THE NEWB2B BUYERS’ JOURNEY A GUIDE FOR DATA-DRIVEN MARKETERS

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Marketing, while critical to any organization, is a function that does not always command the respect it deserves. Too often dismissed as simply a cost center—especially by non-marketing executives—many perceive marketers as creatives that do little more than throw fancy parties, write clever copy, and experiment with pretty ads. The reason for this misconception is simple: too many marketers are unable to justify expenses, because they lack the visibility into the B2B buyers’ journey and the ability to interpret the efficacy of their own campaigns.

The buyers’ journey is a process that must be intimately understood by marketers in order to improve marketing efficiency and drive sustainable revenue growth. Easier said than done, the B2B sales cycle is long and complicated—spanning multiple channels, numerous stakeholders, and disparate technologies—and the ability to attribute marketing-generated contributions to profit and revenue are necessary, but by no means trivial. Today, more than one-third of all marketers (36 percent) cite their biggest challenge as being able to accurately measure and attribute online conversions to the correct marketing channels1.

To succeed, marketers must evolve to become increasingly data-driven. Today’s most effective marketers are backed by performance data and analyst teams with the skills and vision to turn data into action. With better visibility into how various marketing programs coexist and complement each other—accurately measuring and analyzing

campaign performance across channels—marketers will be able tie activities directly to revenue, make smarter decisions, and forecast future outcomes of their marketing initiatives.

This guide will serve as a primer for B2B marketers seeking to realize greater ROI from their marketing investments through a better understanding of the new B2B buyers’ journey. In it, we’ll examine how the journey has evolved in recent years, highlight the opportunity for data-driven marketers, and offer some basic tips to help ensure that your marketing team is well-equipped to thrive as the buyers’ journey continues to evolve.

1, 2: B2B Magazine Survey: “The Evolving B2B Purchase Process”

1 The New B2B Buyers’ Journey: A Guide For Data-Driven Marketers

The majority of marketers(58 percent) said that they were unable to accurately attribute success across the entire marketing funnel2.

THE STATE OF THE B2B BUYERS’ JOURNEY

Today, the B2B sales journey is longer and more complex than ever before and 43% of marketers agree that their B2B sales cycle has increased in length3. Gone are the days when B2B sales was simply a numbers game—moving thousands of leads through a static set of campaigns until a handful of deals emerge. To be successful now, marketers must reach a range of audiences, across varying channels, and do so in a highly targeted way—delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right prospective client.

The current B2B buyers’ journey is defined by a number of trends:

Independent Research Increasingly connected buyers now have unbounded access to information, spurring more and more prospects to self-educate and resist engaging sales until much later in the cycle. Today’s buyers might be up to 90%4 of the way through their research before ever reaching out to a salesperson.

Longer Sales Cycles B2B sales cycles are inherently long because they require multiple touch points, have higher price points, and are generally highly technical in nature. Still, despite the availability of big data and tools designed to help shorten sales cycles, the B2B buyers’ journey has continued to increase in length over the past three years5.

More Stakeholders Today, 81% of B2B marketers say that at least two people are typically responsible for a buying decision6. It’s commonplace for that number to be even higher, with numerous stakeholders weighing in prior to a major purchase’s completion. In tech, media, and financial service-oriented B2B sales, for example, both line-of-business stakeholders (e.g. CMO and team) and corporate stakeholders get involved (e.g. CIO and team).

Marketers can no longer focus solely on the perceived decision maker, as purchases are now made by a committee of stakeholders who all play critical roles in purchase decisions. What’s more, each one of these buyers follows a unique path to purchase—with varying interests and looped into the sales cycle at different stages. Marketers must to understand how and when varying decision makers factor into the buying process in order to more effectively serve targeted content at the most appropriate time.

2 The New B2B Buyers’ Journey: A Guide For Data-Driven Marketers

ATTRIBUTES OF THE NEW B2B BUYERS’ JOURNEY

Research suggests that 90% of the decisionmaking process is complete before a B2B stakeholdereven engages a salesperson4.

3, 5: B2B Magazine: “Priming the Pipeline: Driving Awareness & Sales,”4: Forrester: “Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide The Buyers’ journey”6: B2B Magazine Survey: “The Evolving B2B Purchase Process”

While the state of today’s B2B buyers’ journey presents challenges for marketers, within these challenges lies an even greater opportunity. Marketing is now accountable for a much greater portion of the sales funnel than ever before. As the function that owns the relationship with early-stage prospects, marketers who step-up to the plate can find ways to more effectively engage and convert prospects—integrating tools and procedures that have a significant impact on the revenue cycle.

The traditional B2B sales funnel has evolved from a predictable linear model to a diverse and entangled path, while marketers must still find ways to engage prospects at each step along the way. They draw from an increasingly large pool of tactics, surfacing a wide variety of content across any number of channels.

