80% of B2B buying process is over before first sales touch

Inbound marketing is more important in this post GDPR world than it was ever before. The time where marketing meant letting the world know how great you/your product or your service is, is over. Just think of yourself as a customer and think how many cold calls/emails or flyers do you respond to?

Our buying habits are the best place to start analysing our customer’s buying behaviour (after all our customers are as human as us). Anything we want to buy we search via our phones, computers or ask Alexa. We convince ourselves that the proposition is right for us by reading reviews, asking our friends who would have commented or liked a product on social media and then as a last step, when we are really sure of what we want to buy we contact sales.

Sales is now the last step of the buying process.

What does this mean for marketing departments?

It means that the responsibility of sales and the goal of generating revenue has shifted quite heavily onto the marketing function. Only how we wish the fat bonuses and commissions shifted to us too! After all, we are bringing the customer to the point of sales.

I would love to hear about your customer’s buying journeys, please leave a comment or InMail me.