A lot of things change in marketing from year-to-year.
The buying process isn't one of them.
The buying process - or purchase continuum - refers to the stages people progress through from problem recognition (awareness) to the purchase of a product or service.
And contrary to some of the jokes I hear, human resource professionals are people............. so yes, they also go through this buying process when evaluating and purchasing new HR products.
There are many variations but the one we will use as the model is:
It is the one guaranteed constant in marketing. It does not change and as a marketer you can take great comfort in knowing that.
What's not so comforting is deciding how to allocate your marketing budget. This is quite complex and changes all the time. This decision used to be fairly simple because we had fewer options.
Then came the Internet.
Then came social media.
The number of marketing tactics has exploded. But our budgets, as a percent of revenue, have remained the same at best.
And herein lies the challenge. Less money, more spending options.
So how do we select the right marketing tactics? And once we’ve made our selections, how do we decide what amount of money and resources to dedicate to each of those tactics?
And how does all this tie into the buying process?
When deciding which tactics fit into your marketing plan and how much money and resources to allocate to each, it helps to understand what part of the buying process the tactic impacts.
This is really interesting stuff.
You cannot force people to change their behavior and quickly jump from awareness to purchase. But you can facilitate behavior change by building awareness, informing and educating, and establishing trust and credibility. This leads to meaningful conversations and, eventually, sales.
Most marketing fails because of bottlenecks that occur along the purchasing process. We call this the “clogged artery” effect. And most bottlenecks occur because of inadequate funding of marketing tactics that support the flow of buyers along the buying process.
We touch on a lot of other related subjects in the e-book. The chapters are:
The Marketing Process
The Buying Process
The B2B Buyer vs. B2C Buyer
Common B2B Marketing Tactics and Their Roles in the Buying Process
The Right Mix: Putting it All Together
Don’t Over-Analyze!
Download it today. You can also watch this brief video introduction of the e-book.
I can promise you one thing - this e-book will get you thinking. And that's the intent.