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The Visibility Vacuum: Traffic Is Down, Activity Isn't · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, we are back live here at the Forrester B2B Summit on the
• 0:19
  marketplace floor next to the big boots.
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  My name is Matt Heinz.
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  Thank you for joining us for another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  We have been having so much fun down here the last couple days talking to
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  analysts, talking to B2B ROI award winners, talking to some of the leading
• 0:33
  CMOs in marketing who have stopped by to share what they're working on today.
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  Very excited to have with us for this session, John Buten.
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  He's the principal analyst in portfolio marketing at Forrester Research.
• 0:44
  I really hope I said your last name right, 'cause I forgot to ask you about that.
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  Did I, how'd I do?
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  John Buten: Uh, not too bad.
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  Matt Heinz: Okay, how do we… Buten?
• 0:50
  Okay.
• 0:50
  John Buten: All right — no, with a U. Buten, Buten.
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  There—
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  Matt Heinz: —you go.
• 0:54
  Got it.
• 0:54
  All right.
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  It's really important that I get names right.
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  Okay, John Buten, principal analyst at Forrester Research.
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  So many directions we can go given the work you've done at Forrester,
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  but I know right now that you've decided — you just mentioned — and
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  congratulations on your new report out on the visibility vacuum, and the sort
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  of this idea of zero-click buying.
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  Brand-new world for a lot of marketers that not only are having to learn new
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  channels, but also having to sort of admit finally that the buyer's in charge
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  and doing a lot of their own work, and that, you know, we can do a lot of work
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  around building buying journeys and creating great content, but the buyer has
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  always been in charge, and increasingly is doing it without us around, which I
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  think can, for some people, be terrifying.
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  For other people, it's quite encouraging and empowering.
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  So just would love to have you just kind of, given what you've seen in
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  this space, really at the forefront of this, what are you seeing and
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  what should people be aware of?
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  John Buten: Yeah.
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  I think it was Mike Tyson who said sometimes it's helpful
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  to get a punch in the face.
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  Matt Heinz: Yeah, yeah.
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  Something like that.
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  John Buten: It's been interesting also — this is kind of the culmination
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  of a two-year journey when we first saw buyers adopting these AI
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  tools much faster than we expected.
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  And so we were concerned to make sure we were
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  ringing the alarms appropriately.
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  And people started seeing traffic decline, and it was hitting the
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  SEO team, the digital team first.
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  And it's really been a wake-up call to companies to start thinking about how
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  buyer self-service has really changed.
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  I think that's a great perspective.
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  And we need to change our mental model of how we think about the marketing process,
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  rather than we're in control, and we're bringing people through, or pushing
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  them through a funnel, and realize that they're the ones that are on the journey,
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  and we're there to try to support them.
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  Matt Heinz: Well, and you've said that traffic isn't the
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  real problem, visibility is.
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  So break down the difference between those two things, and why that's an important
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  distinction for sales and marketing teams.
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  John Buten: Yeah, 'cause the traffic is declining pretty dramatically.
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  We actually just announced our prediction that it's gonna decline 50 to 75% over
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  the next 12 to 18 months, and that's across all B2B — that's the content
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  sites as well as the provider sites.
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  So some people are gonna experience that differently.
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  The activity among the buyers is not declining.
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  They're just doing this activity in a different place.
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  It's not like buyers have stopped trying to buy products and solve problems.
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  So they're doing it — they're just doing it out there in the answer engines.
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  The challenge then becomes, if they're continuing to do all this
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  activity, and we can't see any of it, that makes it really hard for
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  us, as marketers, to know what to do.
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  How do we change perception?
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  Well, changing perception starts with: what are they perceiving?
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  What are they reading?
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  What do they have access to?
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  And there's not great tools yet.
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  So that visibility is, I think, the bigger problem to solve in order to
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  help us get good at marketing again.
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  Matt Heinz: It fundamentally changes the way we think about pipeline, right?
