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1. Content Marketing and the
Buyer’s Journey
Make Your Content Work for a Living
Gilbane Conference
November 2012
2. The Buyer’s Dilemma
• Too much content, not enough relevant content
• Stakeholders in buying process increased from 4 to 6
or more in past 3 years
• Buying cycle increased from 4.5 to 5.4 months in past
3 years
– 60.8% said internal buying process complexity hampered efforts
– 55.6 % blamed poor marketing and sales efforts by vendors
IDC 2012 Buyer Experience Study
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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3. The Marketer’s Dilemma
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•
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86% of buyers say relevant content drove buying decisions
51% of marketers plan to increase content marketing spend
Only 41% of marketers believe their content is effective
Vendors lose 40% of potential sales because of mismatched
content
MarketingProfs/Junta42; IDG Connect
Content marketing strategies are producing too
much content that is not relevant to buyers,
reducing vendors chance of making shortlist by 1/3.
IDG Connect’s IT Buyer Survey
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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4. What is Relevant Content?
• Right content, right person, right time
– Role specific
– Anticipates and answers buyer’s questions
– Engaging, compelling, and concise
– Objective and actionable
– Available when, where, how the buyer wants it
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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5. What is the Buyer’s Journey?
• Conceptual framework that describes the cognitive
processes that a buyer goes through in making a
buying decision.
• Strategy for sales and marketing to engage with
customers, both digitally and live, by exchanging
valuable information.
The Buyer’s Journey is a
strategy for ensuring relevant
content
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6. Buyer’s Journey Tenets
• The buying process starts before contact with a vendor
• Buyers move through a unique cognitive process with
multiple states/stages
• Multiple decision makers are involved and have their
own agendas
• Content needs are different for each stage, role, and
situation
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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7. Buyer’s Journey: Linear View
Discovery
Latent need
Discovery
of need
Research
Seek
solutions
Vet possible
solutions
Decision
Justify
solution
Make buying
decision
Stakeholders
CEO
CMO
CFO
CIO
CSO
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8. Buyer’s Journey in Reality
Discovery
Latent need
Discovery
of need
Research
Seek
solutions
Vet possible
solutions
Decision
Justify
solution
Make buying
decision
Buyer 1
Buyer 2
Buyer 3
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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9. Personas
• Profile of example buyers
• More than just a role description
• Goals, concerns, preferences, and decisionmaking processes
• Map to content, format, and stages
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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10. A Simple Sample Framework
Personas/Ro Stages
les
Goals
Topic
Format
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CEO
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CIO/CTO
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•
•
Latent
Need
CFO
•
Sales
Executive
Discovery
of Need
•
Seek
solutions
•
Marketing
Executive
•
User
•
Staff
•
Other
•
Justify
solution
•
Make
buying
decision
•
•
Vet
solutions
•
•
•
Discovery of
problem
Discovery of
solutions
Ability to justify
purchase
Ability to
persuade other
decision-makers
Confidence to
make a decision
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•
•
•
•
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Market validation
Problems and
symptoms
Competitive
landscape
Case studies
Product applications
Product
features/functions
Creating a business
case
ROI calculation
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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White
papers
Webinars
Analyst
reports
Customer
reviews
Data
sheets
Software
tools
Conference
10
11. Getting Started
• Study and understand your buyers’ journeys
• Conduct a content audit
– Start with what you have, use “OPC”
• Develop personas, map questions and content
• Let the buyers do the leg work
– Organize and label content, don’t forget search
• Don’t strive for perfection! Take your best
shot, learn, and refine
2012 Agile Business Logic All Rights Reserved
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12. Agile Business Logic
Marc Strohlein, Principal, Agile Business Logic
and Author of The Energized Enterprise
– mstrohlein@agilebusinesslogic.com
– Twitter: mstrohlein
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Editor's Notes
I’ve been a CIO, CTO, SVP Operations, and COO, and industry analysts so I’ve made and sold, bought, used and analyzed products and vendors from all perspectives. Today I’m straddling vendor marketing and buyer roles. My focus is on B2B buying with a technology slant, but generally applicable to any “considered purchase” cycle
B2B buying process both longer and more complex. Lots of information, much is irrelevant or inaccurate. Effective content marketing can help solve both problems
Marketers are increasingly dependent on content to drive engagement--70 percent of the buyer’s journey occurs before contacting a vendor (Sirius)
Answer without a question is noise—much marketing content is noise
Key words are conceptual and unique—difficult to impossible to actually track a buyer’s journey—approximation to improve results
79% before contact with sales
A nice manicured view of the process—useful as an abstraction and framework, but not for real-world content deploymentDone because it maps to the sales pipeline.
The messy reality—start/stop, retreat.Note the “latent need” stage—buyer is blissfully unaware of problem or opportunity much less a vendor’s solution. This is often the starting point and will increasingly be so as solutions continue to multiply. I believe that the Vendor that gets in at this stage has an edge—he can set the stage for the cycle.
