English: Rackwick on Hoy. The sea was still & a profound green that changed with the light. Rackwick was almost deserted in spite of the warm day. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“What exactly is a buyer insight?”

I was asked this recently.  It made me think.  It is a term you hear and easy to quickly assume you know.  Turns out, there seems to be confusion given the rise in the use of the term “insight”.

Defined

A good place to start is with a brief answer to the question itself.  Here is my guiding answer:

A buyer insight is a profound, not-so-obvious, revelation as well as understanding of buyers, which leads to new innovations, value creation, marketing & sales capabilities, and business growth.

The basis of this definition is a buyer insight must be profound and it must alter an existing direction into one offering growth.

Do Not Confused Fact With Insight

One of the biggest areas of confusion I have noticed is misinterpreting a fact as an insight. One way of putting it is insight goes well beyond fact.  To be profound means an insight is an often unforeseen as well as unarticulated observation, which leads to a new deep understanding.  This new deep understanding then reshapes business growth strategies.

Uncovering facts of how buyers do things can result in improving effectiveness.  However, improving effectiveness is not a clear direct connection to a profound insight.  Mislabeling fact as insight can actually impede deep understanding and innovation.

Simply put, labeling as a buyer insight the “how” of buying processes can lead to a dead end.  How companies and buyers establish criteria for purchase decisions is a focus on process and even established policies.  While in B2B marketing, this knowledge may be new, for B2B sales it is not.  I often get this reaction from B2B sales reps when they see some of the information resulting from buyer personas – “wait, isn’t this the same as Miller Heiman” or the many other sales training methodologies.

Many a good sales leader expects their sales force to be effective at understanding how to mesh the sales process with the buying process.  Marketing effectiveness is enhanced when we also understand the early stages of the buying process involving digital research and evaluation.  Understanding “how” helps us be more effective but such facts may not necessarily be a profound game changer we can call a buyer insight.

The Softer Side of Why

A buyer insight is derived from what I call the softer side of why.  They stem from buyer goals, fears, motivations, perceptions, why buyers think as they do, why they desire, and why they value certain things over others.  As you can see, these are often very hard for buyers to articulate.   They are usually not so obvious as well.  It takes hard work, digging deeper, face time, and use of skilled techniques to reach a special understanding we can call a buyer insight.

An common illustration we can all relate to can help make the point:

My hunch is many readers are Starbuck’s lovers.  A well known fact is Starbuck’s gained a level of insight on how customers were becoming loyal to Starbuck’s not necessarily for the coffee itself but for the experience.  Starbuck’s took insight to a deeper level.  Uncovering the insight of music being the largest element of the experience.  It was not apparent at first (not so obvious).  This profound insight led to a new business growth strategy.  The Starbucks compilation CD’s.  Which has proven to be a way of enhancing customer loyalty and creating a new revenue category.

In my recent article, How Activity-Based Buyer Persona Development Generates Opportunities, I used an illustration of a B2B situation whereby the decision to choose logistics and transportation carriers were being made in loading centers versus the front office.  What was the reason why?

The motivation was a personal goal and desire to get home on time.  The archetypal buyer persona was in their 30's and had family activities right after work.  One carrier’s system was perceived as taking longer than the other.  This perception resulted in the competitor system being chosen more often.  The profound insight led to a redesign of a new speedier ordering system.  A new marketing campaign was developed to subtly highlight you can get home on time.  This was not-so-obvious at first and something Directors of Logistics were reluctant to share with superiors - let alone the selling company’s sales or marketing reps.

These illustrations serve as examples of profound buyer insights, which led directly to business growth.

The takeaway here for B2B Marketing and Sales leaders is this: think of buyer research and buyer persona development as a gateway to profound buyer insights.  Challenge the presentation of facts as insights.  You are in need of game changing buyer insights to be a market leader – not mere facts.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.  If I can be of help, schedule time with me at So Helpful Tony.)

Related articles

• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• Map Content to the 5 Phases of the B2B Buyer Persona Buying Cycle
• How Activity-Based Buyer Persona Development Generates Opportunities
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

• What is a Buyer Insight? (tonyzambito.com)

But B2C marketing is primarily focused on so-called lead generation and customer acquisition. After all, the best way to get critical mass for your app or web service is to spend most of your marketing investment attracting eyeballs so that the ad server CPM model will work to your advantage. That’s a relatively static paradigm that’s been in effect for quite some time in B2C that promises to stick around for the foreseeable future.

B2B marketing, however, at least in the high end enterprise datacenter world that I’ve lived in for the past several years, is less about lead generation and capturing volumes of qualified names, as it’s not that difficult to identify the right customer segment profile, say, for network switches or routers. Vendors like Juniper and Cisco know exactly who those people are – but their challenge now is way more dynamic, as it's one more predicated on how to tailor the right conversation with compelling, exclusive content, even better if the selection and lifecycle of topics can be automated with a robust customer listening platform . . . strategic, differentiated content that’s relevant to very rapidly shifting market conditions, primarily driven by faster moving start-ups, emboldened by open source technology, with the will and daring to bet their company on the pursuit of bold innovation.

And what happens if you are the Cisco of your industry, a networking vendor that enjoys a dominant market share (today) of high end enterprise IT infrastructure, but rather than facing merely a positioning and messaging challenge to a captive audience of essentially the same products and services you have already been selling, you’re up against a tsunami-style computing trend that threatens to wash away your massive legacy installed base, incumbent advantage?

That’s exactly what happened in the last year and a half, when the competitive landscape shifted under Cisco’s feet, away from an expensive (hardware) device-centric purchasing and deployment model to one that cares less about the underlying physical infrastructure and more so about the ability to dynamically provision network capacity for virtualized applications. The SDN (software-defined networking) movement, predicated in large part on an open standard called OpenFlow, not only threatens to commoditize Cisco and other brand-conscious networking device-centric vendors, but to a certain degree, also represents a threat to VMWare as the primary platform for virtualizing IT infrastructure (see Nicera acquisition).

And thus the race is on in the strategic marketing domain within the networking industry to see who can create the best ‘marchitecture’ positioning to capitalize on the SDN computing trend. What are some other examples of how B2B marketing is being challenged to reinvent value proposition storylines?

Network Security: Up until very recently, and fairly consistently for the last several years, the prevailing orthodoxy was that antivirus and antimalware software were required to fully protect all clients or devices in the enterprise from malicious attacks. However, many CIOs woke up to the fact that the license fees they’re paying for subscriptions and maintenance are not only exorbitant but show little evidence of actually working – the so-called malicious threat environment is as bad as it’s ever been, and multi-threaded client-device screening for malware attacks, while impeding your employees’ productivity, that may or may not disrupt the continuity of your enterprise is, perhaps, a dubious business benefit. One very prominent large enterprise CIO recently sent out the first salvo, basically saying his company would turn off all such client-device screening and live with the consequences.

Another good example is what’s happening in storage; for years, the generally accepted protocols for provisioning network-attached storage in the enterprise – NFS, CIFS, iSCSI etc. – were considered sufficient to highlight compatible support for. However, again largely driven in the open source community and by Internet giants like Yahoo and Google, and the advent of Big Data everywhere, the Hadoop standard has very quickly become the requisite storage/computing trend to show relevancy for.

Finally, look at the movement to cloud computing – no serious business model can sustain competitive advantage without a portion of its IT infrastructure “outsourced” to the cloud, and yet, very few C-suite business leaders understand the broad implications of doing so from a security and management standpoint. For example, in order to expose a piece of corporate infrastructure and underlying data so that third parties’ applications (via APIs) can interoperate in the cloud (and across mobile platforms, too), the enterprise must create a tightly controlled, secured, managed and compliant API.

