B2B personalization that’s personal: humanizing the buying experience

This article is part of a series about marketing in the age of AI. Access additional articles here:
– Keep a level head: smarter AI-transformation strategies for B2B marketers
– AI search: a 5-step content blue print to ensure your brand shows up
– Why creativity is a sure bet in the AI age

B2B buyers are fed up with poor service.

More than half the respondents in McKinsey’s latest B2B survey reported that they are “likely to turn elsewhere” if they don’t have a seamless buying experience. A Forrester survey of 16,000 global business buyers found a high rate of dissatisfaction with providers’ technology, domain and industry expertise and a lack of “ease and flexibility during the process.” 

Yet buyer expectations of vendors are growing, creating a canyon-sized experience gap.  

What’s the source of such unhappiness? B2B customers are also consumers. They’re buying airline tickets, ordering coffee and streaming content — where their experiences are customized to match their tastes and habits. When they need software or services, they rightly expect the same level of relevance, speed and personalization. 

But B2B companies lag in this regard. The problem isn’t a lack of automation or an absence of customer data. It’s more that there’s a missed opportunity to translate the data into personalized content and experiences for buyers.

B2B personalization shows customers you care — about their struggles, their success, even the minutes in their days. Showing you care requires you to uncover the human side of your data story and, more critically, to act on it. 

To ensure your marketing efforts are both performance-informed and obsessively customer-centered, consider the following guidelines, which address the empathy side of the personalization equation. Executed with equal parts smart analytics and understanding, they’ll also set you apart from the more generic efforts of your lagging competition. 

 1. Kill the persona, embrace the real person. 

Traditional demographics-based personas aren’t dead. But in B2B contexts, they’re far too static, generic and divorced from real-time data to be effective. Plus, the rise of buying committees means sales teams are speaking to six or more high-level decision-makers, each with their own challenges, responsibilities and stake in the outcome. 

Speaking to every individual in the room and knowing their concerns isn’t easy. Tools like Demandbase, 6sense and Salesforce can track engagement across the entire buying committee, creating a holistic view of the process and the challenges your team needs to address head-on.

2. Tech isn’t the problem — content relevance is.

B2B personalization is no longer a giant tech lift. Most CRMs, including Salesforce, HubSpot and Dynamics, already surface rich behavior data through native AI tools. But data doesn’t create relevance, high-value content or breakthrough creative. 

Today, B2B companies that pair content creators who have sector expertise with left-brained performance marketers have an advantage. This is the content partnership and program that vendors need to meet buyers where they are emotionally and intellectually.

3. Treat your CRM as a continuous story generator. 

Clicks, downloads, conversations and email are part of a human story in a larger decision-making journey. Your job is to decode it and use it.

High-performing B2B companies proactively mine the data to discover what problems customers are trying to solve, what internal debates or blockers they had, and what moments sealed the deal or built loyalty. While AI tools can surface patterns, it still takes people to connect the dots and turn insights into memorable content that accelerates deals.

4. To get more conversions, give more away for free.

A buyer typically spends about 70% of their buying journey researching and evaluating options — primarily with AI — before ever speaking with a salesperson. If you do nothing else, it’s critical to optimize your website for AI visibility. 

Today, your website and digital channels must operate less like a brand brochure and more like a self-service intelligence hub. Modern buyers expect frictionless access to credible, substantive content. Think technical deep dives, customer success stories and real-world use cases. 

Your marketing channels also need to offer substantive content: On average, a B2B customer visits 10 different channels during their decision-making journey. 

6. Focus on the measurement that matters.

Metrics like open rates, CTRs and MQL measure activity. They don’t tell you if marketing is driving growth. In today’s revenue-focused environment, marketing leaders must shift from activity-based reporting to outcome-based measurement.

To demonstrate true impact, anchor performance metrics to business-critical outcomes like lead velocity and customer lifetime value. These are the KPIs that earn credibility in the boardroom.

Conclusion

AI is accelerating how quickly we can understand prospect and client needs and produce content at scale — but your competitors probably have the same tech and, likely, similar data. What they may not have is the ability to make the experience personal and memorable. Everyday, people are flooded with posts, blogs, white papers, and noise. What stands out is content that feels like it understands them, was made for them and provides them something valuable. This requires empathy, curiosity and real investment in the human side of the data. 

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