We often tend to think of potential customers of existing in some kind of clueless void until they reach out to us, but according to Gartner buyers have done over 60% of their research already before they even engage a vendor. By the time someone connects with you to enquire about your product, they probably know a lot more than you realise about what you do, what the market looks like and have assessed that you’re probably able to provide what they need.
Gartner has identified 27 distinct steps that customers take as they move from their starting point to a decision to purchase the product. Their starting point is where someone is doing something manually and goes through identifying that they need to find a solution to a problem that is getting out of hand, to then figuring out exactly what they need and what their options are, to engaging vendors, then finally to making a purchase. According to Gartner, the step at which they begin to engage with vendors is number 16 of 27.
Getting our heads round this gives us a bit of a framework for making sure we have the right content and we’re distributing it in a way that gets in front of the right people at the right time.
Funnel theory
There are a number of different ways that people describe the sales funnel, but let’s go for the simplest here for the purposes of what we’re discussing. I’m going to split the funnel into four:
Awareness; Consideration; Purchase; and Retention.
I don’t need to explain to you what a funnel is and what the different stages mean, but I think it’s worth digging into what people are thinking at each step and what kind of content would be most valuable to them at that point.
Awareness
Mindset:
Users are getting their head into the fact that there is a problem they need to solve. They might not even know that there is a direct way of solving it and might be researching options by asking others or just looking online for more info on the subject. At the SaaS I co-founded, ScreenCloud, although we were a digital signage company we found a lot of the search terms people used to find us were along the lines of “How do I display my social media feed on a display using an Amazon FireTV Stick?”, rather than anything that mentioned digital signage.
Could that be the same for you? Could people be looking for ways to solve a problem without knowing what the solution is yet? It may be that someone is looking for a way to review and assess their sales people’s calls now that her team has gotten so big she can’t listen in on every one, without knowing that there is a thing called a ‘revenue intelligence platform’ and a company called Gong that has some cool ways to help. But eventually, if they ask around and do a bit of research they will inevitably stumble upon them.
Types of content:
Content at this stage should be about articulating the problem and the likely Job that a customer will be looking to hire against. Think of headlines that start with ‘Why’ or ‘How’ or ‘What’.
Why your sales people spend hours having the wrong conversations with customers.
How to effectively review your sales team’s calls at scale.
What should you do if your SDR calls aren’t converting?
All of these headlines would resonate with a sales manager who is struggling to keep on top of managing the quality of her team’s calls. But, notably, what they don’t do is try and tell you how great Gong is yet. Because right now they aren’t in that place. Telling them about a revenue intelligence system when they are still at the awareness stage would just make them either guess what that means (possibly wrongly) or just skip it altogether.
Context:
This kind of content could be distributed in social media. “I read this interesting article the other day about the ideal balance between the percentage that a sales person should be talking vs the potential customer in a sales call.”
But it also could be a blog article on a website where someone might go if they’ve been searching specifically for information on the subject. People don’t want to be sold to yet, so anything that looks like they are going to end up being bombarded with sales material might be off-putting.
The idea is that in their research, there is enough content from you opining on the subject so that your name keeps coming up. Then when they ask a peer, and they mention you, they go “oh yeah I’ve heard of those guys.”
It could be that there’s retargeting going on, but again with an emphasis on the problem you are solving, not overtly flogging you as a company yet.
Interestingly, this type of content is probably not what you want on your homepage. At the awareness stage it’s less likely they will end up just typing in your name and going to your homepage. Unless you’re already famous, like say Salesforce, they don’t know who you are yet.
Consideration
Mindset:
They’ve now figured out that there is a whole ecosystem out there of companies that could solve their problem. They may now be clearer what the problem is they are trying to solve and they just need to figure out what their options are.
This is when they will be researching the solutions and trying to figure out whether your Differentiated Value is a good fit for what they are looking for. People hire products to change them from something they are doing currently, which is substandard, to a state where they are doing that thing in a great way. Do you make that promise? How is your version of the solution going to help them? Are there people who look a bit like them who have had success using the product?
Types of content:
This is when they will be typing in your URL and landing on your homepage. But look again at the questions I wrote in the previous paragraph: the emphasis is very much on what’s in it for them, rather than caring that much about you (yet). Too often, companies are so wrapped up in how great they are and how amazing their product is and they muck this bit up. Consider these two headings on a homepage:
With offices in the US, Europe and Asia, we’re the world’s leading intelligence platform for monitoring sales calls.
