Last updated on October 2nd, 2016 at 07:44 pm
When a B2B buyer has a major purchase to make, they binge.
It’s like Netflix. When you find a great TV show you binge on it. A new season of House of Cards or Orange is the New Black comes out, and you binge. The Range with Ashton Kutcher came out a few weeks ago — I binged. I feel a little guilty saying that, because it was horrible. But a binge is a binge, and I crushed the series in a weekend.
Our buyers are displaying a very similar behavior. They binge when they are buying. They read your blog, watch your videos, download your white papers, and Google your brand to see what else they can find. They binge on everything.
A major purchase decision triggers a fear response. As a result, the buyer works to mitigate the risks by getting informed. Bingeing on content is like putting on armor. The more you know, the more secure you feel.
Create a website that sells
Your website is key destination when your buyers are bingeing. Feed that need.
Build your website to sell as well as your best salesperson. This means providing all of the information you would deliver in a sales call: pricing, competitive stories, case studies, demos, and calls to action.
Don’t make the customer hunt for the information. Provide it to them in logical steps. For example, at the bottom of each page in your site ask the question, “Where does my client go from here?”
Social proof your brand
You know your customers are going to Google your brand before they buy. So give them content to find.
Your social media, public relations, and influencer marketing can provide the social proof that your brand is as good as you say it is.
Many B2B companies struggle with social media. They want to use Facebook and LinkedIn to generate leads, but fail to produce anything of substance. Social media might not be the best place to generate leads, especially for a B2B brand.
Instead of using social media to generate leads, use it to generate social proof.
Facilitate the binge
Social media and content marketing strategies that worked well in 2012 are running out of steam. And in many cases, they just don’t work anymore.
People aren’t subscribing and following as much, because they know they can get all the content they want when they want it. They don’t need to clutter their inboxes with another newsletter, because they can Google and binge.
The binge is a change in customer behavior, and it’s an opportunity. You can create a competitive advantage by facilitating the binge.
Image credit Jon Evans
