Here are 5 changing influences redefining the role of the CMO and their impact on business growth: 

1. Increasing demand for digital experiences  

Between an increasingly remote workforce the need for digitalization in all industries, and the evolution of buyers becoming increasingly savvy in what they need and where to spend their money, it seems everything is digital. Shopping for a new outfit, hiring a dog sitter, or even ordering your Whole Foods groceries on Amazon. We’re so comfortable doing everything digitally. That ease of doing research and purchasing something with just a few clicks? Buyers now expect that same digital convenience during a B2B transaction. 

have adopted or have plans to adopt a digital-first business strategy. B2B buyers now expect a digital purchase journey from start to finish, and CMOs must evolve to stay ahead of the curve. The key lies in integrating digital convenience into the B2B buyer’s journey. An example of this could be chatbots, freemium models, or even an interactive digital experience like Foundry IntentBot, that allows users to interact with your product before sending an inquiry to sales.���� 

2. Expanding buying-teams and generational preferences 

A one-size-fits-all approach just won’t cut it. The average number of individuals who influence the tech purchase process increased to 25 people, up from 20 people in 2022. To add another layer of complexity, there are varying content preferences among younger generations involved in the decision-making process. Foundry’s 2023 Customer Engagement Study revealed over half of Gen X respondents said product tests and reviews are important compared to 30% of Gen Z. A similar contrast was evident with product demonstrations and literature, which are deemed valuable by 44% of Boomers and 50% of Gen Xers but just 15% of Gen Zers.����

The challenge for CMOs lies in not only adapting to the expanding size of buying teams and their preferences, but also in catering to the content preferences of the Millennial and Gen Z demographics. CMOs should leverage data-driven insights to understand not only who the buyers are but also what resonates with them and how they prefer to be engaged. This approach opens doors to crafting tailored messages that resonate with decision-makers across different generations, ultimately driving revenue. 

3. Artificial intelligence adoption 

IT organizations and CMOs are beginning to embrace AI, viewing it as a catalyst for business growth, rather than a threat. ITDMs expect a positive benefit from Gen AI as 55% agree that Gen AI infused products create better business outcomes and another 55% agree that Gen AI is allowing employees to refocus on high value-adding tasks.  

By investing in AI technologies that align with specific B2B objectives, CMOs can unlock opportunities for improved process optimization, targeted outreach, personalization, and advertising, to name a few. However, to be successful, CMOs must have a strong understanding of organizational needs and apply a strategic approach to AI implementation. 

UK fashion brand, is a great example of AI marketing in practice. With over 600k customers, Thread uses AI to provide personalized clothing recommendations for each customer while delivering hyper-personalized emails at scale. This allows Thread to create a hyper-personal experience and tailor their marketing recommendations based on customer engagement. B2B brands can also draw insight from this model. Printer manufacturer saw firsthand the benefits of AI adoption when they worked with , a company that specializes in AI automated emails. Thanks to this partnership, Epson saw a in its customer response rate and a 75 percent increase in its number of qualified leads. 

4. Brand and trust  

Brand awareness matters – 65% of ITDMs typically spend more time-consuming content from known and trusted brands. As we enter a new era of artificial intelligence, trusted sources and brands with strong beliefs will become increasingly valuable. 

CMOs, particularly in B2B marketing, can lean into branding and define their purpose and mission, further connecting with customers emotionally. Emphasizing educational content, thought leadership, and transparent communication are going to be major contributing factors to establishing brand as an authority and reinforcing trust among audiences.  

Foundry’s initiative, “Stores inspire. Data connects.,” launched in late 2023. The campaign focused heavily on brand and educational content, including a hub of thought leadership content as well as featuring industry experts sharing practical solutions and deep insights. The results proved successful, including a 164% surge in overall website conversions and a 44% increase in session duration compared to visitors unaffected by the campaign. 

5. Growing involvement in customer engagement 

While the CMO isn’t accountable for every aspect of the customer lifecycle, a significant focus lies on shaping the digital customer experience. This involves crafting a unified strategy throughout various stages of customer engagement. 

