Use these 4 buying stages to nail your marketing strategy
And how to avoid 2 big mistakes
Hello, welcome to this edition! 👋
Most B2B marketing strategies are fundamentally broken.
And after 9 years in marketing, I’ve learned it’s because of two fundamental reasons.
Today, I’m going to break them down for you and how to adapt to the ‘4 Buying Stages’ to never have a failed marketing strategy again.
So here’s what you’ll learn in this edition:
The two fatal causes of a broken marketing strategy.
The 4 buying stages that allow you to nail your strategy.
How to align your content with your buyer’s journey for maximum success.
The 2 fatal flaws killing your B2B marketing strategy
Marketing fails when:
Your strategy isn’t adapted to your prospect’s buying journey
You're not showing your buyers what they need to see in order to buy.
In fact — most of the time, businesses actually do the opposite:
(If any of these sound like you, make sure you keep reading…)
They brainstorm all their marketing internally and skip the vital research needed to succeed
They are seller-centric (and not buyer-centric), and plan their marketing randomly (or with no plan at all 🤦)
So, that leaves us with the question…
How do you avoid the 2 fatal flaws of a losing marketing strategy?
You simply need to develop ‘buyer-centric’ marketing.
This means stepping out of your own head and deeply understanding how your buyers evaluate, compare, and ultimately decide on a provider.
Of course, the only problem with that is…
Every customer is different.
And B2B buying journeys are quite complex.
But after nearly a decade, I’ve identified a pattern.
You see, 99% of your customers go through 4 stages before they buy:
”We’re always listening”
”We have a problem to fix”
”Let’s look for potential solutions”
”Let’s compare 3 providers and decide”
It can take days, weeks, months, or even years for a customer to go through all 4 stages before they buy from you.
And throughout this period, your customer is:
Collecting content about the problem
Identifying the best potential solutions
Leading a buying committee and negotiations
Which is why it’s so important to have a varied marketing strategy that addresses all four stages.
How to adapt to these 4 stages?
What you need to do is:
Research your buyer’s journeys
Adapt your marketing and content
Align your marketing and your sales efforts together
Sounds easy right?
Don’t worry, I know it’s not. :)
So, here’s how to execute this effectively:
Stage 1 and 2: Create educational content that positions your brand as an option
When buyers are in stages 1 and 2 (awareness and problem identification phases), they are not ready for aggressive sales tactics.
Pushing demos or pricing too soon can turn them off.
Instead, focus on creating easily digestible educational content that addresses:
Industry trends and challenges
Common problems and their implications
Different approaches to solving these problems
This is the type of content that will catch the attention of your ‘champion’ — the key person in the prospective company who will discover you and hopefully, be the advocate for your product or service to the rest of the buying committee.
Once your champion is appointed, they are ready for stage 2 content:
This kind of content brings your champion a little bit deeper into your sales funnel.
You want them to learn more about you so they can start to be more certain that your product or service is for them.
Stage 3: Prove your company is the best choice
At this stage, your champion knows their company has a problem and is actively looking for solutions.
Now is the time to position your company as a viable option.
Short-form, surface-level content won’t cut it here. Instead, focus on creating high value, in-depth content that answers the key questions your buyer is likely to have:
How does your solution compare to competitors?
What results have others seen with your product?
What does your implementation process look like?
Which leads us to…
Stage 4: Close the deal with sales content
By this point, your champion has shortlisted a few options and are now just looking for validation.
They’re likely leading internal discussions with decision-makers within the company, so your sales-enablement content must be strong.
This is no time for fluffy content.
Your job is to close the deal.
You want to help your champion sell internally as much as you can. Give them executive-friendly decks, proof-of-concept materials, and data-driven results that they can take back to decision-makers.
It’s essential here that your sales and marketing teams are fully aligned so that you’re delivering the right message at the right time.
Do this right, and you’ll soon hear:
The bottom line with all this is that you must stop creating content based on what you want to sell, and start creating content based on what your buyers need to see at each stage.
That’s how you win more deals and build a scalable marketing engine.
Learn more about building a winning B2B marketing strategy
In my course, 'Authority-First Content', I teach you how to create content that positions you as an expert and drives prospects down through the 4 buying stages.
I give you the exact frameworks, templates, and processes I used to create content and bootstrap my business from $0 to $1M in just 14 months, and build an audience of over 130,000 people.
On top of that, each week I spend 1 hour reviewing content on a live call — which many of my students say is their favorite part of the course.
Watch the video below to learn more about the program:
Alright that’s the end of this newsletter 👋 I hope it helped you! Thanks for reading :)
Excellent content, Pierre! Thank you for the instructions, I read your letters regularly
Hey, I recognize the guy on the left, on the thumbnail at the end! He's awesome