With the challenging landscape of SEO comes the challenging landscape of SEO reporting, and I’m not just talking about merging SEO data sources into one excel file and adding a logo to try to make it look professional, presentable and understandable. I’m talking about how to make all the data points and metrics indicate real progress, and more importantly meet your clients’ or boss’ expectations.

Since the way we do SEO has changed, the way we report on it must change too. Effectively setting up the reporting metrics to prove progress may make the difference between meeting the clients’ expectations or not.

SEO reporting should answer these questions for your client:

• Are our efforts helping us reach our organic search goals?
• What SEO tasks were completed last month in relation to our goals?
• What impact did these efforts have on the web presence for organic search?
• What new opportunities were identified to optimize for organic search?
• Are there any new competitive threats?

So how do you set up your SEO data, metrics and reporting to prove this progress and set the stage for the subsequent month? How do you set up your SEO team for success?

Follow these four steps with month-end reporting in mind for more successful SEO outcomes.

1. Set Expectations - Clarify what SEO is compared to what it is not.

Most of us know that SEO is not just about ranking #1 in Google for the preferred set of keywords, but the people you have to report to might not be on the same page. Set the expectation early in the relationship that SEO is more than just rank, and that SEO ranking data is not the be all and end all of SEO reporting. Setting this expectation is key.

SEO is the on-going process of discovering and uncovering highly converting unbranded keyword phrases that are driving organic search traffic and conversion – then taking action across the web presence to improve upon impact and create new impact. Impact in the form of increased organic search traffic and conversions, expansion of keywords you are being found for, content footprint index, etc.

Metrics that demonstrate the impact of your SEO efforts include:

• Organic traffic/visits
• Organic position
• Conversions by keyword
• On-site and off-site indexed pages

2. Set Goals & Benchmarks – Quantifying the starting point will help clarify the final outcomes.

Agreeing on and setting goals for the SEO project is obviously key and will help maintain focus. Including those goals in the monthly SEO report will remind your client or your boss of what the overall reason for the investment is after the project gets going. Let’s face it, it is easy to forget why we thought SEO was important. To prove impact, setting goals and benchmarking the current web presence is necessary.

A couple examples of realistic goals to work towards are:

• “To increase traffic from organic search by 20% over the next two months.”
• “To triple the number of highly converting unbranded keywords.”

To help demonstrate progress with these goals, benchmarking certain metrics and including the benchmark values in the monthly report is key.

SEO metrics to benchmark to demonstrate progress and achievement of the agreed upon goals include:

• Organic search traffic both as a percentage of overall website traffic and the number of unique visitors
• Backlink diversity
• Unbranded keywords found in anchor text
• Social signals by social channel
• Number of unbranded keywords driving traffic
• Number of unbranded keywords driving conversions
• Number of indexed pages

3. Set up Goals and Conversions in Analytics - Doing SEO without goals and conversions set up in analytics is a fruitless exercise.

If SEO is about understanding highly converting unbranded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions, then doing SEO without goals and conversions set up in analytics makes this task next to impossible.

Whether you are using Google Analytics, Coremetrics, Omniture, or another analytics system, it is important to set up even some simple goals. Think about the website in question and what you consider a successful visit to be. More advanced goals can be set up as you get to know the website and the behavior of the visitor, but if you are looking for some simple goals to get started in order to understand successful keywords here are two:

a) Time on Page: If the time the visitor stays on the page is greater than 2 or 3 minutes then this can be considered a conversion. One can conclude that whichever keyword the visitor searched on to get to the site matched the content on the page plus they stayed a reasonable amount of time to read the content.

b) 2+ Pages Visited: Similarly to Time on Page, number of pages visited can help indicate that the visitor is engaged with the content. Knowing the keyword they searched on to arrive at the page will help to discover new unbranded keywords that ought to be optimized for.

Make time every week to discover and uncover new highly converting keywords. Identify them in your monthly report, discuss them with your client as well as the opportunities you have identified to create on-site and off-site content for these keywords. This is an upsell opportunity for SEO services.

4. Set Metrics & Drive Action Items - Metrics without action items are useless.

SEO is an on-going process and you want to keep your client engaged, so continuing to discover opportunities through the metrics and demonstrating that more content writing can be done will keep their investment top of mind and on-going.

Here are some metrics that will help with continuous action items:

a) Keywords by Position Sorted by Highest to Lowest Converter

Action items:

• Perform additional keyword research to identify other related search terms including variations and longer-tail terms. How might these keywords be included into on-site or off-site content to test engagement and understand if the keyword(s) in question will perform well?
• Identify other pages on the website that are ranking beyond page one for the keywords in question. What can be done to further optimize these pages to improve rankings?
• Obtain additional budget to write content and report on metrics.

b) New Content Being Indexed and Ranked

• Identify new on-site and off-site pages that are being ranked and indexed. Which pages can be optimized further? If conversions increase then perhaps an entire content campaign can be created around this keyword. Once this is identified, obtain additional budget to create and execute on this content campaign and report on the metrics.

Summary

SEO reporting should be considered an art rather than a science. Monthly SEO reporting deserves a conversation with your client or boss to help describe the opportunities for optimization that you see in the metrics. Setting the expectation that reporting is more than just presenting rank data will help to create a relationship that is open to exploring opportunities to optimize based on strong metrics around keyword visits and conversions.
 

Wikopedia

We are busy people.  Our business and personal days are filled with activities.  The activities we engage in usually are designed to help us accomplish either a business or personal goal.  For example, I get up early and go to the gym and engage in the activities of exercising.  Not because I just want to – but because I have a goal of losing weight!

Often times, marketing and sales folks have no idea about the activities our customers and buyers perform on a daily basis.  Yet understanding these can yield rich and robust insights into goals, which drive buying decisions.

A Day in the Life

Since childhood, we have probably heard this quote a thousand times:

“You never truly know someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes.” –American Adage, Source Unknown

This applies in the development of buyer personas.  Using an activity-based research approach allows us to walk in the shoes of our customers and prospective buyers.  What it gives us is something very important.  Context.

Context provides us with a day in the life perspective.  We want to see what customers are confronted with in their natural – not artificial – environment.

On-Site

When you have visitors to your home, you take pride in your home.  You gladly give a tour, telling your story about how you bought or decorated the house.  This comes natural to us.  Much in the same way, activity-based buyer personas, to yield rich buyer insight, require day-in-the-life perspectives.  When you get a call at home for a survey, your patience gets tested.  Let alone, trying to recall your activities can be a frustrating experience.  There are inherent limitations with phone only research.

These same principles apply here.  Customers and buyers enjoy not only talking about their place of work, but enjoy “show and tell”.  And, that is what you want.

See the Not So Obvious

Without getting too technical, a day-in-the life perspective is a combination of ethnography, business anthropology, and in the new digital age – digital anthropology.  These social sciences give us the techniques and tools needed to uncover what I like to call the not-so-obvious.  In other words, cannot be yielded by phone interviews only.

Let me illustrate:

I was engaged in a buyer persona development effort for one of the largest logistics and delivery firms in the world.  Through a series of on-site qualitative buyer interviews, I began to notice a unique not-so-obvious insight happening.  While the focus had been on getting national contracts - and the “buyer” was in the front office for these - I learned decisions were actually made in the back office.  Decisions on which carrier to use were being made through the push of a button at working stations in the loading and shipping areas.  Usually these decisions were happening around the same time everyday.  Also, a personal goal rather than a business goal proved to be the main driver of which carrier was chosen.  This led to an improved ordering system as well as a shift in marketing towards “back office” buyer personas.

