The B2B buying process is far from rational or simple.
Enquiro’s groundbreaking research into the B2B buying process
found that managing risk plays a much bigger role in buying
decisions than previously thought, and that companies that can
manage the “risk gap” will be at a significant
advantage for driving new business.

There are a variety of
“risk control mechanisms” that buyers use to mitigate
risk:

• Personal experience. We trust those we know.
• Approved vendor list. If a vendor is on an organizations
  “approved” list, the risk of choosing that vendor is
  transferred to the person that put the vendor on the list.
• Referrals from trusted sources. A recommendation from peers,
  co-workers, or existing vendors goes a long way to mitigating
  risk.
• Wisdom of crowds. If we don’t have personal experience
  with a vendor, or know someone who does, we generally trust in
  the wisdom of crowds.

The more B2B marketers can tap into these mechanisms, the
stronger position they will be in to capture their prospect’s
business. This is what B2B branding is all about. What is a brand
but a heuristic that buyers can use to simplify complex decision
making?

In today’s buying climate, prospective customers take
control of their buying process and decide when they want to
engage with a vendor. This means that the companies with the
strongest brands — built using referral and the wisdom of crowds
— will enjoy the best flow of highly qualified inbound leads. We
see this in Marketo’s business, and I’m sure many of you
see the same trend in your business.

This is the hard-to-measure
but undeniable connection between brand building and lead
generation, between buzz and demand, between social media and inbound leads. It’s why I believe
that companies that are thinking strategically about demand generation
need to allocate a significant portion of their demand
generation time and money to less measurable brand building
techniques, including using social media to tap into the wisdom
of crowds. Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll describe the four key connections
between social media and brand.