In B2B sales, relying solely on individual leads often fails to capture the complexity of how purchase decisions are made. Buying Groups provide a more strategic way to identify and engage the real decision makers within an account.
What Are Buying Groups?
Demandbase Buying Groups consist of individuals with defined personas and roles in the buying process. These individuals are grouped to represent the complete set of decision makers within an account.
Data Used to Configure Buying Groups
Buying Groups leverages first-party and third-party data, as well as engagement signals to determine interest. See Define and Manage Buying Groups.
Buying Groups are configured using the following:
- Persona: Title, job function, job level, and custom criteria.
- Buying Role: Pre-defined role in the decision-making process.
- Buying Group Activities: Marketing and Sales activities.
Why Use Buying Groups?
Traditional lead-based approaches are too narrow, and account-based strategies may be too broad. Buying Groups offer a "just right" approach by targeting the real set of stakeholders involved in purchase decisions.
- Accelerate deal cycles: Engaging stakeholders early in the customer journey leads to faster progression through the funnel.
- Improve conversion rates: Persona or role based targeting ensures relevance and alignment with each stakeholder’s needs.
- Enable Sales: Provide deeper visibility into who the stakeholders are.
Buying Groups in Action: An Example Workflow
The following is an example of how you might integrate Buying Groups into your ABM strategy:
| Step | Objective | Strategy |
| 1 | Identify Buying Groups | Configure Buying Groups based on personas, roles, and engagement criteria. |
| 2 | Target the right people from the right accounts |
Create account and people lists to identify accounts with Buying Groups and individuals matched to their respective persona or buying role. |
| 3 | Track engagement | Track engagement patterns based on the Buying Group persona or role. |
| 4 | Personalize outreach | Develop multi-threaded engagement strategies tailored to specific Buying Group persona or role. |
| 5 | Optimize campaign performance | Refine your ad campaigns and messaging to reach relevant Buying Group members. |
| 6 | See impact across the funnel | Align Buying Group insights with account journey progression to measure impact on pipeline and expansion opportunities. |
| 7 | Enable Sales with deeper insights |
Use Demandbase recommended buying group members to grow the Sales team target lists. Sellers can see the full Buying Group profile: Who’s involved, how they’ve engaged, what roles they play, and suggested actions. |