Adapt Your Marketing to the Five B-to-B Decision Stages

Author:

Tom Bishop

Source:

We business-to-business marketing professionals think about our target audience practically every minute (it’s kind of an obsession). We know their revenue, their number of employees, the titles they hold, their budgets, their hobbies, and most important, their decision roles. This is static lead information, and we try to know as much as we can.
 
But what about dynamic information, which changes over time? For instance, when are people ready to buy?
 
That’s where decision stages come in. A decision stage is a unique point in time during the b-to-b lead cycle. It’s another way to segment leads, because their needs differ so dramatically from stage to stage. This affects how we find them, how we evaluate them, and how we craft our message for them.
 
Here are five b-to-b buyer decision stages, and how to apply a unique message to each:
 
1) problem solving. This is the first stage, where a b-to-b buyer realizes a need for a new solution. We marketers hardly ever hear about prospects in this stage, unless we have consulting partners who cover our industry or have massive ad budgets that make it impossible for buyers to miss us. A push strategy is not how you should go about communicating with people in this stage. Instead, adopt a consultative approach focused on detailed technological discussions with content experts. This stage is the biggest reason we need social media, partnerships, blogs, forums, associations, and networks.
 
When somebody signs up for an email campaign from a site designed to reach people in this initial stage, your approach should be ...