Buying groups overview

Demandbase Buying Groups is a feature within Demandbase that treats buying groups as a core data object. B2B purchase decisions typically involve 6 to 20 people. This functionality lets GTM teams define, track, and engage those groups across advertising, marketing, and sales.

To get started, admins define an ideal buying group in Demandbase for Marketing under Settings, then Buyer Profiles, then Buying Groups. Buying groups can be structured by product, geography, or business unit. Once a GTM strategy is chosen, admins click Create New and name the buying group.

Each buying group is made up of personas. Personas can be created within the buying group setup flow or separately under the Personas tab. Creating a persona requires a name, title keywords, and job function or level. Demandbase uses this information to find buying group members across first-party data such as CRM and MAP records, and third-party data including net new contacts from Demandbase. Each persona can also be assigned a role within the buying group.

When building a buying group, admins also select Intent Keyword Sets and relevant web pages. These selections allow Demandbase to track both known and unknown engagement from buying group contacts. Once configuration is complete, the buying group is activated.

For advertising, campaigns can be optimized to reach defined buying group members by selecting the buying group in Step 4 of the campaign wizard, the strategy section.

For other marketing campaigns, buying groups and buying group members can be included when building target account lists using relationship selectors. Lists of people, opportunities, or activities can also be filtered using buying group selectors.

In Demandbase for Sales, the platform surfaces contact recommendations based on the ideal buying groups defined in the marketing platform. Sellers can confirm or dismiss each recommendation and assign a buying role. Contacts can then be added to CRM. Within an account record in Demandbase for Sales, users can view a summary of buying groups associated with the account, persona coverage, and the number of pending contact recommendations.