Dee Blohm is the senior vice president of marketing at Anteriad.
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A funny thing happened to B2B marketers during the pandemic. Not only did more buyers turn to digital channels to help with their purchase journey, but millennials became the largest generation in the working world. Millennials are the first generation of digital natives to dominate the B2B buying process, but they’re quickly being joined by younger generations of professionals who are even more adept with digital channels.
Not Just Business As Usual
According to Forrester, together, millennials and Gen Z make up 64% of business buyers. Forrester notes that 90% are not impressed with their vendors. These buyers want more information, more self-service and more choice.
New buyer demands aren’t just about transforming old offline marketing like direct mail and sales meetings into digital alternatives; it’s about aligning marketing strategies with the things that matter most to these new generations of buyers. According to Merkle, that includes aligning with buyer values, taking care of suppliers and their community and integrating smoothly into the buyer’s current setup. Values like sustainability, diversity and inclusion also matter to many of today’s buyers.
Another transformation in business buying is the shift to peer validation. Younger generations are much more interested in understanding how colleagues and companies with similar needs view a vendor. This comes from their experience using social media—they trust influencers and user-generated content, which influences their buying process.
As a result of these higher demands, buyers take longer to select a vendor and they do more research and consider more options. This puts a lot of new demands on B2B marketers, who need to not only pivot to digital but also deliver content that provides more depth and relevance.
Starting At The Top: Value-Driven Branding
Top-of-funnel marketing matters more than ever for B2B marketers. It’s important to set the stage for a positive buyer journey right from the beginning, and that means providing information about the values that matter to buyers. Marketers should take two steps. First, marketers need to understand the values of their ideal customer profile. This can be determined with a combination of analytics and customer interviews and surveys. If the company’s own values are not aligned with customer or target customer values, a strategic conversation with the executive team is critical.
Once a company has aligned its values with those of its customers as much as possible, marketers should consider branding campaigns that put the key values front and center. Brands also need to have content ready to back up their claims. To provide social proof, having stories and site content to show the company putting its values in action can help with validation.
At Anteriad, we have a few key values that aren’t just for our internal teams. Values like “collaborate and celebrate” feed into the way we support our customers. Similarly, “innovate and inspire” drives our focus on thought leadership to help our customers get out in front and stay there. We are careful to show exactly how these values come across with real examples.
Handing Over The Reins—Somewhat
Younger generations of buyers may say that they want self-service experiences, and they might spend more time researching online by themselves, but that doesn’t mean marketers should leave them alone. Gartner shares that while younger generations are far more used to self-service and prefer it as a starting point, it’s more useful to provide them with assisted service if that route fails to deliver.
This means marketers need to work on two parallel paths. First, they need to map the critical points of the buyer journey and determine how they can make it easier and more streamlined for self-service-oriented buyers. Using data like search behavior, intent signals and website activity can provide a good picture of who looks at what and what they do next. This could mean having more information readily available on the site rather than buried in a manual or catalog that needs to be downloaded, or providing a calculator tool to help them build a potential solution based on different budgets or needs.
At the same time, marketers need to create an excellent assisted service program that can quickly move in when a buyer appears stuck. Sellers and customer service teams need to be intimately connected to the self-service journey so buyers don’t have to repeat themselves or explain their issues over and over again. The goal is to show that the company is available to move the process forward but that the buyer is still in the driver’s seat if that’s what they want. For example, have a seller provide the option of talking to a customer reference to get that all-important social proof.
We’ve used data to create different personas and have developed targeted content that is not only easy to find on our site, but is also part of triggered outreach to make sure our buyers get the information they need and are pushed along the journey in a way that’s relevant.
Addressing Higher Demands Yields Happier Customers
Having a successful engagement with today’s business buyer requires a commitment that goes beyond marketing campaigns. With a data-driven approach to understanding today’s buyer, marketers should have what they need to set their company up for long-term success.
If a marketer ignores the data and fails to align the company with new buyer needs, they could be in for some negative experiences once the buyer becomes a customer. Aligning values and delivering relevant content means that the buyer is well acquainted with the company and its solutions before they sign on the dotted line.
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