The journey from prospect to customer is nuanced, marked by diverse customer needs, complex buying decisions, and competitive pressures. To avoid leaving customers underwhelmed, it is imperative that your sales team is prepared with assets precisely tailored to each type of buyer and at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
But for marketers who don’t interact with customers on a daily basis, understanding the full buyer journey can be difficult — which makes it harder to deliver relevant assets that close deals.
How to provide your sales team with assets tailored to the buyer’s journey.
Understand the buyer’s journey:
Every interaction between a buyer and your seller is a critical moment where your message can influence outcomes. Conduct thorough buyer persona research to understand the needs and pain points of your target audience at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Identify key touchpoints and decision-making milestones in the buyer’s journey where sales conversations play a significant role. Use that intel to craft assets that speak directly to the concerns and motivations of buyers at each stage.
Analyze asset performance by deal stage:
Discover how your messaging influences deal progression. Gather analytics on how certain assets aid conversations at specific stages of a deal cycle. Leverage the insights back into content creation across the buyer journey.
Turn messaging into segmented assets:
There are considerable differences in pain points, preferences, and needs between segments of a target audience. Your messaging should reflect these specifics in the assets you deliver to sellers, so reps are prepared to have the most relevant conversations with buyers. Tailor your messaging based on industry, role, region, or company size, and create assets that fit each designated segment.
Set up a feedback loop for segmented assets:
Filter analytics by industry, company size, and region to discover differences in how assets resonate across segmented groups. Utilize the data to further optimize how your messaging evolves for each segment.
It’s time to incorporate buyer journey touchpoints into your analysis process.
Messaging can no longer exist as a one-size-fits-all resource. It should be flexible, backed by customer persona research, and adaptable at every step of the buyer journey. Messaging for your sales team needs to be broken into segmented assets so that regardless of the target audience, sellers can always have impactful conversations that address relevant touchpoints. Marketers must also be tuned into messaging performance to discover what content drives deals to progress — so they can create more of what works.
Your marketing team may be up against this challenge — and other obstacles — that prevent messaging alignment with sales. Check out our article “Your content is being ignored by buyers because it’s irrelevant” for advice on creating personalized content that addresses real pain points.