Turn customer interactions into business growth
The first one bigs the company up but the customer doesn’t care. They don’t have time for that (yet). All they care about right now is ‘what’s in it for me?’. The second one spells out exactly what’s in it for them. And in fact, this is what Gong is currently using (at the time of writing) on their Homepage.
From here, they might want to find out more about the claims. Who else has been successful - show them case studies. What’s unique about the way your solution does it - explain your process and your differentiated features and values. How do you fit into the wider ecosystem - show them your take on why the competition has an inferior solution.
Context:
Basically we’re at the point at which the customer is ready to engage with you. So Homepage stuff like I described. Case studies/use cases. Competitor comparison tables. Maybe even downloadable white papers. At this stage where they are starting to engage with vendors, they will be more amenable to being pulled into a lead magnet if they think that the content they will get back will help them learn more about the problem they are solving (so long as it is that and not a massive puff piece about your company).
But they don’t just live on your website. These are the things that you give to people when they want to talk to you. So sales pitches, talking at events, exhibiting.
Think about it, showing content that is ‘10 Ways to Improve your Sales Calls’ to someone who turns up to your stand at your industry Expo and is already asking knowledgeable questions about your product would be weird. Giving them some case studies or a genuinely useful white paper to read would be helpful.
Purchase
Mindset:
At this stage they are pretty much ready to sign on the dotted line. This is where they will want to know more about you as a company and how they can be reassured that they’re making the right choice.
Free trials are often used at this stage. Pushing a free trial any earlier wouldn’t be right. Research shows that people generally only trial one vendor during the sales process. They’ve done their research, they’re fairly certain that this seems right, a free trial will give them that final reassurance that this is for them. Otherwise they’re unlikely to waste their time. So, if someone takes out a free trial with you, you know that they’ve probably already decided that if they are going to go with someone it’ll be you.
So your job as a content person is about making it as frictionless as possible for them to easily find the answers to any objections they may have and get to the point where they hand over their card (or sign a contract).
Types of content:
If you can’t do a free trial, you might do a demo or a webinar. If your product is complicated, directing them to download detailed user guides all help in this critical reassurance stage. If it’s important for them to know that you are the world’s leading provider based in three continents and your founder has given a TED talk, because of the type of company they are, now’s the time to tell them.
Context:
This type of content might come in the discovery phase of a sales process if your solution is more ‘enterprise-y’. Your pricing page is also critically important: straight to the point with only the important details. It could be that you need to create user guides that are emailed to prospects. Or maybe there’s a ROI calculator that can be used internally to help ‘sell in’ the product to the lead’s colleagues.
Retention
Mindset:
Especially with SaaS, retention is arguably as important (and I actually believe more important) than new business. And this stage is often overlooked.
For me, content here is about helping the customer succeed with the product. Help and advice, best practice, data insights. Anything that they can use to get the most value from the solution you are providing,
Types of content:
’Heroing’ customers; sharing their success stories. Could that be creating some sort of customer community? Could it be a newsletter or podcast? Guides that provide frameworks that people can use in their own business. Surveys or research that you do either by looking at the data from across your customer base or by commissioning something that nobody else has looked at in your industry.
You want people to believe that you have their back and are looking to help them be better. And of course you want them to be better, too. If they are genuinely successful with your product then why would they ever stop using it?
Context:
Regular communications that aren’t spammy sales messages. Create something that comes out consistently. Some companies do awards ceremonies where they celebrate their best customers. Get customers to join you in talks to the industry. Bring them in for ‘customer days’ where you consult with them to ask them how your service could be improved. Share surveys, insights.
It can be tempting to put all of your effort into the top of the funnel. But don’t ignore this part… holding onto customers is also part of new business, too. Remember the part about people doing 60% of their research before they even reach out to you? We better believe that some of that involves speaking to others in their industry who are already our customers.
A great way to begin to approach this is to build a Content Matrix. If you have multiple buyer personas and/or verticals, list them along the top. Then for each stage of the funnel describe the content you want. If you already have content, plot it on the matrix and see if there any gaps. You might see that you have a whole load of top of the funnel content for one vertical and nothing for another. Or you might notice that you are very light on bottom of the funnel overall.
If you find that there is a blockage somewhere in the funnel, you might find that looking at your content this way goes a long way towards unblocking it.