B2B Marketing in 2026: Changing Buyer Groups, AI Search, Digital-First Audiences and More

James Lawrence: Welcome back to the Smarter Marketer Podcast.

I'm here today with Stuart Jaffray. Stuart, welcome back to the pod.

Stuart Jaffray: James, thank you for having me back. Repeat performance.

James Lawrence: Well, that's it. You must have done something right.

Stuart Jaffray: Maybe, maybe.

James Lawrence: We were talking off air that it's probably very easy for us to work out exactly when you were on the pod, given every episode is on the website and on Apple and Spotify.

But I don’t know. We think it was between two and three years ago.

Stuart Jaffray: Sometime between yesterday and then, I think, is about right.

James Lawrence: Sometime between yesterday and COVID.

So I’ll do a reintroduction.

So Stuart is Managing Director of Green Hat, which is a specialist B2B marketing agency that works through the APAC region. As we touched on, Stuart has been on the pod before.

I was reading a report that Green Hat co-published last year. It’s called the APAC B2B Buyer Journey Research Report. We’ll have a link in the show notes to push you towards the Green Hat website to download it.

We try at Rocket to put out our own research because it is really hard in Australia to get research that is done for the Australian market. This report is for APAC. A lot of the information we get as marketers in this country comes out of the US and Europe.

So I think, just by way of starting, maybe the background to the report. What was the framework for putting it together? And then it might be good to jump into some of the key takeaways.

Stuart Jaffray: Yeah. Okay.

So in terms of the report, when you look at Green Hat as an agency, we have published research every year for the last 15 years. And we do that because, in our view, one of the key things we should be bringing to the table as an agency is insight into buyer behaviour. And that’s how we help influence growth.

So if we have a good understanding of the behaviour of buying groups, we can influence that.

Two years ago, we pivoted the research to partner with 6sense to bring this research into the APAC region.

The great thing about the research for us is that we’ve now got over 800 buyers in the APAC region who have participated in it. But not only do we have two years of benchmark data, 6sense replicate this research in North America and EMEA as well. So we can then reference it against the other regions and we get a global aggregate number as well.

The reality is, across those regional differences, they don’t make a huge amount of difference to a B2B marketer in terms of what their go-to-market strategy would look like.

James Lawrence: Yeah. Towards the end of the report, you compare the data to the different regions and it was interesting. There are some subtle differences, but not wholesale changes.

Stuart Jaffray: There are some subtle differences there. They don’t make a material difference to your go-to-market plans. You’re still dealing with very similar behaviours. The journey that a buying group goes through may shorten by a month. You may have one or two extra people in the buying group. But it’s not going to change your overarching strategy in terms of what you’re going to do as a B2B marketer there.

James Lawrence: Totally. I think it was probably one of the headline themes of the report — the song remains the same, but the rhythm has changed.

Maybe we could just dig into the nuts and bolts of that.

Stuart Jaffray: Yeah, you are right on that.

There are just certain points in B2B marketing that have always been the way, and we are seeing in the research they still are.

We break down the buying journey into two clear stages: the selection phase and the validation phase.

The selection phase is when the buying group is meeting and they form the buying party. They set their requirements, they shortlist vendors, they rank the vendors and they establish preference. That’s the stage that happens before they actually reach out to sellers.

Then you’ve got the validation phase, which is what happens once they start to talk to prospective organisations that can help solve with their solutions.

The selection phase is still the longest part of the journey. And I think a lot of B2B marketers miss that the part before they actually reach out to sellers is still the longest part of the journey.

That hasn’t changed.

The buying group is still constructed of a large number of people. That’s how B2B buying works. It’s committee-based decisions.

The requirements are mostly set by that buying party before they reach out to sellers. It’s over 80%. I think the current number is 85% of buying groups will have set most of their requirements before they reach out.

That hasn’t changed.

The buyers initiate first contact. So it’s them calling sellers, not sellers calling them. That happens in eight out of ten occasions.

And the other thing that hasn’t changed is that when the buyer makes first contact, the very first call they make, in eight out of ten occasions, is with the eventual winner.

So when you think about that, what’s happened in terms of that?

If I go back to what I talked about there in terms of the selection phase — the buying party forms, it’s a big group of people. I’ll talk about a change actually. It has got smaller, but it is still a large group of people.

