Why business-to-person marketing requires a new identity approach

For B2B marketers, this is exacerbated by the difficulty in stitching together business and consumer identities, which come from disparate data sets. More sophisticated marketers are now adopting a business-to-person strategy, where these two identities are no longer divided. 

The challenge is building an identity solution that effectively takes in all the relevant information and makes it actionable. Composable identity solves this problem; unlike rigid, bundled solutions, it is modular, interoperable and designed for control. 

In an era of heightened privacy requirements, control over identity isn’t optional — it’s essential. Businesses need solutions that don’t introduce additional layers of complexity or force them into vendor-controlled ecosystems. Instead, identity should work seamlessly across platforms, enabling companies to maintain compliance while accelerating activation and measurement.

Why business-to-person marketing demands composable identity solutions

B2P marketing reflects a fundamental shift and an opportunity for B2B marketers to connect with potential customers in a new way. Business decision-makers engage with content across personal and professional contexts, using consumer platforms and devices outside traditional business environments. Reaching them effectively requires stitching together multiple identity sources while maintaining security, compliance and scalability.

To realize the full value of B2P, businesses need identity solutions that can connect business and consumer datasets, resolve anonymous signals into actionable insights and ensure identity is available across all marketing and activation environments. 

Yet traditional identity platforms struggle to support this level of flexibility. Many force companies into a rigid, prepackaged stack or require multiple disconnected point solutions that create inefficiencies.

This is where composable identity comes in. Composable identity allows marketers to connect business and consumer datasets and deliver an engaging brand experience. Enterprises can integrate identity within their own environments, ensuring compliance while reducing inefficiencies caused by excessive transcoding and vendor dependencies. Instead of being locked into a single approach, they can select only the identity components they need and scale as their needs evolve.

This level of flexibility enables comprehensive marketing programs and ensures that identity is available across all marketing and activation environments. A composable identity approach eliminates the obstacles of pre-packed identity solutions by allowing businesses to merge business and consumer identity data on their terms, without adding friction or increasing compliance risk. This need for flexibility and interoperability led Dun & Bradstreet, one of Adstra’s data partners, to adopt a composable identity approach to power its B2P strategy.

How composable identity powers D&B’s B2P strategy

Dun & Bradstreet’s ability to execute B2P marketing relies on control, adaptability and seamless integration — key elements that enable composable identity. Unlike traditional identity solutions that require an organization to leverage external platforms to perform their data processing, D&B and Adstra jointly allow their clients the ability to keep critical identity functions within their own environment. This means that identity can be managed, resolved and activated while providing the company visibility into how identity is used across its ecosystem.

By bringing identity in-house, Dun & Bradstreet reduces reliance on third parties that often introduce inefficiencies, limit customization or create privacy risks. Dun & Bradstreet can configure identity workflows based on a client’s specific needs instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all system. This includes resolving anonymous website traffic into known business prospects, enriching audience intelligence and seamlessly activating identity across all marketing and CRM environments.

A key advantage of composable identity is eliminating unnecessary transcoding. Traditional identity systems often require repeated conversions to work across different platforms, adding cost, complexity and potential data loss at every step. By building its strategy around composable identity, Dun & Bradstreet can work directly within its own data infrastructure, avoiding these inefficiencies while improving speed, accuracy and scalability. Better still, Dun & Bradstreet can pass all of these benefits on to its clients, who can, in turn, make use of the benefits of composable identity.

This approach ensures identity is always available, adaptable and actionable — whether it’s used for customer insights, media activation or account-based marketing – instead of forcing identity into predefined structures.

Why control over identity helps marketers overcome challenges

As compliance requirements become more stringent, businesses must ensure that identity solutions enhance security rather than introduce risk. 

Control over identity improves compliance while reducing operational inefficiencies. Businesses that rely on vendor-managed identity often face excessive transcoding burdens, where data must be repeatedly transformed to function across different platforms. Each transformation adds cost, complexity and risk. A composable model eliminates these challenges by enabling businesses to work within their systems without needing constant data conversion.

B2P is a significant opportunity for businesses to reach decision-makers with greater precision. To fully capitalize on it, enterprises need an identity framework that is flexible, scalable and built for interoperability. Composable identity delivers on this need, ensuring businesses can activate, integrate and control identity without compromise.

Sponsored by Adstra