Why intention marketing is essential for B2B

Customer journeys

That qualification process is based on intention. It starts with the customer understating the problem, then discovering solutions, and concludes with choosing a provider and engaging with their sales team. At each stage of this process, the right marketing strategy provides an opportunity to stay connected to the customers and drive their intention to a sale. If your marketing content strategy does not acknowledge the individual intentions of customers, you risk them seeking information from competitive sources, with sales to follow.

Content journeys

Customer intent is driven by knowledge of the problem, solutions, and solution providers. The most common mistake made by B2B companies is that their customers (and potential customers) know more than they do. The role of intent marketing is to provide all the information to build confidence and trust that guarantees customers engage with your company first. Your website content journeys are critical to this outcome.

The goldilocks principle

Most B2B business websites provide too much or too little content. Those who offer too much risk alienating customers by expecting them to have the time, experience and qualifications to make critical decisions based only on the information they provide online. As a rule, the more complex and valuable the sale, the more human support customers need to have enough confidence to purchase.

The inverse is also true. Too little or the wrong type of information limits the kind of person who will become a customer. If there are not enough suitable types of content on your website and other online resources, customers will seek information from other sources. Research indicates that when this happens, customers never return to your website.

Striking a balance

Perspective is everything with communication. If you can see the world from the perspective of your customers, then you can align your communication strategy with their needs.

Organizations like Digital Storytelling provide this perspective and experience, with our leaders delivering the benefit of over 35 years of continuous work with B2B companies informing our intent marketing and content strategies. Below is how we build and drive our intent marketing and content strategies.

Stage 1. Institutional memory

Your sales, BDM, service, and customer support teams have accumulated knowledge of the decision-making processes that have either helped convert customers or disqualified them from a deal. The challenge is separating this knowledge from personal agendas, entrenched management beliefs and noise. 

The best way to understand this knowledge is through open forums conducted by marketing professionals outside the organization. This distance, combined with small, controlled discussions with those who have an intimate understanding of the customer journey, can provide actionable insights for intent marketing strategies.

Stage 2. Organic search data

Every day 9 billion searches are done on Google alone. Your intended consumers start with broad online searches, then narrow down the criteria based on what they learn. The search terms also change based on intent. Understanding what your targeted customers are searching for is one of the most critical criteria in aligning your intent marketing with your customer's needs and expectations. 

The best marketing professionals understand how to take the information they have gleaned from the institutional memory forums and overlap that with search enquiry data to focus resources to get the best return on investment.

Stage 3. Turning data into action

The most important thing to remember with intent marketing is that it evolves as you build data on your target audiences' behaviour. Building this data takes time; however, you need to start somewhere, and the information you receive from Institutional memory forums and Google search data is more than enough to start the process moving. 

Once you have a clear profile of the intentions and keywords’/phrases used by your target audience, you can start creating content that guides them through the qualification and conversion process.

Stage 4. The 'X' Factor

Nowadays, calls to action go beyond as simple offers or discounts. Depending on the customer's intent, you may want to provide additional qualifying resources, such as white papers or customized online reports. Digital Storytelling Collective has experience designing and building these resources to help qualify sales leads and generate qualified lead databases. We can also work with sales teams to build pitch decks, produce intro videos, and drive social media strategies. We deliver all the resources your sales team leaders need to become more effective and generate a predictable sales pipeline to secure and grow your business.