B2B buying isn’t linear or predictable. But brands can grasp the nuances by dissecting consuming decision-making. Decode the nitty-gritty.

Studying consumer behavior, especially the psychological factors behind a purchase, is crucial to a business’s success. Selling to potential customers isn’t as easy as exposing them to products and services and hoping this ends in a purchase.

Businesses need to know how and why consumers buy particular solutions against others. While psychological factors are inherent in B2C and B2B buying structures, the motivations significantly differ. B2B buying decisions comprise companies with groups of individuals (buying committees) from different backgrounds and motivations.

However, understanding fundamental factors that drive decisions in the buying landscape can offer a better base for exploring purchasing motivations.

Sales-Free Experience and Buyer Challenges

According to a Gartner study, over 75% of buyers prefer a sales-free experience. These are the new-age consumers – highly aware and self-driven. But, Gartner’s research also asserts that self-service purchases online are also most likely to turn into regrets.

So, what is the actual root cause? A hiccup on the sellers’ part or the buyer’s difficulty in making a purchase?

“As hard as it has become to sell in today’s world, it has become that much more difficult to buy. The single biggest challenge of selling today is not selling, it’s actually our customers’ struggle to buy,” states Brent Adamson, the Distinguished VP at Advisory, Gartner.

The underlying motivation for a purchasing decision is – buyers want value.

However, complex and lengthy buying processes, uncertainty, and other disruptions overshadow potential customers from seeing it. These end up undermining buyers’ confidence and clarity.

Complexity of B2B Buying Committees

And in B2B, marketers sell to a whole group of decision-makers rather than individuals. There are so many layers to break down here. Even the group of decision-makers entails distinct levels of expertise, influence, and authority.

Thus, they influence the purchasing process differently. B2B buyers reflect a complex set of needs as compared to B2C ones. There are emotional and rational requirements that operate on two different levels – personal and organizational.

Even the alternatives available that buying committees can consider are increasing, owing to the fast pace with which the market is expanding. From new tech and startups to suppliers and services – the market has become an overflowing basket saturated with options.

How can a buying decision be simple when the choices aren’t?

As humans, we make conscious choices every step of our lives. We intuitively understand that we are making a choice, but psychologically, it’s not a straight road. It’s a cluster of decisions.

Making a decision or a choice is an amalgamation of alternative courses of action – ones preceding the final choice and carrying a sense of conflict and uncertainty.

This is prevalent in B2B buying processes.

Meanwhile, for B2B buyers, this decision-making process is a loop where they revisit certain decisions again. It comprises a lot of back-and-forth discussions, convincing decision-makers, re-strategizing, etc.

So, to say it’s unidirectional would be untrue.

The Six Buying “Jobs” in B2B Decision-Making

According to Gartner, there are six buying “jobs” in a decision-making process. Unlike “stages,” these don’t need a sequence or a fixed order.

Source: https://www.gartner.com.au/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey

Gartner uses the term “jobs” to demonstrate the B2B buying process where each job has to be completed before moving on to the next one, irrespective of the order.

Identifying the problem:

The buying committee recognizes the pain points that lead to several online searches. During independent research, it’s easy to disagree on the actual concerns. Hence, regrouping and discussions become necessary.

Exploring different solutions: 

What could be the possible solutions? The buying group then surfs the net for whitepaper downloads, supplier website visits, form fill-ups, outreach, etc. During this stage, buyers may also consult external experts.

Building requirements:

What would the ideal solution look like? Here, the buying committee aligns its expectations and develops criteria for the solutions it seeks. From requesting proposals to scheduling meetings with potential suppliers, data is integral to deciding on a solution.

Selecting the solution:

Evaluating between sellers that ideally fit their defined criteria. It often includes buying committee discussions, requests for more sales information (such as case studies), legal flats, and capital review boards.

Validation or confirmation:

Is this the right choice for our business?

Creating a consensus:

A buying group has different stakeholders with their own expectations. Hence, an alignment between them is vital to finalize a decision. This is requisite at all stages because every decision requires approvals.

Decision-making is non-sequential and complex. So, the sequence of these six “buying jobs” isn’t set in stone. As disagreements or new information arises, the decision-makers visit each job numerous times.

It highly depends on the buyer’s satisfaction in completing each job so that they can move closer to making a purchase.

The Nature of Consumer Decision-Making

Overall, consumer decision-making isn’t about choosing between objects but specific behaviors or attitudes. From selecting a particular information source in their research phase and “when to make the purchase” to “from which business” and payment channels – every decision involves choice alternatives, as mentioned before.

These choice alternatives have transformed into a dizzying array. Market congestion has coerced buyers into extensive research and information processing so they could make informed decisions.

