How much can marketing influence someone to buy B2B software?

How much can marketing influence someone to buy B2B software?

Summary: Understand the importance of creating an 'always-on' marketing strategy that aligns with how B2B buyer’s buy.

Main Body of Content:

How much can marketing actually impact someone’s decision to buy B2B software?

Some of the reasons someone may become in-market could be:
↳ To support business objectives that have been decided by C-suite
↳ Unhappy with an existing vendor
↳ Their customer needs are growing
↳ Outdated systems or processes
↳ Cyber security concerns
↳ Regulatory changes

I could go on — but if you really start to map out all the reasons someone buys B2B software, you’ll realise two things:

1. You often don’t know when one of those things has happened
2. Marketing can rarely impact whether those things happen

So suddenly this puts marketing campaigns into perspective:
↳ Those eBook leads you’re passing on to sales — not going to buy.
↳ That contact that hit a 100 lead score from blog interactions — not going to buy.
↳ The lead who has opened your last 10 company newsletters — not going to buy.

We’ve become so obsessed with generating leads for sales, that we’ve completely neglected the critical part that makes a great sales lead — someone with actual demand.

So how do you fix this?

Structure your marketing as an ‘always-on’ blend of:
↳ Problem identification (helping them realise they actually have a problem they need solving)
↳ Problem solving (how your solution solves the problem(s)
↳ Trust building (Showcasing expertise from the people within your business)
↳ Social proof (Showing how you’ve solved similar problems for your customers)

You might not be able to push someone into a sales process on your terms, but you can passively guide someone through on their terms instead.

Use marketing to touch on every aspect of a sales process, so when they decide they’re in-market, it’s a no-brainer to choose you. You’ve built that relationship with them before your competitors have even got out of bed.