Ignoring The Silent Majority
Recently I walked the trade show floor of one of the largest water-related conventions in the United States. There was a plethora of pipes, valves, computer screens with pictures of engineered systems, and anything and everything that can describe why I should be running, not walking, to each booth to listen to the “latest and greatest” (AKA a sales pitch) solutions providers have to offer the market.
It got me thinking … how many potential customers are actually represented here? Where along the buyer’s journey do most of these attendees currently reside? Are companies doing their brand a disservice by spending MASSIVE amounts of money only to push products on an audience that at best represents an incredibly small fraction of those who SHOULD be buying their solutions?
Compounding that thought and those questions, the following week I had a conversation with a marketing professional who is very experienced but somewhat new to his company. Like most, he was given a budget (what he considered a rather small one) and responsibility for allocating it in the most impactful way possible. He broke it down into buckets (again, not a rare first step) and one of those buckets was “Digital Marketing.” Most (two thirds) of that budget was geared towards display, push and keyword-focused approaches.
While those approaches CAN be effective, they are only effective as PART of a plan designed to connect with all the stakeholders who are involved in the decision to purchase your solution. That’s MORE than one or two people AND those stakeholders are ALL at DIFFERENT stages of their buyer’s journey.
Below is an excerpt from my actual e-mail to him detailing these points:
The digital marketing campaigns you are implementing currently below is certainly one I am familiar with and it can be fairly effective to an extent. The point of differentiation is that most if not all of what you label conversions are representative of an audience that is in the “Late Buyers Journey” stage of the purchasing process. They have to be because they are responding to calls to action built around your products and not necessarily commercial insight content that address their issues, interests, everyday struggles, etc. It’s not a bad thing, identifying those prospects/customers (those in the Late Buyers Journey) is important but it only represents a small fraction (maybe 10%) of your potential prospects and customers. 90% of your current/future customers are in the Early Buyers Journey and Middle Buyers Journey stages and require a different type of messaging. Quality Commercial Insight (almost vendor agnostic) is what will drive those in the Early stage and new Proof of Concept (success stories) content will connect with those in the Middle stage. My point is that there is a LOT of professionals that you can be and should be connecting with that aren’t responding to pay per click advertisements.Not because they won’t purchase from you but because they aren’t READY to purchase from you.
My message to you, the B2Brand Water Audience, is a simple one. When you first outline your marketing plan for a given year, five years or more, I’m sure you didn’t start with “Hey, let’s ignore 9 out of 10 possible customers.” So let’s actually do what is in the best interest of your company, your brand and your future and connect with all customers and prospects in order to grow our mindshare and market share.