Paula’s POV: 3 Shifts Driving the Identity Revolution in B2B Marketing
July 8, 2026 · By Paula Chiocchi · 5 min read
By Paula Chiocchi · July 8, 2026
We’re excited to launch Paula’s POV, a new intermittent solo series within the B2B Influence Podcast. While I’ll continue interviewing industry leaders about the trends shaping B2B marketing on the podcast, Paula’s POV gives me the opportunity to periodically share my own perspective on the ideas, challenges and opportunities that matter most right now. In the inaugural episode, I focused on a topic that sits beneath nearly every challenge marketers are facing today: identity. The gist is that marketing technology has never been more capable. We have AI, customer data platforms, intent data, identity graphs, clean rooms, and an expanding martech stack designed to help us make better decisions. Yet I continue to hear the same frustration from marketing leaders: We still don’t really know who our buyers are. That’s why I believe we’re entering an identity revolution in B2B marketing. As buyer journeys become more fragmented across channels, devices and environments, organizations that strengthen their identity strategy will be far better positioned to create relevant experiences and measure what truly drives growth. Every marketer should be watching these three shifts that are driving the revolution:
Shift #1: Martech Alone Can’t Solve an Identity Problem
Technology can organize information, automate campaigns and surface valuable insights, but it can’t compensate for fragmented identity. Today, one platform recognizes a business email address, another sees a device ID, another captures an IP address and another tracks intent signals. Each system contributes useful information, yet none provides a complete understanding of the individual making purchasing decisions. I recently spoke with a CMO whose organization had invested heavily across all the right platforms. Her team could see someone from a target account repeatedly visiting their website, but they couldn’t determine who that person was or whether they had engaged with the brand elsewhere. That’s the technology paradox. We’ve become remarkably good at tracking activity while still struggling to recognize the human behind it. When identity is incomplete, everything built on top of it becomes less reliable. Personalization, targeting and attribution all suffer because they’re operating with only part of the picture.
Shift #2: The Buyer Has Already Become B2B2C
Traditional B2B marketing was built around a simple model: identify the right company, find the right contact, including their title and function (or operational department), and market to their business email address. Today’s B2B buyer no longer follows that path. According to Gartner, they spend the majority of their purchasing journey conducting independent research before engaging with sales. That research happens wherever it’s convenient. A decision-maker might check LinkedIn during a morning commute, listen to an industry podcast while exercising, research vendors on a personal laptop in the evening and stream Connected TV (CTV) at home. Professional and personal behaviors are all part of the same buying journey. That’s why B2B2C represents one of the most important shifts taking place in modern marketing. Professional identity and consumer identity belong to the same person, yet many marketing systems still treat them as separate worlds. At OMI, we’ve found that a significant amount of early-stage B2B research happens outside business hours and through consumer channels. If your strategy reaches buyers only through their corporate email address, you’re missing meaningful portions of the journey that influence future purchasing decisions. For me, the equation is simple: professional identity plus consumer identity equals more complete audience understanding.
Shift #3: Identity Is What Makes Omnichannel Possible
Many organizations describe themselves as omnichannel because they’re active across multiple platforms. I see an important distinction. Being present across email, social media, display advertising, direct mail and CTV is multichannel. Omnichannel means recognizing the same buyer across those touchpoints so that every interaction builds on the last. That continuity only happens when identity becomes the foundation connecting every channel. I’ve seen the impact firsthand. One client was investing in CTV but couldn’t determine whether those impressions were influencing its B2B pipeline. After we worked with them to build a stronger identity layer, the company was finally able to connect household-level exposure with professional identities and discovered that audiences exposed to its CTV campaigns were converting at meaningfully higher rates downstream. That insight changed both its channel strategy and budget allocation. I often explain this with a simple analogy. Imagine walking into your favorite restaurant and being treated like a stranger every single time, even though you’ve been there a dozen times and the owner knows your name. That’s what a lot of B2B marketing feels like today. Buyers interact with brands across multiple touchpoints over months, only to receive messaging that ignores every previous interaction. B2B marketers need to think about identity as infrastructure, not as a feature within a single platform. They need to use identity as the connective tissue that brings channels, technologies and customer experiences together.
So to all of you B2B marketers and CMOs out there, please consider this: the right identity strategy will allow you to build a richer, more complete view of your potential buyers. It will enable you to create experiences that feel connected rather than fragmented—and that’s the revolution that will reshape your business and the outcomes you achieve. I invite you to watch/listen to the podcast, which closes with a five-question identity challenge that I’ve laid out for today’s B2B marketers. For a deeper dive, you can also check out my recent Forbes Agency Council article, “Why Identity Is Becoming B2B Marketing’s Most Critical Asset.” As always, I invite you to visit my personal website and connect with our team to start a conversation about building a stronger identity layer for your marketing campaigns.