One way the CMO and marketing can become a customer intelligence engine is by adopting the model, or ACE. This model was designed to meet the needs of modern B2B buyers and involves connecting customer data across the enterprise, fostering a deep understanding of both current and ideal customers. From the initial engagement with the brand to the ongoing customer relationship, the goal is to deliver tailored content and engagement. 

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, over the next two years, the CMO role will continue to evolve as new influences emerge. The modern CMO plays a major role in ‘the digital dream team’ and is characterized by adaptability and a strategic mindset. By leaning into developing market influences and embracing change, CMOs can lead the charge of generating business growth for their organizations now and well into the future. 

To learn more about the dynamic role of the CMO, watch the Inspire to Connect session, Adaptive Customer Engagement: How to engage with today’s buyers, .����

This is due to a number of factors. Buying teams have different priorities and challenges they’re aiming to solve based on their unique business needs. These teams are also complex, made up of team members with various investment levels in what they choose to buy. The end user, the legal team, and the CTO likely all have different priorities and needs. As much as organizations’ buying teams have different processes for buying, the over 25 members of the buying committee do too.  

This is all made increasingly complex because of the often-forgotten factor: these buyers are real people. People who make decisions based on their own built-in loyalties, opinions, experiences, relationships, preferences, and pet peeves. 

This is why segmenting audiences or defining leads as “top-of-funnel,” aka TOFU, misses the mark. It creates a linear pathway for a non-linear journey. 

Most people don’t identify a need for a large tech purchase by seeing a blog post. It’s typically triggered by one of two things: a problem or an opportunity. Maybe they’re about to sign a new flagship client, compliance laws are changing, they’re expanding a team, or they’ve outgrown an old tool. When that happens, the first move isn’t typically to read top-of-funnel blogs, click on a broad ad, or start replying to email marketing out of the blue. Instead, first, they search. They check sources they trust, go to review sites, ask peers, talk to their team, look into hiring, and research best practices. 

When TOFU content does point out a need, “step one” still doesn’t really happen the way we assume because of the relationships and brand equity already built by tools used in the past, opinions of colleagues or peers, and the industry giants who dominate their spaces. 

The risk of this funnel-based mindset is two-fold. On the one hand, it creates an artificial blind spot, causing you to potentially miss in-market buyers who just aren’t buying in the typical linear flow we’ve all marketed with before. On the other hand, you could be spending time and resources on people who aren’t actually looking to buy. Maybe they were casually consuming content, looking for a specific stat, or just browsing for inspo. If those “top-of-funnel” actions trigger retargeting and nurture streams without checking for context, you could be putting your eggs in the wrong basket. 

Moral of the story? TOFU is great for a bowl of Pad Thai, but not so great for your marketing strategy. There’s no “step 1” to buying. So, there can’t be a generic step 1 to marketing either.  

Instead, focus content journeys on the context around buyers’ actions and understand their priorities to reach them with helpful, humanized experiences. 

What does this look like in practice?  

Stop treating all audience members the same way, sending them on a linear journey from awareness to conversion. Instead, start analyzing and acting on behaviors, tailoring your next step to what your buyers need in that moment. Watch for patterns and performance. From there, you can engage proactively based on each persona’s needs for true buyer-centric marketing built to really help your audience. 

What’s more, the number of decision-makers can increase for complex deals, and sales cycles are getting longer than ever. But what are we fundamentally doing to adapt? 
 
It’s more important than ever to engage more than just a primary point of contact, most marketing and sales teams aren’t making a concerted effort to multithread their deals.  

What is multithreading in sales?

Multithreading is the sales and marketing strategy of targeting each account from multiple angles. Multithreading is a powerful strategy for B2B sales specifically because B2B deals involve large buying committees. Sales and marketing organizations multithread by targeting diverse personas within each account with tailored advertising and outreach. 

Why aren’t more teams multithreading?

