Technology marketers: buyer-centric content marketing with less noise

When writing a small piece on content marketing strategy, I stumbled upon an old post I wrote about the 3-D content mapping approach of Arketi Group. 

While visiting the Arketi site I noticed a paper, "The Outlook for Business-to-Business Technology Marketing in 2013" on the homepage.

I hadn't seen it earlier and as technology marketing happens to be my thing, I downloaded it. The paper contains some interesting data and evolutions and is based on the annual technology CMO roundtable Arketi Group organizes.


The first takeaway is that buyer-centric content marketing is a must for technology marketers. OK, buyer-centric or customer-centric is a must for all marketers if you ask me but in technology marketing it's even more the case – de facto.

Just consider this, and I quote what one exec said: "in the past, 80% of the sales cycle occurred after the customer met the salesperson; today the customer arrives 80% educated, having gone through the majority of their buying process before they even contact sales”.

You knew that, didn't you?  Of course there is a difference depending on the types of buyers, the type of products and much more. The decision to buy a pc or printer is not the same as buying an end-to-end security solution for a global corp. But in both cases it's clear much of the buying process is done before sales is ever contacted. And in many cases sales isn't contacted at all.

The buying journey and sales cycle are not one and the same. If someone already has a relationship with sales/business, his consideration process will be different from that of someone who has no relationships with any provider whatsoever. And this has an impact on many things, including the content that's required. You will focus on his questions and pain points in a somewhat different way.

The sales cycle doesn’t mirror the buy cycle

Arketi states that aggressive B2B marketers respond to changing buying dynamics by using buyer personas, mapping them to messages and content that has to engage them and so it shouldn't be a surprise that content marketing is a no-brainer for many technology marketers. The Net Promoter Score or NPS is well-known too.

I'm glad to read that many of the participants at the roundtable had begun to question the strategic value of the "quantity over quality" approach as Belgian research confirms. Hurray.

And then comes the part on the sales cycle and the buy cycle I love so much but that is so often forgotten. And I quote again: "Recognizing that the sales cycle does not mirror the buy cycle, these marketers were moving beyond merely churning out content to build frameworks for content that mapped to the buyer's needs".

How I love technology marketing and B2B. A lesson for all marketers, regardless of verticals.

A last quote. One participant said: "Make sure you've got a tight content framework. otherwise, there is so much content that yours is just more noise in the marketplace".

Death to the noise. You can get the paper here.