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CMO: … I get that we need to think of the buyer’s perspective when marketing. We have modeled the buyer’s journey today.
Us: Great. Do all the buyers buy the same way? What if we have different buyers with different problems? Do they follow the same path? Have the same understanding? Go to the same places? Is the buyer’s journey to help create a composite view of the buyer’s journey or to assist in understanding their differences?
CMO: I get it, but how does that help us?
Us: Do you market to the commonality between buyers or the differences?
CMO: Commonalities, but we target market to different segments.
Us: Do you target market based upon differences in perceived pain and motivation (psychographics)or based upon demographics; like industry, title, company size, location, etc? Can you tell the difference between a potential buyer who may at some point in time be interested versus a buyer who has recognized that they have the problem?
CMO: Ok, but we have our inside sales group do the qualification.
Us: What is your qualification rate? How expensive is it to filter on the back-end? What is your cost per lead? Total cost of customer acquisition? Do you calculate the soft costs into your total cost of acquisition? Do you track the soft costs of staff, time, etc on top of hard marketing $’s?
CMO: We track just the marketing dollars.
US: Could you see the value of being to target market to pain in the market? Reduce the volume, but increase the quality of the leads. You would have to build unique models for each type of buyer versus a composite buyer journey. You would then have to understand why and how different buyers do their buying process. Deeper than personas, we actually need to model their adoption process and the differences in their business maturity. Focusing on the differences allows us to filter the noise and recognize buyers who are actively engaged in solving particular business problems.
CMO: Ok, I can see the value, how does it work?
Us: This dialogue is an example of how it actually works. Conceptually, you have to get agreement to the problem. The solution becomes about solving the problem, not just delivering the promised functionality. If you can start with a business problem like “getting visibility to when a buyer enters the market”, then our job becomes helping marketing to get that visibility and then to use that information to better the target marketing and lead generation.
Matthew is a Social Marketing Executive and is co-founder of Social Gastronomy, LLC and the Social Executive Council. Prior to founding Social Gastronomy, Matthew has over 18 years’ experience as an executive in marketing, product management, and sales. Matthew has an extensive background in the SaaS Software, Social Media, Mobile, IT Services, and Telecom industries. He has prior entrepreneurial experience as a founder and executive in several early-stage venture-backed technology companies, as well as, holds several US patents for a mobile marketing technology. Matthew is a prominent blogger and regular industry speaker on social marketing and strategy topics. Matthew’s blog can be found at www.socialgastronomy.com/blog. For more information on Matthew, you can check out his LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/rosenhaft or contact him directly at mrosenhaft@socialgastronomy.com.
