Is all your marketing aimed at those who already know what they want?
It seems obvious – put your marketing budget into attracting prospects when they already know what they want to buy. Right?
Wrong!
Let’s consider a typical buyer’s journey:
If you spend all your time and budget attracting buyers when they’re Product Aware and Fully Aware, you’ll miss the chance to influence them earlier in their journey.
They won’t see you build your brand and solution at the outset. So you’ll be battling for attention at the most expensive and competitive end of the journey...
It’s Time To Change Your Strategy
In terms of Organic Search, your site is optimised for your products and services. Guess what? Your competitors are doing the same thing.
And the same applies if you’re using paid search to attract new business. All your serious competitors will be in this space too. So getting your share of impressions will be difficult – and the price per click will be more expensive as a result.
If you’re advertising in specialist publications, not only is it difficult to calculate an ROI, I bet all your competition advertised in it too. The same is true of trade exhibitions: a room full of your competitors – and you’re all paying a fortune to be compared.
More importantly, your prospect has already done their research. They already know what they want. The reason they’re searching for exactly what you do is because they already know what they want to buy.
This means they’re probably moving to the consideration phase and are comparison shopping and looking for the best price.
Deal or No Deal
We know that the only way you can win new business is by being able to differentiate your product or service and/or by offering the lowest price.
If you’re selling only on price then there’s no ability to prove or add value (or profit for you to do so). It becomes a race to the bottom and only the buyer wins. No surprise then that 72% of B2B sales leads end in either a ‘no’ or ‘no decision’.
Some 67 per cent of the buyer’s journey is completed digitally (with 72 per cent of buyers using Google during the awareness stage of research). Couple this with the fact that the journey in B2B can last from three months to a year.
Don’t you think it’s time to start spending some of your time and budget on attracting the buyer early on in their journey?
Guess what, there’s much less competition, the clicks are cheaper and you get to own and influence the buyer – right when it matters.
But more importantly, 74 per cent of B2B deals are awarded to companies that were the first to add value and insight. This means they’re no longer buying on price alone!
Not only is it better for you but the prospects prefer it too: 95 per cent of buyers prefer brands that provide content throughout the buying process.
Surely then, armed with this information, you would change how you market your business!
Inbound Marketing
The most effective way of changing how you attract new leads to your business is by creating the right content at the right time for the right person, then nurturing them through the buying process. This is Inbound Marketing.
Find out exactly what Inbound Marketing is by downloading our free e-book now.