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  I mean, this phrase you coined around the visibility vacuum — we are used
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  to, as go-to-market professionals, practitioners, being able to send the drip
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  campaigns, and knowing what they clicked on, and feel like we know they came to
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  this webinar, and we know what they're looking at, and all these intent signals.
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  Like, some of those are gonna become quite opaque, if not
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  invisible to us moving forward.
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  So what are some of the practical consequences to how people should
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  be managing their pipelines now?
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  John Buten: Well, we'll maybe step back a little bit to think about what we're
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  trying to do, rather than the techniques and the tools we've used to do them.
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  So some of the performance marketing crutches that we've used that have really
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  come out in the past 10 years, where we're using inbound marketing to get people in,
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  get them cookied so that we can follow them through and keep pestering them.
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  Matt Heinz: That's right.
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  John Buten: That's changing.
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  You know, you saw that HubSpot renamed their conference — it's no longer
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  Inbound, because that's disappearing.
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  At the same time, you know, the buyers are still engaging.
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  They're just engaging less with us directly.
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  So we're gonna see a thinner amount of signals, but still try to respond
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  to them and still be ready for them in those different channels.
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  So it might not be getting them to our website to do information activities
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  — they'll do that in the answer engine.
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  But then there's still going to have all of these different touch points.
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  They're still gonna wanna talk with us.
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  They're still gonna wanna get a demo.
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  And so our website'll change from this lead and pipeline process to
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  one that's much more about this confirmation and trust building.
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  So experiential things, like doing demos and learning from experts and getting
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  trust around: are you the right one to help guide us through this process.
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  Matt Heinz: I feel like one of the final nails in the coffin of the gate-or-ungate
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  debate is the fact that we're building landing pages for AI agents now — that
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  a lot of landing pages are not going to be populated moving forward, or not
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  going to be viewed by people as much as they are agents that are informing
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  and recommending back to prospects.
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  And that's a big change in and of itself.
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  You know, you look across this show floor here, over the last several
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  years, tons of sales enablement vendors, and I see so many now that are really
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  just pivoting to describing themselves as buyer enablement sort of players.
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  And you could — on one hand, I could be pessimistic and say, "Well, it's
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  just lipstick on a pig, I'm still trying to control the process."
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  But if you're authentic about that, ideally, that reduces the friction
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  between you and the buyer, right?
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  You're no longer shoehorning someone into your sales process.
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  You're respecting their buying process and building trust and respect and
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  credibility along the way, which should be giving you an advantage.
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  John Buten: And the buyers are going to then want to get more.
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  So we had a fun conversation yesterday, a round table with people on this topic, and
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  it was interesting that there were people that from an SEO background, and digital,
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  and content, and we went around and said, "Who's team gate and who's team ungate?"
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  And the digital teams all said, "We used to be Team Gate, but we're on the ungate
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  side now." Because we have to welcome people in, but once they get there — if we
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  can create the right opportunities to have a conversation or come to a webinar with
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  the person who has authored that ungated content that they read about, they're
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  gonna come through when they're ready.
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  So creating those opportunities to really create experiences will
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  be satisfying to these buyers.
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  So it changes how you're engaging, when you're engaging
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  — but not the engagement itself.
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  Matt Heinz: We're talking on this special episode of Sales Pipeline
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  Radio live from the Forrester B2B Summit floor with John Buten.
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  He's principal analyst, Forrester Research, done a ton of writing
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  on zero-click, on his new concept around the visibility vacuum.
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  And you have written, John, about the fact that AI agents will eventually
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  make buying decisions autonomously.
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  I think that is scary to sellers.
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  I also find it scary to buyers, depending on sort of what they're talking about
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  — these are large, considered, high-trust purchases that our lizard brains are
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  used to having more control over.
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  Do you hear any of that sort of fear on the buying side, even as that may
• 8:34
  be an advantage to buyers long term?
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  John Buten: I'm maybe in the middle on whether autonomous buying is
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  really something we should worry terribly much about, especially
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  in high-engagement purchases.