For starters, most teams are not incentivized to multithread deals when their primary KPIs are MQLs, MQAs, or opportunities. If you only get ‘credit’ for driving one lead within an account, you certainly wouldn’t be going out of your way to multithread. I have encountered instances where marketers believe that once an opportunity has been created, the account becomes ‘off limits’ for further marketing efforts. This narrow perspective often limits the opportunities that multithreading could offer. By the same token, if when a second lead within an account is passed to sales, marketing is met with responses like, “We already met with so-and-so from this account”, you’re not likely to practice multithreading. But you should! Here’s why: 

Here’s an example of how multithreading can decrease risk: Sales receives just one MQL from marketing within a target account with 25 people within its buying team. But is the MQL a key decision maker within the buying team? They might not be. They also might have colleagues within their buying group who are meeting with competitors. By ignoring the hidden buying group with singlethreaded tactics, sales opens themselves up to a lot of risk.����

Benefits of multithreading 

More likely to get buy-in and increase win rates

Multithreading increases win rates by allowing sellers to persuade hidden stakeholders who aren’t bought in. In fact, found that multithreading increased win rates from 5% for single threaded opportunities to 30% when multithreading occurred with 5 stakeholders- a 6X improvement. 

Faster sales cycle – increasing pipeline velocity

One of the biggest barriers to any deal is that the product being sold is not top priority for the buyers. When a product is not top priority, buyers may cancel or reschedule calls, delay moving forward, or wait to bring in other stakeholders. But when you multithread deals you can learn what’s priority for stakeholders across the account, position your product accordingly, and by connecting with different stakeholders, you can push along the account by the FOMO effect – if you meet with more people within the account – others won’t want to be left out and you’ll face less friction.  

Product stickiness and adoption 

We see this all the time in our ABM platform deals: prospects in exploratory calls often say that only one department is getting something out of a product they’re using. When just one department uses a product, the product is easily a risk in case of budget cuts. The goal is for your product to be un-cuttable, and the best way to do that is to get cross-departmental adoption early. By multi-threading deals, you can get a jumpstart on this even before the deal has closed.  

Lower risk of loss due to point of contact leaving 

Sellers have seen this countless times: your deal is progressing well, your POC seems keen to move forward and… they left their job? Now your deal for their previous company is generally dead in the water if you were single threading. But if you were multithreading, you can more easily set next steps with the rest of the buying group, determine who would make the most sense as a new primary point of contact, and see if the deal still has legs.  

Limitations of multithreading 

We don’t report on this well 

Like I mentioned early on, in a world of MQAs and opportunities where the usual expectation is ‘there’s only one of these per account’, marketing and sales teams aren’t incentivized to multithread their deals. If their performance metrics look better to have 3 single threaded deals rather than 1 multithreaded deals, that can be a problem, especially if you reference the stats from – a 6X higher win rate with multithreading, a multithreaded deal should be weighted significantly more heavily than a single threaded deal.  

Requires more persona work 

If you’re going to multi-thread your deals, you can’t expect to use the same talk track with marketers as with sales, as with finance, etc. You have to develop personas and pain points for each, and approach them as the distinct personas that they are. You might even need to determine different channels and tactics that are more effective for each persona such as relying more on cold calls for sales, or advertising for executives, for example.  

Requires more bandwidth   

If you’re going to try to reach 5X more people within each account, you’ll be using more bandwidth. This could mean more marketing support with resources and tactics to reach stakeholders, as well as more sales bandwidth- drafting cadences for more personas within each account, more cold calling, and more social selling touch points.  

Could require more spend 

If you’ll be running additional advertising in your multithreading plays, that could very quickly increase your spend per account. Because of this and requiring additional bandwidth, it’s a good idea to start multithreading with a small target account list of high fit accounts.  
 
Now that we’ve covered the pros and cons of multithreading, let’s jump into some actual multithreading tactics you can deploy in your go-to-market strategy. 

