Somewhere along the way, B2B marketing became very serious.
The language became more corporate. The visuals became more polished. The messaging became more complicated. And somehow, the human being on the other side of the communication became less visible.
We started talking about “decision-makers”, “enterprise accounts”, “leads” and “prospects”. But behind every one of those labels is simply a person trying to make a decision.
The person buying at work is the same person buying at home
I have worked across fashion tech, hospitality tech, HR tech, loyalty and payments. These industries operate in very different worlds, with very different customers and very different buying cycles.
Yet one thing has remained constant: the people making business decisions are still the same people making everyday consumer decisions.
The person evaluating a technology platform during the day is the same person who chooses a restaurant because of reviews. The HR leader comparing software is the same person who abandons an online purchase because the checkout is frustrating.
B2B buyers are still emotionally influenced, sensitive to risk and guided by the same behavioural biases that shape their decisions as consumers.
Yet B2B marketing often treats buyers as though they are purely rational.
Why does everything have to sound so corporate?
Open a typical B2B technology website and you can almost play marketing bingo.
“Driving operational efficiencies.” “Unlocking synergies.” “Enabling transformation.” “End-to-end solutions.”
The problem isn’t that these statements are necessarily wrong. It’s that they are interchangeable. When every brand sounds the same, sounding professional stops being a differentiator. And corporate language often forces the customer to do the translation.
What does this actually mean for me?
What problem does it solve?
Why should I care?
What changes if I choose you?
Good B2B marketing should answer these questions without requiring the audience to decode the language first.
B2B decisions are human decisions
We like to think of B2B purchases as rational exercises. There is a business case. There are spreadsheets. There are procurement processes, presentations and ROI calculations. But there is also risk.
There is the fear of making the wrong decision, the pressure of convincing senior stakeholders and the desire to choose something that won’t come back to haunt you six months later. There is also perhaps the strongest force of all: inertia.
People don’t always stay with an existing solution because it is perfect. They stay because changing feels harder than staying where they are. I have seen versions of this across the different industries I’ve worked in.
Whether the product involved employee technology, customer loyalty, hospitality operations or payments, the challenge was often not simply convincing someone that the product was good. It was convincing them that changing was worth it. That requires understanding the person, not just the persona.
What B2B can learn from consumer marketing
There is still a perception that storytelling belongs in consumer marketing, while B2B needs facts, figures and product specifications. Of course B2B buyers need evidence. But evidence and emotion aren’t opposites. A case study is a story. A customer problem is a story. The journey from a frustrating process to a better one is a story.
The strongest B2B marketing can make you understand the business case while also making you care about the problem. Consumer brands understood this long ago. They use personality, emotion and storytelling to make products memorable.
B2B brands can do the same without becoming frivolous.
The future of B2B marketing is more human
This doesn’t mean B2B brands need to become louder, funnier or more casual for the sake of it. It means they need to become more relatable. Use language people actually use. Show the problem before showcasing the product. Tell customers what changes for them and not just what your technology can do.
And don’t be afraid to give the brand a personality, because professionalism and personality aren’t opposites. In fact, personality may be what makes professionalism memorable. As AI makes it increasingly easy for every company to produce polished content at scale, sounding polished will become less valuable. Being understood will become more valuable.
The future of B2B marketing isn’t about making B2B look exactly like B2C. It is about understanding what both have in common: a human being making a decision.
Before we ask what message will drive a conversion, perhaps we should ask a simpler question: what would make this person care? Because behind every account is a person. Behind every procurement process is a person trying to make the right call. Behind every business decision is a combination of logic, emotion, risk and instinct.
Maybe the brands that win at B2B marketing won’t be the ones that sound the most professional. They’ll be the ones that sound the most human.