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  We are gonna see it in repeat purchases, in procurement environments, and
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  people are seeing that already now.
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  Some of the procurement tool sets are creating those agents to be able
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  to do some of the functions around buying: monitor pricing, monitor terms,
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  make sure that there's compliance, or monitoring strategic sourcing.
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  So that's gonna increase.
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  But when we get to consequential change management — when we get to the purchase
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  process for these high-involvement purchases, it still involves 13
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  different people in the buying group.
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  And so to do that, you can't delegate to an agent.
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  You could have agents involved in really significant ways that are
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  gonna be new and innovative, like summarizing what is the dialogue
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  across these 13 — what's the consensus?
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  So taking the politics out of it, even, and maybe even helping
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  buyers make better decisions.
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  Matt Heinz: I think you're absolutely right.
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  I think that's in our future.
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  I think it's really hard for us to see clearly what that's
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  gonna look like because it's something new that we haven't done.
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  And anything that we can't see clearly, just like things we
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  can't control, makes us nervous.
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  But I'm continually impressed at how, again, our lizard brains are
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  good at normalizing new things and seeing them for what they are.
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  And, you know, even things that have sort of mixed good and bad
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  implications, we start to see as normal.
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  And especially for something like this — if it makes your job easier,
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  if it helps you make better decisions, helps you make confident, faster
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  decisions — there's many of those words that benefit the seller, too, right?
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  Like more confident, faster decisions.
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  What I hear there is faster sales cycle times.
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  That could benefit me instead of being something I need to worry about.
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  John Buten: Perhaps getting the buying group on the same page
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  more easily, getting information across that team much faster.
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  So taking away some of the friction on the buying side.
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  And then also it's gonna remove some of the gamesmanship that we see on
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  the selling side, where we have to do these clickbaity things in order
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  to get people in and win that battle to have the earnest conversation.
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  Everybody's talking about how can I create authentic content once that
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  works both for the models and for the humans after they come through?
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  Matt Heinz: So before your time as a researcher, before your time at
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  Forrester, you spent 20 years in-house.
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  You know, basically you had the job of the people that you're
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  now consulting and advising.
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  What are the things, when you talk to CMOs in this space, that sound familiar
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  from your time in the seat, and what are the things that have changed that are
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  different that they have to grapple with?
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  John Buten: That's an interesting question.
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  I think
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  balancing the brand and demand is something that's consistent throughout
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  — we want to, and the CMOs especially, understand the value of brand.
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  They have a hard time in a B2B context making sure that the whole company, that
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  the executive team, understands that when the person who is most engaged with the
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  marketing team is the sales team, or the product team, they wanna see revenue.
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  So understanding how you can use brand to help feed into the
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  revenue cycle is really important.
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  And I think that is potentially an opportunity for zero-click, because
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  it takes away some of the technical elements of driving demand and
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  makes them much more soft, and content-oriented around building trust.
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  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
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  No, I think you're right.
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  There's gonna be a lot of change, for sure.
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  I think one thing that I take out of this, and from your research and from others
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  here just over the last couple days, is — this is in the future, but not too far.
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  And there's a lot of this that you've made the argument is present tense already.
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  This is already changing buyer behavior.
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  And if you're not on this already and making some of these pivots in
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  your go-to-market motion, as well as how you are enabling buyers and
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  leaning into the trust building that is done when you let them operate
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  the way they're operating today and moving forward — big opportunity.
• 13:02
  John, thanks again so much for joining us.
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  I know you're busy.
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  We'll let you go.
• 13:05
  John Buten: My pleasure.
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  Matt Heinz: All right.
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  John Buten: It was great.
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  Thanks for—
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  —the conversation.
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  Matt Heinz: Thanks for being here.
• 13:08
  Absolutely.
• 13:08
  We've got several more great guests coming up on Sales Pipeline Radio here.
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  Stay tuned.