Grow your coaching business
LinkedIn and Ipsos · June 2025 · Registration required
2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark: The Influence Report — Be Category-Famous and Accelerate Social Trust
LinkedIn’s Ipsos survey of 1,500 B2B marketers finds that trust is treated as the foundation of brand success, built more through social proof than through being widely famous.
Plenty of coaching marketing advice starts with ‘be more visible’. This benchmark, part of LinkedIn’s 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark series, is more interesting on trust.
In the Influence Report, 93.7% of marketers agreed that building trust is the most important factor for a successful B2B brand. LinkedIn also reports that marketers see customer and peer validation as more influential than product attributes, price or general awareness.
This is research with marketers, not coaching clients. We picked it because independent coaches often sell into similar B2B buying conditions: a small reputation, a nervous buyer, and a lot of untested claims.
If trust is the thing that makes someone willing to buy, then a polished website may matter less than whether other people can vouch for you in the category you want to be known for.
For a coach, that might mean being specific about the work you do, making it easy for clients to recommend you, and showing your thinking in places peers already look, rather than trying to become famous in general.
It is also a reason to be careful with generic personal-brand advice. The report’s distinction is useful: being trusted inside a category is not the same as being widely known outside it.
This is an external source. Four Corners Coaching did not produce the original report.
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Edelman and LinkedIn · June 2025
The seventh annual Edelman–LinkedIn study looks at how thought leadership reaches both visible buyers and the quieter internal voices that can help or halt a deal.
Why we picked it. It shows why useful thinking can help a lesser-known coach become easier to take seriously inside a buying group.
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6sense · November 2025
6sense’s global buyer study finds that most B2B buying groups rank preferred suppliers before they speak to anyone, and that the early favourite still usually wins.
Why we picked it. It is one of the clearer explanations of why waiting for a tender or a warm referral can be too late.