Buying Cycle | Tony Zambito Founder of Buyer Personas and Buyer Insights Research

Buying Cycle

How B2B CMOs Can Achieve Customer-Centric Marketing With Buyer Personas

A recent survey by B2B Marketing, in conjunction with the UK-based agency Tomorrow People, indicated only 38% of marketers considered their content to be “very customer-centric.” This mirrors findings of other surveys related to content marketing and customer-centric marketing, which consistently hovers in the 35- 40% range of “very customer-centric” or “very effective content marketing.” In this same survey mentioned above, it was found 50% or more of marketers surveyed have not engaged in researching and creating buyer personas for their marketing efforts. Although the concept of buyer personas were founded nearly 14 years ago, the maturity of buyer persona…

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Digital Buyer Personas: Why Prosumer and Produser Behaviors May Be The Most Important Yet To B2B Marketing

The digital economy continues to expand and reach into every corner of the globe. Digital technology advances have shrunken the world and made it possible for businesses to connect and collaborate on a scale like never before. These advances have altered buying behaviors drastically where conventional thinking about the B2B buyer can no longer be relied upon. Whereby continued outdated focus on the B2B buyer may put an organization at peril. Buying Behaviors Reshaped For some time now, we have had predictions of forthcoming changes in how people will adopt entirely new buying behaviors. Alvin Toffler, the famed futurist, who first…

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Why Are 76% of Content Marketers Forgetting Sales Enablement?

24%. That is it. At the recent Hubspot Inbound Conference in August, this percentage was mentioned. It represents the percentage, from Hubspot’s recent State of inbound Marketing report, of marketers surveyed who do have agreements with sales on defining lead responsibilities. Very surprising and no wonder there have been increasing indications of content marketing ineffectiveness. Half The Story Statistics being statistics let us presume further validation would still be close with a plus or minus 5-percentage spread. It means it is quite possible nearly three-fourths of marketers are not in alignment with sales on an important issue. A read into…

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Lead Optimization Study: The Right Prospect, The Right Message, At The Right Time

Generating leads is a big deal. Acquiring new accounts and customers an even bigger deal. Getting both of these right is a very good deal. Getting them wrong – well – can be a very bad deal. Recently, I reviewed the interesting findings from the CSO Insights Lead Optimization Study. The study’s primary focus was to see how marketing is attempting to generate more demand and how well it supports the efforts of sales to generate revenue. Over 600 firms participated in a web-based survey. If I were to pick one word to sum it up, I would pick: struggle. The…

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Is Your 2014 Sales Strategy Already Doomed By Lack of Information?

Right around the corner, the laborious and angst filled process of planning for 2014 begins. 2014 will be different. While economic growth will remain sluggish (according to the Congressional Budget Office), businesses are starting to release the chains put around growth spending. A lot has changed since the meltdown of 2008. In these short five years, what we know about buying and selling has been turned upside down. The Revolution Continues What we have learned is a buyer revolution is in full swing with buyers now holding the cards. We are in the midst of it and the revolution shows…

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5 New Buyer Insights You Need To Grow Customer Acquisition

The buyer revolution is in a frenzied uprising. More empowered and influential than ever before, buyers are letting it be known of their dissatisfaction. Several reports during the past year indicate buyers frown upon self-serving as well as product-based content marketing and sales approaches. The power of revolt now a mere click to the trash icon. What buyers today are beginning to voice is the higher expectations of knowing about their business. With these higher expectations comes a new standard, which must be met. B2B organization must come to the table with business related advice on how to solve business…

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Is Content Marketing Ineffectiveness Changing Buying Behavior?

The pendulum has been around since 1602 when Galileo invented it. It was the world’s most accurate timekeeping device right up until around the 1930’s. The concept is one of our natural laws of the world. We may be experiencing the effects of the pendulum in sales and marketing. Despite the pronouncements of buyers not engaging sales until 50-70% into the buying cycle, this generalized view is and should be questioned. Paired with other studies indicating buyer dissatisfaction with content and information, something new may be afoot. At this stage, it should be treated as an early stage buyer insight…

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Are You Treating the 57% of the Buyer Journey Statistic As Gospel?

I was inspired to write this article after reading Megan Heuer’s article entitled Three Myths of the 67% Statistic. Megan is Vice President and Group Director, Data-Driven Marketing at SiriusDecisions. It is a good read. I am happy to see SiriusDecision make a commentary on their statistic regarding the buying journey. As Megan points out, we have all seen a variety of numbers, such as the Corporate Executive Board statistic of 57%, as well as others. All stating buyers are not making their first sales contact until up to 70% of the buying process is completed. What I would like to…

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How Well Do You Know Your Ideal Company Persona? (4 Ways You Can Know)

The concept of targeting companies has been around for a long time. Opportunity pipelines usually consist of company names. Sales automation typically has started out with creating a company account name. Knowing which companies to target has been the lifeblood for B2B Sales for decades. This approach, however, is starting to become like trying to race across a quicksand lake. B2B organizations find themselves sinking deep into a state of darkness with little knowledge about the companies being targeted. There is a reason for this. For years, we have done targeting quantitatively, categorically, and statistically. One problem, these approaches give…

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5 Steps B2B Chief Sales Officers Must Take To Survive The B2B Buyer Revolution

For tenured B2B Chief Sales Officers, the world of sales – as they know it – is undergoing its most dramatic disruption in the last 50 years. What worked before no longer works now. Sales organizations are under constant assault by both internal forces and buyers. The demands and expectations of buyers and internal leaders rising each quarter. As I have written about for marketing, B2B sales now find themselves in the throes of a buyer revolution. The traditional sales processes of the last two decades have been upended and overthrown by newly empowered buyers. The use of conventional sales…

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