A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post called “Who is Buyer 2.0?” I followed up last week with “How to Engage Buyer 2.0,” stressing the importance of buyer persona research and analysis. Now that we know how to properly identify prospects, influencers, their content consumption patterns, and their sources of information, lets take it to the next level and talk about moving away from old school batch-and-blast techniques to thoughtful, well-designed nurture processes.

Is your marketing one-to-one or one-to-many? One-off email blasts to your house list offer a very low probability of your critical information making it through to your potential buyer. Even the greatest piece of marketing content does nothing to support the buying process if it is delivered to a prospect too early or too late in their journey. Marketing automation can be an effective tool for delivering content but it is often misused. Utilizing it without an integrated buyer-driven strategy that maps relevant content to your buyer will only add to your list fatigue challenges.

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog called “Who is Buyer 2.0?” This week I would like to discuss how to engage and sell to this new type of prospect.

Develop Buyer-centric Demand Generation Strategies

You are always competing for your buyer’s mindshare with several competitors and a list of other priorities. In order to successfully win their attention, your communication must demonstrate that your focus is specifically on them. This requires an understanding of their needs – a “buyer-centric” approach to demand generation marketing.

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Greater access to information has provided B2B buyers with unprecedented power – resulting in “Buyer 2.0.” Marketing success in the Buyer 2.0 environment requires a new set of people, processes and content to better leverage new marketing technologies and to engage with buyers on their terms.

Buyer 2.0 rejects traditional, interruptive marketing tactics, preferring a buyer driven, Web-educated and peer communication approach. Why? Because it’s a process buyers can control and it helps them get the answers they need from the sources they trust, when and where they want.

This new buyer behavior requires marketers to focus on buyer-centric demand generation. Buyer-centricity in demand generation means tightly integrating inbound marketing efforts, such as search, Web and social, with elements of outbound marketing, such as email nurturing and offer landing pages.

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This week I had the pleasure of presenting at the very first Content Marketing World! It was very exciting, a lot of great content marketing, social media experts and authors attended and spoke about the industry and how it’s evolving. There was a good combination of motivational (get out there and do it!) speaking as well as plenty of how-to, practical advice to get your content marketing efforts in order, and aligned with revenue goals.

One of the presentations I gave was on more of the tactical side. I spoke about 21 ways to distribute content. Originally it was from the perspective of “I have all this content, now what?” but I really felt strongly about emphasizing the fact that content distribution is really a discipline that needs to be considered much earlier on, when you’re in the content strategy phase. If it’s something you think of after the fact, the success of your content marketing programs may be at risk.

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One of the things I find exciting about modern B2B marketing is that not a day goes by without rapid change and new thinking. It’s a great time to be a B2B marketer, but it’s also a quite challenging time. For example, over the past year, marketing automation vendors have shifted much of their messaging from a focus on automating marketing and powering demand generation to that of managing ‘revenue performance.’ Seems like a good thing–revenue is good; however, for some B2B marketers this is probably a bit confusing, and so the obvious question is whether we’re still talking about the same technology and capabilities. The answer is yes and no.

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