What to Do When the Buyer Isn't the User in B2B

What to Do When the Buyer Isn’t the User in B2B

In much of B2B, the person who uses your product isn’t the person who buys it — the user loves it and champions it internally, but an economic buyer like a manager, executive, or procurement makes the actual purchase decision. This splits your challenge in two: you have to win over the user, who’ll advocate for you, and the economic buyer, who’ll approve and pay, and they care about completely different things. The user cares whether the product is useful to them; the economic buyer cares about business value, ROI, and cost. Reaching only one leaves the other unconvinced. This guide covers how to handle the common B2B situation where the buyer isn’t the user.

Key takeaways

In B2B, the user often isn’t the buyer — the user champions, but an economic buyer decides.
This splits the challenge: win the user (who advocates) and the economic buyer (who approves and pays).
They care about different things — the user about usefulness, the buyer about business value and ROI.
Reach both — the user with product value, the economic buyer with the business case.
Support the user as a champion with material to sell your case internally.

Why does the buyer-user split matter?

Because winning the deal requires convincing two different people with different concerns, not one. When the user and the buyer are the same person, you make one case to one person. But when they’re different — the user who’ll work with the product day-to-day, and the economic buyer who controls the budget and makes the purchase — you have to convince both, because the user can love your product but can’t approve the purchase, and the economic buyer can approve it but doesn’t feel the day-to-day need the user does.

This split is common in B2B, where products are used by practitioners but bought by their managers, executives, or procurement. It means a deal can stall in two ways: the user isn’t sold, so no one champions it internally, or the economic buyer isn’t sold, so the champion’s advocacy doesn’t get approval. Winning requires addressing both — getting the user to advocate and the economic buyer to approve — because the deal needs both the internal champion and the budget holder’s yes. Recognizing that the buyer isn’t the user, and that both must be convinced, is the starting point for handling this situation.

What does each care about?

Different things, which is why you can’t use one message for both. The user and the economic buyer evaluate your product through different lenses:

	User	Economic buyer
Role	Uses the product day-to-day	Controls budget, approves purchase
Cares about	Usefulness, features, ease of use	Business value, ROI, cost
Question	Will this help me do my job?	Is this worth the investment?
Message	Product value to them	The business case

The user cares whether the product is genuinely useful to them — does it make their work easier, better, faster — so they evaluate features, usability, and practical value. The economic buyer cares whether the purchase makes business sense — the ROI, the business value, the cost justification — so they evaluate the business case. These are different concerns, and a message aimed at the user (here’s how it helps your work) doesn’t answer the economic buyer’s question (is this worth the money), while a message aimed at the economic buyer (here’s the ROI) doesn’t address what the user cares about. You need messaging for each.

How do you reach both?

By targeting each with the message their role responds to, and supporting the user as a champion. Reach the user with messaging about the product’s value to them — how it helps their work, its features and usability — so they want it and advocate for it. Reach the economic buyer with the business case — the ROI, business value, and cost justification — so they’ll approve the purchase. Using LinkedIn’s targeting to reach both the practitioner roles and the manager, executive, or procurement roles lets you address each with the message that resonates.

Crucially, support the user as a champion. Since the user often advocates internally to the economic buyer, giving them material that helps them make the case — the business value framed for their buyer, proof points, the justification — strengthens their internal advocacy. The user is your champion, so equipping them to sell your product internally, while also reaching the economic buyer directly, means the buyer hears the case both from their advocating team member and from your advertising. This combination — convincing the user, equipping them to advocate, and reaching the economic buyer directly with the business case — is how you win a deal where the buyer isn’t the user.

The buyer-user framework

Handle the buyer-user split deliberately:

Recognize the split — the user champions, but the economic buyer approves and pays.
Convince the user — with product value, so they want it and advocate internally.
Convince the economic buyer — with the business case, ROI, and cost justification.
Reach both — target the user’s roles and the economic buyer’s roles with their respective messages.
Support the champion — give the user material to make your case to the economic buyer.

