Buyers Take a "Trust But Verify" Approach to Vendor Content

TrustRadius recently published The 2018 B2B Buying Disconnect report, which provides several important insights regarding how business technology buyers research potential purchases, and how they view their vendors.

The report is based on the results of two surveys. One was a survey of 438 individuals who played a key role in a significant business technology purchase during the previous year. The second was a survey of 240 individuals who worked for business technology vendors in a marketing or sales capacity.

A primary focus of this research was to identify what sources of information buyers used to support purchase decisions, and which sources they deem to the influential and trustworthy. TrustRadius provided survey participants a list of 15 sources of information and asked them to rate each source in terms of use, influence, and trustworthiness. The following table shows the five most widely used sources of information according to surveyed buyers.

Unfortunately, the TrustRadius research contains rather sobering news for B2B content marketers. When surveyed buyers were asked about the influence and trustworthiness of each source of information, vendor-provided sources of information scored as the least influential and trustworthy. The following table shows the four most influential and trustworthy sources of information identified by surveyed buyers.

And the next table shows the six sources of information ranked least influential and trustworthy by surveyed buyers.

Things May Not Be Quite As Bad As They Seem

These survey findings paint a fairly bleak picture for B2B content marketers, but there are reasons to believe that things aren't quite as bad as the survey results seem to indicate. The TrustRadius report contains several quotes from surveyed buyers. Here are just a few examples.

"Salespeople, no matter how honest, will always have a strong bias and be the least objective voice in the process."

"Websites can be helpful for finding objective facts like technical specs, etc., but at the end of the day, they're a marketing tool and therefore not going to give you the full picture."

". . . The [vendor provided] use case studies typically do not get into the details of what was involved with implementation and are not tailored for the specific use cases we are looking to tackle."

The quotes contained in the report provide context for the survey findings, and what they indicate is that most business technology buyers are unwilling to rely solely on vendor-provided information.

In some cases, buyers view vendor-provided information as biased (but not necessarily deceitful), and in other cases, vendor-provided information just doesn't adequately address some of the specific issues that buyers are concerned about. In addition, the quotes and the survey results show that today's buyers want direct experience with a product (via demos and free trials) whenever possible.

Trust, But Verify

In the 1980's, President Ronald Reagan made extensive use of a Russian proverb during nuclear arms negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev. The English translation of the proverb is "trust, but verify."

The TrustRadius research indicates that many of today's B2B buyers have adopted President Reagan's mindset. They expect vendors to provide information, and they will use that information in their decision-making process. But they also want to confirm important points via first-hand knowledge or experience, and/or via information sources that are independent of the vendor.

It's important, of course, for B2B marketers to provide potential buyers with content and information that is credible and trustworthy, and I discussed how to make content more credible in this post. But we also need to recognize that many of our prospective buyers will want to access independent sources of information, and we need to make such sources of information an integral part of our marketing efforts.

Top illustration courtesy of opensource.com via Flickr CC.

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Surprise! Buyers Want Trustworthy and Authoritative Content

Business buyers are continuing to rely heavily on content to inform and support their buying decisions, but they are becoming more selective about the content they consume, and they show a strong preference for trustworthy and authoritative content. These are some of the major themes of Demand Gen Report's 2018 Content Preferences Survey Report.

Demand Gen Report has conducted the content preferences survey annually for the past six years to gain insights regarding how B2B buyers use content in the buying process and what types of content they prefer. The 2018 survey produced 168 responses from B2B marketing and sales professionals. Ninety percent of the respondents hold C-level, VP-level, director-level, or manager-level positions.

The 2018 survey revealed that content continues to play a vital role in the purchasing process. Thirty-eight percent of the survey respondents said they consume five or more pieces of content when making a purchase decision, and another 40% reported consuming between three and five pieces of content.

Research by other firms has shown that business buyers are becoming more selective about the content they consume, and the 2018 Content Preferences Survey also provides evidence for this increased selectivity. Demand Gen Report asked survey participants to indicate their agreement with this statement:  "I place a higher emphasis on the trustworthiness of source." In the 2018 survey, 78% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, up from 75% in the 2017 edition of the survey.

The content preferences surveys have also consistently shown that business buyers want content that is authoritative and evidence-based. In each survey, participants were asked what recommendations they would give to improve the quality of the content provided by B2B vendors. Demand Gen Report provided a list of possible recommendations, one of which was:  Use more data and research to support content." The following table shows the percentage of respondents who strongly agreed with this recommendation:

Buyers' desire for content that is objective and authoritative is also reflected in the types of content they give more credence to. The following table shows the percentage of respondents in the 2018 survey who said they occasionally or frequently give credence to five types of content:

As the table shows, these survey respondents are most likely to give credence to content created by users and content authored by a third-party publication or analyst. They view vendor-created content as least credible, but even so, 61% of the respondents said they would occasionally or frequently give credence to such content.

