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While the purchase funnel has served B2B marketers well over the years, a recent study conducted by Latitude found 87% of buyers now travel a less linear, more complex pathway to final purchase. The four key pillars of the funnel–attract, convert, close, and delight–are still relevant but, you may want to start thinking about the mental state and behaviors of your buyers during the purchase cycle.
Latitude’s study uncovered six behavioral and mental states buyers will experience:
- Openness: A receptiveness to new and better experiences
- Realized Want or Need: Comes into motion by a catalyst like a recommendation
- Learning and Education: Done to make the buyer feel secure in their purchase
- Seeking Inspiration: Buyers who are looking for ideas or motivation
- Vetting: Buyer gathers support around the intent of their purchase
- Post-Purchase: Buyers use their experience to rate the purchase
In the digital age, buyers have found themselves more informed and less impulsive than ever. Here are a few quick tips to help improve upon the classic funnel and speak to the modern buyer’s pathway to final purchase.
Start with Personas
If you want to build a successful marketing strategy to stand out against competitors, you must understand who is interested in your product and why. By building in-depth personas you can focus in on the wants and needs of your audience. The more you narrow down your target audience the better chance you have of appealing to buyers in the openness or realization state.
Once you have clearly-defined buyer personas, you have a higher chance of your message reaching people who are already looking for a solution like yours–setting yourself up with the best possible leads.
Automate Follow Ups
We live in a modern society filled with self-educating buyers, whose purchasing decisions are often made before they even go to your website. If you didn’t manage to snag the response you were looking for from your first encounter–here is your chance!
The rise of marketing automation platforms has greatly simplified digital marketing for B2B companies, since they can efficiently systematize repetitive tasks across channels like social media and email. These platforms give you the opportunity to keep yourself at the forefront of your targets mind, increasing your chances of catching them in the realization or inspiration state.
By developing automated landing pages, emails, and social posts you are slowly working yourself into the forefront of their minds and building brand awareness. Follow that up with content that is specific to their needs and the questions they may be facing, showing them you understand their needs and how best to meet them.
Maximize Your Efforts
Maximize your marketing spend by targeting your efforts around attracting prospects that best fit your personas. Try utilizing tools like GoogleAnalytics and CRMs to create clean segmented lists to fine tune your nurture efforts.
A CRM or, “Customer relationship management” is a term that refers to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. By doing this you will not only be able to get a clear sense of which personas are on point, but what efforts are going unnoticed.
So what do you say? Are you ready to get started and implement these tactics into your marketing mix? Great! At thinkdm2 we are here to help fulfill your marketing needs while making your life a little easier. Want to know more about us? Click below.
