The content marketing strategy for B2B companies changes throughout the sales funnel. In this second part of an interview by the SD AMA, Jeremy Durant of Bop Design discusses how content can be tailored specifically for the Decision Phase of the sales funnel for B2B firms.
All interviews were by Jimmy Page, Vice President of Content and Analytics, at the San Diego Chapter of the American Marketing Association for the segment, This Week in Marketing powered by wsRadio.com. All recordings can be accessed on the SD AMA website.
Jimmy: We spent the majority of the first segment talking about an overview of the content industry. How B2B companies are looking at it, and a high level understanding of how you’re looking at stages of the buying process, and applying content to it. We’re going to start really digging into pieces of the funnel and how you design content and think about content for those specific pieces. We’ll start with high to mid-funnel. For people who aren’t as familiar with the marketing funnel, what we’re talking about there is awareness-style marketing. More sort of high-level, making people understand what you’re doing. People who are in an informational research phase, those kinds of things. Jeremy, you mentioned the first stage in the buying process is what you called, “Discovery,” in the first segment. How do you identify a customer that’s in Discovery phase, based on behaviors?
Jeremy: You actually almost have to look at the Discovery phase from both sides. As the business, you’re discovering that client, and you’re trying to qualify them. It’s really a two-way street where both sides are trying to discover and qualify the other. I’m looking at certain behaviors with content, just certain personality behaviors with the client that I think are important. If a client seems to know better than I do in terms of content, that could be a major red flag. You want to make sure that they’re hiring you as an expert. If you’re supplying content, and they either disregard it, or have better ideas, even though you, as that business, have a tried-and-true process, that can be a major red flag. I look for little “superficial” things like that from a personality standpoint that I think are very important. What you’re doing there is you’re trying to qualify that client from a personality standpoint, to know if you can take this project from start to finish. With most b-to-b projects, it’s typically a long-term partnership. You’re going to be working with this person for months, if not years, so you want to get that right out of the way immediately. That definitely is, from a content standpoint, just seeing the reaction to certain content is a big thing. If they’re eager to learn, and they actually look at you as that expert, that’s a great sign.
Part II: Content Marketing for B2B Firms: An Interview with Jeremy Durant
