Most B2B marketers already know that enterprise technology decisions are rarely made by one person.
There is the CIO. The CTO. Procurement. Finance. Security.
Business-unit leaders. IT teams.
And several others who may influence, validate or challenge the decision.
Forrester’s research puts some numbers behind this. Its 2025 Buyers’ Journey Survey found that 73% of B2B purchases involve three or more departments, with an average of 13 people inside the buying organisation and nine from outside involved in the purchase decision.
We know this.
But here’s the question I think marketers should be asking:
Does our content strategy actually reflect it?
Because often, it doesn’t.
We may have five or six buyer personas sitting in a PowerPoint presentation, but our content calendar still looks remarkably similar month after month.
A product article for the CIO.
A technical article for the CTO.
A customer story.
A whitepaper. A webinar. Repeat.
The problem isn’t that these assets are wrong.
It’s that we may be planning them around personas rather than decision-making needs.
Different people need different reasons to believe
Consider a large enterprise evaluating a new technology platform.
The CIO may need to understand the strategic business impact.
The CTO may want architecture, integration and scalability details.
The CISO may be looking for evidence around security and risk.
Finance may want to understand the economics.
Procurement may want confidence around commercial and supplier risk.
A business leader may simply want to know whether the technology will solve an operational problem.
One piece of content cannot do all of that particularly well.
And it shouldn’t have to.
This is where I think content planning needs to change.
Instead of asking: “What content should we create for the CIO?”
we should also ask: “What does the CIO need to believe?”
And then:
“Who else needs to believe something before this decision can move forward?”
That produces a much more useful content map.
Think in buying questions, not just buyer personas
For every significant offering, marketing could map the questions that different stakeholders are likely to ask throughout the decision.
Business case: Why should we invest?
Risk: What could go wrong?
Technical validation: Will it work with what we already have?
Proof: Has it worked somewhere similar?
Commercial justification: Does the investment make sense?
Implementation: What happens after we sign?
Internal confidence: Can I defend this decision to the rest of the organisation?
Now the content calendar starts looking different.
You might need an executive point of view on the business problem.
A technical deep dive.
A customer story focused on implementation.
A benchmark or research-led piece that helps someone build the business case.
An analyst perspective that provides third-party validation.
A practical guide that addresses implementation risks.
These aren’t simply different formats.
They are different pieces of evidence for different people involved in the same decision.
The content journey should mirror the buying journey
This becomes even more important because buyers are doing much more research independently.
Gartner’s 2026 research found that B2B buyers use an average of seven information sources during a purchase. Forty-five percent said they had used GenAI, primarily to research vendors and products. And 69% said they turn to sales representatives to validate AI-generated insights.
In other words, buyers are assembling their understanding from multiple sources before and during the buying process.
Forrester’s 2026 research makes a similar point: buyers increasingly rely on their internal and external networks to validate information and de-risk purchasing decisions.
So your content may be reaching different members of the buying group before you even know they are in a buying process.
That changes the job of content.
It isn’t just about generating awareness.
It needs to provide the information, perspective and proof that different stakeholders need at different moments.
This also changes what we ask our SMEs to do
If content planning becomes more closely connected to the buying process, marketing needs to get closer to the people who actually understand those questions.
Your solution architects know the technical objections.
Your consultants know where implementations go wrong.
Your sales teams know which questions repeatedly come up late in the buying process.
Your customer success teams know what customers discover after implementation.
Your leadership team understands the strategic issues customers are wrestling with.
That is a tremendous content resource.
Marketing’s job is to connect those insights to the questions being asked by the buying group.
Not necessarily to turn every SME into a writer.
But to make sure their knowledge finds its way into the content strategy.
Maybe the content calendar needs a rethink
I don’t think the answer is simply to create more content for more personas.
That can quickly become another content factory.
Instead, I’d start with your most important buying decisions and map three things:
Who is involved?
What questions does each stakeholder need answered?
What evidence would help them move the decision forward?
Then build the content around those gaps.
Because if 20-plus people can influence a technology purchase, your content shouldn’t simply be speaking to one persona 20 different ways.
It should be helping different people arrive at the same decision with greater confidence.
That, to me, is a much more useful way to think about B2B content planning.
Sources used in the article:
- Forrester — Three Realities About B2B Buying Networks — 2026 research on buying networks, departments and stakeholders.
- Gartner — 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights — 2026 data on information sources, GenAI and human validation.
- Forrester — The State of Business Buying, 2026 — 2026 research on buying networks and validation.