Website's Influence on Buying Decisions

On Wednesday Hubspot put up a blog post/chart (below) about a new survey released by RainToday.com. 97% of survey respondents (which included more than 200 buyers of professional services) stated that websites had at least some measure of influence over their ultimate buying decisions. 97%.

This hopefully tells you something you've known for some time, that nearly all confirmed buyers will eventually make their way to your website (or your competitors) to gather information to help inform their buying decision. And that's not just product-specific data.

We know from analysis of the marketing and sales funnels that at the beginning of this journey, these prospects are first looking for educational content and thought leadership that first speaks to an understanding of business challenges, how that relates to their specific needs and then provides answers that help solve these challenges. Not until those questions have been satisfied do these prospects seek specific information on the vendor solutions that support these ideas.

This blog has spoken often about the need to have a website that provides compelling (and easily obtainable) content to prospects for each stage of the funnel they are in, as well as for their specific roles/pain points relative to their responsibilities to the overall decision chain. This only further supports that.

If you feel your website is not sufficiently content-optimized, it's not too big an elephant to start the changes needed right now. I'm sure you have sufficient content already in your site copy, your campaign offers and assets, etc. The keys are to get that content organized, updated and targeted, and get it on the site (and searchable). Simple SEO, such as keyword development and creating meta tags for your page titles, descriptions and keywords can be done in a few days. Paid search that supports those keywords can be done in minutes. Create a landing page/s that provide a path for prospects to gain further information from you while exchanging some of their personal data. Ensure that your blog is liked to your site and pump a steady stream of your brilliance into it. Link those posts to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. It's not difficult. There are prospects who are waiting to hear from you right now...

Lead Nurturing

I've been chatting this week with a former colleague setting up a simple lead scoring system for a small tech company where he runs the marketing team. He embraces the importance of automating his lead collection and management, nurturing the leads they gather as well as placing scores on each of the interactions he has with prospects as they progress through the lead funnel. Good stuff.

We've been debating though the amount of data he should seek to collect through this lead nurturing process, that is, how much data and when to ask for it. He's attempting to collect all relevant data with which to determine if the prospect is a viable lead IN THE FIRST CONTACT HE MAKES. Hmmm, I say... not good stuff.

We both agree that lead nurturing should be an ongoing process where we engage in a ongoing dialogue with a prospect with the goal of providing the prospect with high value information that makes him smarter/do his job better in exchange for his providing us proprietary data about what his needs are (or might be in the future). This suggests that this information exchange should be gradual and at a pace the prospect feels comfortable with in his learning process.

The lead nurture process is very much about your company gradually earning trust as a valued thought leader or provider of good ideas. As you become a trusted partner (you're not just about trying to sell product) the prospect will become more willing to gradually reveal more information about himself and his requirements. Very few people will tell you everything about who they are/what they need in that first marketing interaction.

I've always felt that the campaign forms I build are incremental and reflect where the prospect is in the funnel. I seek to gather just enough prospect data with the first marketing activity that permits me the chance to re-connect and prove my mettle again and again. My first forms usually ask just for a first, last name and an email address (always a 2nd email field to ensure there are no errors). Once I have that, I can enter the prospect into my marketing database and let the conversation grow.

Hopefully with each successive marketing transaction I provide sufficient value for the prospect to feel comfortable in exchanging more info about who he is and what his needs might be. A 2nd form might for instance ask for his title, company name, size, address and industry. 3rd touch forms might then delve into BANT information (budget, authority, need, timeline) where I begin to get a sense if there is funded project either now or on the horizon.

In future posts I'll go through how creating an offer portfolio which supports this lead nurturing process ensures a hand-off from one marketing transaction to the next and keeps the prospect engaged.

Continuum vs Breadth Offers

I've written quite a bit about how a one-size-fits-all offer simply will not prove effective in marketing to an extended decision chain. By that I mean a single offer (or if you prefer a 'Call-to-action') generally cannot speak to the pain points/interests of a C-level exec, VP, Dir, Manager and Analyst in total, as well as specific offers created for each target could (most especially as they progress thru the marketing funnel). I've run a number of tests that show conversions rise when offers are built that address specific target concerns or charters.

With that in mind, start your offer development strategy by considering not only who the target is and what's top of mind for them, but also where the target is in the marketing funnel.

There are circumstances when offers can be consolidated between more closely-related targets, say C-level and VP-level targets. These types of offers, called breadth offers, are broader in scope and are designed to speak to a wider swath of people in the decision chain (while being cost efficient to the overall program). These offers are usually top-of-funnel assets that speak to more general issues relating to business issues, problems, challenges and would be of interest to a cross-over collection of individuals in the decision chain. They're specific enough to create sufficient awareness to prompt the collection of profile information at the initial stages of when an organization is vetting and researching an idea or product.

However as each target's interests (and their responsibilities) become more specific as the entire decision chain progresses thru the funnel, continuum offers support a multi-touch, lead nurturing model by providing progressively detailed and highly targeted content needed to attract, satisfy and advance individual targets from touchpoint to touchpoint. Continuum offers provide coordinated incentives for deeper engagement and mutually satisfying funnel progress, ensuring that each interaction you have with these decsion makers meets their need to seek more relevant information relative to their own roles and responsibilties to the overall decision.

Email is Still Relevant

Article today from Jeanne Jennings on ClickZ 'Why Email Matters More Than Ever' has some good points on why email is still relevant as a tactic/communication vehicle especially as marketing budgets are being cut and every tactic is under a microscope.

Jeanne talks about being strategic in your emailing (targeting, creating relevant messages), optimizing your tactical email elements (and testing those elements), insuring deliverability and list testing.

I might add that I feel any touch (email or other) that you make with a prospect should have a purpose and should always be designed with dual goals in mind - providing ongoing value/information to that person as they interact with you while moving her/him thru the funnel and better qualifying their needs. The latter goal is of course critical to your organization - converting them into an opportunity or learning that they will not be a future buyer (or influence the buying decision) of your products or solutions. In my eyes any tactic should have a distinct purpose of a true value exchange - give the target information that makes them smarter while further understanding/qualifying their needs to see if/how/when you can solve a business problem for them with your solutions.