The Drum caught up with LinkedIn’s Mimi Turner (pictured) and Jann Schwarz on the set of our new Buyability video series, filmed at the ANA Masters of Marketing 2025 in Orlando, to unpack a framework that could redefine how B2B marketing works. The research explores how brands can move beyond clicks and leads to build trust, fame and real business growth.
LinkedIn’s Mimi Turner
“Most marketers think in terms of targeting individuals,” says Jann Schwarz, senior director of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn. “We’ve inherited a lot of B2C thinking, but in B2B, the real picture only comes into view once you start looking at groups of buyers within the same company. The question isn’t just ‘who’s clicking?’ but ‘have we created enough collective confidence within the buying group to make it safe for them to choose us?’”
That, in essence, is the logic behind buyability – a new model for B2B growth that focuses on how organizations decide what, when and who to buy from. It’s about more than awareness or demand generation. It’s about becoming the safe choice.
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“You have to start much earlier,” Schwarz continues. “If you’re not well-known by the entire buying group at the beginning of an evaluation, you’re probably not going to close the deal. Fame matters – not just any fame, but category fame. You need to be known as a credible player in the category you want to grow in.”
That theme – of moving from transactional to relational marketing – runs through the research like a thread. “In B2B, being known isn’t enough,” adds Mimi Turner, head of marketplace innovation at LinkedIn. “You have to be bought. And being bought depends on trust, relatability and validation from peers.”
Turner and Schwarz have spent the past two years unpacking what that means in practice. Their study – first revealed at the ANA Masters of Marketing and soon to be explored in The Drum’s Buyability video series – dives into the psychology of B2B buying groups, identifying how social proof and organizational alignment often trump price or product specs.
“One of the biggest surprises is that hidden buyers – people from legal, procurement, HR or finance – have as much, if not more, influence than the people marketers usually target,” Turner says. “They’re not impressed by rational product messaging. They’re looking for reassurance that you’re a safe, trusted partner – that companies like theirs already work with you. It’s not about being the cheapest or the biggest; it’s about being the most relatable.”
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Her analogy? “B2B buying is like an Indian wedding. There’s the ideal partner everyone dreams of – and then there’s the partner the family actually agrees on. Getting to the altar requires alignment, not just attraction.”
The findings offer a roadmap for marketers who feel trapped between brand and demand – a false divide, Turner argues. “Brand and demand are answers to the same question. The goal is buyability: to be trusted, liked and recommended by the people who matter most in your category.”
The Buyability Project, developed by LinkedIn’s B2B Institute in collaboration with Bain and Company, is part of a broader movement to give B2B marketing the same strategic clout as B2C. “B2B is a $20tn category,” says Turner. “It’s bigger than B2C, yet we still talk about it as if marketing doesn’t drive growth. Buyability gives us the language, the data and the mindset to change that.”
The Buyability video series, launching this November during The Drum’s B2B Month, will continue this conversation – speaking with leading marketers to uncover how buyability can add measurable value to business and reshape the future of B2B marketing.
Stay tuned. The real B2B revolution might just be emotional.
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