Buying is a Process and, therefore, so is Marketing.
A lot of technology marketers are still missing the point about marketing being a process. And this leads them to waste tons of time and money running single-tactic “campaigns” that don’t pay off.
Let’s be sure you’re not in that boat.
If you never put much thought into how your prospects buy, now is the time to do it. No matter what you’re selling, your buyers are going through a multi-stage decision-making process that looks something like this:
Stage 1: Blissfully unaware. At this stage, the future buyers have no idea the problem you can solve even exists.
Stage 2: Problem acknowledged. Something happens in the business and these future buyers begin to recognize the pain.
Stage 3: Research. At this point, buyers begin to identify the problem and define their needs and solution requirements.
Stage 4: Vendor identification. Buyers make a long list of possible solution providers.
Stage 5: Vendor filtering. Often through an RFP process buyers whittle the long list to a shorter list.
Stage 6: Vendor selection. Finally a single vendor is chosen.
Stage 7: Purchase. Negotiations begin.
The interesting thing about this process is that buyers are likely to navigate stages 1 through 4 and sometimes even stage 5 without ever talking to a sales person.
Think about that. If the sales people aren’t helping the prospects through the first stages of the buying process, who is? You guessed it: marketing.
And isn’t it pretty obvious that no single marketing tactic – no ad, no email, no website, no trade show – alone can move a prospect through all 4 stages?
So, buying is a process and marketing must match that process with a process of its own.
We’ll discuss how marketing can help at each of these stages in a future post.
Technorati Tags: technology marketing, marketing process
This article was first published December 10, 2007 on the Tatum Marketing blog
A lot of technology marketers are still missing the point about marketing being a process. And this leads them to waste tons of time and money running single-tactic “campaigns” that don’t pay off.
Let’s be sure you’re not in that boat.
If you never put much thought into how your prospects buy, now is the time to do it. No matter what you’re selling, your buyers are going through a multi-stage decision-making process that looks something like this:
Stage 1: Blissfully unaware. At this stage, the future buyers have no idea the problem you can solve even exists.
Stage 2: Problem acknowledged. Something happens in the business and these future buyers begin to recognize the pain.
Stage 3: Research. At this point, buyers begin to identify the problem and define their needs and solution requirements.
Stage 4: Vendor identification. Buyers make a long list of possible solution providers.
Stage 5: Vendor filtering. Often through an RFP process buyers whittle the long list to a shorter list.
Stage 6: Vendor selection. Finally a single vendor is chosen.
Stage 7: Purchase. Negotiations begin.
The interesting thing about this process is that buyers are likely to navigate stages 1 through 4 and sometimes even stage 5 without ever talking to a sales person.
Think about that. If the sales people aren’t helping the prospects through the first stages of the buying process, who is? You guessed it: marketing.
And isn’t it pretty obvious that no single marketing tactic – no ad, no email, no website, no trade show – alone can move a prospect through all 4 stages?
So, buying is a process and marketing must match that process with a process of its own.
We’ll discuss how marketing can help at each of these stages in a future post.
Thu, Nov 5, 2009
Conversion Optimization, Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum