As “back to school” season begins, Arizona State University has made something official: content creation is now a four-year degree at the Walter Cronkite School.
That may sound merely interesting… until you consider what it says about influence.
A recent poll found 57% of people ages 13 to 26 would choose to become an influencer… if given the chance.
Universities, after all, don’t build degree programs around hobbies. They develop them to address functions the economy depends upon. And in career opportunities for the emerging workforce.
Audiences increasingly look beyond what brands say about themselves. They consider peers, experts, creators, reviews and trade media.
When deepfakes and questionable sourcing is considered, the result is predictable.
Audiences are more skeptical.
And skeptical people do something entirely reasonable.
They bring other people into the decision.
Sometimes that’s a voice they follow online. Other times it’s three more departments, inside their own company.
And increasingly… it is AI.
In building products, we have always known this. An architect specifies it. Then it has to clear the engineer. The contractor chooses to trust it on the application. A distributor must decide whether it’s worth stocking.
A builder needs the economics to work. And an owner ultimately, must believe the outcome.
What is new… is how many additional voices now influence each of those decisions.
And how much of that influence – happens before a sales team – ever enters the room.
The Buying Group Was Always There… It Just Got Bigger
What has changed is not an existence of the group.
It is the size and speed of the conversation.
Gartner finds that today’s buying group decisions pull members from as many as four departments. And when those reach agreement, they are 2.5 times more likely to describe the deal as high quality.
What’s more, that research reports 77% of B2B buyers call their most recent purchase “complex/difficult.” And the friction they identify most often… is not the price. Or the product.
It is getting their own people to agree.
So, the opportunity that a Building Product Brand considers “lost” just last quarter – may not have gone to a competitor – after all.
It may have simply… run out of consensus.
The Decision Often Happens Before the First Call
Many audiences today prefer a purchase experience, with little to no sales rep involvement.
And if that’s not concerning enough… consider how, the research process has moved.
Search engines now point audiences toward information. While AI hands them, a decision.
Which is why Gartner expects PR and earned media budgets to double by 2027.
Because, when AI platforms deliver buyers synthesized answers, they rely on third-party validation – trade coverage, reviews and peer commentary – as well as on authoritative owned content.
Your trade show booth may start a conversation. It cannot control all the communication that follows.
The encouraging reality: Earned credibility compounds… and it keeps working in rooms brands are never invited into.
Relationships Outperform Transactions
Buyers no longer seek the easiest transaction.
Instead, they want to feel known.
And they have stopped caring, which department owns their relationship. They expect everyone in your organization to make their job easier.
Sales and service. Even technical support… who answers the phone at 4:45 on a Friday.
Everybody must “own” the story.
Aim for Consensus… Not Just Conversion
This is where the brand-promise mission has quietly expanded.
Metrics traditionally have been built to track an individual. With MQLs. Click-throughs. And lead scores.
Yet, a recent audit of 1.8 million sales opportunities revealed that while most deals are multi-threaded – the ones that close successfully – have twice as many buyer contacts as those that don’t.
The paradigm shift now is empowering the group… to agree.
That consensus begins to form in a specification meeting. And again, in a distributor conversation. On a jobsite. As well as in a peer recommendation.
Featured in a trade article. Or from an online search.
And in the AI summary.
The brand promise must survive… every one of those handoffs intact. Each stakeholder needs relevant evidence. Because each one is navigating a different kind of risk.
Adoption is not a single “yes.”
It is a sequence of separate agreements – most of them happening – where a brand is nowhere near the conversation.
Same product. Same promise. Six translations.
This Is Commercialization… Rather than a Campaign
Commercialization means creating the conditions that allow an innovation to earn agreement across every audience required for adoption.
That calls for a commercial strategy. Not a content calendar.
Aligning sales and marketing with channel-ready proof for every silo of the decision.
The buying group is understood as a connected system. Not scored as a collection of unrelated leads.
It is the discipline K&A has invested some four decades helping brands in this channel solve. Our team understands why a focused campaign – aimed at one persona and buying journey – is no longer enough.
Not because targeting stopped working. Rather, because the targets have grown.
One Last Thought
Skepticism is not a problem to be solved.
No, it is destined to increase.
Instead, consider the opportunity – because a skeptic is a buyer actively looking for somebody – to believe.
Today, every one of those voices is now part of your buying group. And despite the best efforts of a team, almost none of them may be residing accurately in your CRM.
So, the advantage no longer belongs to the brand with the sharpest single message.
It belongs to the brand whose narrative holds up… no matter who in the room repeats it.
Is your marketing built for the person you believe decides?
Or for the group… that actually determines adoption.
If an innovative product is not gaining traction as it should – let’s map the people who must say yes – and where the sequence is breaking down.
(404) 918-5700
