B2B Buyers Trust Everyone Except the Company Selling to Them

Introduction

A Gartner study surveying 771 B2B buyers in November and December 2022 found they value third-party interactions — customer references, reviews, advice from industry experts — 1.4 times more than direct digital interactions with a supplier. When it comes to validating whether a purchase is actually worth it, buyers trust an outside voice more than the seller's own pitch.

Why Buyers Trust Outside Voices More

Rick LaFond, a Director Analyst in Gartner's marketing practice, put it directly: "Buyers yearn for assurance throughout their journey of procurement, and it is these third-party sources that can instill them with the much-needed confidence." That's the core mechanism — a supplier's own marketing can't validate itself the way an independent source can.

The study also found YouTube was the social platform with the biggest measurable effect on recent B2B purchase decisions, ahead of Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and TikTok. LaFond's guidance for that channel specifically: stop using it for brand-focused promotional videos and start showing, concretely, how the product solves problems buyers actually have at each stage of their purchase process.

That said, supplier-owned channels haven't become irrelevant. Buyers still ranked a supplier's own website as the single most important channel, followed by the supplier's social presence, direct searches for the supplier, and interactive tools like product recommenders and price calculators.

LaFond's advice isn't to abandon owned channels in favor of third-party ones — it's that buyers approach the whole research process holistically, using both. Most B2B CMOs, per the research, haven't yet capitalized on third-party interactions despite how much weight buyers put on them.

Conclusion

The practical takeaway: a supplier's own website and digital presence still matter, but they can't be the only investment. Customer references, credible third-party reviews, and genuinely useful video content — YouTube specifically — carry more persuasive weight than anything a brand says about itself. B2B marketing budgets should reflect that, not just assume the company website does the convincing.

Tyrone Showers