3 Multithreading plays to deploy in your GTM strategy 

Air cover to hidden stakeholders 

When you look at all the contacts associated with a deal after it’s closed-won vs. when it was first created, you’ll likely see more contacts across the account, some of them likely higher level executives who were brought into the deal only once the deal got to a certain point of maturity and they had been sold internally on the importance of purchasing your product or service. 

But there are many reasons why you might never get to closed-won in deals with many stakeholders.You might find that C-suite stakeholders haven’t heard of your business, that a competitor is deeply entrenched, or that they still need to be convinced of the business case for your product.  

If your primary point of contact isn’t absolutely championing your product internally (we love to see it, but that doesn’t make it guaranteed of course), then reasons for deals stalling like the above can be addressed with marketing and sales touches.  

First, let’s start with advertising air cover. Start with your top accounts in pipeline. Identify personas that can make or break your deals but that aren’t the primary points of contact. Now go through your CRM or your sales intelligence to analyze your most common loss reasons that would likely relate to these hidden personas. For example, CFOs not wanting to fund your product, executives having low awareness of your brand, competitors winning more with certain departments, etc. Then based off that information, create ads to target those personas with messaging that addresses the fear, uncertainty, or doubt they might have.  
 
To measure whether your advertising air cover to hidden stakeholders is working, you can run an A/B test comparing the win rate of half of a list of your top accounts pipeline who were exposed to this advertising, vs. half who were not. This way you can decide whether this tactic is worth continuing and expanding for your organization.  

Looping in other team members 

Have you ever received a cold email that mentioned your colleague by name? If you did, you might’ve noticed that it jumped out at you far more than the countless cold emails you receive that contain your own name. By reaching out to multiple members of a team, sellers can increase their response and meeting rates, and people are more likely to reply when there are a couple of them. It goes back to a sort of fear of missing out or fear that they might seem like they’re dropping the ball. This tactic can work well, but you should be careful with it, since it’s much more effective the more personalized it is.  
 
For example, an email mentioning you colleague by name and then referencing a conversation you had with them would be far more likely to receive a response than a spray and pray “Hi {first name}, are you the right person to talk to or is {colleague-first name}?” 
 
However, if you use this tactic dishonestly, your approach may have the opposite effect. For example, don’t say you “talked to their colleague Jane Doe” if you didn’t.  

Cross-team recon 

If you sell to sales and marketing organizations, or if you simply don’t live under a rock, you know that sales and marketing teams are often at odds with each other. This can be due to needing to seemingly argue for credit for revenue,  or whether leads are or are not qualified, difference in opinion over which go-to-market tactics are most effective for their market, or a myriad of other reasons. So when sales and marketing teams both get on board with a product, that’s big. It means your product will be much more likely to be onboarded and adopted across teams and become uncuttable.  

This leads me to a tactic the Foundry ABM team uses to get more information on top accounts and multithread: cross-team recon. Cross team recon is when an SDR cold calls sales team members of an account, as opposed to going straight to marketing, the more typical primary point of contact within their accounts, and asks them exploratory questions about the account. This works because firstly, sales team members are significantly more likely to answer their phone than marketers are. Secondly, because of the idea that sales and marketing are at odds with each other, they may be more willing to share candid information about their pain points around go-to-market tools. And lastly, because the call is from a sales person to another sales person there’s a sense of congeniality, making the sales people being called are more likely to relate to the SDR calling them and want to help them out with information.  

Final thoughts

Now more than ever, multithreading just makes sense for B2B. With ballooning buying groups and dragging sales cycles, multithreading is a key strategy that can improve your revenue generation.  

Now that we’ve discussed what multithreading is, why it’s worth your while, and some plays you could try, give some thought to how your reporting is set up, what tactics are incentivized, and how you can approach your metrics in a way that encourages your team to get the most revenue possible.

The next 2-3 years look to be a remarkable transition in B2B marketing that will define the discipline for a decade or more. 

Of course, the last 12 months have seen no shortage of gloomy takes on the outlook for B2B marketers. , even though CMOs say their current tech is under-utilized. Gen AI automates marketing’s creative and analytical work at a low cost. Regulatory changes continue to disrupt traditional targeting methods. And buyers — they’re more reluctant to engage brands directly than ever early in their journey.  

