We left LinkedIn’s Indie Summit last week with one number we can’t stop thinking about: 40 percent of B2B deals are lost due to indecision, not to winning competitors.
The first instinct is to treat that as a product problem or a price problem. But most of the time, it’s not all those things. A typical B2B buying team is ten people: CMO, CFO, security leader, team leader, and a few others who have important priorities and different questions they need answered before they can go out. If neither of them object but neither of them is fully convinced, the deal will not go to the competitor. It just stops.
Most B2B marketing isn’t designed for that reality. It is designed to convince a single decision maker, differentiate from competitors, and drive conversion. That is a sound strategy when one person calls. But when ten people need to reach a shared point of trust, often without talking to your sales team, a campaign designed to convince one person doesn’t do the job it needs to do.
The question stops being “how do we win the competition” and starts with “how do we make it easier for the team to say yes.” That change changes almost everything downstream: what you do, where you use it, and what you measure.
Reaching out to a buying group that has already done their research
Understanding who you are actually trying to reach sharpens the problem. LinkedIn shared data showing that 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs in their buying process. That means most of the people in that group of ten people have already done a version of the survey before your campaign reached them. They asked AI to compare sellers. They have read the section. They come with knowledge, certain questions and pre-formed doubts.
That changes what content is considered that needs to be done. Content targeting your competitors takes less work than it used to, because the people who read it the most are already making those comparisons for themselves. What motivates a conscious, informed buying group is the content of the risks they are already thinking about and facing directly. Short changes from “here’s why we’re better than the alternatives” to “here’s why your concern isn’t the obstacle you think it is.”
That’s a little shorter to write, but it actually shows how purchasing decisions are made.
A format that builds trust in the buying team
Given all that, the question of format becomes important. If you need to build familiarity and trust with ten people who may never have a direct conversation with your sales team, you need something that goes well, is viewed more than once, and builds recognition over time rather than asking for a decision with a single exposure.
LinkedIn data points to video as the format that performs this function best on their platform. Members exposed to video ads, according to their research, are 1.6x more likely to fill a lead type from the same brand. Video has a 95% retention rate and grows 60% faster than other content on the platform. Agencies with a video-focused strategy are reported to be growing by 20% year-over-year while agencies that don’t focus on flat video. We’d love to check some of those numbers against your account data, but the guiding story of video investment is hard to argue with.
The reason video works for this particular problem goes beyond performance numbers. A written piece of content is read once. The video is shared through a Slack thread, played in a meeting, watched by the CFO and the team leader and the procurement contact, each of them picking up the same context from the same source. That shared exposure is exactly what a buying team trying to reach consensus needs. It creates familiarity with the group at the same time, which written formats rarely achieve.
What does this mean for the way you create art
Knowing the video is the correct format only helps if the video is actually being watched. And on LinkedIn, that drops almost entirely.
86% of LinkedIn members are not mobile. Your video is competing for attention on a small screen in a crowded feed, against everything else someone has open. LinkedIn data found a 36% increase in CTR when hooks open with a specific number or statistic. Controversial statements, questions that call out a real pain point, and content that creates real urgency also go through the motions. The assembly line is straightforward. Standard B2B creative that can apply to any product in any category gets scrolled past, while content that creates something the viewer is already thinking about stops scrolling.
In terms of production quality: lo-fi content, behind-the-scenes moments, and workplace culture posts have had the most polished production performance in several instances on LinkedIn. That sounds absurd, but it makes sense when you consider what the buying team is actually evaluating. They’re not just testing your product. They’re checking for credibility, and signs of integrity are trusted more quickly than production quality, especially with audiences who have already done their research and are looking for reasons to believe rather than reasons to think.
In formats worth testing: BrandLink delivered a 130% higher video completion rate compared to traditional in-feed video, and LinkedIn’s CTV reached 94% of members with 2.6x stronger exposure than linear TV campaigns. Both should be seriously considered if you’re building a presence in a buying group that takes months to reach a decision.
Bottom line
The decision problem is real, and it probably costs more pipelines than most B2B teams realize. Campaigns designed to win comparisons don’t solve it. Video, distributed in formats that reach the buying group repeatedly and contextually, and created creatively that communicates real risk rather than just product demonstration, is how you bridge that gap.
The question you should ask before your next speech: are you building to convince one person, or to make ten people comfortable enough to move?
The post LinkedIn’s Latest Data: The New Rules of B2B Targeting appeared first on Brainlabs.
