B2B2C Isn’t Optional: 4 Mindset Shifts Every Marketer Must Make Now

We’ve written about B2B2C data before. For at least a few years now we’ve made the case that effective B2B marketing doesn’t stop at company names, job titles, or professional channels. It starts with people — individuals whose lives, behaviors, and decision-making span both their work and personal worlds.

What’s especially encouraging now is seeing that perspective continue to surface across the industry. The conversation is no longer just about whether B2B marketers need to think differently — it’s about how to operationalize that shift.

A recent diginomica article featuring leaders at Twilio reinforces this momentum. The takeaway is clear: B2B marketers must borrow the right lessons from B2C — personalization, relevance, and experience — while maintaining the rigor required for complex buying cycles. That alignment validates what we’ve long believed at OMI: audience strategy needs to reflect how buyers actually behave today. To make that shift, here are four B2B2C truths that every marketer must lean into now:

1. The Buyer Hasn’t Changed — But Influence Has

B2B buyers didn’t suddenly become “consumer-like.” They’ve always been people first. What’s changed is how and where influence happens.

Today’s decision-makers research during the workday, engage with content in the evening, stream media on connected TV, and move fluidly across devices and channels throughout the week. Treating those interactions as separate identities — one professional, one personal — no longer reflects reality. And it introduces unnecessary friction into audience planning, activation, and measurement.

This is the gap B2B2C data is designed to close.

2. Get the Full Audience Picture for More Meaningful Connection

Today’s marketers want more meaningful and direct ways to connect with their audiences — both at work and at home. That’s where true B2B and B2C data convergence comes in.

B2B2C data linkage breaks down the silos that exist between consumer and professional prospect data. As one of our most popular data offerings at OMI, it involves weaving together a prospect’s B2B attributes—sourced from our own massive B2B database—with that prospect’s B2C attributes, such as their LinkedIn profile, demographics and residential address. OMI then sends the combined B2B2C anonymized audience data to the client’s social channels or DSP of choice, whether it’s theTradeDesk, Google DV360 or another platform, to fuel media activation, email acquisition marketing, CTV, programmatic, social, and other omni-channel campaigns.

A unified B2B2C view enables our clients to elevate personalization and relevance while reaching the same decision-maker across both personal and professional channels for higher ROI.

3. It’s Never Been More Essential to Reach Real People

B2B2C isn’t about adding more channels for incremental reach. It’s about precision, continuity, and accountability. When professional and personal data signals are responsibly linked, marketing leaders can:

• Build audiences around real people, not fragmented identifiers
• Maintain consistency across work and personal environments
• Align messaging and timing to real-world context
• Reduce waste caused by disconnected targeting strategies

Without this foundation, teams are forced to rebuild audiences repeatedly, rely on proxies, or guess at where influence truly occurs.

4. Meeting People Where They Are — With Intention

B2B2C isn’t a trend we’re chasing. It’s a response to how marketing must operate in a fragmented, privacy-first world. As more industry leaders call for a B2C mindset in B2B, the opportunity becomes clearer: audience strategies built around identity, context, and connection don’t just improve reach — they improve relevance.

If your audience strategy still treats professional and personal engagement as separate worlds, it may be time to rethink the foundation. Understanding who you’re reaching — and how those individuals move across channels — is where more durable, performance-driven growth begins.

Reach out to our team for a B2B2C consultation now.