Buying group-based marketing & journey management
This guide describes the buying group-based marketing and journey management use case pattern, which uses Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition and Real-Time CDP B2B Edition to implement account-level journey orchestration with buying group management. It is designed for solution architects, marketing technologists, and implementation engineers who need to understand what this pattern does, the business objectives it supports, the tactical use cases it enables, and the Adobe applications involved.
Unlike person-level journey patterns, this pattern operates at the account level, qualifying individual leads into buying groups associated with solution interests, scoring engagement at the buying group level, and orchestrating multi-step account journeys that progress accounts through pipeline stages toward sales readiness.
Use case pattern
Buying group-based marketing & journey management
Develop account-level journeys that qualify leads into buying groups to improve B2B marketing effectiveness.
Execution plan: Account Identification > Buying Group Definition > Lead Qualification > Account Journey Execution > Engagement Scoring > Reporting
Use case overview
B2B organizations face a fundamental challenge: purchase decisions are rarely made by a single individual. Complex B2B purchases involve multiple stakeholders – decision makers, influencers, champions, budget holders, and technical evaluators – who collectively form a “buying group.” Traditional lead-based marketing treats each person independently, missing the critical signal of whether the right combination of roles within an account is engaged and ready to buy.
Buying group-based marketing and journey management addresses this by shifting the unit of orchestration from individual leads to accounts and buying groups. The pattern enables B2B marketers to define solution interests (the products or services being sold), create buying group templates that specify which roles are needed for a purchase decision, qualify incoming leads against those roles, score engagement at the buying group level, and orchestrate account journeys that respond to buying group completeness and readiness signals.
The desired outcome is improved pipeline quality and velocity: marketing delivers accounts to sales only when the right people within the account are engaged and the buying group is sufficiently complete, reducing wasted sales effort and accelerating deal progression.
Key business objectives
This use case pattern supports the following business objectives.
Improve lead qualification & conversion
Increase lead quality and accelerate pipeline progression through scoring, nurturing, and personalized follow-up.
KPIs: Lead Conversion, Prospect/Lead Conversion, Efficiency
Learn more about improving lead qualification & conversion
Increase lead generation
Generate more qualified leads for the sales pipeline through forms, events, content, and multi-channel engagement.
KPIs: Prospects, Cost Per Lead, Lead Conversion
Learn more about increasing lead generation
Increase revenue & sales
Drive top-line revenue growth through optimized digital channels, campaigns, and customer journeys.
KPIs: Revenue growth, pipeline velocity, deal close rate
Learn more about increasing revenue & sales
Example tactical use cases
The following are specific scenarios where this pattern can be applied.
- Solution-specific buying group qualification – Define buying groups for each product line (for example, “Enterprise CRM,” “Data Platform,” “Security Suite”) with role templates specifying required personas (Economic Buyer, Technical Evaluator, Champion, End User) and qualify leads from the CRM and marketing automation system against those roles.
- Account journey for pipeline acceleration – Orchestrate a multi-step account journey that sends targeted nurture emails to under-engaged roles within a buying group, triggers sales alerts when engagement thresholds are reached, and transitions the account to a sales-ready stage.
- Buying group completeness campaigns – Identify accounts where buying groups have missing roles (for example, no Economic Buyer identified) and launch targeted acquisition campaigns to engage the right personas within those accounts.
- Cross-sell account journeys – After an initial deal closes, create new buying groups for complementary solution interests and orchestrate account journeys that nurture the expanded buying committee.
- Re-engagement for stalled deals – Detect accounts where buying group engagement scores have declined and trigger re-engagement journeys with fresh content, executive outreach, or event invitations.
- Sales and marketing alignment via CRM insights – Surface buying group status, engagement data, and account journey progress directly within Salesforce or Dynamics 365 so sales representatives have real-time visibility into marketing-qualified accounts.
- Event-driven buying group updates – Automatically update buying group membership and engagement scores when leads attend webinars, download whitepapers, visit pricing pages, or request demos.
- Multi-region account coordination – Manage buying groups across global accounts where different regional contacts hold different roles, unifying engagement scoring across geographies.
Key performance indicators
The following KPIs help measure the effectiveness of this use case pattern.
Applications
The following Adobe applications are used in this use case pattern.
- Journey Optimizer B2B Edition (AJO B2B) – Orchestrates account-level journeys, manages buying groups with role templates and solution interests, scores engagement at the person and buying group level, authors B2B email content, sends SMS messages, configures sales alerts, and provides B2B analytics dashboards.
- Real-Time CDP B2B Edition (RT-CDP B2B) – Unifies account profiles from cross-source B2B data, resolves person-to-account relationships, evaluates account-level audiences, configures B2B-specific destinations (Marketo Engage, LinkedIn, CRM), and enforces data governance across B2B data.
Related documentation
The following resources provide additional detail on the applications and capabilities referenced in this guide.