Why does coming up with a content strategy often feel like pulling ideas from a black box?
Probably because for many marketing and sales teams–especially at growing start-ups and scale-ups with a complex purchase process–the B2B buyer journey is a bit of a black box. And when you don’t understand how buyers are buying–and more importantly, what is holding them back from buying–how are you going to come up with a buyer enablement content strategy?
Still, many sales and marketing teams operate with a very vague grasp of what the buying process is like from their buyers’ perspectives. Sales are typically interested only in the information that will help them sell, and marketing usually adopts a general framework –like the awareness-consideration-purchase funnel. At most B2B companies, it’s nobody's job description to become a buying process expert and this is why content planning often feels like pulling teeth.
Why your content strategy shouldn't sit squarely on the shoulders of “The Funnel”
This is the most common approach I’ve seen to content strategy. Usually, the marketing team discussion goes something like “We need more awareness content” or “we need some case studies for bottom-of-the-funnel”. In short, you are creating content to achieve your marketing goals. This is socially acceptable and it won’t get you fired. But you are missing about a million opportunities to increase pipeline velocity and lead quality. Here’s why:
The funnel provides an overview of our marketing and sales strategy relative to the vendor’s perspective–not the buyer’s. In other words, we are building awareness of US (the vendor), consideration of US, etc.
The funnel fails to account for a bunch of crucial buying activities that happen while a buyer is poking around on your website and meeting one of your salespeople—and these activities tend to compose the bulk of the buyer journey.
Researching vendors
Ranking options
Reading through a mountain of content
Fielding questions from every angle and internal stakeholder
Refereeing internal debacles
Comparing costs
And so much more…
The funnel also fails to highlight buyer challenges –and instead blindly proposes tactics without knowing what hurdles we are trying to help buyers surmount.
The funnel falsely misleads us into thinking that buying is a linear progression when in reality, buyers bounce around between checking out websites and talking to sales in no particular order. Furthermore, the funnel has led us to organize marketing and sales as separate functions when the buyer is just trying to get information out of the organization–they don’t care whether they are getting it from marketing or sales.
Is there a better foundational step to take? Yes: mapping the buying process.
Before developing a buyer enablement content strategy for my clients, I build a buying process map based on qualitative data. These maps looks nothing like a typical marketing funnel. Instead, they organize buying insights by the 6 B2B buying jobs that Gartner identified a few years ago.
This one is a bit boring because it's the template minus all the juicy bits, but you get the idea.
Building a buying process map vs. mapping content to the marketing funnel
Oftentimes, marketers will go straight into ideating content strategy, email marketing tactics, and website changes based on how they want the buyer journey to be.
Build-a funnel-and-will-they-come? Not always. Take a look at your lead quality and pipeline velocity to see if this is working for you.
Building a buying process map adds an extra step before jumping straight into funnel-focused marketing tactics. It gives marketing and sales an opportunity to share their individual observations about buyer behavior and build consensus around the actual hurdles that buyers are experiencing. It gives your teams a chance to identify key opportunities to help prospects through the challenges they are facing, and answer the biggest questions they are grappling with.
In short, this means that your marketing and sales strategy won’t be a hopeful shot in the dark based on assumptions but rather grounded in the reality of the actual buyer experience.
How do you build a buying process map?
The best way is to build this based on buying process insights gathered while interviewing a mix of closed-won and closed-lost buyers. This is one of the deliverables during my 8-week Untangle Your Buying Process Buyer Enablement Content Strategy and Research package.
To create a robust buying process map, I recommend exploring the following areas.
Nailing down buyer psychographics. Who are these buyers? What are their most commonly held beliefs?
Identifying the buying triggers (organizational changes that precipitate a need for your service)
Digging into the biggest buying hurdles that are holding buyers back
Identifying the buyer questions that are slowing down the sales cycle
Figuring out the biggest opportunities to make buying easier
Looking into how buyers are quantifying the problem in their business
Including insights on the process through which they are exploring solutions
Listing out the most common buyer requirements
Listening to why buyers did and didn’t buy from you
Asking about any tradeoffs or too-good-to-be-trues about buying from you
Finding out how buyers are building consensus to move forward with this decision.
For clients who don’t have tons of buyers whom we can interview–– there is another option. We can create a working buyer journey map based on a workshop I’ll facilitate with marketing and sales. Then as buyer interviews become possible, we can add more data.
How should mapping the buying process fit into your content marketing planning?
As we covered above, it’s a first step that has to happen before randomly proposing marketing ideas to meet your annual or quarterly goals. Yes, it will definitely take a little more time. But once you are clear on the most considerable obstacles to buying…coming up with content ideas will be dead easy.
Are you looking to shed light on the black box of the buyer journey before planning your content strategy?
Here’s what you can expect from working with me (learn more here):
Reduce buying friction by identifying obstacles and developing laser-targeted buying resources and tools to help.
Get definitive answers about your buyers’ needs and pains and stop wasting marketing resources and sales cycles with wishy-washy priorities.
Align marketing and sales strategy around a shared understanding of buyers. We’ll demystify the complex, circuitous buyer journey and then codify it for practical daily reference.
Create a more predictable pipeline by empowering sales to be a buying guide, anticipating buyer needs, and sharing content designed to signal buyer intent.
Convert more leads by accessing key buyer feedback to align your marketing messaging and sales training to speak your buyer’s language.
Rally marketing and sales around a shared pipeline goal: What can we do to make buying easier?
P.S. Thanks for sticking around; it’s been a hot minute since my last post! Fast-forward 5 crazy months, including a round of COVID-19, a rebrand, a house-hunt in Andalusia and a road trip of the Iberian Peninsula. Life is good but doesn’t bode well for the consistency of my writing schedule. Begging forgiveness. I am looking forward to what I hope will be a peaceful 2022.