B2B Buying Stage 4: The Invested Buyer

If you have ever been solicited by a company you already do business with, you know what it feels like to be taken for granted. Don’t let this happen to your customers. Like your prospects, your customers are also buyers in a buying cycle. The important distinction is that they have made an investment in your company. As such, they are your Invested Buyers. They have educated themselves, performed all the due diligence, and have now become stakeholders—so they must be treated as such. Give them their rightful place in your value chain.

Content for the Invested Buyer must be exclusive. It should give the buyer a sense of being a member of a select group. The same new information you use for the previous three buyer stages will help her be your sponsor for additional purchases, and it will continue to validate her role in the original buying decision. But it must be framed for the customer relationship. Just as a parent doesn’t talk to a teenager the same way he talks to a toddler, you can’t afford marketing materials that talk down to your customers.

How can your content foster the stakeholder relationship with your Invested Buyers?

• Inform, don’t educate. Having performed discovery, education, and validation in the previous stages of the buying cycle, your customer has “graduated.” The Invested Buyer is now your peer, not your pupil. Content should be informative, like a newspaper, not educational like a textbook. Send customers new research that impacts them. (If they need education, let them find “ABCs of the Industry” on your website.)

• Treat customers as members. Marketing content for customers should communicate exclusivity and the elevated status you give your customers. Sneak previews of new information, and “insider” tips that don’t upsell, set the right tone. Customers expect you to know them, so personalization of their emails and web content is always appropriate.

INVESTED Buyer Case Study Everyone loves to be asked for their opinion, and one of the tactics we like to employ with clients’ customers is to regularly survey them and ask them what they think. But we are not talking about service levels or customer satisfaction data. Rather, we ask about industry trends, direction and expectations. Customers are flattered when they know that you value their opinion and insight. In addition, the results usually have a benefit that goes beyond showing your customers that you value them. For PCI compliance provider Control Scan, we asked their customers what they thought of industry efforts to help small merchants better understand PCI compliance. We published the interesting findings in survey that fed the company’s lead generation efforts and also resulted in more than thirty editorial mentions.

• Use an informal and conversational style. Remember, these people are part of your family. Communicate with them in a slightly more informal and conversational style. They have given you permission to do that.

• Don’t take the customer for granted. Although B2B marketers are aware that their existing customers experience their brand, many take the customers’ positive perception of that brand as a given. They expend too little effort to support the ongoing relationship. Don’t let customers leak out of the end of the sales funnel, only to get swept up by a competitor. Analyze your overall marketing plan for an appropriate proportion of effort for marketing to customers.

Most importantly, remember that your customer is still in a buying cycle in which she has claimed control. Allow the customer to retain that sense of control in a peer relationship. It’s been a long and hopefully rewarding journey for both of you. Give your Invested Buyer the special status she has earned.

Your Next Step: Map Out Your Content Strategy

Marketing myopia is curable, once a marketing organization commits to communicating with its buyers, first and foremost. With the four stages in mind, it becomes much easier to brainstorm