The decision-making process of B2B buyers is complex, and a collective one. The B2B buying collective includes six to eight people on average with different levels of involvement, priorities, and preferences. IT decision makers (ITDMs) – a primary stakeholder throughout the journey – conduct extensive research and consume on average 17 content assets to help inform their purchase decisions. Therefore, marketers need to identify their buyer personas, understand their needs and preferences to develop a buyer’s journey, and create content that’s relevant at every stage of the buying lifecycle to ultimately take their content marketing strategies to the next level.
In this two-part series, we will first delve into how to map the buyer’s mind and the stages in a buyer’s decision-making process. The second part of the series will cover the content assets recommended for every stage.
Unlocking the Mind of B2B Technology Buyers
For tech marketers, creating relevant content and meeting the expectations of B2B technology buyers begins with understanding how buyers think:
- What problems are they trying to address?
- What solutions are they seeking?
- Where are they searching to find solutions?
- What do they expect from vendors?
- Does the entire buying collective agree with the selection and solution?
Answers to these questions can give marketers a better understanding about how their buyers think and help navigate the buyer’s journey with relevant content.
Navigating the Buyer’s Journey – Attract, Engage, and Aid Decision Making
Developing the buyer’s journey based on how buyers think can help marketers create relevant content and guide buyers at every stage of the buying lifecycle. There are typically three stages in the decision-making process of buyers – awareness, consideration, and selection.
At every stage, marketers can get an opportunity to capture attention, create engagement, establish trust, build a relationship, and convince buyers to make the right choice. Marketers can capitalize on these moments when they’re ready with the right type of content distributed through the right channels.
- Top of the Funnel (ToFu) – Awareness Stage – When buyers have identified a need, marketers should be ready to build awareness around it. At this early stage, it’s the marketer’s role to attract buyers by creating content that addresses their pain points and making it easy to discover and consume.
- Middle of the Funnel (BoFu) – Consideration Stage – When buyers are researching and evaluating solutions, marketers should be ready with content that fosters consideration. Buyers move to this stage when marketers have succeeded in capturing their attention. It’s at this stage marketers can show why their solutions are the best fit. This is the best stage to extend engagement with buyers, establish trust, and build a relationship.
- Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu) – Decision Stage – At this critical stage, when buyers are negotiating and making a decision, marketers should support sales with relevant content. With the right offer and sharing relevant content assets (such as a demo or a comparison guide), or even a compelling call-to-action, this could be the final nudge to get buyers to make that purchase decision.
The buyer’s journey may be different based on various factors such as the industry, audience, product, pricing, and business model. For instance, someone purchasing a pair of headphones would require lesser engagement and nurturing compared to someone making a purchase of a business software solution. Tailoring the engagement and nurturing path for different type of buyer personas can help build custom content marketing plans that generate better results.
In our next series, we will cover different types of content assets (with examples) that are relevant to technology buyers at every stage in their buying lifecycle.
If you’d like to elevate your content marketing strategy – from conception, creation, to conversion – talk to our experts.