How much do we know about our buyers?
In the world of B2B marketing every buyer has a different journey. The length and complexity of that journey will have some kind of proportional relationship with the cost and complexity of your product or service.
This is where I should really invent a scientific-looking formula and flog it on the consultancy circuit.
But, of course, it isn’t scientific – at least not entirely. We’re dealing with inherent uncertainties and multiple unknowns.
So the game is one of improving your chances of success. If you know your buyers, it certainly helps.
How well do you know your buyers?
We improve our chances of success by being clear about what we know, honest about what we can’t know, and putting our business in a position where it has a chance of success. And yeah, the quality of your marketing content makes a difference.
What we know:
- Buyers do their homework. They have problems to solve and hit the internet looking for solutions they can understand and can see are relevant.
- Buyers need to trust your solution and the outcome. They have a lot at stake personally and risk is as appealing as a rotting fish head. Trust building starts with clarity.
- Once a buyer has a favourite potential solution/vendor they will prefer to stick with it to stay consistent with previous beliefs and actions (see Robert Cialdini).
- Being identified as a viable partner early in the buying process has enormous advantages. We simply don’t like to change our minds – it takes enegy and requires us to admit we were wrong.
What we should do:
- Invest in knowing your buyers. Find out what they considered when making a choice, what other options they looked at and why they discarded them.
- Ask your sales and customer service teams what questions they ALWAYS get asked.
- Feed all of this into your product development, value proposition AND YOUR MARKETING CONTENT.
If your content answers the right questions early enough in the process, you’ll improve your chances of success. Long-term this may improve your results more drastically than PPC ever could.
And remember the three key points: how this solution will help you, why you need US to provide it, and why you should trust us to deliver what we say.
No points for effort
Once you know your buyers in enough detail, what then?
In business, there are no prizes for doing your best or being a willing amateur.
I thought long and hard about this point and whether I should sugar-coat the message.
But there are some things that B2B SMEs need to hear. Particularly as we’re entering a recession or, at best, a long painful period of slow growth. Times will get tougher.
So I decided to deliver the message raw and hope everyone will see that it’s intended to be helpful rather than criticism for the sake of it.
I spend a lot of time looking at small business websites and marketing materials. I’m an avid picker-up of leaflets at trade fairs.
I see plenty of DIY marketing.
Digital tools make things easy. I could build a WordPress site in a morning, I know how to operate a digital camera and I can produce a functional layout for a flyer. I don’t do any of these commercially because the results would be mediocre – even on a good day.
Aim higher if you want to thrive
I can spot the website or blog copy that someone in the team pulled together and the literature that somebody designed in-house using DTP. It kind of works – but doesn’t.
I’m tired of seeing stock images everywhere rather than stunning photography or graphics. And if I see another roller banner with bullet points or dense copy I might just set fire to it.
I’m sure in every case somebody was doing their best without having the skills, flair or experience to do it well. None of it is helping your business.
This bothers me because time and again it’s a business that the owner and employees care about. But they’re selling themselves short. In the curent climate you can’t afford to do that.
Marketing is serious. It helps deliver growth and might just be what keeps your business afloat in tougher times. So take it seriously.
I hear plenty of people in the marketing industry saying how quiet business is. I also know that it isn’t because B2B SMEs have nailed their marketing and don’t need any more support.
Please put away the DIY kit and talk to some serious marketers and creatives.
If this has got you thinking, let’s have a chat and see where it takes us.