For modern-day marketers, aligning marketing goals to the typical B2B funnel can sometimes lead to a lack of relevance or purpose. What matters more is building newer strategies and frameworks that help marketers understand the different nuances in a buying journey based on different data, behaviors and audience sets.

Today’s B2B buying journey is largely influenced by a myriad of factors, while most marketers would typically align marketing steps based on a buying funnel, only using the concept of a funnel to drive marketing campaigns might not help push prospects through the various buying stages anymore.

The various factors that affect buying decisions and patterns today need to be taken into account with a more precise approach to help drive growth goals.

First off, what marketers today need to accept is that the core purpose of their department and role has changed over the years.

Modern marketers are meant to draw relevance through their initiatives and enable the organization as a whole with their growth goals, this has made the function more performance oriented, also leading to a stage where marketing teams need to play a key part in supporting their brand’s sales teams and sales cycles.

In B2B, buying decisions and buying cycles are longer and can sometimes take months to close. Both, marketing cycles and sales cycles as well as buyer preferences have evolved over the years: with buyers now wanting to speak to brand reps and sales reps until much later in the buying stage.

With these shifting trends, it is crucial for not just marketing teams but also sales teams to tweak their overall plans and strategies and meet buyers where they are at, digitally, physically and even emotionally (in terms of budgets, pain points and such matters).

Here are a few pointers that marketers need to pay attention to in 2023 to drive a more purpose led and relevance heavy marketing output:

Revisiting How They View The B2B Buying Funnel

Marketers need to think differently when trying to tap into a certain audience base today. The typical B2B funnel divides buying groups into different stages thereby giving marketers a more precise way to talk to stakeholders based on the stage of the funnel.

But today’s buyers undertake a very different buying journey when they need to make a decision.

Buyers who are in decision-making role will be more sensitive about current market trends and what the vendor/technology provider they are talking to does in terms of providing an innovative service or feature. They will also be sensitive about current opportunities and market threats thereby making a decision on who to partner with based on who can prove to be the best for their brand and business. These decision makers will also use peer reviews to understand and actual metrics to evaluate competitor vendors so that they can shortlist the most relevant one.

Buyers within the same company who are tasked with evaluating different vendors and platforms with the aim of shortlisting a few, getting quotes and then taking all of this info to the decision makers above are primarily interested in competitive pricing and will reach out to potential vendors with different kinds of asks and information based on what the decision makers above will want.

For both categories, detailed statistics and information, relevant case studies and value add services (like 24-hour customer support) will help them influence a buying decision.

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Using the Right Content and Marketing Channels Based on the Above

The type of marketing content and channels that are needed to drive buying decision vary as per the prospects’ or target audience’s buying stage and past conversations. The wrong channel can in fact break the potential of closing the deal.

Marketers and sales teams who work together to gather relevant insights on when buyers are moving from one stage to the other can have an upper hand here. Knowing where and when to reach out to your prospect based on whether they are a decision maker or whether they are the one evaluating vendors to put in front of the main decision makers can help identify what channel and marketing messaging will work better to drive further interest or reactions.

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A main decision maker for instance, will want proven metrics or recent case studies, a B2B buyer who is evaluating platforms to put in front of a decision maker could be swayed by competitive pricing or special add-on services and features.

Using existing customer testimonials to drive impact at this point is also beneficial, understanding more about your buyer’s behavior, how they consume content (whether through little LinkedIn posts and snippets or videos) can help marketers build strategic messaging accordingly.

Creating Greater Impact with the Intention of Shortening Buyer Journeys

B2B buyers today are exposed to a vast array of information online. You can assume that in most cases, before getting onto a call with you, your prospect would have already done their fair bit of research to know more about your service, product benefits, competitors and current clients.

This is why it becomes crucial for sales and marketing teams to work closely together to align to the buyer’s interest and their own process.

For instance, moving a potential buyer from one stage to the other by using thought leadership articles by your brand, sharing industry or product updates that can be beneficial to them, highlighting the benefits of your service or product in a more concise and relevant manner can help at this point.

While most seasoned B2B teams know to expect longer sales and marketing cycles in a typical buying journey, the goal for every marketing or sales effort should be to pre-empt the prospect’s or customer’s future pain point or question/concern and respond accordingly with the right content assets, marketing messaging – through the right channel. If you, for instance, have been conversing with a prospect only over email and they’ve gone silent on you, understanding where they are in the journey, what could trigger a reaction and using email as a complimentary yet relevant channel they are active on to share something that could influence their interest is key to keeping the conversation going.

For this to happen effectively, sales and marketing teams need to sync on the status of current pipelines and prospects.

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Enabling Target Audiences and Prospects to Look at Your Brand or Technology as an Investment, not Spend

In the B2B technology segment, decision makers need to keep lean tech stacks while ensuring they have invested in the most fruitful tech for their business. Most buyers in this segment already have an idea of what type of technology they would like to purchase down the line. Presenting your own service or product as an investment that will lead them to gain more ROI down the line is a trigger that can help drive deal conversations forward.

Seasoned marketers use intent data to understand more about this part of the buying journey or to drive other conversations in the pipeline forward. What matters is knowing that even if a prospect is not actively in-market for your service or product they will still have a set of pain points that their current vendors might not cater to as effectively – diving deep into this part of their problem to see whether your brand or service can fill the gap is an important step in the cycle.

The Importance of Marketing and Sales Working Together to Close Deals

For marketers and sales teams, knowing how to establish a proper ‘’hand off’’ process between the two teams was always considered crucial in B2B. The way B2B cycles work now, it makes more sense to drive conversations together as a single unit. When a prospect starts ghosting a sales rep, marketing could step in to nurture them again, with the right messaging, based on their role in the company (decision maker versus vendor evaluator).

The B2B buying journey today is more process and data driven, prospects know what they want and they look at data before making a decision. Marketing and sales teams need to then create frameworks that can keep interest and sales pipelines and current conversations active until a buyer is ready to finally sign on the dotted line.

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