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Wittgenstein and B2B Marketing
In his 1953 work Philosophical Investigations, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used the Rabbit-Duck optical illusion to illustrate how easy it is to get trapped in a single perception, even when more than one interpretation of the facts is available.
When you look at this picture, whether the first image you see is a rabbit or a duck, it is hard to see beyond that without a great effort. However, with a determined shift in perspective, the other image does become apparent. And, once seen, it cannot be unseen. Wittgenstein called this ability to see different outcomes in the same data by changing our perspective a “paradigm shift.”
In B2B marketing, we need our own paradigm shift. When it comes to understanding who we need to market to, we too are trapped in a single, limiting view.
In the leads-based ecosystem of B2B marketers, what gets measured is what matters. What matters, therefore, becomes “that which can be measured”. This sets up an unfortunate feedback loop which, much like the Rabbit-Duck illusion, traps us within a single view.
The Problem: Most B2B Marketing sees only half the picture.
B2B Marketers have become very successful at targeting one half of the Buyer Group: the product experts who make buying decisions based on their technical expertise and knowledge. Because these “Target Buyers” download whitepapers, attend webinars, click on ads, engage with content and can be found in CRM systems, they leave a clear digital trail of signals in their wake.
But, as we found out in recent research looking at the decision-making drivers of Enterprise level B2B Buyer Groups, which was co-authored with the global B2B practice at Bain & Company, Target Buyers are only half the true story. In most B2B marketing plans, a crucial group of buyers is being overlooked.
These are the “Hidden Buyers,” the process experts from departments like procurement, finance, legal, and operations, who evaluate vendors on criteria that are not about product performance at all, but are about risk mitigation and whether a vendor can be trusted.
Hidden Buyers don’t leave the same digital footprints as Target Buyers because their role in the decision-making process does not require them to be product experts.
But just because we cannot “see’ Hidden Buyers does not mean they do not exist. They have huge power. As our research showed, half of all shortlisted vendors fall through the “Hidden Buyer Gap.”
The Result: Nearly half of B2B deals get stuck because Buyer Groups cannot agree.
More than 40% of B2B deals are abandoned before completion, with the abandonment rate reaching as high as 60% in some industries. This is not because buyers prefer a competitor, but because the Buyer Group—composed of both Target and Hidden Buyers—fails to reach a consensus. Far from competing on the basis that a product is better or cheaper (as marketers do in B2C), B2B marketers are often unknowingly competing with products/vendors that are simply easier to agree upon than their own offering.
The Reason: There is a Hidden Buyer Gap where Hidden Buyers control some stages of the purchase process completely, and where they end up vetoing around half the vendors that are shortlisted.
Longlisting and shortlisting are usually controlled by Target Buyers – the product experts. But the veto/validation stage is controlled by Hidden Buyers alone. This means there is one stage in the buying process where all the technical and product information in the world does not influence the decision-making.
In our research we found that Hidden Buyers actually vetoed around HALF the vendors on the shortlist. Almost all our sample said that Target Buyers shortlisted between 2 and 5 vendors after technical testing. And when the Hidden Buyers evaluated those vendors, almost all rejected half the vendors put forward because they did not satisfy their risk-mitigation criteria. In other words around half of all shortlisted vendors fall through the Hidden Buyer Gap.
The Solution: B2B Marketers must market to the Hidden Buyers, the other half of the picture. Hidden Buyers are ‘process experts,’ and their values are entirely different from the target ‘product experts.’
The value props for Hidden Buyers are risk mitigation and reputation, not technical knowledge. Hidden Buyers care about whether vendors are “reliable brands,” “trusted by their peers,” and safe to do business with. They are primarily concerned with risk mitigation, legal compliance, financial stability, and the overall reputation of the vendor. That’s quite different from Target Buyers, who care about transformational potential, advanced features and innovation.Without the digital signals left by Hidden Buyers, it is tempting for marketers to put all our budgets behind chasing Target Buyers. It makes logical sense. But leaving your Hidden Buyers in the dark with a media plan that exclusively reaches Target Buyers perpetuates the problem.
The Rabbit-Duck test encapsulates the challenge B2B marketers face in recognizing the full spectrum of decision-makers within a Buyer Group. Just as seeing both the rabbit and the duck provides a complete view of the image, addressing both Target and Hidden Buyers offers a more actionable B2B marketing and creative strategy.
One that will help us close more deals, faster.