Phone-based buyer persona research alone would not have yielded such insight for these reason:

• First, you would be confined to the status quo conversations with perceived notions of who the buyer is.
• Second, it would have been too focused on traditional sales "win-loss" research.
• Third, the focus would be on obvious insights
• Lastly, you would miss the big not-so-obvious insight

In this particular situation, on-site allowed for ethnographic insight (day-in-the-life), business anthropology (witnessing the culture of shipping and back office), and digital anthropology (discover the impact of how digital systems impacted decisions).

Insight-to Foresight

The former Chairman of Proctor and Gamble, A.G. Lafley, was a big believer in gaining qualitative insight, via ethnographic research, and had this to say about what it leads to:

“lead to richer insights which helps identify innovation opportunities that are often missed by traditional research”

Granted, we are talking about one of the largest B2C entities in the world.  We may be unable to afford or scale research like P&G.  However, there are lessons for B2B Marketing in every story.  I like this quote because it embodies where B2B needs to go.  And, what it misses in buyer foresight if it does not.

Activity-based buyer persona development can lead to obtaining rich (not-so-obvious) buyer insight.  This level of buyer insight can lead to tremendous buyer foresight.  Allowing us to uncover “what if” opportunities to innovate for customers as well as with customers.  Leading to the coveted prize of more revenue opportunities.

My advice to B2B Marketing and Sales leaders is this: if you believe buyer persona development is an activity for just content and messaging, expand your belief to bigger opportunities with customers and buyers.  Move beyond obvious insight to not-so-obvious insight.

More critically, do not miss out on big insight-to-foresight opportunities as A.G. Lafley aptly conveys.

Related articles

• What is a Buyer Persona? Why the Original Definition Still Matters to B2B (tonyzambito.com)
• What is a Buyer Persona? Why the Original Definition Still Matters to B2B (business2community.com)
• How Activity-Based Buyer Persona Development Generates Opportunities (tonyzambito.com)
• Do You Get A "So What" To Your Buyer Personas? (business2community.com)

Business (Photo credits: www.roadtrafficsigns.com)

B2B business strategies were much simpler back in the day.  In the pre-Internet and pre-digital age, the target of one customer or buyer was an accepted viewpoint.  We are no longer back in those days.

We are in the new digital age.  This new age consists of more complexity, collaboration, co-creation, and new emerging buying behaviors.  Recently, I introduced the concept of the Persona Buying Cycle™.  It represents a view of understanding new buying behaviors via the B2B buying cycle.  Designed to help us address not only new behaviors – but address new complexities.

The Why

Last year, I suggested a single view of the buyer was a dangerous road to travel.  This view wired into B2B Business for nearly a century.  We now live in a new digital age of audiences, influencers, procurement policies, buying teams, committees, social collaboration platforms, and more.

Mapping content strategy to this new world means factoring in more views than a single buyer.   For B2B businesses, the dynamics of audiences, nurturing, insight, experience, and “consumer-like” branding are all new.  These new dynamics are fast emerging as success factors for succeeding in the new digital age.

One of the key insights behind this thinking, gained through a collection of on-site qualitative buyer interviews over the past two years, is this:

Over the course of the complex end-to-end B2B buying cycle, multiple people come in and out of this cycle.  They exhibit different goals, behaviors, as well as personas depending on where they are in the B2B buying cycle.

The key here is mapping content to the goals and behaviors of people participating in the B2B buying cycle.

(Let me note here a single person’s goals and behaviors can change throughout the course of a long buying cycle.  They can take on different persona behaviors depending on where they are in a complex B2B buying cycle.)

The How

From a strategy perspective, we want to map business and content strategies to the 5 phases of goals and behaviors discovered in your industry’s B2B buying cycle.  Here is a simplified illustrative chart to serve as an example (click on image for larger view):

I also use for this illustration the Customer Decision Journey suggested by McKinsey.  It is a realistic B2B perspective.  This chart is incomplete in a few areas for a very important reason.  What we want is an outside-in mindset.  This illustration is meant to highlight the need for understanding the goals and behaviors of B2B businesses as well as the people within them.  With this understanding, we can best be informed on developing content strategies.

The Operation

There are seven considerations for the B2B CMO and his or her team to ensure successful development of content strategies, which this chart helps to illustrate:

1. Personas were founded and based on goal-directed understanding of users/buyers – don’t lose sight of audience and buyer goals
2. Personas are a decision tool to help inform strategies – map strategies first before jumping to tactics
3. Behavior focus helps us to understand what audiences/buyers do, how they do it, why they do it, and how they think – important elements for developing content
4. Understanding goals and behaviors happens with on-site perspective.  Best results come from 3^rd party qualitative customer research expertise.
5. To make customer and buyer focus operational, we need to develop specific tools –personas - to align with the efforts of teams most central to each stage of the Persona Buying Cycle.  Single view buyer personas only collect dust.
6. Mapping the Persona Buying Cycle helps unite the enterprise around a common understanding of people who live within target B2B businesses and industries.
7. Content Strategies and tactics become more targeted and focused.  Avoiding the pitfalls of being overly product-centric or sales-centric.  Or, avoid seeing what content spaghetti sticks against the wall.

This is a continuing dialogue on one of the big questions for B2B marketing this year: how do we operationalize content marketing?  This view and approach not only helps to operationalize content marketing.  It helps us to operationalize a consistent buyer and customer focus throughout the B2B buying cycle.

(Be part of the dialogue with the latest thinking on Buyer Personas, Persona Buying Cycle, and Buyer Foresight - sign up for news and updates here: www.tonyzambito.com.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• 4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Care About Audience Development

• Map Content to the 5 Phases of the B2B Buyer Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

Image via CrunchBase

At the recent Google I/O 2013 Keynote, Google announced a laundry list of new enhancements and services.  Solidifying its’ game plan of playing offense rather than defense with innovation.  Which, at this writing, is putting the challenge on Apple to respond.

My thoughts shared here are heavily influenced by a brilliant article from Mike Myatt entitled -Leadership Lesson: The Difference Between Google and Apple.  Mike is one of our best thinkers on leadership and is the author of Leadership Matters . . . The CEO Survival Manual. Here is Myatt’s view on how Google is gaining the edge on Apple:

“…there is one very big difference between the two  – Google plays offense while Apple has recently settled for playing defense. Apple is struggling to maintain its position in the market, while Google is expanding its position.”

Mike goes on to say it is this offensive mindset, which is putting the hurt on Apple.  In essence Apple has ceded ground to Google, Samsung, and HTC while taking a defensive stance.  The result: Apple’s stock has fallen by over 35%.

What really caught my attention and is well worth noting is the following statement from Mike:

“Google could have made the decision to stay solely focused on search, but they had the foresight to move beyond the certainty of what is to pursue new opportunity by focusing on what if.”

By going on the defensive, Apple has lost its’ way in the very element which allowed them to introduce the world to the iPhone and iPad – foresight.  I made this point in my recent conversation with Michael Brenner on his B2B Marketing Insider Blog entitled – Marketing in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution.

In my own humble opinion, I believe this to be a temporary setback for Apple.  There is no question the delay until fall to introduce their newest innovations, as most pundits believe, is hurting them.  Time will tell.

B2B Marketing Lesson

Of note is Google’s ability to turn massive analytics and insight data (what is) into a game plan focused on foresight (what if).  Taking a leadership position on providing a future-oriented vision to consumers on the possibilities of what their future can look like with Google.  In essence, sharing its’ foresight gained as well as making it foundational to Google marketing.