Most of the findings of the 2018 Content Preferences Survey aren't particularly surprising, but they do provide support for several established principles of content marketing. Specifically, this research demonstrates the value of using third-party content and the importance of creating content that is credible and authoritative.

Top Image Source:  Demand Gen Report

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Alice, the Red Queen, and Effective Content Marketing

In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen takes Alice  on a run in a forest. Alice and the Queen run very fast, but they never leave the place where they started. When Alice wonders why, the Red Queen explains:  "Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."

Today, most marketers can identify with Alice and the Red Queen. Marketers now have access to an impressive array of tools and techniques that didn't exist only a few years ago, but they're also facing new pressures and challenges. And despite the new tools and techniques, marketing success remains difficult to achieve. If anything, successful marketing requires more resources, more effort, and more expertise today than it did in the past - a classic example of the "Red Queen effect."

The impact of the Red Queen effect is particularly visible in content marketing. Over the past few years, the volume of marketing content has exploded, and this bounty of content has enabled consumers and business decision-makers to become more "choosy" about the content they consume.

In a 2016 survey of 1,644 executives by The Economist Group, 75% of the respondents said they had become more selective in their consumption of thought leadership content over the previous 12-24 months, and 82% cited the volume of content as the main reason for their increased selectivity.

The primary impact of the Red Queen effect in B2B content marketing is that content of average quality is far less effective today than it was a few years ago, as the following diagram illustrates:

In this diagram, the diagonal black line represents the relationship between content quality and content performance that existed when the spread of content marketing was still in its early stages.
The red curved line represents the relationship between content quality and content performance today, and it shows that you need better content today to be successful at content marketing, another classic example of the Red Queen effect at work.

Does this mean that companies should stop using content marketing? Not at all! It does mean, however, that most of the "easy victories" have already been won. It also means that business and marketing leaders need to have realistic expectations about the benefits that effective content marketing will produce and the resources (time, effort, money, etc.) that will be required to make their content marketing program successful. There's reason to believe that this more realistic view of content marketing is beginning to emerge.

For the past several years, Gartner has plotted the evolution of content marketing in its "Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising." The 2014 edition of the hype cycle showed that content marketing was approaching the "peak of inflated expectations." In the 2016 version, Gartner indicated that content marketing was nearing the "trough of disillusionment." The 2017 hype cycle shows that content marketing is about to emerge on the "slope of enlightenment," where both the benefits of content marketing and the requirements for success will be more widely understood.

Top image courtesy of KCBalletMedia via Flickr CC.

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The State of Personalization in 2018

The personalization of content and messaging has been widely discussed in marketing circles for more than two decades. Numerous research studies have shown that both consumers and business buyers want companies to understand their individual needs and interests, and then tailor experiences accordingly. Virtually all marketing thought leaders agree that personalization is vital for delivering outstanding customer experiences.

So, just how far have we come in our personalization efforts? New research by Dynamic Yield provides important insights regarding the current state of personalization. The Personalization Maturity Assessment report is based on a survey of 700 marketers and executives in various business roles drawn from several industry verticals. Forty-two percent of the survey respondents were located in Asia-Pacific, 34.1% in EMEA, and 23.9% in the Americas.

This research revealed a strong belief in the value of personalization. Globally, about 26% of respondents said that personalization is at the core of their marketing/customer experience efforts, and another 46% said they understand the benefits of personalization.

Dynamic Yield's survey found that many companies have made significant progress on the personalization front. For example, 23.57% of respondents said they have a single view of the customer that enables them to personalize experiences across marketing channels, and another 23.14% said they personalize most experiences.

The survey also revealed, however, that many companies have more work to do to maximize the potential of personalization. Only about half of the respondents (49%) said their organization has prioritized personalization as a company-wide strategic initiative. And only about 52% reported having sufficient resources (money, time, personnel, etc.) to deliver personalized experiences across all marketing channels. In addition, only about 22% of the respondents said they have a centralized, cross-functional team that executes personalized campaigns across all channels.

Dynamic Yield also found that many companies need a more integrated technology stack to reap the full benefits of personalization. Only about 24% of respondents reported having an integrated tech stack that allowed them to personalize customer experiences across all touch points. Another 33% said their personalization technology is integrated with some, but not all, of their other marketing/customer experience technology systems. These findings are generally consistent with Econsultancy's 2018 Digital Trends study, in which 40% of survey respondents reported having a highly or somewhat integrated technology stack.

So overall, the Dynamic Yield study paints a fairly positive picture of the state of personalization in 2018, although it also clearly shows that there's room for improvement.