But with all due respect to the naysayers, here are 3 things that I believe spell opportunity for B2B marketers who want a chance to lead from the front — and a few suggestions on how to get started.  

AI will fundamentally change how brands build trust with prospects

#1: Search interfaces inspired by ChatGPT will gradually intermediate your brand and your audience’s consumption of your digital content

The explosion in B2B content marketing 20 years ago was driven by the value companies derived from creating a “digital breadcrumb” trail to buyers.  

That strategy yielded diminishing returns as buyers responded with less enthusiasm to trade personal information for digital content. In response, brands “ungated” much content and learned to rely instead on intent data that picked up digital breadcrumbs anonymously at the company level.  

Now buyers are on the cusp of simplifying their research even more — this time by having ChatGPT-derived interfaces — I’ll call it “Search AI” here — answer their queries, instead of manually navigating and synthesizing information from a dozen search results. 

But that shift means that even when prospects are benefiting from your content, they won’t know it. 

#2: The weakened connection between brands and buyers around digital content will diminish the value of traditional content marketing

To state the obvious, there are at least two key motivations driving B2B content marketing today:  

1. Creating a trusted relationship with your audience, and  

2. Generating digital breadcrumbs that focus your budget on the best prospects 

Will generative AI help you to publish thought leadership content at unheard-of volumes and quality levels? Perhaps. But doing so will be of precious little benefit if that content is (a) consumed in a way that hides your brand from the buyer and (b) generates no digital breadcrumbs from prospects. i.e., through Search AI. As that shift occurs B2B marketers will have to think differently about top-of-funnel engagement. If digital content can no longer build trusted relationships with early-stage prospects, what can?  

#3: The winners in this coming era will be the marketers who innovate ways to build trusted relationships with prospects that Search AI can’t disrupt 

The job of B2B marketing will continue to be building trusted relationships with ideal prospects so that sales can engage and convert them into customers — but the assets at the heart of their work will have to change. To use a parallel: over the last decade, B2B marketers have become expert at turning insights from customer success reps, data teams, and other Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) into “thought leadership.” As we’ve illustrated here, that strategy will yield diminishing returns — so what is the new SME, the company asset that marketers work to cultivate, amplify, and externalize to attract and engage early-stage prospects? 

I’ll suggest a few possibilities.  

Building trust in the era of search AI 

Your product as your content

There’s an obvious candidate when you ask, “What brand asset do we have that Search AI can’t mediate to my audience?”  

Your product.  

Not the entire thing — this isn’t a pitch for all companies to consider Product Led Growth (PLG) — but rather discrete Product Experiences narrowly designed to address top-of-funnel concerns your prospects have. Where marketing needs to lead in their companies is imagining what those product experiences can be (mapping value to the buyer’s journey) and forming new collaborative relationships with Product Management to deliver them.   

At Foundry, the marketing team did this for their intent data product by launching Intent Bot — a tool to help early-stage buyers understand what intent data was and how to use it, delivered through a lightweight product experience rather than a content asset. Intent Bot offers personalized intent data specific to the user’s query, allowing users to understand the benefits upfront and before entering their email addresses.  

Yes, this involved uncomfortable new partnerships between marketing and product management. Yes, it involved tradeoffs between shipping features in the roadmap. But that’s no less valid a tradeoff than when we take an SME and have them write marketing content instead of helping a customer solve a problem.   

Your community as your content

If hands-on product experience is the best trust-builder with prospects, a close second is interacting with your most successful customers.  

Many companies already have strong efforts underway in this area, such as generating positive customer reviews to post on product review websites. Another tactic is to incentivize customers to spread positive word of mouth on other channels, like Chili Piper’s ‘ initiative. That said — those efforts are susceptible to mediation by Search AI just as other digital content is, so to really protect and project your customers’ voice, marketers will need to deliver true human-to-human interactions between customers and prospects.  

