It is an age old truth of marketing that a customer needs a lot of coaxing before they are ready to buy. We have probably all seen variations of the opinion written in the early 1900’s the 20 stages to a selling process.
How advertising works written early 1900s
1. First time a man looks at an ad he doesn’t see it
2. Second time he doesn’t notice it
3. Third time he is conscious of its existence
4. Fourth time he faintly remembers having seen it
5. Fifth time he reads the ad
6. Sixth time he reads it through and says “oh brother!”
7. Seventh time he says “here’s that confounded ad again”
8. Eighth time he wonders if it amounts to anything
9. Ninth time he will ask his neighbour if he has tried it
10. Tenth time he will wonder how the advertiser makes it pay
11. Eleventh time he will think it must be a good thing
12. Twelfth time he thinks it might be worth something
13. Thirteenth time he remembers he once wanted such a thing
14. Fourteenth time he is tantalised because he cannot afford it
15. Fifteenth time he thinks he will buy it someday
16. Sixteenth time he makes a memorandum of it
17. Seventeenth time he swears at his poverty
18. Eighteenth time he counts his money carefully
19. Nineteenth time he walks into the shop and has a look
20. Twentieth time he buys the article or asks his wife to buy it for him.
A century later…
However it seems many B2B marketers are forgetting this. They work in short-term sales environments where sales wants marketing to deliver lots of leads straight away and very often from a single piece of DM. This can create unrealistic expectations and the inevitable disappointment can lead to the belief (usually from sales people) that marketing is a waste of money.
The question, though, is not ‘does DM work?’ (or any other media for that matter), but rather ‘how do customers buy?’ And then: ‘are your communications matched to their needs, as well as your internal sales needs?’
Successful lead generation comes from understanding the customer buying process, and matching campaign objectives against a journey, not simply to the end goal of a lead to pass on to sales.
As with our buyer a hundred years ago, today’s B2B purchase will go through several stages before they ‘walk into the shop’. Typically this might be:
1. Recognise a potential need
2. Gain awareness of your company
3. Develop understanding of your proposition
4. Consider whether the time is right
5. Investigate some specifics
6. Request more information
7. Speak directly to a salesperson.
Small steps, big rewards
Only at this point are they a potential lead and depending on the nature of the product, this could take several months or even years.
Marketing’s job is to take prospects down a journey which culminates in a sales lead. At Meteorite we use a process of immersion, which helps us understand the real stages that customers go through in the buying process, so that the communications journey is matched to customer needs and behaviour.
Giving a DM or advertising campaign the goal of instant lead generation is expecting one piece of communication to take a prospect directly to stage seven. Except only in exceptional circumstances will they respond to a piece of DM with an instant request for a meeting or a trial and usually it’s because they’d already had some level of involvement with your communications.
In its own good time
If you give people a series of small decisions, they are more likely to say ‘yes’ as they become more engaged the further they go. Ask them to make a single big decision in one go and you will get a ‘no’ from most people.
Communications objectives should be set and measured accordingly. With conversion from one stage to the next being the most important criteria after initial response. Many more leads will be attributed to marketing if the real lead times are taken into account, and leads matched back over time.
This way the real value of marketing can be measured. So what was true a hundred years ago is still true today. It takes time, and a lot of work, to get prospects to ‘walk into the shop’. Have patience and they will come.
Expect them to walk in tomorrow and you may well be disappointed.
