While quarantining and lockdowns are hopefully temporary, the move to digital that has erupted during the pandemic seems to be here to stay. As the buyer’s journey becomes increasingly more complex over time, it emphasizes the importance of expanding our horizons beyond traditional marketing to pick up on the digital insights that buyers are putting out. Traditional practices like buyer personas or wide-cast prospecting on their own lack the context needed to fully grasp a buying team’s needs during this day and age. If B2B marketers and sellers tap into real buyer activity, they are not only in a better spot to keep pace with changing market dynamics, but they’re better equipped to address the true needs of customers in 2021 and beyond.
The Big Picture: Buyer Activity Matters
It’s typically challenging to see the big picture if you’re missing pieces of the puzzle. For instance, the big picture for a sales rep is usually something along the lines of, “I need to show prospects that I can help them solve their pain points.” Missing pieces of this puzzle are:
- Am I talking to the right person? Who are the other decision makers?
- Does this person currently have an interest in my company and our solutions?
- Where is this person in their buying journey? Are they even in-market at all?
This is why buyer activity matters. 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer even reaches out to sales. Sellers who are working cold leads and marketers who are blindly writing content will struggle to find success in their efforts because there are key details missing. How can you help buyers navigate complex buying journeys if you don’t know what they need? Or where they are in their journey? Or even who they are?
As Cameron Weeks, Customer Experience Executive and Founder of Edify Labs said in this recent article, “Customers leave breadcrumbs everywhere. Don’t let that data go to waste.” Take heed of this advice – the right data and sales intelligence is necessary to truly understand what buyers need today. As the lines between B2B and B2C continue to blur, buyers will not only be expecting personalization that behavioral data can provide, they will require it.
Trust from Buyers is Earned Not Given
Embracing the shift to digital is only half the battle when it comes to staying connected to buyers. Sellers also need to establish trust with the humans they are trying to sell to or it’ll be hard to break through and be heard. Sellers that take a consultative approach and demonstrate knowledge of a prospect’s buying team, industry and pain points are better suited to establish productive-long-term relationships. It’s for this reason that sellers are itching for buyer insights to provide the highly personalized and meaningful connections buyers are after. Marketers can benefit from this type of information, too. The more context they have available, the more they can align content and messaging with the buying journey.
Buyer Intent Insights Piece Everything Together
This past year’s digital transformation has given many companies the “push” they needed to advance innovation and get more in tune with buyers. We’re seeing marketers swap out rigid personas for insights from real people. Furthermore, in the absence of in-person events, utilizing behavioral data has enabled sellers to not only understand what buyers are up to but also what they need. If companies zero-in on buyer activity for intent insights and trends, they’ll be better equipped to put pieces of the puzzle together in a way that surpasses the capabilities of traditional sales and marketing efforts.
To understand more about how TechTarget’s Prospect-Level Purchase Intent insight can help you deliver better results in 2021, visit here.
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