LinkedIn is sharing the results of its B2B Buyer Research study, which found that despite an apparent alignment between sales and marketing, “some of the same issues still persist.”

The company surveyed over 6,000 buyers, marketers, and salespeople in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Based on the findings, LinkedIn says that marketers must rethink many of the ways they communicate with their customers and how they align with their colleagues in sales.

“Marketers must strive to reach the entire buying team, not just the key decision maker, as there are now an average of 3-5 additional departments influencing the buying decision depending on the industry,” a spokesperson for the company said in an email. “In order to improve relationships with buyers, marketers and sellers must look to social media as a critical tool for converting leads (67 percent of buyers used social media for awareness, more than any other channel).”

“B2B buyers tend to be more engaged on LinkedIn than other average users of the platform,” the spokesperson added. “In fact, buyers are 9x more likely to share content and 7x more connected than the typical LinkedIn member.”

The company has an eBook available looking at the B2B buyer’s journey, but if you don’t want to read the whole thing, they sum up six takeaways from it in a blog post here.

Image via LinkedIn