Why B2B buyers trust your people before they trust your brand
B2B buying used to be a numbers game built on brand recognition. The bigger and more familiar the name, the safer the choice looked on paper, and the people inside that business rarely factored into the decision.
That instinct has flipped. Today, when a B2B buyer starts researching a vendor, the brand account is rarely the first thing they see. More often it's a LinkedIn post from someone who works there, a comment from an analyst, or a quote in an article written by a journalist with no stake in the outcome. The brand might get a like, but it's the person who gets the trust.
Forrester's recent research surveyed more than 17,000 global business buyers and found social media now ranks as the second most influential source in B2B buying decisions, behind only generative AI search tools. The pattern buyers describe is consistent. They want interaction with real people across the buying journey, industry analysts, vendors, customers and company leaders, not just product messaging pushed from a corporate account. As Forrester puts it, buyers crave human validation and trusted connections, especially in a market increasingly filled with AI-generated content.
For technology brands with complex, considered sales cycles, this means a CEO's, CTO's or category expert's personal presence often carries more weight with a buyer than the brand's own channel does. The two need to work together, corporate and personal profile reinforcing each other, rather than compete for the same attention.
It's why a growing share of our work now sits at the intersection of PR, personal profile and corporate profile. B2B vendors come to us to build the right pipeline of corporate, executive and subject matter experts into a credible, consistent voice, rather than leaving social in the hands of whoever has a spare hour to run the content calendar. They recognise that the shift in B2B buyer behaviour requires a joined-up commercial investment.
What a strong LinkedIn program actually has to do
LinkedIn content has to work harder than ever. It needs to align with a company's strategic objectives and positioning. It needs to support quarterly sales targeting, whether that's account-based marketing or a sector-specific push. And it needs to amplify earned media activity, draw on owned assets like blogs and whitepapers, and drive engagement through the right mix of employee advocacy and event commentary. None of it works on its own. Together, it's what earns the credibility a buyer needs before they commit.
The output might land on LinkedIn, but the credibility behind it is built through the same disciplines that make good PR work everywhere: proximity to the story, access to real subject-matter expertise, and judgement about what's actually worth saying.
If you're thinking about how to build genuine trust and visibility for your executives and experts, and how that connects to your wider earned media program, talk to us. We'd love to help.