Remember when marketers controlled the flow of information? Those days are long gone. Today’s B2B buyers are in the driver’s seat, and they’re taking the scenic route.
The rise of self-service research tools and information abundance has fundamentally shifted power from sellers to buyers in the B2B space. According to Gartner research, 75% of today’s buying teams prefer a rep-free experience. In fact, they complete up to 70% of their journey before ever making contact. I sat down with Lead UX Strategist Kelly Kautz to understand how B2B brands pursuing digital transformation can stay relevant, helpful and visible in a nonlinear decision-making journey.
Let’s find out how to meet them at every turn.
Q: How has digital transformation changed the B2B buyer journey?
I wanted to start at the foundation, so I asked Kelly about the fundamental shifts in how businesses buy from one another.
Kelly Kautz: Forget the traditional funnel—today it feels about as outdated as dial-up internet. Digital transformation has completely redefined how B2B buyers interact with brands.
Today’s buyers are fiercely independent. They’re conducting thorough research on their own terms, often exploring solutions for months before they’re ready to talk to your sales team. Marketing isn’t just about collecting leads anymore—it’s about building long-term trust and nurturing relationships across the entire buyer journey.
The real challenge? Creating personalized, anticipatory digital experiences that support this extended journey while allowing buyers the independence they demand. The brands winning today aren’t just capturing leads—they’re building confidence in the solutions they provide through every digital interaction.
Q: What pain points are B2B buyers facing when researching solutions?
With this new landscape in mind, I asked Kelly about the specific challenges today’s buyers face when trying to research potential solutions.
Kelly Kautz: B2B buyers are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content out there—especially now with so much AI-generated stuff. Figuring out what’s authentic takes real effort. Plus, they’re struggling with fragmented experiences as they hop between platforms. Generic messaging only adds to their frustration.
What buyers really want is simplicity and relevance. They need:
- Easy navigation to quickly find exactly what they’re looking for
- Role-specific or industry-specific messaging that speaks to their challenges
- Immediate access to the resources that matter most—demos, pricing and peer reviews
The most powerful move a marketer can make today is to remove barriers. Every gate, form and hurdle you place between buyers and information only sidetracks the buying team. It also hurts credibility in an increasingly skeptical marketplace.
Q: Are marketers giving buyers too much—or not enough—information?
Kelly’s insights about information overload made me wonder if marketers might be contributing to the problem. I asked her to weigh in on whether we’re giving buyers the right information at the right time.
Kelly Kautz: It’s a paradox: a lot of marketing teams flood audiences with content that doesn’t matter—while missing the mark on what buyers actually need to make a decision. They over-rely on gated content, or rigidly adhere to outdated nurture tracks.
The solution starts with a buyer-first mindset:
- What questions are buyers asking at each stage?
- What information do buyers need to move forward confidently?
Customer support chats, sales call notes and search queries can provide invaluable insights.
For long-term success, you have to balance quick wins from paid channels with strategic investments in organic search visibility. The right content, at the right time, delivers lasting impact—something ads alone can’t do.
Q: How should B2B brands look at content effectiveness today?
If marketers are creating both too much irrelevant content and too little of the right kind of content, I wanted to understand how we should rethink what makes content truly effective in this new environment.
Kelly Kautz: Content is the connective tissue in today’s fragmented buying journey. Today’s B2B buyers bounce between consideration and validation multiple times, often revisiting the same questions from different angles.
To support them, your content strategy needs to be modular and accessible at every stage. Blog posts, webinars, comparison tools, ROI calculators—each piece should stand on its own while also connecting to a larger narrative.
The critical success factor is discoverability. Great content is worthless if buyers can’t find it exactly when they need it. That means optimizing for search, distributing through social, reinforcing through email and amplifying through paid channels. The goal is to be there with the right answer, regardless of which path your buyer takes.
Q: How should marketers think about content personalization?
With content established as the crucial connector in the buyer journey, personalization seems like an obvious next step. But is it realistic for resource-constrained teams? I asked Kelly for her practical approach.
Kelly Kautz: The secret to effective personalization isn’t trying to create unique content for every prospect—it’s smart segmentation.
Start by identifying the different players in the B2B buying process. Each brings distinct concerns and priorities. By understanding these key personas and their unique journeys, you can focus your limited resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.
