No Surprise: B2B Buyers Need to Find Your Content
GlobalSpec recently published its latest survey report: Understanding the Industrial Buy Cycle: How to Align Your Marketing with Your Customers’ Buying Process.
The 17-page report covers ground most marketers (should) already know regarding the four stages of the B2B buy cycle: Needs Awareness, Research, Comparison and Consideration, and Procurement.
Buyers in each stage use various sources to find the information they need to make purchasing decisions, including supplier Websites, print catalogs, trade publications, tradeshows, and of course search engines and social media.
In fact, a whopping 69% of survey respondents indicated they use social media (defined as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) to find information in the “Needs Awareness and Research” phase while 60% use blogs and 55% use search engines.
Even more important for B2B marketers, 33% of respondents indicated that supplier Websites and catalogs are the most important information sources by the time the “buyer reaches the Procurement stage.”
While it’s easy to read into the survey results that traditional marketing tactics no longer work or that marketers should move all marketing activities to social media, the exact opposite is true: Buyers need to be exposed to your company and its products / services before they know they need you.
This means that you must engage in a long-term strategic marketing campaign that includes tradeshows, direct mail, e-newsletters, social media, and industry portal Websites, Webinars etc. — on a continual basis. As the GlobalSpec survey authors point out:
From the beginning of the buy cycle to the end, the supplier that is eventually selected is exposed to the buyer many times. The company may have first become visible through an Internet search, or exposure to its online catalog, or a banner ad on an industrial site, or any number of ways. A marketer may not always know what specific exposure initiated the process that culminated in a sale.
In fact, the survey goes on to say, 62% of respondents type company names they know into a search box versus typing the URL directly as it saves time and reduces error (this is very true for how I search).
What matters in the end, however, is that in order to make a buyer’s “short list,” you must ensure your company and its content get found by potential buyers.
During the initial Research phase, 42% of buyers evaluate four or more suppliers but as buyers move toward the Procurement stage, only 26% get quotes from those four suppliers — meaning 74% go with fewer suppliers.
Those that drop off the list are often those who did not provide the right level of information to buyers or did not meet some other perceived or real need in the buyer.
So, what does this mean for small and mid-sized B2B companies?
1. Continually add new content to your site that helps buyers at all stages of the buy cycle make purchasing decisions and that educates them about how you’ll help solve their problems / challenges.
2. Optimize this content — and push it out via social media and other tactics — so that buyers can find it no matter where they are (i.e. using search engines or lurking on LinkedIn) as well as driving them back to your site.
3. Develop methods for keeping your company top of mind for not-yet-ready-to-buy prospects, including Webinars, e-newsletters and other methods.
4. Ask your prospects what kind of information they need to make purchasing decisions — and then give it to them.
5. Rinse, repeat.
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