Why isn’t reaching only the user enough?

Because the user can’t approve the purchase, so a user who loves your product but no convinced economic buyer results in a stalled deal. It’s tempting to focus on the user, since they’re the one who’ll use the product and often the easiest to excite about it — but user enthusiasm alone doesn’t close a deal when someone else controls the budget. If the economic buyer isn’t convinced, the user’s advocacy hits a wall at approval, and the deal doesn’t happen despite the user wanting it. Conversely, reaching only the economic buyer isn’t enough either, because they don’t feel the day-to-day need the user does, so without a user championing it internally, the economic buyer has no internal pull toward the purchase. This is why both must be reached: the user provides the internal demand and advocacy, and the economic buyer provides the approval and budget, and a deal needs both. Focusing on one at the expense of the other is a common mistake — over-indexing on the enthusiastic user while neglecting the economic buyer who actually decides, or making the business case to the buyer while failing to build the user advocacy that creates internal demand. This connects to the broader reality that B2B purchases often involve multiple stakeholders with different concerns, so reaching the whole relevant group, each with the message their role responds to, is what wins deals — and the buyer-user split is a particularly common and important instance, where the practical necessity of convincing both the user and the economic buyer, and equipping the user to advocate, determines whether a deal that the user wants actually gets approved and bought.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What do you do when the buyer isn’t the user in B2B?

Convince both — the user with the product’s value so they advocate, and the economic buyer with the business case so they approve and pay. They care about different things (usefulness versus ROI), so message to each with what resonates, and support the user as a champion with material to make your case internally. Winning needs both the advocate and the budget holder’s yes.

Q2. Why does it matter that the buyer isn’t the user?

Because winning the deal requires convincing two different people with different concerns, not one. The user can love your product but can’t approve the purchase, and the economic buyer can approve it but doesn’t feel the day-to-day need. A deal can stall if either isn’t sold, so you have to address both — the user who advocates and the economic buyer who approves.

Q3. What does the user care about versus the economic buyer?

The user cares about usefulness — whether the product helps their work, its features and ease of use — while the economic buyer cares about business value, ROI, and cost justification. They evaluate through different lenses, so a message about helping the user’s work doesn’t answer the buyer’s question about whether it’s worth the money, and vice versa. You need messaging for each.

Q4. How do you reach both the user and the economic buyer?

Target the user’s roles with messaging about the product’s value to them, so they want it and advocate, and target the economic buyer’s roles with the business case, so they’ll approve. Use LinkedIn’s targeting to reach both the practitioners and the managers, executives, or procurement, addressing each with the message their role responds to.

Q5. Why isn’t reaching only the user enough?

Because the user can’t approve the purchase — user enthusiasm alone doesn’t close a deal when someone else controls the budget. If the economic buyer isn’t convinced, the user’s advocacy hits a wall at approval, and the deal stalls despite the user wanting it. The user provides internal demand and advocacy, but the economic buyer provides the approval and budget, so both are needed.

Q6. Should you support the user as a champion?

Yes — the user often advocates internally to the economic buyer, so giving them material that helps them make the case (the business value framed for their buyer, proof points, justification) strengthens their advocacy. Equipping the user to sell your product internally, while also reaching the economic buyer directly, means the buyer hears the case from both their team member and your advertising.

Q7. What message works for the economic buyer?

The business case — ROI, business value, and cost justification — since the economic buyer evaluates whether the purchase makes business sense, not the day-to-day usefulness the user cares about. They control the budget and need to justify the investment, so the message should answer “is this worth it” with the business and financial rationale, distinct from the product-value message aimed at the user.

It’s a common instance of the broader reality that B2B purchases often involve multiple stakeholders with different concerns. The user and economic buyer are two key roles, but a full buying committee may include others. The principle is the same — reach the whole relevant group, each with the message their role responds to — with the buyer-user split being a particularly frequent and important version of that challenge.