It's possible that the Dynamic Yield research slightly understates the level of personalization maturity in larger organizations. About 42% of the respondents in this study were with companies having $50 million or less in annual revenue, and 23% were with companies having under $10 million in annual revenue. It seems fair to say that larger enterprises are likely to have more experience with personalization and more resources to devote to their personalization efforts.

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How to Persuade Prospects to Leave the Status Quo

Most B2B marketing and sales professionals recognize that their more formidable competitor is usually the status quo. The grip of the status quo can result in longer sales cycles, stalled deals, and the dreaded "no decision."

Persuading prospects to move away from their status quo is a significant challenge, and there is no "silver bullet" technique or tactic that will work with every prospect. However, recent research by Corporate Visions has identified a messaging framework that can improve your odds of defeating the status quo.

The Corporate Visions Research

Corporate Visions (in association with Dr. Nick Lee, a professor of marketing at the Warwick Business School) designed an experiment to test what type of messaging is most effective at persuading business executives to move forward with a purchase. Corporate Visions discussed the experiment and the results in a very interesting report, but here's a brief description of how the experiment worked.

Study participants were asked to imagine that they are an executive at a vegetable processing company. The company has traditionally processed vegetables in large batches using large-scale equipment, but the most promising growth opportunity is organic and specialty vegetables, which require small-batch processing. The company's existing equipment is not suitable for small-batch processing.

Study participants were then divided into six groups, and each group was given a sales presentation relating to small-batch processing equipment. All of the presentations were economically equivalent, but each presentation used a different combination of message elements. After the presentation, each study participant rated the presentation based on how impactful he or she believed the message was across four dimensions:

• How urgent is the need to purchase?
• How important is the purchase to future growth?
• Confidence that the purchase is a good business decision
• How likely he or she would be to make the purchase right away

The presentation that scored highest in all four of the rated dimensions used three message elements - a description of the relevant business issue, followed by a description of unconsidered needs, followed by a detailed, quantitative ROI analysis.

In terms of breaking the grip of the status quo, the key element in this messaging framework is unconsidered needs. Corporate Visions identifies three basic types of unconsidered needs:

• Unknown needs exist when there is a problem or risk that a potential buyer is unaware of.
• Under-valued needs exist when a potential buyer is aware of a problem or risk, but doesn't understand or appreciate its impact, or how quickly the impact will be felt.
• Unmet needs exist when a potential buyer is aware of a problem or risk, but believes there's no way to effectively address it.

Emphasizing unconsidered needs is a effective way to loosen the grip of the status quo for two reasons. First, it makes the potential buyer think about a problem or threat that he or she had not previously considered. But more importantly, unconsidered needs tap into the inherent human desire to avoid losses.

In the late 1970's, research by psychologists Daniel Kahneman (who later won a Nobel Prize in economics) and Amos Tversky established three core principles of human decision-making:

• When choices are framed in terms of gains, most people are risk averse. They will usually choose a certain benefit rather than a gamble that may produce a greater benefit or no benefit at all.
• When choices are framed in terms of losses, most people become risk seeking. They will resist a choice that will result in a certain loss and will prefer a gamble that may result in a greater loss, but also may result in no loss at all.
• Humans are more sensitive to losses than to gains. We are more likely to act to avoid losses than to win gains.

Unconsidered needs are effective for breaking the grip of the status quo because they enable us to frame the flaws or weaknesses of the prospect's status quo as losses that are immediate, significant, and, most importantly, certain. When prospects recognize the reality of these losses, they become more willing to consider change.

Image courtesy of Nichole Burrows via Flickr CC.

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New Research Highlights Digital Trends for 2018

Econsultancy recently released its 2018 Digital Trends report (published in association with Adobe). This report is based on a global survey of nearly 13,000 marketing, creative, and technology professionals. Sixty percent of the respondents were from the client-side ("company marketers"), and 40% were affiliated with agencies, consulting firms, technology vendors, and other types of marketing services firms.

Econsultancy has been conducting the digital trends survey annually for eight years, and it's consistently one of the largest surveys regarding digital marketing trends that I see.

As part of the 2018 study, Econsultancy identified a group of successful organizations in order to compare the behaviors of these top-performing companies with their mainstream peers. Econsultancy defined top-performing companies as those that exceeded their top 2017 business goal by a significant margin and also significantly outperformed their competitors.

Customer Experience Remains the Prime Directive
The 2018 study revealed that customer experience remains at the top of the agenda for many marketers. When company marketers were asked to identify the single most exciting opportunity for their organization in 2018, the top three choices were:

1. Optimizing the customer experience (19% of respondents)
2. Data-driven marketing that focuses on the individual (16%)
3. Creating compelling content for digital experiences (14%)

When you consider that both insights from data and compelling content are integral to delivering great customer experiences, it's fair to say that fully 49% of these survey respondents see optimizing the customer experience as their most significant opportunity for 2018.

