There’s no denying that our world moves at a fast-pace, a pace that seems to increase on a regular basis. This can make keeping up with current trends and client demands somewhat difficult. Many agencies pride themselves on their ability to provide a quick turnaround, but also make designing and implementing a successful buyer’s journey an afterthought.
Why is this important? Without a buyer’s journey in place, how will you know which of your marketing tactics are working versus which are not? A complete buyer’s journey allows you to outline the touch points and references customers require in order to feel comfortable purchasing a product or service from you. This is particularly important in the world of B2B marketing. As you may recall from various globalHMA blogs, B2B decisions are generally made by a team, not a single person, and take between 9 to 12 touch points before a purchase is made.
These touch points have to be presented to your potential customers in a strategic manner, and that’s where the buyer’s journey comes in. You need to take the time to sit down and really think through your marketing strategy. Flooding your customers’ inboxes with random, weekly emails is not going to lead to a purchase. You need to start thinking as if you were the client. Map out the pieces of content that would lead you to a purchase, including an introduction to your company, case studies about specific products, infographics, videos, etc.
Once you’ve collected these pieces of content, think through how customers will be receiving this content. Here are some critical questions to consider as you develop your buyer’s journey:
- Will the content be placed on your website or on a new landing page?
- Where is the content placed on your page?
- Easy to find?
- Above the fold?
- Is your content gated – requiring a form submission?
- Does your form submission take the customer to a ‘Thank You’ page?
- Does your form submission trigger an auto-responder email?
- Is your contact information easily found?
- Do you have goal conversions set for accurate measurement?
Take the content that you gathered and the questions that you’ve answered about how the content will be used and map out your journey. The most important thing to remember is that your buyer’s journey should contain relevant content and be easy for the customer to understand.
