The Complete Considered Purchase Guide

Subscription Services

Maintaining ongoing value to subscription service customers is vital in both the pre- and post-sale experience because these services come with recurring fees that give the customer the opportunity to regularly evaluate the service. For example, we saw the evolution of Netflix from a DVD mail service to a full content creator and provider. Similarly, Hulu started creating its own content, and recently Disney+ landed on the scene, providing classics and new content that has helped shape the market.

Industrial Services

With the typical B2B new customer sales cycle lasting 4-6 months, the industrial services category often uses considered purchase marketing methodologies. Even existing B2B customers require 1-3 months to make another purchase. The sales cycle is longer, the dollar amounts are higher investments, and decisions include multiple stakeholders, which means there is a high-touch approach needed to closing industrial service deals.

Financial Services

People don’t take matters of money lightly, making any decision involving financial services a considered purchase. Whether they’re choosing a personal bank to handle their checking and savings accounts, or a financial group to handle a company acquisition, the path to purchase is one made with thought and consideration. For our banking clients like Union Savings Bank and Community Services Financial Bank, we were able to apply considered purchase methodologies to extend their reach and map their purchase process to meet their customers where they are.

Healthcare

Whether you’re an individual in search of a new doctor or senior care service, or a B2B healthcare provider selling medical technology, a healthcare decision falls into a considered purchase category. Both B2C and B2B healthcare audiences look to online content to educate themselves before making a healthcare decision. In fact, more than 80% of Americans look for health information online. Unlike many industries, though, the healthcare industry must take into strong consideration the optics involved in marketing — balancing that fine line between selling and showing concern for the well-being of patients/customers.

Retail

Utilizing strategies from considered purchase methodology will lead to better retail activation and, in turn, better communication plans. These plans will identify your target personas, the kinds/types of content they need, the right channels for content delivery, and the metrics by which you measure success.

Content

Considered purchase buyers are sponges, always looking to soak up as much information as they can before making their final decision, which means you’ll need to have any and all information they might need readily available. People love how-to and explainer videos, rich blog content, and any other form of content that gives a better understanding of what they’re about to purchase. Your product and services pages should be robust — full of pricing, comparisons, details, and images so buyers can see exactly what they’re getting and why it’s better than the competition.

Persona

When establishing or identifying your ideal customer persona, it’s more important to establish the “why” than a specific “who.” Painting a broad and robust picture allows you to more effectively and efficiently bring buyers into your sales funnel and provide them with pertinent information that resonates with them. You need to understand how your persona views the problem, evaluates the solution, and what will ultimately make them pull the trigger to make a purchase. If you understand why buyers are looking for your product, you can speak to the solution they're seeking, rather than just push features of your product that may not directly hit home.

Context

A successful content strategy provides context for the buyer as they move along the stages of their journey, gathering different content at different times according to their changing needs. That content should also be able to move them along to the next stage of their journey, closer to the bottom of the funnel. For example, if your buyer reads a blog post that educates them on how to identify the kind of problem they’re currently experiencing, don’t leave them there, simply validating their problem exists. Use marketing automation to suggest other content that will give you insights into both their motivations and their place in the journey. If they read another blog, they might not be ready to make a purchase and are still educating themselves. But if they go straight to a demo of how your product clearly solves their problem, you'll know they're priming themselves for a sales conversation.

By utilizing marketing automation platforms that allow you to collect data from multiple touch-points across the customer's journey, you’ll be able to serve them content as they need it and avoid frustrating wastes of time.

Trust

In many cases, a considered purchase decision requires earning the trust of more than one purchase decision-maker. Here are a few ways to gain trust across all considered purchase stakeholders:

Accesibility

People like to feel like they’re talking to people and not some faceless organization, even in a B2B transaction, so it’s important to connect on a personal level to develop trust in your brand by humanizing it. Having someone dedicated to answer questions online, on the phone, or through social channels can help add a sense of human touch.

Authenticity

Being authentic is at the heart of earning trust. Customers see through fake sales pitches and “key benefits.” They want something real, that they can see, hear and touch. Use your company's story to help customers identify with you and your mission.

Transparency

How you handle mistakes and tough situations can go a long way in helping customers gain trust in your brand. They want to see that you’re willing to admit mistakes and do what’s right by them. If you get a bad review on social media, don’t hide it or delete it. Address it head-on and your customers will appreciate it.

Value

Considered purchase sales don’t happen because of the flash or the great deal customers are going to get. Consumers are in search of solutions that add value to their experience along the way. Improved communication strategies that deliver content not only set you apart from the competition, but also solve consumers' problems. These strategies are an important investment. 

Consistency

You can’t say one thing and then do another. People will notice. You have to remain consistent across all touch-points to reinforce that what you say and do is deeply ingrained in your brand and in the consumer experience.

• Conventional marketing wisdom leads us to focus on filling the top of the funnel, with the belief that that will lead to the most sales. So leveraging awareness-level content is where you should start. But while this practice may be effective, it can involve a significant amount of time and money to try to speak to all the different audiences, at all the points, all the way through the funnel.
• We believe that focusing on the leads at the bottom of the funnel first allows you to understand your end consumer, identify their behaviors and apply that knowledge into lead conversion that moves interested consumers into active customers.
  
  

What Happens When You Focus Your Marketing on Leads at the Bottom of the Funnel First?

1. Quick wins that improve lead conversions, morale, and effectiveness of the marketing team.
2. Better data on what led customers to the point of purchase that you can use to make the top of the funnel less of a guessing game.
3. Higher-quality leads for your sales team due to using data to optimize your nurturing and marketing automation strategies.
4. A more optimized, funnel because you'll know what tactics to spend time and money on as well as what isn't worth pursuing.

Starting at the bottom of the funnel requires you to spend time on the people who already know you, who have subscribed to your email list, downloaded content, engaged with your company on social media, and are interested in a trial, demo, or consultation. Understanding who they are and how your product solves their problem allows you to understand and identify the most likely potential customers at the top of the funnel, and optimize your communication plan and messaging specifically for them.

Activating the considered purchase approach

By deep-diving into your target buyer’s mindset, we identify the right levers that need to be switched on (and off) to transform consumers into customers. In effect, we turn your purchase funnel upside down to connect both rationally and emotionally sooner and more effectively.

1. Identify

• Interpret historical data and ID meaningful metrics from the purchase path of current and prospective customers who are the closest to close.
• Create an engagement roadmap based on this information that will lead to successful potential purchase paths.
• Use the momentum and revenue gained from these closed sales to fund efforts further up the funnel.

2. Qualify

• Employ marketing automation to bring content within the context of the decision-maker’s stage in the buyer’s journey.
• Engage with buyers in the right channels at the right time with the right message to move the right customers closer to decision.

3. Activate

• Reference data from qualifying marketing automation efforts to create and adjust content that activates awareness-level consumers to become leads.
• Optimize paid campaign spends and messaging.
• Incentive word-of-mouth marketing from brand advocates to bring in new leads.

Still not sure about the considered purchase approach?

Then think about this: What could you do with the following assets?

• A deeper understanding of your customer on both a micro and macro level
• Actionable strategies and automated execution that are highly measurable in effectiveness
• Access to hyper-accurate data analysis that better informs creative direction
• More sales-qualified leads and maximized ROI for every dollar you spend
• True prospect-to-customer paths to make your marketing program self-sustaining