Awareness and B2B buying
What is a B2B buying group?
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what it means here
Here is what the term means for a UK buyer
The definition above holds anywhere. Buying media in the UK adds the detail below, including where AdBuyMCP does something different.
An awareness plan counts its market in people rather than in companies: the companies that could buy from you, times the people in each buying group. AdBuyMCP's onboarding starts at 4 people per company, and you change that to fit your buyers, because you know who signs.
Who is in a B2B buying group?
Usually more people than the one you are talking to. A typical group includes whoever found the supplier and champions it, the person who holds the budget, the people who will use the product every day, and the functions that can say no: finance, IT, security and legal. In larger companies procurement joins them.
Most published research on group size covers large enterprise purchases, so for a startup selling to small and mid-sized companies the group is often smaller. Count the people who actually decide at a typical customer, not the size of the company.
Why does the whole buying group need to know you?
Because any one of them can stop a purchase, and you may never meet the ones who do. In LinkedIn's 2024 study with Bain of 500+ senior buyers of enterprise technology in the US, UK and Western Europe, 81% said the product they bought was known by everyone in the buying group on day one. That is LinkedIn's own published figure, checked 20 October 2026, from enterprise technology purchases, so the effect on a smaller company's deals may differ in size.
Most B2B media reaches the champion: the person searching, downloading and replying to email. The finance approver and the security reviewer rarely see that activity, and they are the ones who ask who you are. Awareness advertising reaches them where everyone spends time.
Source: LinkedIn Pressroom, LinkedIn is the place to B2B at Cannes Lions 2024, 17 June 2024, checked 20 October 2026.
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related terms
These terms sit next to this one
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
Day-one shortlist
The vendors a business buyer already has in mind when a purchase begins, before any searching, comparing or talking to sellers. Studies of B2B buying find that most purchases go to a vendor on that list, so much of a vendor's chance is settled before the formal process starts.
Total addressable market (TAM)
The whole set of customers who could buy a product, usually given as a number of companies or a revenue figure in a pitch deck. In B2B it is often counted in companies, though an advert has to reach the people who make each purchase.
In-market and out-of-market buyers
In-market buyers are the businesses actively looking to buy in a category right now; out-of-market buyers will buy in that category at some point but are not looking yet. In B2B the out-of-market group is usually far larger, because companies replace most suppliers only every few years.
Frequency
The average number of times the people in an audience see an advert in a period, usually a week or a whole campaign. It is impressions divided by the people reached, so it describes the audience on average and says nothing certain about any one person.
same group
These terms are also in Awareness and B2B buying
How B2B buyers choose vendors, and the words for planning how often your market sees you and how big that market is.