The B2B Buying Cycle is Tough
If you’re a B2B marketer, you know how arduous the buying cycle can be.
One day it’s a hot lead, the next day they’re “taking another direction” or “waiting until the economy is more certain”.
Bottom line: B2B buying cycles are getting longer and more difficult to close.
How We Define the B2B Buying Cycle
While there are many variations of the B2B buying cycle, we describe the B2B buying cycle as having six primary stages.
- Problem Identification – In this first stage, the business realizes it has a problem. Often the issue is brought to light by an event or data such as customer feedback, product failure, decline in sales or new regulations. Regardless, the realization creates discussion, meetings and action items as the company springs into action.
- Criteria Creation - The company is on it. The are “getting smart” on the subject and are defining criteria and requirements to solve the problem. A lot of Internet research occurs here in this stage. Influencers within the company render opinions on how to solve the problem and someone usually emerges as the company “‘expert”.
3. Search - Search for vendors and consultants begins in earnest. Company become smarter about a possible solution as lessons learned and war stories begin to emerge. An RFP and a budget are often defined in this stage as well.
4. Evaluation - RFP responses are received and a vendor short list is created. Detailed content and conversations become more frequent as a concrete solution begins to emerge. Demos and “pre-sales” activity kick into high gear.
5. Test & Procurement - Trial test of software solutions and final evaluations occur in this final stage. A final decision is made and purchase orders are created.
Customer Behavior is Different in Each Stage
In the age of instant and free information, talking to a salesperson is often seen as unnecessary.
As a buyer, why would you want to create pressure and confusion for yourself during your evaluation process? Especially when you’re in the early part of the buying cycle.
So right now, your potential customers are trying to find useful content to help in their buying decision process.
Do you have the right content to drive their behavior?
More importantly, do you have the appropriate content for each stage in the buying cycle?
Content Should Solve Problems in the Early Stages
In the early Problem Identification and Criteria Creation stages, your potential customers are educating themselves by:
- Reading blog posts
- Downloading general whitepapers
- Following influencers and subject matter experts in social media
- Visiting industry forums
- Asking questions on Quora
- Subscribing to industry newsletters
- Searching with broader, problem-oriented terms
Content in this stage needs to be more general and very focused on your target market’s problem or goal.
Don’t talk about your product and services. People already know you’re trying to sell something.
Blog posts are ideal for this early stage content. They should be less than a thousand words, casual in tone yet informative. Again, no need to explicitly sell your product. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and talk about how to solve the core problems your product offers.
Another great technique is to curate content from other sources. For example when you see interesting articles and other content that might help educate your community, share it. Tweet it. Link to it on your blog. Become an information source.
Content Should Get Specific in the Later Buying Cycle Stages
In the Search and Evaluation stages your potential customers are narrowing down their choices by:
- Watching vendor videos
- Downloading more technical whitepapers and product specs
- Attending webinars
- Seeking product reviews
- Searching by using more detailed, long tail and-vendor specific terms
- Joining vendor communities to discuss your products
- Participating in demos and free trials
While you should never abandon your core problem-solving focus, understand that buyers have already answered many of their basic questions and are now forming a solution. Vendor specific information and technical discussions are usually welcome in these later stages. Videos are always good to communicate large amounts of detailed information quickly.
How’s your marketing content? Have you mapped it to your industry’s buying cycle? Do you agree with us?
Content Marketing at Spark
Helping you understand content marketing is one of our specialties at Spark. If you’d like to contact us to talk a little shop, we’d love to hear from you. See you soon.
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Posted by CristiSpahr on September 6, 2011 |
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