Easy to Find: Being Where B2B Buying Happens

B2B marketers are under constant pressure to deliver more with less. The answer? Don’t just make your brand easy to think of — make it easy to find and buy.

In consumer marketing, being easy to buy means being on the shelf where customers shop. In B2B, the “shelf” is far more complex: buying journeys are fragmented, attention is scarce, and digital touchpoints are endless. Yet most brands underinvest in the very channels and assets that make them present, prominent, and relevant at critical buying moments.

Building on the B2B Institute’s years of research into Mental Availability - making the brand easy to mind - we now explore Physical Availability and its role in B2B brand growth.

This report draws on decades of foundational research by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the pioneers of Mental & Physical Availability, with fresh perspectives from LinkedIn, Stein IAS, Magic Numbers, Visa, and more. Together, these insights provide a practical roadmap for helping marketers turn attention into action by activating these three levers for growth:

Expand presence: Go beyond the usual channels—use sales and penetration data to show up where buying actually happens, including overlooked spaces like events.
Own prominence: Build visibility with distinctive assets, not just paid placements.
Refine the portfolio: Know what sells. Use sales and CEP data to protect the core, cut dead weight, and scale future bets.

Download the full report to make your brand not just memorable – but buyable.

Physical Availability In B2B

Brand growth depends on Mental Availability (being easily thought of in buying situations) and Physical Availability (being easy to find and buy). In B2B, Physical Availability often requires making costly decisions across channels like sales teams, distributors, and trade shows, so this paper focuses on how to make smarter investments in those areas. These improvements will help you better reap the benefits from building the brand’s Mental Availability.
Lever 1: Presence

A presence strategy ensures the brand is available where customers buy, balancing cost-effective coverage of current revenue-driving channels with careful timing of future channel investments. In B2B, sales reps provide valuable insights, but digital growth means marketers must lead decisions on where to sell. To guide these choices, the framework focuses on two key areas: revenue and customers.
The Ubiquitous But Undervalued Value of B2B Events

Branded events and trade shows remain central to B2B marketing, though their impact depends on placing brands where buying happens and expanding access to customers and revenue. When leveraged as reach multipliers, content engines, and thought-leadership platforms, events can deliver far greater returns than when treated as one-off moments.
Lever 2: Prominence

Prominence is about making your brand easy to spot across all sales environments, from stores to apps to trade shows. Brands can rent prominence (paid placements) for short-term visibility or build owned prominence (distinctive assets) that help customers recognize them long-term.
Lever 3: Portfolio

Portfolio management balances meeting current sales needs with preparing for future demand, using both sales data and Category Entry Points (CEPs) to guide investment decisions. Protecting and growing the core product—which often drives about half of brand revenue—is critical, while trimming underperforming products can free resources for innovation.

Easy To Find

Being Where B2B Buying Happens

Ready to apply B2B Institute principles to your marketing strategy?