A key lesson for B2B Marketers is this: the new digital age requires us to build a capability of understanding buyer foresight.  It is no longer enough to gain buyer insight and focus on the “what is” as Myatt aptly points out.  B2B Marketing and Sales will need to build competencies in understanding the “what if” scenarios they as well as their customers can see together.  This is what it will take to be a market leader in the new digital age.

Turning Buyer Insight Into Buyer Foresight

During the past few years, there has been much focus on analytics and insights in the B2B arena.  However, it is a focus on what has already happened.  There is value for certain.  What we need though is to expand – not merely respond.  Recently, I had an engaging conversation on the Dan McDade's PointClear PowerView segments on this concept of buyer predictability.

In my recent article 3 Ways to Be a Market Leader with Buyer Foresight, I offered some steps B2B entities could take to build Buyer Foresight into their organization’s DNA.  Of most importance is gaining insight with foresight in mind.  This means more of what my Dad used to say – “you have to look the person in the eye to know what they are thinking”.  More often than not, this takes a level of expertise in on-site qualitative research well worth the time and investment.

Turning buyer insight into buyer foresight takes a new level of commitment.  Google made a commitment to foresight.  This level of foresight and foresight sharing has allowed them to win at the economic game of leapfrogging.

Now they are reaping the rewards.

(Be part of the dialogue with the latest thinking on Buyer Personas, Persona Buying Cycle, and Buyer Foresight - sign up for news and updates here: News and Updates From Tony Zambito.)

Related articles

• 3 Ways to Be a Market Leader with Buyer Foresight
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• Leadership Lesson: The Difference Between Google and Apple

Millennials (or, if you prefer, Gen Y) are growing up, making some of their first big-ticket purchases and changing the buying game.

This is particularly true for the automotive industry. Despite recent reports suggesting Millennials are driving less and waiting longer to get their license—at Jumpstart Automotive Group, Gen Y traffic has spiked 74% in the last five years. And, when I think about the Millennials I know best—my two boys—I can vouch for their desire to get behind the wheel (and out of the house). When it came time for them to purchase their own car, I was impressed by their depth of research and surprised by how practical they were in their decisions. It almost makes me want to give their taste in music a second chance. Almost.

Why is it essential that we understand this group of consumers? Well, according to the recent “Gen Y in the Driver’s Seat” study by Deloitte, Millennials (ages 19-31) represent about 40% of the nation’s car buying population—the largest consumer segment since the Baby Boomers. There are more than 80 million American consumers approaching the age of 30, which means that millions are moving into the new vehicle buying demographic each year. * By 2025, Gen Y is expected to account for 75% of all vehicles purchased, with an annual buying power of more than $2 trillion.

How can you win over this influential demographic?

Start with your site. Millennials grew up on technology and expect ease and speed when they’re on the go. Site design roadmaps should include mobile optimization at the very least, device responsiveness at best. Pertinent information about products and services should never be more than one to two clicks away. And since Gen Y buyers rely heavily on peer advice and referrals, customer reviews and testimonials should be showcased.

Respond quickly. Millennials are always on, which means follow-up to prospective purchases should happen within minutes, not hours or days. There’s a sense of urgency among younger buyers—if they can’t find what they’re looking for (or don’t hear from you quickly when they do) chances are they’ll move on.

Jeremy Beaver, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at the Del Grande Dealer Group in San Jose, California (and a Millennial himself) agrees and says it’s all about effective communication. “Consumers want to feel connected no matter where they are, especially when it comes to younger car buyers,” said Beaver. “Whether they’re on their cell phone or tablet, or reaching us through our website or on Facebook, they need to feel like we’re responsive. Most importantly, we listen to their individual needs and help guide them to the car that best meets those needs.”

Develop content around key triggers. Overall value (as it relates to fuel economy and the availability of eco and tech-friendly features) is important to Gen Y car buyers, so develop content about the benefits of your brand/products/services around these core triggers. Interactivity is important too. Allowing young consumers to engage and interact with your content—on your site and via social media—enables them to feel more engaged and connected with you.

Ditch the old school sales pitch. Gen Y buyers (arguably, most car buyers) don’t want the hard sell—they want a consultant to guide them through the process. The Deloitte study revealed that half of Millennials surveyed said they would permanently turn against an automotive brand if they had a negative experience with a salesperson.

Millennials (virtually) kick the tires until the very week they buy a car; they’ve done their homework by comparing multiple brands, they know what they should pay, and they won’t waste time negotiating.

This group is increasingly turning to practical, reliable cars with generous warranties and excellent fuel economy (according to Deloitte, 89% will consider buying a car that gets better gas mileage). And while existing financial obligations like student loans mean tighter budgets, they still expect more refinement, even with entry-level products. They want value but value doesn’t necessarily mean a lower price tag. For Gen Y buyers, it means reliability, safety, and convenience at a reasonable price.

Make no mistake, as Gen Y’s incomes grow and technology shifts them further away from their brand-loyal predecessors, we won’t be talking about a new consumer but the consumer.

*U.S. Census Bureau statistics

Nick Matarazzo is CEO of Jumpstart Automotive Group, an expert digital automotive marketing and advertising company and division of Hearst Magazines.

All About the Future (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every company has aspirations to become the market leader in their space.  Leading your market has built-in advantages over your competition.  Market leadership helps to ensure a level of stability and longevity.

Getting there and staying there is the hard part.

The demands of the market and the buyers within them can set the bar very high.  Being the market leader can be very tenuous as buyers evaluate new emerging technologies and options.  Rising to the top also comes with a heavy responsibility.  Which is this:

Customers and buyers expect market leaders to provide them with a roadmap of the future.

Recently, this became a profound understanding for me, which I want to share with you.  I conducted a significant amount of qualitative buyer interviews during the past year or more.  There was a sense buying behavior was shifting in this direction.  It has led me to conclude this:

Organizations today, particularly B2B, must develop the capability as well as provide to their prospective buyers and existing customers future-oriented Buyer Foresight™ .

Michael Brenner, who has a fantastic blog B2B Marketing Insider, and I had a conversation on the subject of buyer foresight.  You can find it here: Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution.

Buying behavior is shifting towards future-oriented thinking and planning for several important reasons:

Rapid Change in Technology

This is a big threat for existing customers and prospect buyers.  When it comes to high-ticket technology and solutions, the stakes are high.  A true source of fear is making a significant investment in technology, which may be obsolete in a year.  Here is a buyer voice on this matter:

“One of the things we really like to know is what is being planned in the future.  We expect honesty because the last thing we want is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars only to be stuck with an obsolete system.” Vice President, Business Integration and Operations

Innovation Leader

Customers and prospect buyers want to be associated with organizations demonstrating successful skills in innovation.  Future-oriented buyers are not interested in the status quo. They also want to share in the innovation.  Another voice:

“We are looking for a long-term partnership.  We want to actually be a part of what they create.  Even at the R&D stage.  We believe it helps serve us as well as serve them.” Chief Operating Officer

The Vision Thing

A concept I covered in my conversation with Michael Brenner is the idea of how customers and buyers desire vision.  They want to not only understand your future.  They desire to gain their own foresight into how their future can change if they enter a relationship with you.  A voice to articulate:

“Our committee does a five-year outlook planning session once per year.  It is a fun exercise really.  So, I like vendors who can give me a vision of where they think they will be in five years as well as how they think where we will be in five years.” Vice President, Portfolio Management

Developing Competency in Buyer Foresight

There are several ways to begin building buyer foresight into an organization’s DNA, which can be covered over a series of articles and conversations.  Here are just a few for starters:

• Conduct qualitative buyer research - on-site to get the best future-oriented perspective
• Create appropriate levels of personas for the Persona Buying Cycle™
• Recognize Buyer Insight which can be turned into Buyer Foresight
• Engage in buyer scenario modeling and mapping exercises which are future-oriented

The last of these suggestions, are important new exercises.  Adapting to what I have called in the past Buyer Scenario Modeling can be a significant path for organizations to take towards Buyer Foresight.