That type of community marketing offers potential customers a unique opportunity to connect with existing users, ask questions, and truly grasp the value of your product — and offers strong early returns in exchange. Before purchasing a product, use dedicated brand communities to research the product. These communities, such as the , play a pivotal role in building trust and relationships that can span individuals’ careers across many companies.  

Your pilot as your content

While many companies are averse to the practice, there is growing demand for technology companies to offer pilots of products that were traditionally sold only on an annual or multiyear basis.  

And it’s coming from all directions.  

yield unsurprising results to anyone in B2B sales: CFOs are asking for short-term trials, seeking ways for their teams to dip their toes in the water before signing off on a long-term purchase. They’re meticulous, having their FP&A teams craft detailed ROI analyses before diving into larger deals. But it’s a mistake to think that free trial pressure is purely top-down. Data on they’re wired to press for trials and other information sources (such as online communities, peer insights, and podcasts) as well during the buying process, significantly changing where deals speed up and slow down relative to their Millennial colleagues. CFOs and Gen Z, seemingly worlds apart, are converging on their demand for higher trust before buying. 

In this shifting landscape, characterized by the growing significance of short-term trials and the imperative need for trust, partnering with strong editorial brands can be a strategic move for technology companies. Editorial brands are media organizations or publications that are recognized for their distinct editorial style, content, and perspective. They often have a loyal readership or viewership base that trusts their content and relies on them for accurate, well-researched, and thought-provoking information. Editorial brands can serve as trusted third parties, providing authentic reviews, insights, and demonstrations of the products in question. These partnerships not only boost the products’ credibility but can also create a solid trust foundation. 

Conclusion

Trust will always remain a crucial piece of any marketing strategy. But it’s something that needs to be earned, kept, and valued – especially in the era of emerging AI technology. Marketers who adapt quickly and lead from the front will secure lasting customer loyalty, build meaningful relationships, and thrive amidst the challenges of the digital age. 

Enter the latest and greatest tech buyers’ journey road map: – How to Engage IT Decision-Makers. Establishing a strategy that effectively engages IT decision-makers (ITDMs) may start with quality content, but it extends much further. The poster highlights additional aspects, such as the impact strong customer experience and proper engagement has on increasing sales.  Turn to these 5 easy steps to guide your strategy.

Understand the goals of your target audience

It doesn’t matter the company; every organization wants to be considered an innovator in their respective industry. Gaining a stronger understanding of what your customer is currently prioritizing and what they want to focus on in the future is essential to their customer journey.

• 93% of organizations have made digital-first plans
• Why are organizations implementing a digital transformation (DX) strategy?
  • Improve employee productivity/collaboration – 51%
  • Reduce costs/inefficiencies – 50%
  • Create better customer experiences to keep up with expectations – 45%
• Increasing spend in these areas:
  • Cybersecurity
  • BI/analytics tools
  • Data analytics frameworks
  • AI & machine learning
  • Business process management/workflow automation
  • Robotic process automation

Know your customers

Leadership shifts with each stage of the technology purchase process. Once you’ve gotten a grasp on what your target audience is focused on, be sure to know who is involved in which stage of the process so you are actively engaging the correct people at the right times. For example, the CIO leads the way when determining the business need, but IT management and security staff are more involved in the technical stages such as evaluating products and services and determining technical requirements.

Be sure to understand who is involved throughout each stage of the purchase process so your message aligns with the influencer and their needs.

• 61% agree that the purchase process for technology products and services is becoming increasingly complex
• There are more than double the number of influencers involved in enterprise tech purchases – 33 total compared to 15 for SMBs
• 57% will purchase from an existing vendor, while 43% will seek a new vendor

Consider their educational needs

There are so many forms of content available today, but do all of them provide quality, actionable insights to your audience? On average, ITDMs download six assets throughout the tech purchase process, however they state that only 48% of downloaded work-related content has provided them with value in the past 12 months. It’s important to provide them with the content types they most rely upon as well as from the proper sources.