Decision-making is a paradox.

On one hand, buyers wish for control over their challenges, but they also want simplicity. In the age of tech paralysis, these two rarely go hand-in-hand. Every option is an added benefit to the buyers – if one doesn’t meet their requirements, the other might.

It’s still another choice buyers have to consider making. But how often do buyers know what they want?

Every decision is a series of behaviors that rely on contextual influences, such as economic factors, peer pressure, social roles, or cultural attributes. This underlying theory mirrors how every marketing strategy is a chain of actions intended toward a specific outcome.

In short, the choices are directly reliant on the context within which it takes place.

The ‘context’

The psychoanalytical consumer decision-making model asserts that buyers have underlying motives for a purchase – unconscious and conscious. They are driven by a mix of conscious and subconscious desires, which is why buyers might be drawn to specific products or brands without entirely understanding why.

Decision-making is rudimentarily influenced by external factors known as contextual influences. They highlight the information available to consumers and how they process it to make decisions.

In B2B, one of the crucial contexts required for purchasing decisions is collating necessary information.

Think of whitepaper downloads or case studies. Why are case studies such a vital step in sales? It’s value-proof, detailing how reliable, authentic, or an ideal fit a brand’s solution is. Additionally, such pieces of information are a support for decision-making.

Information is crucial at every step of B2B decision-making. This varies from tangible ones, such as pricing structure and meeting ethical standards, to intangible ones, such as brand awareness and reputation.

More often, a brand’s reputation is likely to take priority over price in high-risk purchasing situations. But if a decision is low-risk, cost and convenience take the front seat.

The ‘risk’ factor

In the B2B landscape, buyers are assumed to be more objective and focus on the purchase risk before making any decisions. Risk is a crucial determinant in choice decisions.

What will the business risk losing (adverse consequences) if it makes an incorrect decision?

Predicting the outcome of a decision or a choice is not easy – it’s never accurate. So, how can the buying committee navigate significant purchasing risks?

They focus on the importance and complexity of a purchase. Mapping the importance of a purchase for the organization helps ascertain its impact on the business goals. This facilitates buyers to focus on the brand with a positive reputation in sailing through potential problems.

Whereas, with the lesser complexity and higher sophistication of the purchasing process, the decision-makers are likely to oblige. In complex or excruciatingly long sales cycles, buyers find it tasking to weigh the choices or even predict the offerings’ performance.

This increase in ambiguity might also lead to significant risks, compelling the buyers to move on.

Today, B2B is commoditized. This has embedded specific tangible (price and scalability) and intangible (cultural fit and aesthetics) elements in brand offerings, fostering choice paralysis.

Thus, B2B buyers must engage in complex decision-making processes to grasp brand offerings. Subsequently, it’s the brand’s responsibility to offer sufficient cues that highlight the intangible attributes.

In simpler terms, decision-making crucially depends on the brand information communicated to the buying centers. It permeates the overall process, but to what extent? This is questionable.

With market saturation, complexity in decision-making has become the norm.

It’s about predicting what, as buyers, we truly want from weighing the choice alternatives and evaluating the information in our hands.

But, the truth of organizational buying is that even the most thought-out decision-making processes are susceptible to errors.

For example, too much information can derail the purchase, overwhelming the decision-makers. This overload could result in poorer decisions or purchases by increasing deliberation, complicating the processes further.

In B2B, every decision-making process involves six to 10 decision-makers. These hold their own sets of information and contextual cues for the different solutions available in the market.

While the modern buyer is self-driven, they still require brand support. Instead, this disjointed and fragmented buying environment demands a shift to a more relationship-focused alignment between prospective buyers, sales, and marketing.

Organizations need to keep up with the times. Adopt parallel and channel-agnostic roadmaps and execute buyer enablement strategies.  

When your customers reach the end of the sales funnel & are just a step away from garnering new clients, these marketing tactics will help you win leads.

The bottom funnel is a closing stage. Your potential customers are done with their research (TOFU) and have weighed the options well (MOFU). By now your prospects have thoroughly investigated their problem and are well aware of the potential solutions available in the market. All they need is a final push to take things ahead from the BOFU phase. And the next step is converting them into buyers.

That said, the last leg of the sales funnel pipeline may have the least number of leads. The number of prospects at this stage will probably be few, but all of them chose to come this far. You can be sure that they align with your offerings and are ready to make the purchase. Your prospects have liked your brand and are one decision away from sealing the deal.