Other findings from the research confirm the overarching importance of customer experience. The survey asked participants to rank seven areas in order of priority for their organization in 2018. Survey respondents ranked content and experience management as their top strategic priority for this year. Forty-five percent of respondents ranked content and experience management as one of their three most important priority areas, and 20% said it was their primary focus.

Other Significant Findings
The 2018 Digital Trends report addresses several other important topics. Here are some of the other significant findings:

• Sixty percent of respondents said that digital permeates most or all of their marketing activities, and another 11% said they are a "digital-first organization."
• Most respondents said their organization will invest in digital skills and education in 2018, but top-performing companies are twice as likely to be investing significantly in those areas, compared to their mainstream peers (45% vs. 23%).
• The largest group of respondents (43%) said their marketing technology stack is "fragmented" with "inconsistent integration between technologies." However, top-performing companies are almost three times as likely as their mainstream peers to have a highly integrated, cloud-based marketing/customer experience technology stack.

Survey Demographics
It's important to make a couple of points about the demographics of the participants in the Econsultancy study. First, this study was somewhat European centric. Forty-four percent of the survey respondents were based in Europe. The next three largest geographies represented were Asia (21%), North America (16%), and Australia/New Zealand (12%). 

Second, this study did not focus exclusively on B2B companies. However, 31% of the company marketers were affiliated with B2B enterprises, and another 36% were with hybrid B2B and B2C organizations.

If you're involved in B2B marketing, the 2018 Digital Trends report is well worth your time.

Illustration courtesy of Jamie Spencer via Flickr CC.

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How to Show Buyers That Inaction Has a Price

It will come as no surprise to B2B marketing and sales professionals that sales cycles are getting longer. In the 2017 B2B Buyer's Survey by Demand Gen Report, 58% of the respondents said the length of their purchase cycle had increased compared to a year earlier, while only 10% said the length had decreased.

Other findings from the survey explain why the buying cycle has gotten longer:

• 52% of respondents said the number of people in buying groups had increased significantly.
• 77% agreed that they conduct a more detailed ROI analysis before making a purchase decision.
• 78% agreed that they "spend more time researching purchases."
• 75% agreed that they "use more sources to research and evaluate purchases."

I don't doubt that these factors are playing a role in lengthening purchase cycles, but I also contend that other factors are contributing to longer buying cycles, stalled deals, and the dreaded "no decision."

Today's business buyers are incredibly busy, and like the rest of us, they spend most of their working time dealing with issues or problems they perceive to be important and urgent. If they don't see a problem as both important and urgent, they won't give it much attention. And if the financial ramifications of a problem aren't visible, buyers won't be likely to see the problem as urgent.

In addition, psychologists have found that we humans have a natural desire to avoid or delay making difficult of complicated decisions. These factors explain why the status quo is usually your toughest competitor. In most cases, doing nothing is the easiest choice your prospect can make.

The key to breaking the grip of the status quo is convincing your potential buyers that the problem your product or service will solve is worth their time and attention. In essence, you must help your potential buyers answer two questions:  Why is it important for me to address this problem, and why should I deal with it now?

One of the most effective ways to demonstrate the importance and urgency of a problem is to make the cost of inaction visible to your potential buyers. That's why I include a cost of delay calculation in every ROI model I develop. Most ROI estimates focus on the traditional ROI metrics - the basic ROI percentage, the payback period, net present value, and possibly internal rate of return. These metrics should be included in any ROI estimate, but they won't necessarily communicate a sense of urgency to your potential buyers. That's what a cost of delay calculation does really well.

The basic cost of delay formula is:

Average Solution Benefits - Average Solution Costs

When calculating the cost of delay, you can use daily, weekly, or monthly average values. I typically choose the unit of measure based on the size of the benefits and cost values. The larger the values, the shorter the unit of measure.

To illustrate how the cost of delay calculation works, let's assume that for a particular prospect, you've determined that your solution will produce total financial benefits (cost savings, cost avoidance, etc.) of $115,000 during the first twelve months after the solution is implemented. The annual cost of your solution is $75,000, and you will need one month to implement your solution for this prospect.

Based on these facts, the monthly cost of delay would be calculated as follows:

Monthly CoD = Average Monthly Solution Benefits - Average Monthly Solution Costs

Monthly CoD = ($115,000 / 13) - ($75,000 / 12)

Monthly CoD = $8,846.15 - $6,250.00

Monthly CoD - $2,596.15

To make the cost of delay even more compelling, I will typically include a cumulative cost of delay chart somewhere in my ROI calculator. For this example, that chart would appear as follows:

Making the cost of delay visible to your potential buyers won't cure all of your sales cycle problems, but it can help create a necessary sense of urgency.

Top image courtesy of Predi via Flickr CC.

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