The Sales Cycle Has Become the Buying Cycle

If you are like many B2B marketers, you have great content-delivery tools—in the form of marketing-automation or campaign-management software—but a short supply of effective content to push to the market.

There are two reasons for the lack of content: marketing myopia and underestimating how buyers use content.

Marketing myopia. Many marketing departments are driven by their own internal events, such as new-product launches, user conferences, and the CEO's latest initiative. But that is the myopic approach.

Here's the painful truth: Your prospects couldn't care less. They move through the sales cycle at their own pace, based on their own needs and pressures.

In fact, it is not even accurate to call it a sales cycle anymore. It is really a buying cycle—and the buyer is in control. Therefore, the most effective content, and thus the most effective marketing, must meet the buyer's needs, not yours!

Underestimating how buyers use content. Marketing doesn't fully understand how buyers use content. B2B marketing is no longer just in the business of brand management and lead generation. It must serve a huge demand for content that spans buyers' needs, from pre-awareness to post-sale. And matching the right content to each buyer—at the right phase of the buying cycle—is critical.

An intelligent content strategy gives buyers the content they want at each phase of the buying cycle.

Four Stages of the B2B Buying Cycle

The B2B buying cycle has four recognizable stages, each requiring a wholly different content approach.

1. Unaware: The buyer is not explicitly in the market but should be. Content should be interruptive.
2. Tentative: The buyer is standing at the edge, or quietly wading into the market.
   Content should be educational.
3. Engaged: The buyer is in a dialogue with your company. Content should be validating.
4. Invested: The buyer is a customer. Content should be exclusive.

Those four stages provide a useful wireframe that helps B2B marketers answer "What makes buyers buy?" and guides their production of the content buyers demand.

B2B Buying Stage 1: The Unaware Buyer

Unaware buyers don't care about your product, even if they need it. And they certainly don't care about your webinar or your tradeshow booth. Unaware buyers don't think they need to buy anything.

Content for the unaware buyer must be interruptive. It has to cause would-be prospects to do a double take and change their minds about what you have to say. And it has to be about them, not about you.

To arrest attention from unaware buyers...

• Speak loudly to the pain they are tolerating: High failure rates? Lost shipments? Excessive IT maintenance costs?
• Make it news. A new research finding is news; your product-launch press release may be. But a "happy user" case study certainly is not.
• Make it emotional. Humor, fear, and storytelling are proven to work. Don't be boring with the unaware buyer.
• Know your buyer persona. Develop solid personas for unaware buyers to be sure your content speaks to them personally.

B2B Buying Stage 2: The Tentative Buyer

Research shows that most B2B projects start without a budget or purchase authority—when the potential buyer does a Web search to begin to solve a problem. That is the tentative buyer, one who wants to learn as much as possible about the best solution without being sold anything.

Content for the tentative buyer must be educational. It has to give the buyer a feeling of control over the research process, while gently, almost subliminally, guiding the buyer to your solution. It has to be about the buyer's problem and how to solve it—not your solution and how great it is.

How do you educate the tentative buyer?

• Make the shift internally. Here's a simple test: Look at your search keywords. Do they describe the buyer's problem? (They should.) Or do they merely describe  your solution?
• Make your website a self-qualification tool. Interactivity allows the buyer to perform research and self-qualify. Use analytics and marketing automation to capture valuable lead information even while the buyer takes charge.
• Be guided by a spirit of generosity. Lead with learning, and ditch the pitch. The title "What Financial Regulation Means for Main Street Bankers" has more educational appeal than "Streamline Banking Customer Care With the XYZ Solution."
• Don't talk about babies on the first date. Long registration forms for whitepapers and too many commands to "Call us now!" conspire to make a tentative buyer feel less in control.

B2B Buying Stage 3: The Engaged Buyer

Your solution is on the buyer's short list. Does that mean that your work providing marketing content is done? Hardly. Your buyer is engaged... but still needs plenty of information.

Content for the engaged buyer must be validating. Now is the time to confirm the engaged buyer's good impression, answer questions and objections, make your offering compelling, and—most of all—help the buyer feel safe.

Here are a few examples of content for the engaged buyer:

• Case studies. Help the buyer relate to your current customer. By describing your established success, you relieve feelings of risk the buyer might have.
• Third-party articles. Even if an article's focus is more corporate- than solution-based, remember that the engaged buyer is researching your company's vision as well as your product.
• Competitive comparisons. Fight the old-fashioned reticence to discuss a competitor's strengths; the engaged buyer will appreciate your candor and confidence.
• Customer-friendly legal documents. Plain-English agreements eliminate the win/lose mentality. Doing business well and being easy to do business with don't have to be mutually exclusive.

B2B Buying Stage 4: The Invested Buyer

Like your prospects, your customers are also buyers in a buying cycle. The important distinction is that they have made an investment in your company. Give them their rightful place in your value chain.

Content for the invested buyer must be exclusive. It should give the buyer a sense of being a member of a select group. Just as parents don't talk to a teenager the same way they talk to a toddler, you can't afford marketing materials that talk down to your customers.

How can your content foster a stakeholder relationship with your invested buyers?

• Inform, don't educate. Content should be informative like a newspaper, not educational like a textbook. Send customers new research that affects them.
• Treat customers as members. Sneak previews of new information and "insider" tips that don't upsell set the right tone. Personalize emails and Web content.
• Use an informal and conversational style. Remember, invested buyers are part of your family. They have given you permission to communicate informally.
• Don't take the customer for granted. Don't let customers leak out of the end of the sales funnel, only to get swept up by a competitor. Analyze your marketing plan to ensure an appropriate amount of effort is allocated for customers.

Your Next Step: Map Out Your Content Strategy

Marketing myopia is curable once a marketing organization commits to communicating with its buyers, first and foremost. With the four stages in mind, it becomes much easier to brainstorm topics for new content and ways to reuse and repurpose the content you have.

Compromise nothing to internal drivers: Concentrate on the buyer. The result will be a comprehensive, multitouch content program that drives business and gets results.