These prospective clients fairly have an idea of how your brand will address their pain points, over the conversations or messages you probably exchanged before they reached this stage. They could be regularly visiting your website to understand how your product or service resonates with them. By the time your prospects reach the Bottom Of the Funnel stage of the funnel, they have interacted with your TOFU and MOFU content, instilling brand awareness and building trust in what you have to offer. The BOFU phase is also a point where you are banking on garnering more leads and getting worked up about how to make this happen. In this article, we have provided insights to guide you toward successful interactions with BOFU customers.c

Your BOFU marketing objective needs to center around convincing your prospects that they should buy your product or services. Building an effective marketing strategy for BOFU is a catalyst for driving revenue and accelerating brand growth. It is the process of marketing to a narrow, highly qualified audience to nurture the decision-making process and persuade buyers to purchase your product or service. For converting more prospects to leads at this stage, you need an effective BOFU marketing plan to convince potential customers that they need to go ahead and make the buying decision.

Bottom-of-the-funnel Marketing Tactics: Content Ideas to help you shine

In a marketing funnel, a well-crafted BOFU will make a big difference to help your brand shine. The goal of your marketing strategy is to amplify personalization and highlight your brand’s trustworthiness.  Although in-person interactions are considered impactful, robust content can also attract customers for the long haul.  

While launching a bottom-of-the-funnel marketing campaign, remember that your end goal is to take people across the finish line, converting them into paying accounts. An impactful digital marketing strategy will serve as a roadmap to convince potential customers to purchase your offering. And this is possible by delivering informative content that motivates prospects to take action.

The bottom-of-the-funnel content framework focuses on prospects familiar with their pain point and actively seeking the best solution. These are the people who are very close to buying your offering. This is the perfect stage to use the power of content to persuade the purchase decision. BOFU content takes personalization up a notch, helping the potential leads decide to follow through and convert. Your content must convey why your offering is the best solution for their pain point.

We have compiled ideas for effective BOFU content to inspire action and increase the lead conversion rate.

Product Guides and Tutorials

Publishing how-to guides and tutorials for your products or services are good content forms to consider. Utilize them to convince your prospects that your offerings will deliver the results and outcomes they’re counting on.

Free Trial Experiences

A free trial is a great way to advertise your expertise. More customers would be willing to give a free trial a go than jump to the purchase. If your business is product-based, a free trial will help provide customers with more details. It is perfect to provide an opportunity to find appealing features about your product, convincing you to purchase. When your prospects enjoy a free trial experience, the probability of them converting into paying customer could be higher.

Case Studies

Case studies work well for the bottom-of-the-funnel marketing strategy to support the final nurturing and the much-needed persuasion. The feature of case studies that stands out is that you can create interviews narrating buyer personas and provide deep insights into what made them take the plunge of purchase decisions. These case studies can also draw upon why the customers think your product or solution is amazing and how well it solves their challenges. Add the benefits of integrating your offering and why they recommend prospective buyers. You can use case studies as an opportunity to highlight features of how other customers are benefitting from your product or service.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are amazing marketing tools for bottom-of-the-funnel. You can launch short and pillar blog posts to communicate key features of your offerings and how they will help your prospective customers. The idea here is to develop blog pieces for specific buyer personas, so they find it highly relevant and can resonate with them. All the blogs can then be distributed through various channels, such as websites, emails, social media posts, and so on.

Infographics

These forms of content are visually appealing and work well to catch the audience’s attention. With infographics, you can showcase complex solutions in a simple and visual format. This content can also feature customer experience and how your brand helped them overcome pain points.

Paid Advertising 

Set a clear budget plan for advertising your offering to the right client network. Launching paid ads can help you remarket to customers you previously interacted with and who showed interest. Collect relevant data to share your ad campaign with and use the channels frequented by prospective customers.

Email campaigns

Once you have drawn a niche audience in the BOFU phase, you can persuade them with an effective email. Sending out personalized email campaigns to potential customers can work in your favor. Personalize your messages so you connect with them better. This marketing channel remains a great way to guide the buying journey of prospects and enhance their interest in your offerings. While engaging with customers, think carefully about how to leverage emails to earn a conversion at the BOFU phase.  In your emails, you can add a combination of targeted content, such as useful tips and promotional offers.

Customer success stories

Success stories can be uploaded on your web page, giving potential customers confidence in your brand. Provide potential customers with stories that highlight the positive experiences that people have had in the past. Share a link to a video demonstrating successful user experiences with products or services.

Wrapping up

The bottom-of-the-funnel is pretty much the end phase of your sales cycle— the last step before converting prospects into paying accounts. A strategic plan can help push prospective customers to make the purchase decision. Your marketing plan for BOFU customers needs to focus on the incentive and accomplish the lead conversion with impactful content marketing. The types of content that will work well for bottom-of-the-funnel marketing differ from the TOFU and MOFU stages. Rather than utilizing it to build trust, you’ll need to leverage content strategies to increase lead conversion. With these marketing efforts, utilize BOFU to highlight your offerings directly to prospective customers.

