What does marketing excellence look like? (Part 2)

In my previous blog I explained how we all go through a number of stages when we make a buying decision.

Excellent marketing supports our buyers at every stage of their decision-making process so they can move forward.

To do this, you need to have mapped out your customer’s buying journey because it’ll be different for different markets and products. Once you’ve mapped out your customer’s buying journey, you can then look at how you can reduce the perceived risk at every stage and build trust throughout the journey. By reducing risk and building trust at every stage, it becomes easy for customers to decide to choose you. And if it’s easy for people to buy from you then sales will inevitably increase.

If you haven’t read part 1 yet, where we covered the first stages of the buying journey, click here: Part 1

Building buyer’s interest

Once your buyer is aware of you, you need to let them get to know you in their own time. Build trust by providing regular, quality, short-form content such as;

• Blogs/short articles
• Short videos
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Presentations/slide share
• Social media posts

These pieces of content need to demonstrate your knowledge, authority and experience to build trust and help buyers educate themselves in how to make their decision.

A lot of the best ideas for short-form content come from the questions your customers most commonly ask you, or common misconceptions about your industry or category.

‘Interested’ to ‘Considering’

When your buyer is interested, you then need to empower them so they can make an informed decision. The way to do this is by providing evidence of credibility and authority. Here are a few ways you can do this:

• Case studies, testimonials and online reviews
• Awards, certifications, standards, accreditations, qualifications
• Statistics and facts
• Guarantee
• Third party endorsements or articles about you (PR)

Supporting consideration

Now your buyer is getting serious about their purchase. Your product has been shortlisted and your buyer is weighing up the pros and cons to make sure they make the right decision. They might have a lot of questions or objections that need to be overcome for them to move forwards in their decision. There might also beother people involved in the buying decision that have their own objections.

A lot of businesses leave it up to their Sales team to overcome objections, but there’s a lot that Mareketing can do to make the job of Sales much easier. For example:

• Testimonials and case studies that mention common objections
• Frequently asked questions (web page, pdf or nicely printed version)
• Buyer’s Guide (e.g. “How to choose a graphic designer” or “The FD’s guide to outsourcing software development”)

These pieces of content allow buyers to overcome the most common objections before they speak to anyone in Sales. This means they’re much more likely to buy once they get in contact and your sales process becomes more efficient.

All of the above pieces of content can be printed, digital, audio or video. Ideally you’d have your best content available in more than one format because different buyers have different content preferences.

And the rest?

In my next blog I explain the later stages in a typical buyer journey and showing you how you can implement excellent marketing in your business.

We cover this whole process as part of creating a wider marketing strategy for your business in my Engineer Your Marketing Machine course. If you'd like to hear more about this course, or if you need specific help implementing marketing excellence in your business, get in touch. I'd love to hear about your business challenges and see how I can help.