Digital marketing content continues to win viewers, and buyer enablement content offers a shortcut to helping those viewers make better—and faster—buying decisions.
Gartner says that 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyers and suppliers will be in digital channels by 2025. We also know that buying groups have continued to expand, so there’s greater need to reach buyer groups—not just individual decision-makers.
To make things more complicated, more buying decisions are being made in private outside the view of traditional sales teams. So digital marketing has a heavy load to carry: It’s got to persuade buyers while guiding them through the purchasing journey—with few, if any, cues to tell us where they are in their journey.
In short, we’re seeing an increased need for marketing and sales alignment, working together to optimize the buyer’s journey for digital and remote sales experiences. Buyers want to complete as much of the purchasing process as possible online and without interference from sales reps. It’s our job as marketers to empower them and streamline their journey.
That means we’re seeing a greater need for buyer enablement and content that facilitates consensus among buying decision-makers.
Buyer enablement offers support for those who are completing what Gartner identifies as the four buying tasks: problem identification, solution exploration, requirements building and vendor selection.
Here are six ways we can do that:
- Use digital tools to usher prospects along the journey. Website chats improve website conversion rates, and self-service web tasks satisfy their DIY instincts for payments, re-ordering and lookup histories.
- Incorporate video solutions like Vidyard or Vimeo as stand-ins for human interaction to demo processes or offer helpful hints along their pathways to purchase.
- Good, old-fashioned “thank yous” still work. Nurture and thank your prospects, customers and partners to keep existing customers coming back and bring new ones to the party. Gifts are one way to do this.
- Reduce friction. Make registrations and approvals, for example, as fast as possible—automate them if you can.
- Personalize their journeys with product recommendations and items tailored to the tasks they’re completing in any given moment.
- Always monitor your customer experiences to make sure you’re improving UX whenever and wherever you can. Survey your customers—or just ask them what went right and what could use a boost.
Buyers want content that delivers the insights they need to make the best decisions for their teams and their businesses. As marketers, it’s in our best interest to make sure they get it.
Take a closer look at what buyers need at each step of the journey, what questions your content should answer and which formats are up to the task. Check out Inside the New Buying Experience: How to Create Awesome Buyer Enablement Content for tips and best practices.
Holly Celeste Fisk
Holly Celeste Fisk is an accomplished marketing pro with 20+ years of experience in B2B and B2C. She’s responsible for Content4Demand’s internal marketing efforts, managing everything from content creation and email marketing to events and sponsorships, blog publishing, website management and social media presence. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sliding into third at softball, buried in a book or practicing her Italian.