• 91% of ITDMs think it’s challenging to find high-quality content
• Where do they find information?
  • Tech content sites
  • White papers
  • Webcasts/webinars
  • Technology vendors (via phone, email video conference)
  • Technology vendors (via vendor website)
• 96% of tech buyers are interested in custom-tailored content, based on…
  • Industry
  • Tech platform(s) already installed
  • Company size

Make tech buyers your brand advocate

One of the most important aspects to the customer journey is establishing trust and authenticity with your target market. Becoming a dependable and knowledgeable partner is key to retaining your customer base and ultimately having them become an advocate for your brand and product.

• 65% of tech buyers say that they typically spend more time consuming content from known and trusted brands because they’re confident their time will be well spent.
• Vendor awareness impacts tech buyers’ decision to engage with certain content:
  • Product reviews – 71%
  • Case studies – 56%
  • Third-party market research – 44%

Become an integral part of your customers’ research process

To become not just a vendor, but a relied upon resource for your customers, it’s all about knowledge, timing and trust. These strong relationships will help to increase your sales, so be sure to provide a valuable and enjoyable journey for your customers and prospects.

• Knowledge – 96% of tech buyers have responded to outreach from a potential vendor, specifically when they:
  • Shared valuable content or informationWere knowledgeable about business or specific challenges
  • Demonstrated honesty/transparency
• Timing – 16 hours is the average time tech buyers expect follow-up after filling out a contact form
• Trust – 73% of tech buyers say that when a technology brand is known and trusted, it increases the likelihood that they will be added to the short list.

Between this research, our content experts and premium data we can help you identify and engage the world’s most influential tech buyers. Get started by downloading the and partner with Foundry to simplify your marketing with data-driven media and martech solutions.

provides insight into the progression of technology in business, as well as an in-depth analysis of who is involved in the IT purchase process and the information sources they rely on during each stage of the process. This global research of more than 846 technology decision-makers is a valuable resource for tech vendors to understand the decisions made around their products and services to gain an advantage in this competitive landscape. To assist technology marketers as they plan out their strategies for the upcoming year, we have outlined a handful of key findings below.

Key takeaways:

1. Technology is still seen as “recession proof” as budgets are expected to increase (50%) or remain stable (38%) over the next 12 months.
   

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2. The buying cycle is getting longer, as 6.5 months is the average length of the tech purchase process, up from 6.2 months in 2022.
   

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3. The average number of individuals who have influence over the tech purchase process increases to 25 people this year, up from 20 people in 2022. This varies by the technology being purchased. On average, there are 28 individuals involved in cloud purchases, but only 21 in desktop/laptop purchases.
   

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4. Brand awareness matters – 65% of ITDMs typically spend more time consuming content from known and trusted brands, which increases to 73% for Millennials and decreases to 68% for GenZ.
   

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5. During the purchase process, tech buyers rely on technology content sites, white papers, webcasts/webinars and technology vendors via phone, email or video conference. The sources relied upon also vary depending on which stage of the purchase process ITDMs are in.
   

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The findings in this report solidify the need that tech buyers have for consistent, valuable, and trustworthy vendor relationships. These individuals are tasked with researching, evaluating, and implementing new technologies while maintaining status-quo tasks. To do so, they seek reliable information sources and insight during each stage of the process to make sound purchase decisions.

View the sample slides below for additional insight and to better understand and engage with tech buyers.

John Gallant, enterprise consulting director for Foundry shares key findings from the Role and Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker research and what it means as far as opportunities for tech marketers 

and reach out to share your ideal customer profile – by company size, region, industry sector, etc. – so we can customize the results to to help you shape your marketing strategy. 

Download the poster for insight on:

• How tech decision-makers evaluate vendors and the technologies they’re prioritizing
• Who is involved in the decision-making process and collaborating throughout the journey
• The content types and information sources tech marketers need to focus on
• 5 tactics to boost relationships with tech buyers

RESEARCH:

• Role & Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker Study
• Customer Engagement Study

WHITE PAPER:

POSTER:

Interested in learning more and diving deeper into the results?