Are you a B2B Marketing sadist?!
You should be...and here's why! You should want your targeted buyer to be in pain, real pain. Your buyer should be desperate to stop the agony.
Pain, in business terms, is the impact of severe problems that are without a solution. If your targeted buyer has a problem in their business that is causing the business to suffer, then they will make a decision, they will take action to stop the pain...and they probably won't be asking for a discount!
As sellers you want to be part of that action and part of that solution to the problem.
Without real pain, a real problem; an identified gap from where they are now to where they want to be; buyers rarely act. They may identify a need they have but unless that need is tied back to a problem that is causing significant pain to the business they will question the need to invest in your solution.
The implications for marketers are numerous.
- You must be blisteringly clear about who your buyer is and what problems you are in the business of solving. There is one problem that your target buyers have that you are best at solving. Are you clear on what that is? You need to be.
- Your messaging and content must trouble the buyer about the problems they have, make them understand the pain of inaction, the benefits to the firm of solving the problem. Examples of firms who have solved the same challenge, education oriented content around ways to solve problems are examples of the content you might produce.
- Engage at the right time in the buyer's cycle. How do I know when is the right time? The answer is: You don't. Therefore your marketing campaigns must honour this and have a well designed, affordable recycling tactic, to ensure your buyer is aware of you and then when the time is right they will engage and drop into the top of your funnel.
- Prepare and plan to nurture. Once a buyer identifies a problem and identifies your firm has a potential solution and has made initial contact, your marketing campaigns should be designed to nurture the buyer to the next stage in the buyer's journey. By creating a content map that is aligned to the buyer's journey, you can drive traffic to specifically designed landing pages that host content and offers that deliver genuine value to the buyer at that stage of the purchase process.
- From sadist to hero! By nurturing leads through the stages of the buyer's journey you will be able to pass leads to sales that are genuinely sales ready. Through their interactions with you, buyers have identified their problem and their need to solve it, indicated they are ready to engage and know that your firm is in the business of solving their problem. Any self respecting salesperson will jump at the chance to engage with those leads...and when was the last time your sales team thought marketing were heroes!
If you would like to read about the concepts of the buyer's journey and using content to nurture leads, please download this complementary eBook.