Buyers today are seeking relationships which keeps pace with the rapid changes in the new digital age.  Buyer foresight is a means to help you do just that.

Related articles

• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013
• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• 4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Care About Audience Development

It seems like as soon as I wrap my head around Google's latest algorithm update, there's another release that changes the game.

While SEO experts should live in the weeds of these updates to understand the nuances in how Google ranks content, marketers should recognize a few high level SEO trends that drive successful content marketing initiatives.

1. SEO used to be an exercise in optimizing content for spiders. Today, SEO is about optimizing content for the user.

This is an important distinction that should drive every piece of content produced, from how you choose the topic to the words you use to express the idea. Search engines think like people, but for some reason most brands don't speak like people. This is causing a disconnect between the brand and the consumer on every level - in relating to them obviously, but also in just being discoverable. No one searches in corporate speak.

So, how do you do this? Research.

A combination of both keyword research and social listening will show you what words and phrases consumers use. Once the content is written and optimized appropriately for search, the language used in social media should reflect the language used in the content.

The same keywords should be used in a similar tone since search engines are now considering social interactions in search ranking. You not only want to be shareable, you want the language used when sharing your content to be the language that will serve you best.

2. Links still matter, but the game has changed.

Without getting into the weeds, it is important to know that linking to quality websites and being linked to by quality websites is still important.

In fact, when a website links to your site and also links to another website of higher authority on the same page, your site will benefit from the authority of the other linked site.

Another important factor in outbound links is, just as above, the language you use. The anchor text should clearly indicate what you're linking to and the text around the link should be carefully considered too.

3. The power is in the long tail.

This isn't news, but it is so important that it should be emphasized.

There are 500 million active domains competing for the attention of consumers. Unless you have a huge budget, you aren't going win big, broad buzzwords.

Optimize your content for the long tail keywords that niche audiences are looking for and publish often. Not only will you rank higher for less competitive topics, but Google will assign you higher authority for publishing regularly.

4. Traditional marketing tactics will boost digital marketing initiatives.

Google likes to tell us that if we build a quality website and publish quality content, users will come. While that might be true to some extent, it is important that marketers realize that traditional tactics can actually help boost content efforts.

Press releases, for example, provide branded mentions and links that will increase the authority of your website while also increasing exposure. Despite what some might say, email is still extremely effective in creating opportunities for awareness and sharing.

Penguin 2.0 was just released and everyone is in a frenzy to figure out the next button to push to get out ahead of the competition. That is important and every serious brand should have someone doing that for them.

But it is equally important that everyone involved in digital marketing understands basic SEO trends in order to ensure content is being produced in a way that will drive success.

Use this list as criteria to check off on each time content is added to your website:

1. Am I using the language of my target consumer?
2. Am I linking to authoritative websites?
3. Am I optimizing this content for a specific user by targeting a few long tail keywords?
4. Am I promoting this content using more traditional marketing tactics?

*as posted by Noah Echols on IQ's blog

Overhead View of Audience (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the past year, questions about content marketing effectiveness are beginning to surface.  The Content Marketing Institute as well as a survey sponsored by eConsultancy, indicated belief in effectiveness was under 40%.  Most recently, SiriusDecisions made this statement:

“Fully 60 to 70 percent of content churned out by b-to-b marketing departments today sits unused. This stark statistic underscores the urgent need for a content revolution in b-to-b organizations.”

There is consistency on both the customer/buyer as well as the seller side regarding this issue.  In my qualitative research work in the past year, this view was evident. Digging into the “why” is the challenge.  Some 4 “whys” I’ve noticed:

Skipping to the Solution

One of the reasons this is occurring is the act of jumping to the solution too quickly. You can call it education material, insight, information, and etc.  However, reading between the lines, content is loaded with non-value messaging.  Content is filled with the usual “we are great, we know your problem, and we have the greatest solution” messaging.

Product Marketing Origins

Some companies have been product-centric for decades.  Reshaping such DNA is not an easy transition some are finding out.  When the majority of content is being produced from the product marketing or management epic center, it is hard to resist.  Resist what you ask?  The temptation to talk about how great the product is.

Sales Driven

Contrary to the above, some organizations have been sales-centric for years.  Thus, putting enormous pressure on marketing to generate sales-ready leads.  Patience for nurturing may be on the low-end of the scale.  The result is content bleeds “selling” in every way.

One Size Fits All

Some organizations have not moved beyond the “single” view of the buyer.  Content is oriented towards this single view in all aspects.  Thus, content is not developed for other members of the buying team nor external influencers.  I include in this category firms too focused on a single buyer persona.

The Audience Development Manifesto

Three categories of buyer behavior getting plenty of notice recently are:

• Not in the market to buy
• Not ready to buy
• Do nothing

Read them again.  If all content is oriented towards “ready to buy”, then it is no wonder 60 to 70 percent of content goes unread or unused.  Let this voice of a buyer interview subject do the talking:

“It is important to stay abreast of new ideas, trends, technology, and the likes.  But, some just make it difficult to do so.  Everything is set up to sell me something right away.  So I am reluctant to give details about myself.” (Vice President, Mortgage Operations)

If your content is product-centric or sales-centric in the wrong place, time, or situation, this may be the voice of your potential buyers.

Audience-Centric

We are seeing the term audience-centric used more often.  What does this mean exactly?  The obvious is to develop content specific to an audience.  To do so implies not skipping the first step of knowing your audience.

First Step

The first step to be taken is to gain an understanding of segmenting 3 types of personas which are reflected in the Persona Buying Cycle™:

Audience persona: oriented towards "not in the market to buy."  Understanding how to meet the needs and goals of people as well as companies who fall into this category is pivotal.  It can include a wide spectrum of industry influencers to non-buying teams in prospect companies.  Sound audience development messaging begins with understanding audience personas.

Lead persona: oriented towards “not ready to buy” but have needs and goals specific to their role as well as situation.  As we have seen often in buying teams, team members are assigned research and evaluation roles, which can take place over a 6 to 12 months period.  Sound lead nurturing begins with understanding lead personas.

Buyer persona: understanding when the buying cycle “kicks” into sales-ready mode is crucial.  Buyer personas should be specific to active participation in the process of buying.  Buyers can and will choose the "do nothing" choice.  If so, you may be able to trace this back to a lack of understanding your buyer personas.

Armed with the knowledge of how these three distinct personas behave can help lead to this summary point:

Improving content marketing effectiveness requires an audience development strategy.

A plain and simple statement yet with much work to be done.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.  If I can be of help, schedule time with me at So Helpful Tony.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

• 4 Reasons Why Content Marketing Should Care About Audience Development (tonyzambito.com)
• Map Content to the 5 Phases of the B2B Buyer Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

One thing we can count on is by the time you have finished reading this buying behavior may have been altered one again.  Changes in buyer behaviors continue unabated.  This is making it difficult for marketing and sales leaders to plan the right mix of strategies and tactics resulting in a winning formula.