This targeted approach allows even small marketing teams to deliver experiences that feel personal without the impossible task of creating infinite content variations. The goal isn’t personalization for its own sake—it’s creating relevance and clarity for the decision-makers who need buying confidence.
Q: Is it possible for marketers to journey map a nonlinear decision-making process across multiple channels?
With all this talk about zigzagging journeys, I wondered if traditional journey mapping is even possible anymore. I asked Kelly if there’s still value in trying to map these complex paths.
Kelly Kautz: Effective journey mapping starts with the buyer’s perspective, not your marketing channels. You need to understand:
- What questions are buyers asking?
- Where are they looking for answers?
- What’s the emotional context of their search?
This insight enables you to design experiences that connect touchpoints across your website, email campaigns, social media, third-party platforms and events. The goal isn’t perfection on any single channel but consistency across all of them.
Monitoring these connections is crucial to identifying friction points that interrupt the buyer’s progress. Remember that consistency builds trust, and trust is ultimately what moves buyers toward conversion in complex B2B purchases.
Q: How can marketers better align with sales to create a unified content experience online and offline?
Of course, even the best content strategy falls apart if marketing and sales aren’t on the same page. I asked Kelly how to bridge this notorious divide.
Kelly Kautz: Sales-marketing alignment starts with shared goals and unified data. Too often, these teams operate from different playbooks with inconsistent terminology and conflicting priorities.
Breaking down these silos requires collaboration on:
- Lead qualification criteria that both teams actually believe in
- Content development that addresses real objections salespeople hear daily
- Campaign timing that supports rather than disrupts the sales process
Feedback loops are essential—marketing needs to know which assets help close deals and which ones fall flat in real conversations. Regular communication, supported by an integrated tech stack, enables both teams to make data-informed decisions that move buyers through their journey without unnecessary friction.
Q: What KPIs or data signals matter most in tracking digital buying behavior?
Alignment requires measurement, so I wanted to know which metrics matter in this new landscape.
Kelly Kautz: It’s not vanity metrics. The signals that really matter reveal genuine buying intent, not just casual interest. Look for patterns in content consumption, time spent on solution-specific pages, demo requests and return visits—especially when they form clusters of activity.
Equally valuable are the negative signals: drop-off points where prospects consistently abandon their journey. These trouble spots often represent opportunities where small improvements can yield significant results.
Tools like user session recordings provide invaluable context that traditional analytics miss, showing exactly where users get stuck or frustrated. These behavioral insights allow you to build more empathetic digital experiences that anticipate and address obstacles before they derail the buying process.
Q: How can AI help with a B2B marketing and content strategy?
No conversation about modern marketing would be complete without addressing AI. I asked Kelly how this technology is changing the game for B2B marketers.
Kelly Kautz: AI is revolutionizing personalization and predictive capabilities in B2B marketing. What was once impossible—truly personalized experiences at scale—is now within reach for marketing teams of all sizes.
While strategic work like defining audience segments and mapping journeys still requires human insight, AI simplifies the execution. Creating and deploying multiple targeted messaging variations is no longer the resource-intensive challenge it once was.
Perhaps most valuable are the predictive capabilities that allow marketers to anticipate buyer needs and act proactively throughout the funnel. This shift from reactive to proactive engagement represents the next frontier in building meaningful buyer relationships.
Q: If you could give one piece of advice to B2B marketers today, what would it be?
To wrap up our conversation, I asked Kelly for the one insight she’d want every B2B marketer to take to heart. Her answer brought everything full circle.
Kelly Kautz: Always consider the next step your buyer should take. Every touchpoint in your marketing experience should clearly guide users toward deeper trust and buying confidence. A marketing tactic should never exist in isolation. Think about how each element connects to what comes next, where the user is coming from, and how to help them move forward with confidence. This level of intentional design significantly improves both user experience and business outcomes.
The marketers who win aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the fanciest technology—they’re the ones who truly understand their buyers’ mindset and remove barriers from their path.
As our conversation ended, it struck me that despite all the technological advances and shifting buyer behaviors, marketing success still comes down to something fundamentally human: understanding another person’s needs and helping them move forward with confidence. In a digital world, that human element might be the most powerful differentiator of all.
About Kelly Kautz, JPL Lead UX Strategist: Kelly uses research, testing and data-driven design methodologies to define UX strategies. She then brings these strategies to life through user profiles, journey maps, wireframes and requirements documentation.
