Recently, SPOTONVISION co-founder and B2B marketing guru Ingrid Archer presented a content clinic at Beeckestijn Business School. She shared the latest trends in B2B with the 300+ participants and discussed ways to collect insights about buyers, their B2B buyer journey, as well as how to create content that converts. A recap of the most important learnings.
Real-time and personalization is now possible
The trend of doing business online has accelerated immensely due to the global Covid-19 crisis. More than ever the Internet is the place to find and target your potential buyer. This means that using technologies such as chatbots, interactive calendars, and personalization tools are a must. Technology can help increase the overall customer experience. And, above all, Marketing and Sales should work together to understand when, how, and where you can help your customers buy.
B2B buyers say buying is difficult
B2B buyers do not buy alone, they operate in groups. What criteria are important to consider when choosing a product? What features are important for the different players involved? According to Gartner, 77% of B2B buyers experienced their last purchase as difficult or complex.
By providing accessible information, full (price) transparency, and real-time responses to questions you can make buying easier for your potential buyers.
How are you helping your buyers buy?
Understand who your buyer is
Helping your buyers with their purchase starts with visualizing a DMU by uncovering buyer personas. Personas go deeper than demographics. Find out what drives your buyers, what are their goals? When do they succeed in achieving those goals? What barriers do they experience? How do they access information?
It helps to create and visualize a buyer journey that is based on the buyer’s drivers and barriers. The journey starts with the moment a need was first recognized and ends with the purchase.
Are you adjusting your content to each phase of the journey?
Final tips
Set clear and measurable goals. How do you know whether your content is effective if you do not know how to measure this? Have a clear end goal in mind and adapt your content when the goals are not reached.
Also, do not forget to repurpose existing content. Content often takes a lot of resources and time to produce, so why only use it once?
Finally, it is important to remember that creating a buyer persona, buyer journey or content plan in itself are not end goals. Always keep in mind the end goal: number of deals, customer retention, or brand awareness.
Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about your B2B content strategy.