5 Buyer Behaviors B2B Marketing Must Keep An Eye On

New buying behaviors means B2B marketers have to become more responsive today.  Creating nimble organizations and improving knowledge in buyer understanding.  Here are ways buyer behavior will continue to reshape marketing:

Buyers Embrace Collaboration

Social and digital technologies has allowed for progress in the area of collaboration.  Meaning the sphere of influence and interaction not only has widened but increased.  Old ideas about roles on buying teams are being shattered as we speak.  The era of collaborative buyer networks has arrived.  We now have to consider internal as well as external members of collaborative networks impacting decision-making.

Buyers Want Co-Creation

Collaborative networks are fostering a new environment for co-creating products, services, and for solving problems.  This new development will put pressure on B2B organizations to get in line with flexible products and services which allow buyers to play an active role in co-creating.  Buyers and their collaborative networks will demand it.  For B2B marketers, this means a broader view on how you deliver messaging.

Buyers Want Less Content

I am sure some will do a double take on the above sub-header.  The fact is buyers are overwhelmed with content.  Here is how one buyer put it to me: “Look, I think twice now about putting my name in a form - not because I am not willing - but I know this just means I am going to get a flood of emails to download more information.” Buyers want less content – yet desire smart content.

Buyers Want 1-to-1

A funny thing happened on the way to marketing automation.  Marketing may be inadvertently dripping back into the mode of 1-to-many as opposed to the coveted 1-to-1.  I came upon this thought after conducting two reviews of lead generation and nurturing campaigns.  Buyers can see right through this screen.  They can smell automation.  A buyer’s voice on an email she received: “What is this?  I really don’t know because it doesn't say anything to me.”

Buyers Want More Than Insight

There is the old adage “too much of a good thing.”  I think we may have such a situation happening.  We have embraced the idea of the Challenger Sale and you see organizations racing to offer insight.  An issue here is too many items are being classified as insight.  This can actually counter-balance the act of contributing insight.   What this means for B2B marketing and sales is they will have to be more judicious in what they label insight.  Why dilute a good thing?

Adaptive and Agile Marketing

With rapidly changing buying behaviors, B2B marketing will need to be more adaptive and agile.  I foresee buyer behaviors shifting in waves.  This means marketing must be able to see these waves and make adaptive shifts in how they connect with buyers.  This will certainly not be easy to do.

Predictability will become even more important as we look ahead.  While Big Data holds promise, it will equally take developing the qualitative ability to anticipate where the new buyers of today are heading.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• The Art of Buying
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

A one-minute video is a recommended start, and you might find yourself liking that length, viewers do. You’ve got to keep things simple being careful not to over saturate the viewer with too much content. To retain what they are watching, people need “nuggets” if information so they can consume and think about it.

Structure the Video

The structure of your video is like a program at a play with a beginning, middle and an end. If you ramble on and leave people hanging, you’re better off not doing a video. It might make you look bad. Hire a professional copywriter that knows video. It’s worth the effort.

Develop Your Story

With every presentation, try to make it into a story. Give your information purpose for even being put into a video. People follow stories, they like to hear the conclusion, and they like to know you have things well thought out too. Stories that are communicated well can influence others. Use emotion to help stamp the video into the viewers’ mind.

Use Plain Terminology

You may be talking to people that know your industry, but some won’t or may not know what you know. Be inclusive and if you need to use an “industry term,” briefly explain it so you don’t lose anybody. Using BIG words is a great way to get people to NOT watch anymore of your video.

Make Your Video Likable

The human mind likes laughter. Things are remembered more when you are “stirred” in this way. I’m no scientist, but the brain reacts well to humor. But, BE SURE it’s funny. Bad jokes can make you look dumb and drive people away. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Have A Clear Call-To-Action

When you get to the end of your video, you have a unique opportunity. You get to instruct the viewer where they should go next or what they should do next. Flat out tell them what to do. They can:

Go to your site, if they are not already there

Share your video with others

Sign Up for More Informative Videos or a Newsletter

Download an App

Click a Link

Prank call your mother-in-law (just kidding)

Tell your viewer what you want them to do. Make it clear so they are likely to do what you ask of them.
Those are some thoughts in making a great video. But keep in mind there are always variables. That is why a professional copywriter might be needed. He/She can help you mold the “story” to include your variable and it can have a great position within your video.

By Dan Nuckolls
Creative Director at Nuxx Media
www.NuxxMedia.com

What results often times is either: 1) shoving traditional campaign structures into social networks, or 2) a big bowl of tactics that are stand alone gimmicks, giving neither the creators or brand managers a fair way to evaluate whether integrated campaign tactics actually do integrate. And when they do integrate, how do you create consistency without droning sameness?

To make sense of it all, to give teams a structure by which they can create ideas that build on each other, I made a bit of a simple, strategic mashup: First, take the 3-act storytelling structure that humans have been using for a few thousand years to relate and process information. Then, blend with Nielsen's Participation Inequality Law, the rule of thumb that describes digital participation behaviors at scale.

What comes out is a way to look at campaigns where the launch / event / purchase isn't the end of the story, or the beginning. It should be where it belongs: at the climax of the story. That allows the ending of your arc to be the resolution of your audience members succeeding: the behavioral outcome that could not have occurred without the brand having facilitated it.

But that only gets us as far as campaign content, and campaigns in social aren't enough.

To truly model out and encourage positive behaviors, you need to be actively facilitating the community. The Participation Framework makes sure that your brand's declarative statements are balanced as part of a mix that balances content and conversation.

Because people engaging with the brand is a means to an end: people using the brand as a setting to strengthen relationships with each other. Again, positive community behaviors are what you're shooting for. It's these behaviors that will ultimately determine the social success of a brand.

Here's the whole deck with much more step-by-step detail on how Behavioral Storytelling works.

If you're wondering how you can use structures like this to make the difference for your brand, join me at General Assembly in NYC for a class on June 4, or I can work with a number of different teams in your organization: as a speaker or consultant.

What's your take on social content strategy? Drop a note below in the comments or on twitter @mleis.

Questions? (Photo credit: Valerie Everett)

The more change occurring  the more questions arise.  This year is no exception.  B2B Marketers are experiencing ongoing as well as new challenges as we start to hit stride in 2013.   What are the big future questions for B2B Marketers?  Let's look at a few:

How do we generate more leads and keep them?

Survey after survey indicate B2B marketers have this issue top of mind.  Creating demand and filling up a pipeline is loaded with pressure packed environments.  In my qualitative buyer research work, I see shifts in behavior on the part of buyers.  There are unique sets of goals and behaviors emerging in the area of nurturing.  Calling into question how leads should be defined and segmented.  Lead research and unique lead persona development will emerge to help B2B marketers address this most important question.

How do we use marketing automation effectively?

Marketing automation has crawled out of infancy stage and is being more widely adopted.  Many organizations have been in the "let's just get started" phase.  Experiencing the pain of implementation.  The next level question is how to make marketing automation more effective to get better results.

How do we operationalize content marketing?

Content marketing has certainly arisen as one of the core capabilities B2B marketing must possess.  It is causing radical shifts in thinking about the role of marketing and how to build internally.   To operationalize content marketing begs further questions related to structure, roles, and skills.  Presenting CMO's with the daunting task of figuring out how to build internal strength in content marketing.

What do customers and buyers want?

Usually, when this question is asked, there is a tendency to give a product-centric answer.  If you find yourself doing this - then you might want to catch yourself.  Admittedly, this is one of the hardest questions to figure out.  Since no one is guaranteed to be a mind-reader, this will take qualitative intelligence.  To understand how your customers and buyers think as well as what is motivating this thinking, it takes skilled customer research and buyer research.