The following are three tips to ensure that your company is well equipped to capitalize on an evolving buyers’ journey:

While the path-to-purchase may be intertwined, the classic buyer stages remain unswerving: awareness, consideration, and decision. What has changed is that the awareness stage of the buyers’ journey now often accounts for more than we’ve seen previously. While the consideration and purchase stages should not be neglected, focus on producing content that helps prospects identify and understand their pains and opportunities early in the buying cycle.

Integrated demand generation capabilities are critical to building awareness for your brand. With high-quality content—such as webinars, eBooks, white papers—and optimized delivery timing, you’ll to help educate prospects in the channels that matter most.

3 The New B2B Buyers’ Journey: A Guide For Data-Driven Marketers

Optimize your content mix1

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR B2B MARKETERS

CONTENT MIX BY BUYER STAGE

AWARENESS EVALUATION DECISION

INDEPENDENTLY RESEARCH (90%4) ENGAGE SALES

Review educational and third party information to help identify

and understand a problem or opportunity.

Examples: Analyst reports, Research reports, eBooks, White papers, Blog posts, Editorial Content, Expert Content

Research all available approaches and/or methods to solving defined problem or

opportunity

Examples: Webinars, Videos, Podcasts, Comparison white papers, Expert guides, Live interactions

Research supporting documentation, benchmarks, and success stories to make a

final decision.

Examples: Case studies, Product trials, Vendor comparisons, Product comparisons, Integration guides, Live Demo

For marketing professionals growing high value enterprises, time is money. Waiting patiently for leads to trickle in isn’t—by itself—a smart approach. Awareness is more important than ever before and, therefore, we recommend practicing high-velocity marketing. High Velocity Marketing (HVM) is expressed simply as follows:

HVM = Inbound Marketing + Outbound Demand Generation

Inbound Marketing = blog posts, webinars, downloadable assets, etc.

Outbound Demand Gen = distribution via newsletters, display ads, etc.

In other words, rather than creating a high quality webinar, with a name brand customer advocate, and waiting for people to find it through search and word of mouth alone, a high-velocity marketer needs to proactively get that content promoted to the right people, quickly, via paid ads and other distribution channels.

Today’s buyer demands more personalized attention, and to be more personal, ironically, marketers must become more automated. Marketing automation captures buyer behavior—giving us insight into how, when, and where prospects are interacting with our brand. Most importantly, automation tracks all of the data that can help marketers serve more targeted, engaging offers.

But collecting performance data is just half the battle. Without the ability to interpret campaign results, understand how they coalesced with other touches, and ultimately tie marketing efforts to sales, marketers will never be able to effectively predict future marketing outcomes. Marketers who are truly dedicated to data-driven marketing must develop processes and adopt solutions that will aide in not only serving and tracking (automation platforms), but also interpret, plan, and accurately forecast marketing-driven revenue.

4 The New B2B Buyers’ Journey: A Guide For Data-Driven Marketers

Automate and analyze3

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR B2B MARKETERS (CONTINUED)

Practice high-velocity marketing2

While a lengthening, complicated sales cycle presents new challenges for B2B marketers, a huge opportunity exists. Marketing’s influence on the buying process is bigger than ever and marketing has never been in better position to reestablish itself as a core, revenue-driving function of the organization.

With added influence comes great responsibility, but new tools and technology are making it increasingly easier for marketers to accurately attribute, predict, plan, and benchmark campaign performance. The marketers who are able to correctly attribute campaign influence and ROI—including complex, multi-touch scenarios—will prosper. Effective attribution will give marketers the ability to identify performance trends by campaign and channel, isolate gaps, evaluate new investments, and quickly adjust marketing programs to support business priorities. Most importantly, marketers who adopt new tools and procedures necessary to arrive at these valuable conclusions will be able to predict the future revenue impact of every marketing dollar spent.

Marketers with the big picture—full visibility into the efficacy of programs across the buyers’ journey—will be the ones that succeed, and be able to make smarter marketing decisions and drive ongoing marketing-driven revenue and growth.

5 The New B2B Buyers’ Journey: A Guide For Data-Driven Marketers

THE BIG PICTURE

About BrightFunnel

BrightFunnel’s predictive marketing intelligence platform generates actionable revenue insights for B2B CMOs. By empowering marketers to accurately attribute, predict, plan, and benchmark campaign ROI across channels, Brightfunnel helps CMOs understand the revenue impact of every marketing decision. BrightFunnel’s mission is to transform marketing into a revenue function, by taking an approach—unlike traditional BI and analytics— that is predictive from day one, provides immediate and marketing-specific revenue insights, and can be set up in hours—not weeks. Early adopters include data-driven marketers such as HootSuite, ServiceMax, Nimble Storage, and ExactTarget.

Contact us today to find out how Brightfunnel gives you greater visibility into the sales cycle—helping you tie marketing spend to revenue, once and for all.