Are you Getting Lost in the Buyer's Journey?

Three meditations: something to think about, a “how-to” resource, and a marketing deep dive. Ommmmmm.

Something to Think About

"How To"

In a couple of weeks, I’ll join two GTM rock stars at the Kiln in Lehi.

We’re talking GTM frameworks!?

If you’ve got questions like:

• Should I hire marketing or sales first??
• Should I hire sales reps or a manager first?
• Which marketing channels should I build first?

These questions and more about getting your company’s revenue engine launched and humming will be answered.

Psst!?

For newsletter subscribers who can’t be there in person… register anyway and we’ll send you the streaming link!

A Marketing Deep Dive?

Buyer's Journey

You’ve seen these diagrams before.

Purchasing steps laid out in a row.

Top to bottom, left to right.

Stages of awareness.

Funnels.

Pipelines.

Demand waterfalls.

All attempts to map the buyer’s journey.

To classify what happens inside and outside of a prospect on their way to closing.

And for the most part, the path through these stages is a straight line.

Point A to point B.

Boom.

Except that’s a lie.

Well, not a lie per se. But an abstraction—a simplification with functional utility but also some deceptive pitfalls if you aren’t careful.

It’s kind of like this.

Here’s an image of the moon’s orbit around the earth.

This about covers everything we learned in Jr. High.

Rotation, phases, etc.

But if you actually wanted to GO to the moon, you might want to have an understanding that reality looks more like the image below.

My point? The tools we use to map the buyer’s journey are often like the simplified animation.

Funnels and pipelines make us think the journey is linear, because that’s easy to understand.

We think marketing captures demand, then hands qualified leads off to sales like passing a baton.?

But it’s not reality.?

Because buyer’s journeys are almost never linear.

Instead, buyer’s journeys are MESSY.

Gartner created this image to explain how complex the process can be.

And even this is often a simplification.

Chris Walker is constantly beating the drum about the waste and inefficiency of selling to buyers who are not “in-market.”

But this image is describing the journey for buyers who ARE in-market.

If they aren’t, they are either not qualified or the timing is wrong.?

Mapping that would convolute the story even more.

According to Gartner, sales reps will only be in contact with buyers 5% of the time during their buying journey.?

So, what’s going on the other 95% of the time?

They are researching, talking to others, asking questions on social media.

In the information age, buyers take responsibility for informing themselves.

So ask yourself, are you able to adapt when those journeys are all over the place?

How well are you controlling the sources of information that they find?

• Is your website up to date?
• Is the copy clear and compelling?
• Are your entries on review sites like G2 or Capterra up to date?
• Is your SEO making content you control the easiest for prospects to find when they ask?
• Are you engaged in social listening, so when your prospects ask a question, you can be there to answer?
• Are you sending them well-crafted messages that answer their questions before they ask them?

It’s HARD to justify the time and effort it takes to update a website, produce content, and man social channels.

And it’s HARD to attribute revenue to those efforts.

But that’s where your customers are making the decision to buy.

It’s a lot.

So, how do you eat the elephant?

With a plan.

A systematic and relentless focus on execution will give you an edge.

The volume of marketing activities matters.?

But it’s SO easy to waste time and money on random acts of marketing.

And it’s stubbornly deceptive.

While you’re doing them, activities that don’t move the needle FEEL pretty similar to those that do.

Until you look at the results.

The lag between effort and results can be insanely hard to pin down.

If you’re working your guts out but it’s not showing up in revenue, you might need to expand your view of the buyer’s journey.

It might be good to bring in some outside experts like our team at CMO Zen.

These problems ARE solvable.

But sometimes they are a pain in the neck to figure out.

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Until next time… namaste.

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Chad Jardine, CEO

CMO Zen

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