Hurry Up!! Shifts to Speed in B2B Marketing
(Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash)
The path-to-purchase has been revolutionised over the past 10 years by digital.
Documenting a shift in decision-making models from linear (e.g. AIDA) to more messy, a google insight paper details seven approaches emerging over the last decades.
The most recent (2011) is entitled intriguingly Zero Moment of Truth (Thinkwithgoogle).
This seems to be a digitally-driven phenemonom where a brand presents itself online as the immediate solution to a need as it arises. The purchase can follow very quickly - the decision process is reduced to a few minutes, perhaps less.
Path-to-Purchase: Acceleration in B2B?
Two experiences recently made me wonder if there's a new take on the digital path-to-purchase expanding outside of consumer goods - an effort in B2B digital marketing to nudge potentials straight to the action phase.
i) A global translation company sent me an email inviting me to test their services. The link provided lead me straight to a project formula - so I could get started more quickly. I don't know who the company is.
ii) Something similar occured on LinkedIn. A global software company looking to revolutionise the qual market research space invited me to click on a link to find out more about a claim made.
The click-bait worked - but it took me straight to a virtual diary so I could make an appointment.
All good? Speed things up, no time to waste on things like familiarity or interest.
Well, a few concerns.
First up: I wasn't looking for a translation service. And being pushed straight to the decision phase before I know anything about a company was a turn-off. Pushy, not charming - a sort of need-breaker.
Second - b2b funnels may not be a simple question of maximising conversion factors. If you have 100 potentials, and push them all quickly to the let's-get-to-it moment, you may well put people off who haven't made up their mind, or are still in the process of what google calls the messy middle.
Thirdly, I'd say biases live within cultural contexts. What may be normal in an Anglo-American work-the-digittal-room style setting doesn't work in many European cultures.
It can take years to build up the trust needed for a business transaction to happen. Unwitting marketing imperialism isn't effective - culture beats a lot for breakfast, however untrendy it may be to say that.
Finally, we talk about consumer centricity. This is a seller-centric model. Put more simply - it's old-school push-style marketing with a digital hat on.
Speed - to What End?
I'm not sure where this new approach is coming from.
Maybe mobile is putting people off spending too much term on home pages, researching a company's background and competences.
Perhaps it's nothing to do with Zero Moment of Truth - more the ultra-energising factor of private equity funding encouraging acceleration at all costs.
Brand building is important - but it's easy to forget, to get driven by short-term urges.
I wonder about the lasting impact of Binet/Field's 2013 seminal piece, The Long and the Short of It. (IPA Knowledge)
Interested to hear from anyone with data that suggests that this sort of accelerated performance marketing - a strange phrase that suggests universality whilst being limited to digital - is validated by any empirical evidence.
Or if it's just another example of a rush to closing a deal, regardless of how much collateral is left in its wake.
Curious. Anybody?