They sit in a boardroom, they communicate online, they do all of those things to get to their set of requirements. So now they’ve decided that there was a need, and they’ve decided what it is that they actually need.

They create a shortlist. Ninety-five percent of the time, the winner will come from that shortlist that was set on day one of the buying group meeting.

So 95% of occasions, they already knew who the successful vendor was on day one that they met.

James Lawrence: It’s kind of hard to get this data for this market, and there’s such a similar statistic — and I use it all the time — it’s in a Harvard Business Review article, particularly in B2B SaaS. It talks about that, right? Which is, if you are not on the list before they even reach out, you’re not going to make the sale.

Stuart Jaffray: You’re not going to make it. Correct.

James Lawrence: And it’s such a powerful statistic or data point for marketers to have when they’re trying to fight the battle internally.

Stuart Jaffray: I agree.

James Lawrence: It’s a great one.

Stuart Jaffray: And this is the key part there, right? So when you look at those trends — those things that haven’t changed — if you are not on that list on day one, you’ve got a 5% chance of winning. But there will be one or two of you in that group. So now you’ve got a 1–2% chance.

If you’ve not established brand preference earlier in the piece, then you can forget about it.

And that’s the part — and I agree — that’s critical for marketers. Establishing brand familiarity and brand preference so that when the buying group meets for the first time in the selection phase, you are on that list. And ideally, you are number one. You are the preferred vendor on day one.

Because again, when they reach out, eight out of ten times the first person they call is the one that’s going to ultimately win the business.

James Lawrence: That’s it. And that doesn’t even take into account all the other benefits, right? The price premium that that preferred vendor will be able to charge, and the speed to close, and all those types of things.

How do you view that within the interrelationship with demand gen? Because we’re having very similar conversations with our clients, right? Either educating marketers or marketers themselves are trying to educate other stakeholders.

Brand has such a negative connotation outside of marketing. It’s seen as future demand, right? Future performance.

What’s the relationship there with that 80% stat on demand gen and how you see the interrelationship between the two versus just fundamental brand activities?

Stuart Jaffray: My point of view on that — and this is one that we push with our clients regularly — we’ll sit down and take people through the research, and everyone nods their heads.

Interestingly, all of our clients are also buying things. Their businesses buy things as well. So they say, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s how we buy things as well.”

Then we get to this thorny topic of, “But we need to create demand today. We need to create pipeline.”

But guys, we’ve just agreed that’s not how the world works.

James Lawrence: It’s not how the world works.

Stuart Jaffray: That’s not how it actually works.

Kerry Cunningham from 6sense wrote a fantastic piece of thought leadership last week where he said B2B organisations just need to hold a mirror up to themselves and consider the way they buy. Then think about that in terms of their go-to-market.

So we have that conversation regularly.

What that means is what you currently call demand generation is actually demand capture.

All you’re doing once people are in market — once they’re shopping — we agree it’s too late because they’ve already built their preference.

So all you’re doing at that stage is capturing the details of accounts that are already in market today.

Unless you were already number one, your chances of dislodging preference are very, very small.

That’s not demand generation. That’s demand capture.

What you’ve done before — what you’ve done to influence people prior to and during the selection phase — that’s genuine demand generation.

And that is brand.

Now, in pure-play B2B, what we look at is: how much of your ICP are you actually reaching?

If you’ve got an ICP of 5,000 organisations, but your target account list is only 1,000 of them, how much of that total addressable market are you reaching?

What percentage are you engaging? How many are moving through to high-value content? Are you tracking that over time?

And it takes time. The average buying journey is still 11 months.

The work you’re doing in February this year is going to benefit you in March, April, May next year.

That’s the medium-term view B2B marketers need to take.

James Lawrence: That’s it.

And eight out of ten journeys are initiated by the buyer, right? When they’re ready.

You’re going to put in a CRM when it suits you — not when some sales-led opportunity comes knocking.

Stuart Jaffray: Exactly.

And once the procurement process has started — that selection phase — it’s 60% of the overall journey. Often, you’re precluded from talking to vendors until stage gates are hit.

Even if a vendor calls you back and you’re interested, you can’t talk to them yet.

James Lawrence: You’re saying marketing works, Stuart.