How do we create seamless multi-channel experiences?

Existing customers and prospect buyers, simply stated, do not want to have to alter how they interact based on the channel.  My theory on this is based on hearing how buyers complain about how one channel works for them but another does not.  The wider the gap, the more disruptive.  Disrupting your customers and buyers - well - is not a good thing.   Here is an example:

"Okay here's what I mean, I go to the website.  It is impressive and I find some good information.  I am thinking this could be a smart organization to potentially get to know.  Of course, I download the white paper and I get the call.  Let me just say they had no idea what they were talking about." (Director, IT Integration and Service)

How do we stop reacting and plan for the future?

There is palpable tension in the air for B2B Marketers this year.  The need to know and the need to get results creates mounting pressure.  When first quarter results may not have been as expected, it is bound to cause some to push the panic button.  It can become a fire drill.  All hands on deck to create the next campaign.  What I believe is happening is buyers are out in front and B2B marketers are trying to catch up.   I advocate having a solid foundation of buyer intelligence to work with.  This means a collective body of research-based reference knowledge like audience personas, buyer personas, mapping tools related to content and buying journeys, and much more.  These give you the perspective you need to know why something may not have worked and to plan intelligently.  Another words - stop hitting the panic button.

How do we build more buyer predictability into B2B Marketing?

Predictive analytics continues to grow.  With limitations.  It holds promise to scale down Big Data and give the ability to predict buying behaviors.  While this may help us to predict how buyers may behave online for example, it may yield little on predicting why.  A capability I am advocating is developing customer and buyer foresight planning.  This type of planning calls for  emerging buyer scenario modeling and mapping capabilities.  Knowing where your buyers may be headed can give you the foresight needed to anticipate future motivations.  In addition, share your foresight and help them envision a future which includes you.

There are many more questions.  It is the nature of business and marketing.  It is the one constant we can count on.  Things will change enough which will beg more questions.  B2B Marketing leadership and success wil be predicated on the ability to answer the big questions.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• The Art of Buying
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing

1.  Logo – (Noun) “A symbol adopted by an organization to identify its products or services” We all know it’s never about what you have, it’s about how you use it that makes the difference! Since you've spent the time and/or money on this masterpiece called your "logo," make sure it shows up everywhere including business cards, social media sites, and any other promotional materials. Your logo is your company's identity in a picture and the more you show it off, the quicker your brand recognition will grow.

Does this really matter, you ask? Consider this… how likely are you to remember a random fast-food restaurant you visited when they use generic bags and soda cups versus the restaurant that brands every cup and bag with their logo? That garbage in your car becomes advertising and will make an impression every time you see it.

2. Interact – Who knew this was a part of branding? Speak directly with your target and, even more importantly, with your clients. Share and respond to social media comments, answer your phone using your company name and/or slogan, and use interactive communication tools such as surveys and email marketing. Remember, everything you send and share should always include your logo and slogan.

3. Solve – Your mission should be simple. Every business offers a product or service that offers results and/or a solution; and just because you know that, it does not mean your target market does. Leverage your interactive tools to share a clear, concise, and consistent solution that is unique to your brand identity. Remember, the process you use to help your clients may be complicated but your message should be simple enough to earn the trust and comfort of your clients.

Branding is more of an art than a science; it takes creativity, time, patience, and just like a painting, it will even go through an ugly stage. An initial brand launch should focus on creating awareness for your unique product or services. Luckily you have a friend in the industry- whether your current brand is sour or your business is brand new, HMG can help you too!

A key component of understanding buying decisions is gaining a reality check on how buyers perceive you and whether you match to their criteria.  How well organizations are perceived will serve as one of the primary influences shaping buying behaviors and purchase decisions.

Buyer research can reveal many aspects of what comprises buyer perception.  Buyer experience is now becoming one of the most important factors contributing to and influencing perceptions.  The new digital age is introducing new types of criterion buyers place a value on, which can directly affect their perceptions:

Buyer Experience: previous as well as current experiences can have an enormous impact on how buyers perceive you. Do you think waiting an extra day to return a call was no big deal?  Think again.

Engagement: evidence is building on engagement being a factor in shaping buyer perceptions when making purchase decisions.  What the "engagement experience" tells buyers can make a big difference.  This differs from buyer experience in this way: when you ask customers and prospects to engage - meaning interact - it better not be painful.

Knowledge: the sharing of knowledge and insight is fast emerging as a one area shaping how buyers perceive companies.  Content marketers need to watch for information fatigue setting in with their buyers.  Suffocating buyers with content is not the answer.  On the other hand, if buyers feel like they have to perform a tooth extraction tor pry information from your organizations, then they will move on.

Community: buyers today are getting tuned into joining various communities specific to their industry.  Are your efforts tuned into the communities buyers are at?  Are you contributing to this community - or "selling" and annoying the community?

These are just four factors affecting how buyers can perceive you and your organization.  Based on hundreds of buyer interviews I have done to date - I can say the above directly impact the why and how of purchase decisions.

Now What?

Getting to understand how buyers perceive you can be challenging.  Two ways you can get a handle on buyer perception is:

• Have buyer research performed specifically for perception
• Have mystery shopping performed to get insight on how buyers experience their interactions with your organization

Understanding how buyers perceive you can often be a surprise.  When I have provided insight into buyer perception, I often get the "I had no idea" response.  Given the hyper-competitive digital world of today, this might be one area you should have an idea about.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to theBuyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• The Art of Buying

• 4 New Values Affecting How Buyers Perceive You (tonyzambito.com)
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing (tonyzambito.com)
• Is Your Lead Generation Off-Target? (blogs.imediaconnection.com)

A problem facing organizations today is generating more leads.  Making this issue even more challenging is changes in buying behavior.  Depending on which study to reference, buyers are performing different activities for up to 70% of their buying evaluation before sales intervention.

A recent report by the Aberdeen Group on sales performance shows there is a fair degree of dissatisfaction among sales leaders.  56% saying they were not seeing sufficient growth in top line revenue.  Nearly 30% expressed dissatisfaction with lead conversion to sales.  A recent CSO Insights report indicated that only 20% of organizations understood their buyer’s buying process.  These two perspectives combined point to one of the key issues – targeting the wrong buyer.

Looking back on over 12 years of qualitative buyer research and buyer persona development work, I found in 6 out of every 10 organization– a different buyer was identified than the organization had been targeting!  If you are off-target with the buyer – you will be off-target on your demand generation and lead generation.

Getting On Target

Marketing and sales leaders today are looking to increase their percentage of being on target when it comes to lead generation.  There are four steps you can take to resolve targeting issues:

Do Lead Research:  It all starts here.  You can no longer assume the buyers you've been targeting are the correct ones.  A level of lead research is needed to outfit your lead generation and nurturing team with knowledge about ideal prospects.  For example - it may not always be the CIO but the IT Director.

Develop Lead Personas:  Lead and buyer personas are useful in understanding consideration and purchasing behaviors.  Organizations, through personas, can determine how a prospect behaves when moving from a lead persona to a buyer persona.   One of the main benefits of this approach is the ability to tailor lead and buyer personas to fit the needs of dedicated lead nurturing teams as well as sales team.

Buyer-Centered Design: Designing your lead generation strategies, systems, and processes should revolve around buyers.  The key is in modeling their behaviors when in lead nurturing and when they enter the buying cycle.  Better results will happen when you meet buyer expectations and goals – which can be distinctly different when in lead nurturing versus buying cycle.  Conversion rates at the point of when a lead persona converts to a buyer persona (becomes a sales-ready lead) will rise.

