Making brands visible even when buyers aren't
Today’s demand generation is demanding a different approach. Welcome to a new world where context is king, and where value rules over volume.
In today’s B2B landscape, buyers are conducting more research independently than ever before, often making significant purchasing decisions before engaging with a sales team. Jim Sampson, Senior Vice President & Partner here at Fox Agency, explores how marketers must adapt their demand generation strategies to reach these invisible buying committees, build meaningful awareness, and optimise for the channels and engines that influence modern buying behaviour.
When Forrester opened marketers’ eyes with the bombshell that 80% of the B2B buying journey was invisible and completed before any contact with sales reps, the world of demand gen had to sit up and take notice.
Suddenly, the methodology marketers previously relied on – generate leads through sheer volume of activity, leads get passed to sales, sales brings it home – was now defunct. Out there, within these businesses looking for solutions, was an invisible buying committee making decisions themselves based on their own research and findings, without even talking to sales! The absolute nerve.
The obvious question is, then, how does marketing reach them before those decisions are made? For challenger brands, the answer’s in building awareness and ensuring that activity is tracked through to demand. For leader brands, the approach should be in generative engine optimisation to ensure that they show up as prospects search and conduct their research.
Ultimately, it’s all about context: ensuring brands show up as the right sort of recommendations in any generative engine searches, both in their organic content as well as paid.
Marketing by Calculator No Longer Adds Up
It may be a tough pill to swallow for some but gone are the days of calculator marketing: looking at a spreadsheet, pushing out x volume to generate y MQLs, rinse and repeat.
Reliance on content syndication to do the heavy lifting isn’t enough. Today, marketers need to be focusing on what is creating the most value by looking where brands fit in the marketplace.
This does create certain challenges for marketing teams who are in a constant uphill battle to prove their value against ROI. It may seem easier to do that with a spreadsheet and calculator, but really, it’s a question of what you’re evaluating – is value judged on MQLs or is it overall impact at the account level for all activity?
If we’re able to ensure that we have the right sort of insight into what accounts are being delivered, we can then identify the right mix to generate higher conversion rates, the right reach and frequency, and the right contacts to be engaging in. So, by looking at that account level engagement, we’re able to tell a better business impact story.
Setting the Stage for Success
With the right infrastructure, marketers can unlock those impact stories and having agency partners with expertise across search, social, programmatic, standard media content, creative, organic social, and PR will be invaluable – because then those quality insights can be delivered across all teams, regardless of the scope of engagement.
As we tell our clients, optimising your generative engine is what is going to deliver today’s big demand numbers. And to be able to optimise requires that new level of context to have the right content, the right keyword strategies, the right linking structure and the authenticity to reassure buyers they’re in the right place with the right solution in front of them.
That’s the way to get the invisible buying committee firmly in your sights.