Industry leaders swear by marketing automation as an imperative catalyst for efficient decision-making. Are you maximizing its potential?

The marketing landscape has undergone significant transformations over the years, with an ongoing evolution fueled by innovative technologies. B2B marketing automation, in particular, has emerged as a sophisticated tool that permeates nearly every facet of marketing.

The reality is that automating your marketing processes is no longer a mere option but a vital necessity for any business. Incorporating marketing automation makes it easier to keep pace with your audience’s continually shifting expectations and the strategies competitors employ.

As per a study, 53% of B2B companies are leveraging marketing automation, and an additional 37% plan to implement it soon. If you haven’t already embraced marketing automation, consider integrating it into your processes to stay competitive and responsive to the dynamic market landscape.

Understanding B2B Marketing Automation

B2B marketing automation employs technology to simplify, automate, and gauge marketing tasks and workflows. This approach can significantly enhance operational efficiency and accelerate revenue growth. Your marketing team can redirect their efforts towards more strategic and high-level responsibilities by automating repetitive tasks such as email campaigns, social media posting, and advertising initiatives. The outcome is more streamlined. operation that fuels B2B demand generation.

Implementing B2B Marketing Automation

1.Define your objectives:

Clearly outline your marketing goals and how automation aligns with them. Whether it’s lead nurturing, lead generation, or customer retention, having a clear purpose is essential.

2.Choose the right automation platform:

The current market landscape offers various marketing automation tools. Choose the platform that best suits your needs based on your business size, budget, and specific requirements.

3.Integration with CRM:

A seamless integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems is essential. It allows for a unified view of customer interactions and enhances collaboration between the marketing and sales teams.

4.Build a target contact database:

Your automation efforts are only as reasonable as the data you have. Regularly updating and segmenting your database ensures you provide relevant content to the right audience.

Benefits of B2B Marketing Automation

1. Lead nurturing:

B2B marketing automation is a transformative tool that empowers businesses to orchestrate intricate lead nurturing strategies. By delivering precisely tailored content, this technology ensures a seamless and personalized experience for leads. Marketing automation is crucial in enhancing customer relationships and guiding leads toward successful conversions by providing them with the correct information at the right time.

2. Increased efficiency:

Automation serves as a pivotal force in minimizing the need for manual tasks, resulting in substantial time and resource savings. By leveraging automation, marketing teams can focus on creating better strategies and creative endeavors. This shift allows for a more streamlined workflow, where the human touch is applied to higher-level tasks, fostering innovation and enhancing the overall effectiveness of marketing efforts.

3. Data-driven decision-making:

Automation is a valuable resource because it generates substantial data and insights for marketers. This information empowers marketing teams to make informed decisions and fine-tune campaigns to enhance performance and effectiveness. The data obtained through automation illuminates the success of current strategies and provides a foundation for strategic adjustments, ensuring campaigns are continually optimized to meet evolving market demands.

Best Practices for B2B Marketing Automation

1. Personalization:

Leverage automation to deliver personalized content and messages, increasing engagement and building stronger relationships with your audience.

2. Multi-Channel Marketing:

Utilize automation across various channels, including email, social media, and website, to create a cohesive and integrated marketing strategy.

3. Align sales and marketing teams:

Foster collaboration between sales and marketing to ensure a seamless transition of leads through the sales funnel. Define lead qualification criteria to improve conversion rate.

4. Continuous optimization:

Regularly analyze data and metrics to identify areas for improvement. A/B testing and performance monitoring are essential for optimizing campaigns over time.

Measuring success with B2B Marketing Automation

1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

Identify and track KPIs such as lead conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, and return on investment to measure the success of your automation efforts.

2. Reporting and Analytics:

Utilize the reporting features of your automation platform to gain insights into campaign performance, allowing for data-driven adjustments.

Conclusion

Businesses across various industries have adopted marketing automation to navigate the complexities of scaling operations. As they expand, managing customer journeys, achieving heightened personalization, and handling diverse tasks associated with growth becomes challenging.

Success in leveraging marketing automation hinges on selecting the right platform for your business and identifying processes suitable for automation, optimizing, and streamlining marketing endeavors.

Marketing automation has emerged as a potent tool, widely embraced by nearly every B2B business. Its effectiveness lies in simultaneously reaching numerous prospects through personalized communications, thereby saving valuable time and effort that would otherwise be required for individual outreach.