I’ve spent the last few years pitching thousands of (sometimes very annoyed) customers. I’ve learned a lot, the most useful of which is this: today’s buyer is smarter, busier, and more skeptical than ever.
The wealth of digital information available to consumers makes defining a clear-cut sales funnel incredibly difficult today. In fact, a study by Google and CEB tells us that buyers are almost 60 percent of the way through the decision-making process before they even start talking to a salesperson.
As marketers, we are challenged to transform our old mentality of “closing the deal” to delivering value, and to do so with timely, relevant content at each stage of the sales cycle.
The Good Ol’ Days
Traditionally, the sales funnel followed the AIDA Model (Attention, Interest, Decision, Action). This model relied heavily on the salesperson to handhold customers along the journey to purchase. This included generating product awareness, creating urgency and obtaining customer commitment.
How Content Marketing Has Completely Reshaped The Sales Funnel
