Most B2B marketers still target one persona at a time— even though buying committees include dozens of stakeholders. That’s where orchestration comes in
B2B buying has never been a solo act. Yet somehow, we’ve spent years marketing as if it were.
The reality is that any significant B2B purchase involves a buying committee. These groups range anywhere from five to 20 or even 50 people, depending on the organization’s size and the decision’s complexity. These aren’t just different people with the same concerns. They’re different personas with fundamentally different priorities, operating at different levels of the organization.
The CMO cares about budget efficiency. The VP of Demand Gen wants proof of pipeline impact. The hands-on executor just wants something that won’t make their job harder. Send the same message to all three, and you’ve effectively reached none of them.
This is where artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming B2B marketing in ways that go far beyond simple campaign optimization. The real power of AI isn’t just making your campaigns run better; it’s decoding the dynamics of the entire buying committee and orchestrating outreach that actually makes sense.
The Buying Committee Reality
Let’s start with what a buying committee actually looks like. In the old days, and by “old days” I mean just five years ago, we talked about targeting “decision makers.” It was persona-based marketing: find the CFO, target the CMO, reach the CTO.
That approach is dead. Today’s buying committees are multi-layered structures that typically break down into three distinct groups: Decision makers sit at the executive level. They sign the checks and care primarily about strategic value and budget impact.
Influencers operate in the middle layer— managers and directors who evaluate options, build business cases, and ultimately recommend solutions to their superiors. They’re focused on team impact and career advancement.
Executors are the hands-on users who will actually work with whatever solution gets purchased. They care about ease of use, implementation, and whether this new platform will make their daily work easier or harder.
Here’s the critical insight: decision makers typically represent only 15-20% of any organization. If you have a company with 100 employees, roughly 20 people are involved in major purchase decisions across these three levels. That’s not a single persona you’re targeting; it’s an entire ecosystem of stakeholders, each with distinct concerns and influence.
The Orchestration Problem
Marketing to a buying committee is about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time within the sales cycle. That’s exponentially more complex than traditional persona-based marketing.
Think about what this requires in practice. The influencer wants to hear: “This will help you deliver better results to leadership.”
Send a cost-savings message to the executor, and they’ll ignore it; that’s not their concern. The executor needs to hear: “This will make your life easier.”
Send an ease-of-use message to the CFO, and you’ve wasted an impression. The orchestration of these different messages, across different media types, at different stages of the buying journey, becomes incredibly complex. The decision maker needs: “This will save money and drive strategic value.”
This is exactly where most B2B marketing strategies break down. The signals and triggers that indicate the next best action become overwhelming. Should you serve a CTV ad? Change the ad copy? Send an email? Or push an alert to a salesperson to pick up the phone? Without AI, you’re essentially guessing. With AI, you’re conducting an orchestra.
AI as the Orchestration Engine
AI excels at three critical functions that make committee-level targeting possible: classification, prediction, and speed.
Classification means AI can analyze behavioral signals and identify where individuals sit within the buying committee structure. Based on job title, online behavior, content consumption, and engagement patterns, AI can classify prospects as decision makers, influencers, or executors with remarkable accuracy.
Prediction means AI can assess what stage of the buying journey each person is in. Are they in early research mode? Actively comparing solutions? Ready to buy? This isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. If someone lands on your website, they’re probably already comparing you to competitors. You should have been building that relationship six months earlier.
Speed is perhaps the biggest gamechanger. AI operates in real-time. When behavioral signals indicate a shift in buying stage or interest level, AI can update targeting, adjust messaging, swap creative, or trigger sales outreach instantly. Before AI, this process involved pulling reports, analyzing data, logging into platforms, and making manual changes, which could take days or weeks. Now it happens instantaneously.
The Real-Time Feedback Loop
We’re working with a client now where real-time events happen on their side—prospect engagement, content downloads, demo requests—and they currently share this data with us via a spreadsheet every night. We then update their advertising audiences to reflect these changes.
But here’s where we’re headed: direct integrations that allow AI to update ad campaigns in true real-time as those actions occur. The moment a prospect from the buying committee engages with specific content, the system automatically adjusts targeting and messaging across all committee members from that account.
We have the technology in place. The challenge is integration and implementation, not capability.
From Bottleneck to Breakthrough
The most common objection to committee-level targeting is complexity. “We can barely manage persona-based campaigns. How are we supposed to orchestrate messaging across entire buying committees?”
This is exactly backwards. The complexity is why you need AI. Humans have become the bottleneck, not because we’re not smart enough, but because we simply can’t process signals and make decisions at the speed modern B2B marketing demands.
AI doesn’t replace human strategy and oversight. But it removes humans from the execution bottleneck. We set the strategy, define the messaging for each committee layer, establish the rules for progression through the buying journey, and then AI handles the real-time orchestration.
The Committee Advantage
Here’s the ultimate irony: marketing to buying committees actually simplifies your strategy. Instead of guessing which single person makes the decision, you’re ensuring your message reaches the entire decision-making ecosystem. You’re building relationships across the organization, not betting everything on identifying the one “decision maker.”
The committee approach also solves a persistent problem in B2B: what happens when your single point of contact leaves the company or changes roles? If you’ve built relationships across the buying committee, you’re insulated from that risk.
The future of B2B marketing no longer targets the perfect persona. Successful B2B marketers understand that B2B buying is a team sport and are building marketing strategies accordingly. AI doesn’t just make this possible; it makes it the only approach that makes sense.
The buying committee has always existed. We finally have the tools to market to it effectively.
Since co-founding AdDaptive nearly 15 years ago, Kevin O’Malley has led the company with a clear vision for growth, innovation and long-term success. Under his leadership, AdDaptive has remained entirely self-funded, a rare achievement in the ad tech industry, demonstrating the strength of its business model and the strategic discipline that has fueled continuous profitability and expansion. Year after year, AdDaptive has grown its revenue, technology, and team, evolving into a trusted partner for brands, agencies and publishers navigating the complex world of data-driven advertising. With a career in digital advertising that spans more than two decades, Kevin has built his expertise at the intersection of business development, media sales and ad tech innovation. Before launching AdDaptive, he held leadership roles at major industry players during pivotal moments in digital advertising’s evolution. His approach to leadership is rooted in a commitment to working both smarter and harder—encouraging his team to push boundaries, innovate and execute with precision. He fosters a culture that values accountability, ingenuity and work-life balance, ensuring that AdDaptive’s continued growth is fueled by both strategic execution and a strong, engaged team
