Podcast - Why Modern B2B Marketing Must Embrace the Non-Linear "Buyer’s Orbit"

In a recent and insightful conversation with Fahad Aziz, CEO and founder of PuppyDog.io, Steve Garrison, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Stellar Cyber, unveiled the core concepts behind his forthcoming book, asserting that fundamental changes are sweeping through B2B marketing.

Driven by shifts in buyer behavior and the revolutionary capabilities of AI, the established models we once relied on are rapidly becoming obsolete.

The key takeaway? The traditional linear marketing funnel is dead, and marketers must focus on the buyer's orbit, not their own orbit.

Throwing Out the Funnel and the Bathwater

For decades, B2B marketing strategies have revolved around concepts like MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads), leads, and even Account-Based Marketing (ABM). These structures, with their linear stages of awareness, consideration, and decision, made sense under the assumption of a "big machine buying a product".

Garrison argues that it is time to "throw out the baby, let's throw out the bath water and start fresh". Data now shows that people are buying like people, not like businesses. Buyers are interacting with society and digital tools, making decisions on the fly, meaning you cannot think linearly anymore. The crucial shift for marketers must be toward understanding what motivates an individual.

The central thesis of the new approach draws partly from ethnomethodology, an obscure sociology segment concerning how people interact with the world. This framework confirms that the reason people behave and click is because they are human beings engaging with society.

The Non-Linear Nature of the Buyer’s Orbit

The buyer’s patience and attention span have shortened, and where they are in their buying journey can change in an instant. The buyer’s motion is volatile and non-linear. As an example, seeing something outrageous at a trade show booth can immediately change a buyer’s path, highlighting the role of instantaneous data.

To succeed in this orbit, marketers must achieve hyper specialization or hyper specificity concerning the person and exactly where they are in their motion to buy the product. This represents a decisive shift toward human-to-human (H2H) marketing.

Buying decisions are driven by key psychological factors that must be addressed:

1. Peer-to-Peer Trust: As the noise level in the market increases, people trust someone who "looks like them and feels like them" more than they trust analyst notes from firms like Gartner or Forester.
2. Changing Use of Economic Data: Champions—the initial observers who decide they like a product—use economic data (like ROI) not to make their decision, but to build critical mass within their organization after they have already decided to adopt the solution.

These psychological realities confirm that the buying process is far more complex than a linear flow chart allows.

AI: The Foundation for Human-to-Human Scaling

This necessary hyper-specificity requires a level of personalization that is often described as impossible to achieve at scale. However, AI tools are a game changer.

Generic white papers or demo videos meant for a general audience fail to build the necessary trust. Prospects want to know that the company and the product care about them specifically. AI makes this possible by enabling marketers to:

• Package Hyper-Specific Stories: By understanding a persona in extensive detail including their role, what they’ve done recently, and what their company has announced—marketers can instantly package this information into a story. This makes the prospect feel that the company has done the research, reducing the resistance barrier and making them willing to "lean in" and listen.
• Democratize Content Creation: AI first product demo video maker is essential because product changes (common in agile SAAS companies) quickly render content stale. The ability to create bespoke communications and personalized videos at scale allows lower-skilled people to build high-quality content, further democratizing the marketing process.

The integration of AI, exemplified by platforms like PuppyDog’s AI video platform, is critical. Stellar Cyber reduced their video production time by 90% using AI, demonstrating the immediate impact of these tools on scalability and agility.

Looking Ahead

The future of B2B marketing centers on thoughtful psychology and the human connection. Whether achieved through AI or deep psychological understanding, the more a company talks to a prospect "like you know them," and the more they impress upon the prospect their understanding of their journey, pain, and business, the more likely the prospect is to listen.

‍

AI is now the foundation for achieving this hyper-specificity and hyper-personalization at the volume the mid-market demands.

Want to learn more about how to adapt your strategy to the non-linear "buyer's orbit" and utilize AI for hyper-specialization?

Watch the full video conversation between Fahad Aziz and Steve Garrison now:

‍