Stuart Jaffray: I’m suggesting it might change things.

James Lawrence: Some of those headline stats:

• 95% of winning vendors were on the initial shortlist.

• 76% of the time the vendor ranked first at the end of selection wins.

• 70% of the shortlist is set on day one.

• 73% of shortlisted vendors had prior experience with the buyer.

• 88% of buyers had prior experience with the vendor they ultimately chose.

• 90% of the time the chosen vendor was on the shortlist from the start.

It’s fascinating.

Stuart Jaffray: And intuitively, it makes sense.

We’re dealing with experienced buying groups. Heads of IT. CMOs. Procurement teams. CFOs. They’re on 2–4 year procurement cycles.

They’ve done this before.

If you’ve missed this cycle, you have three or four years to position your brand for the next one.

But the buying party knows what they’re doing.

James Lawrence: Let’s talk changes. The buying journey and team structure.

It was August/September that the data was collected, right?

Stuart Jaffray: Correct.

James Lawrence: Buying groups got smaller and sales cycles got shorter.

Stuart Jaffray: Yes.

Buying groups shrank by two people. We’re now just under 11 people in the average buying group in APAC.

That’s significant.

Consultant involvement dropped from eight out of ten buying groups using consultants to just over half.

Economic conditions are the driver.

Restructures. Budget scrutiny. Senior people out of market.

It makes sense.

James Lawrence: Anecdotally, last year I felt more senior non-marketers were involved in pitch processes. More pressure. Less abundance.

Stuart Jaffray: We see senior sales leaders, CROs, sometimes CEOs involved depending on organisation size.

But overall, buying groups are smaller.

James Lawrence: And shorter cycles.

Stuart Jaffray: Yes.

We’ve gone from 13 months down to 11 months.

Statistically significant.

Buying groups know that if they don’t spend in this cycle, that money may disappear.

But here’s the interesting part.

For years, buyers were reaching out later and later in the journey.

This year, that reversed.

They’re reaching out 12 weeks earlier.

James Lawrence: Why?

Stuart Jaffray: AI.

Buying groups are under pressure to have AI inside everything they procure.

But they’ve never procured with an AI mandate before.

Websites aren’t explaining it clearly. It’s impenetrable.

So they’re bringing sellers in earlier to understand AI capability, data privacy, security, pricing.

And by the way, they want AI included. They don’t want to pay more. And they want training — but they don’t want to pay for that either.

60% of organisations said they’re bringing sales in earlier specifically to understand AI.

James Lawrence: 93% of APAC buyers use AI in the buying process.

We see it in analytics data. Referral traffic from large language models converts at 5x the rate of search traffic.

Brands have to show up there.

Stuart Jaffray: Absolutely.

Not enough organisations have a proper AI optimisation strategy in place.

We’ve built a GEO tracker for B2B because the commercial tools skew B2C.

If you’re not showing up today, I worry about where you’ll be next year.

James Lawrence: Digital natives are here.

72% of buying teams are Millennials and Gen Z.

It disrupts the notion that B2B has to be boring.

Stuart Jaffray: Completely.

They’re digital natives. Video natives.

They don’t want dense PDFs.

They want video. Transparency on AI.

They’re more averse to filling out forms.

Ungating content is uncomfortable for organisations, but it works.

It requires education internally and better tech to track account engagement.

But it works.

James Lawrence: One thing CMOs should stop doing immediately?

Stuart Jaffray: Gating their content.

James Lawrence: One thing they should double down on?

Stuart Jaffray: Brand.

James Lawrence: Brand or demand?

Stuart Jaffray: Brand. Because it leads to demand.

You won’t get demand without brand.

James Lawrence: Most underestimated buyer?

Stuart Jaffray: Last year I would’ve said consultants.

Now I’d say senior signatories — CFOs, CEOs, procurement.

If they’ve never heard of you, they won’t sign the contract.

James Lawrence: One signal every revenue team should track?

Stuart Jaffray: Account engagement.

We’re still obsessed with MQLs.

Account engagement isn’t harder to measure. You just need the right tech.

James Lawrence: Mate, that was awesome. I love talking B2B marketing with you. Great having you back.

Stuart Jaffray: Likewise. I enjoyed that. Thanks for having me.