As a B2B marketer, you now need to be much more thoughtful in how your company interacts with buyers during every stage of the purchase funnel. You can no longer win with traditional digital marketing campaigns rife with imprecise personalization; you need to talk to each buyer as an individual. When you combine this with the fact that marketing’s role has expanded from focusing on the top of the funnel to needing to have their impact directly felt on sales , the result is a brand new era of marketing, one which I am calling the Thoughtful Marketing Era.

There are three core tenants of the Thoughtful Marketing Era, and B2B marketing leaders need to ensure that they are actively devoting resources to each one in order to stay ahead of competitors and fulfill their promise to sales. They are:

1. Marketing needs to walk customers through every stage of the buying process

The B2B buying process has become incredibly complex. There are more internal stakeholders than ever; the amount of information available to buyers is overwhelming; internal processes and bureaucratic oversight add even more pressure and requirements. In fact, CEB has found that, on average, B2B purchase lengths take 97% longer than initially expected.  

It is up to marketers to make the entire process as easy and seamless for the buyer as possible. As CEB also notes, marketers need to “identify the specific obstacles that derail purchase progress,” and eliminate them. This means creating truly educational, high-value content perfectly tailored to each buyer’s unique situation and problem they are looking to solve. It means counseling them on the processes they will face when trying to get internal buy-in. It means helping them not only better understand your product, but better understand your market at large.

Prioritizing educational hand-holding in the purchase funnel represents a dramatic shift for most marketing organizations, where the goal has traditionally been to package your solution in the most attractive way possible. But by being more empathetic to the buyer and their problems, you will build an unprecedented level trust and rapport , setting both parties up for mutual success.

2. Marketing needs to facilitate a B2B buying experience that equals B2C experiences

As I mentioned in my last post, the hyper-personalized consumer technology experience puts most B2B experiences to shame. The good news is, with the influx of data and new technologies available, it’s now possible to emulate those experiences as a B2B marketer.

In fact, two of the hottest trends in B2B marketing represent this new emphasis on truly thoughtful, unique experiences for every buyer: sales enablement and account-based marketing. The former allows marketers to equip sales reps with the right piece of content, training, and information for every interaction, ensuring the buyer realizes that sales is speaking to them on a truly one-to-one basis. The latter allows marketing and sales teams to focus on groups of individuals involved in the buying process at target accounts, providing personalized experiences for each buyer across the entire range of marketing initiatives, from email campaigns and website experiences to even which buyers get invited to which events.

These trends result in an experience for the buyer which is vastly more customized, unique, and valuable than traditional B2B marketing tactics, and it comes close to offering him or her an experience that meets the expectations set by the Amazons and Netflixs of the world.

There are specific technologies that can help grow these foundational elements of Thoughtful Marketing at scale, which I will go over in my next post.

3. Marketing needs to enable their sales reps to the best people they can be

At many organizations, sales reps are inundated with tasks and processes that are detrimental to their own success. Forrester has found that B2B reps spend an average of 30 hours per month searching for and creating content, and administrative work takes upwards of 29% of a rep’s day.

The result is that very few reps are actually spending the requisite time to learn about the buyer, their problems, and tailoring solutions specific to individual needs. And this is not the fault of sales; it’s the fault of marketing. In addition to establishing a robust, effective sales enablement process, marketing needs to take tasks off the plate of sales while providing as much valuable information as possible about each lead. We’ve all heard many times that the best sales reps are the ones that take the time to learn and listen; marketing has the power to help every sales rep learn and listen better .

The Thoughtful Marketing Era represents a major departure from the lead-gen focus of marketing that has dominated our discipline for the past 25 years. It requires a tight alignment with sales, technologies and processes that facilitate personalization at scale, and above all, it requires a fundamental shift in mindset, from “How can I sell?” to “How can I help?”

And by “help,” I mean not just in how much my product can help the buyer. It means what I can do to help the buyer smoothly and productively navigate this incredible confusing, complex terrain of B2B buying. That’s being a thoughtful marketer.