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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:

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Let’s talk. The two words that everyone dreads to hear, but we promise what we’re up to won’t hurt you, it will help you. It’s about how you are using social media to leverage B2B marketing tactics. Now don’t panic! We’ve come up with five tactics that can help you get back on your social.

Being observant of the lingo the customer is using can help strengthen a company’s SEO/SXO marketing efforts as well as maintain their customer base. And customer language doesn’t have to be complicated or foreign; it should be simple, informative, and straight to the point. After all, if they don’t understand you, they won’t buy from you.

After the 2008 financial crisis, the Wall Street banks were clearly one of the largest and most hated industries in the country. The recession erased all of the positive impressions people had for this industry. If the business of big banking had a tagline during this tumultuous period, it would be "You suffer, we sail."

The novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway is known for his famous Iceberg Theory—to only explicitly include one-eighth of the details in the story, and leave the other seven-eighths implicit and underwater. For example, his story “Hills Like White Elephants” is about a man convincing his significant other to have an abortion, but the word abortion is never mentioned.

The senses are a near-universal way to connect with people. They are anchors for memory, and that is the goal of marketing—to get ideas related to your company to live in people’s brains.

How do you present yourself when you meet a client, or even a date? Imagine if you never made eye contact with them or didn’t offer a handshake. They probably wouldn’t want to deal with you, even if your product was impeccable or you were incredibly good looking. 

The most important part of your interaction is taking the small risk to engage. The same rules apply to your B2B marketing strategy. The market is saturated with content—heartless, cookie-cutter content. Make your campaign stand out by making it human. Here are three ideas to consider in that process.

If you are still trying to figure out how your company will stand out amongst your competitors online, you need to revisit the Inbound Marketing method. This method will allow you to identify the right kind of prospects online and turn them into satisfied customers and brand loyalists.

Before you dive into business as usual in the new year, take the time to map out a content marketing strategy that identifies new insights and inspirations that improve upon last year’s results.

Have you ever written a blog post, social media post or email that was never opened or read? This could be happening if you don’t have a content strategy that is specifically mapped to your buyer personas. Personas are a semi fictional representation of your real customer base that comes from industry research and your professional experiences.