empathy and a deep understanding of the brand, can know what to do with them.

As more organizations use the same AI tools to conduct research, develop strategies and generate content, the danger is growing that brands will go down the algorithmic middle road: safe, efficient, and entirely forgettable.

By all means, use AI to accelerate research, production and adaptation. But please, do not ask it to decide what your company stands for.

For the B2B buyer, AI may assemble the shortlist. But the brand that resonates most emotionally will always rise to the top of it.