Conversation Enablement Training:  What is needed is making conversation enablement a staple of training for lead generation and nurturing teams.  The long ramp-up time it takes for lead generation teams to understand prospects is out of synch with the pace of change in buying behavior.  As the CSO Insights report pointed out, barely 20% of organizations understand their buyer’s behaviors and buying processes!  In my qualitative research, I often hear of the frustration prospective buyers have in the lack of productive conversations.

Targeting the right prospect is becoming the lifeblood of organizations today.  For many companies, tackling this issue means discovering who represents their ideal target buyer.  In addition, gaining greater clarity on how buyers differ in behavior when they are being nurtured versus actively engaged in a buying cycle.  Combining these can be a winning ticket and get your lead generation results on target.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to theBuyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle

• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing (tonyzambito.com)

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade.  It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.

We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals.  On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt.  The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized.  These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.

Adapting to New Realities

Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers.  Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers.  For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers.  Yet, there are many more miles to go.  My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to this conclusion:

Personas, specifically in B2B, need to be adaptive to new goals and behaviors of buyers throughout their buyer’s journey.  In addition, personas need to be designed for the new practices, which are developing in marketing and sales.

The term buyer persona has been used universally to an extreme level. The term worked well when buyers relied on sales for their buying cycle for upwards to eighty percent.  We are seeing the inverse today.  Here is where I believe buyer trends as well as qualitative evidence is telling us to go:

B2B personas need to be researched, understood, and designed to meet robust goals and behaviors of buyers throughout the end-to-end buying cycle and brand experience.  In addition, personas need to be designed to enable as well as make more effective new practices, functions, and roles.

Persona Buying Cycle™

As new operational models for marketing and sales develop, there are 5 buying behavior phases of the buying cycle personas must now address:

1. Audience Behavior: the concept of content marketing reaching audiences is more prevalent.  Audience goals and behaviors are distinctly different when not in the market for products or services.  Yet, awareness, insight, and intelligence are an important component of connecting with existing customers and future buyers today.  Content marketing effectiveness is enabled when it can reach many different types of audiences.  Audience personas must now include the likes of industry influences and more.
2. Lead Behavior: one of the fastest growing areas, in terms of emerging practices, is the rise in lead nurturing and lead development.  Buyers have distinct goals and behaviors when they convert from being a part of a wider audience to an interested party.   New forms of lead research and lead personas can create more effective conversions from an interested party to an active buyer.
3. Buyer Behavior: the core persona when buyers have become actually engaged in the process of buying.  Buying behaviors, and buying goals, operate on a different level when buyers are actively engaged in the buying process.  Buyer personas, true their original intent, are designed to enable the buying process between buyer and seller.
4. Customer Behavior: when a buyer becomes a customer, there is a trial period underway.  This trial period consists of a different set of goals and behaviors meaningful to confirmation and customer experience.  Specific customer personas can enable understanding and capabilities to meet customer goals post-sale.  Implementation and customer support teams can benefit immensely from personas designed specifically for their roles.
5. Brand Behavior: brand management is emerging out of the shadows, as a competency B2B companies have to get right today.  Fulfilling the brand promise consistently is one of the hardest jobs of marketing and an organization as a whole.  Customers and buyers have different goals, behaviors, and beliefs, which surround brands.  The goal here is to convert customer personas into brand persona advocates.

A recommendation for forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders is to begin thinking in terms of the Persona Buying Cycle™ versus a singular focus on a buyer persona.  One certainty is the buyer’s journey not only begins before buyers think of themselves as a buyer, but also extends beyond the purchase.  Having a common visual and story of how buyer’s goals and behaviors change throughout the buying cycle is compelling.   We are also seeing activities, functions, and roles widen in marketing and sales in response to changing buying behaviors.  The Persona Buying Cycle™ is a natural extension to address both of these developments.

Positive Outcomes

Creating B2B personas through the lenses of a Persona Buying Cycle™ help bring these positive outcomes:

• • Make personas relevant throughout the major touchpoints of the end-to-end buyer’s journey
  • Make personas more practical to each functional team interacting with audiences, buyers, and customers
  • Make demand generation, lead generation, opportunity management, and customer experience more effective
  • Provide a common communications platform for understanding buyers
  • Foster alignment between marketing and sales by mapping to specific buyer goals and behaviors

In a dozen years, we have seen the then straightforward buyer-seller dynamics become more complex.  How B2B views the use of personas, from a pragmatic standpoint, now must adapt.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• The Art of Buying

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

I don’t pretend to be a savvy shopper, but when I dive wallet-first into the clearance section at The Gap, I tend to stock up on accessories in my favorite color — black. Why? It’s a universal truth that black goes with everything.

So does branded journalism. In the words of veteran digital content guru Ann Handley, “Content is the new black.”

Handley is right, branded journalism (also known as brand journalism or branded content) has caught on like a wildfire this year. From Tory Burch’s fantastic branded blog to Mint.com’s MintLife section, brands realize the value of consumer-facing content like articles, photos or videos, and are rushing to create some with the company name on it.

Why? For a lot of the reasons we discussed in the first post in this series and mainly because consumers are demanding it. As brands become more accessible to fans through social media, people want more from brands than their products and services. So much so, even Twitter is looking to hire a Head of News. That leads us to branded journalism.

But branded journalism breaks the natural order of business that advertisers, journalists and businesses have subscribed to for decades. This makes some people nervous, traditionalists angry and opportunists jumping on the branded content bandwagon faster than Baltimore fans during the last Super Bowl.

So that leaves the question, if you’re going to start creating content for a brand, be it a local business or a Fortune 500 company, what are the best practices? Better yet, how do you do it ethically?

Try these simple steps for better branded journalism:

1. Build a process

Journalistic content should be more than an article or blog post thrown together quickly. Create an editorial plan, support whatever content you create with strategy, edit it, review it with key company team members and a set time to distribute it via a medium that will reach your intended audience.

2. Share something valuable

Share something that your target market will respond to. For example, Home Depot’s YouTube page features an array of do-it-yourself garden tutorials. Completely different from Red Bull’s adrenalin-pumping YouTube page that offers an array of video features on the brand’s extreme athletes. Both give their fans journalistic content in the same medium, but do it completely different ways to reach separate audiences.

3. Know your boundaries

Producing journalistic content doesn’t equate to producing a Pulitzer winning news article, so stick to your industry and the topics surrounding it. Create content targeted at a company’s audience, on subjects related to your company’s industry. Find creative ways to make content relevant to trends and new stories without reporting the news.

4. Stick to the facts and cite your sources

People want transparency from their favorite brands. Always support your content with facts from experts and credible sources. Back up your claims with research, data or testimonials from credible experts that you mention by name.

5. Strike a balance

Don’t use branded journalism as an opportunity to knock a competitor’s product or service, use it as an opportunity to share valuable content. If needed, acknowledge competitors professionally when it’s appropriate. Focus instead on sharing real insight about a subject consumers are interested in.

6. List a byline

If possible, list the author or producer of a branded journalism piece. This gives your work credibility and gives audience members a face representing the brand to connect with. Melissa Lafsky Wall left her job at USA Today to head up content production at dating site How About We, where every article or column in the site’s Date Report section is credited with a byline.

7. Track results

Producing branded journalism is useless if it doesn’t reach the correct audience to support business goals. Use analytics to track your results and SEO to shape the strategy behind your content. This ensures that you don’t just produce quality branded journalism; you produce branded content that gets results.

*as posted by Sarah Giarratana on IQ's blog