The pressure to achieve top line revenue growth and profitable growth strategies remain as the key challenges B2B CEO’s face today.  Compounding these challenges is the rapid transformation underway in the buyer-seller relationship brought on by the advent of digital marketing and social media technology.  For many B2B CEO’s, they are witnessing the conventional strategies associated with sales and marketing being dismissed and tossed aside by buyers at an alarming rate.  The seller centric world of yesteryears has literally been turned upside down as buyers are seemingly in more control than ever and traditional strategies no longer are effective.

These challenges are creating a mandate for CEO’s to innovate towards new means of attracting new buyers, retaining existing customers, and maximizing value through customer loyalty.  A CEO today must think in a much broader context than the myriad of different approaches that have arisen over the past few years to respond as well as adapt to the transformative events taking place in B2B markets.  This broader context is essential to viewing in totality the buyer experience one has with their organization.  Today’s CEO’s must make Buyer Experience Innovation a top priority to succeed in the rapidly changing B2B marketplace.

Let’s define Buyer Experience Innovation:

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This has been a summer of many defining moments on a personal level. Graduations, rare extended family vacation, a wedding, a 25th wedding anniversary, a family reunion, a move, and minor health related issues. This will surely be a summer filled with many memories. Included in my activities was a read of The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter. A historical look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first one hundred days in office as well as the precarious events that led to his election.

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The concept of goals has been around for centuries.  Humans have endeavored to achieve goals for a variety of mundane pursuits to noble purposes.  Here is what Aristotle had to say over 2,000 years ago:

“All men seek a goal—success or happiness.  The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical idea—a goal, an objective. Second, seek the necessary means to achieve your ends—wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”  - Aristotle

Today, in B2B marketplaces, we are seeing the rise of social media expand at a rate unexpected as we climb out of the financial crisis stupor markets found themselves in the past three years.  Amounting to as perhaps Aristotle might say if he were present today – a new means for people to achieve goals.  With all the chatter about social media, have we lost sight of this important and consistent fact about human behavior and choices?

Understanding buyer’s goal orientation has become even more critical as the means and methods to achieve them expand and diversify.  This is made more difficult for buyer’s articulation of goals is often times not precise or clear.  Here’s why:

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Orienteering has become the new rage of outdoor sports and hiking.  It is a sport that requires navigational skills using the tools of an orienteering map and a compass to navigate from one point to another.  In the race against time, one wrong misread and heading in a different direction could put you out of the running. 

Many organizations today are in need of an orienteering map when it comes to customer experience.  The notion of creating positive and delightful customer experiences has been around for almost two decades now.  While customer experience initiatives have been put into place several years ago, recent fast paced evolution in customer interaction suggest it may be time to rethink and redesign customer experiences.  The advent of the Digital Age has produced many new potential forms of customer interactions that can be a contributor to a holistic customer experience.

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In Spain, for thousands of years Christian pilgrims have come to walk the Way of St. James where legend has it that the body of St. James is buried in northern Spain.  Today, many take this journey which has several different routes and has different degrees of difficulty.  It can take weeks and some say even months if you take such a spiritual journey.  For many, it is a spiritual renewal that is life changing.

In our 21st century, the buyer journey is undergoing a transformation and renewal with the advent of digital marketing.  The route the digital buyer persona takes today towards making a purchasing decision is a myriad of new paths along the journey brought on by traditional, digital, and social media avenues.  Organizations today also are attempting to understand the best mix to offer with many resorting to trial and error.    Here are three ways to create a favorable digital buyer journey and mitigate trial and error:

One: Understand end buyer goals

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Recently, I watch the HBO documentary on the legendary UCLA Dynasty where UCLA won ten NCAA basketball titles in twelve years between 1964 and 1975.  Led by John Wooden, a legend amongst coaches in general pursued an unmatched focus on excellence and achieving a goal of winning the NCAA championship consistently.  A few years ago, I had the chance to meet John Wooden and engage in a brief conversation with him.  It was a treasure trove of imparted wisdom I will never forget.  To this day, I marvel at his quietness yet the focus was clearly present at every moment.

To pursue excellence in building top line revenue growth takes a high degree of focus.  If an organizations hopes to accomplish a business level feat akin to UCLA’s basketball dynasty it will need to have a consistent focus on understanding the goals of its buyers.  John Wooden established a disciplined process to impart among his players how to achieve this focus and accomplish many step-ladder goals towards the ultimate goal of winning the championship.  What does this look like in a business context?

One: Focus on listening to customers

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In sports today, there is plenty of talk about parity in teams for such leagues as the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL.  To some sports writers, this has not been a good thing and they long for the return of the dynasty teams to love or hate.  Such teams not only dominated but stood apart in their appeal to both the avid and the average fan.  Creating a national following that rivaled some of the best marketing and advertising prowess dreamed up by Madison Avenue.  The New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, and Chicago Bulls all have had dynasty years which extended their marketing advertising reach far beyond their geographic regions.

Similarly, the world of B2B Marketing and Content Marketing must contend with parity.  Businesses continue to be in receipt of multiple waves of marketing messaging, email marketing, demand generation, pay per click, and many new forms of social networking oriented content.  The stream of messaging and content is surely to rise as marketing automation weaves its way into the fabric of marketing tactics.  The challenge of standing out above the parity that exists in B2B marketing messaging and content will become increasingly difficult.  

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When we are faced with choices, sometimes they can be gut wrenching.  There are choices we have to make that can be especially personal as well as heart breaking.  History has recorded good choices as well as bad choices throughout time.  Imagine that you are President Truman and you are faced with the choice of using the Atom Bomb to end the war against Japan.  President Truman must have been confronted with many sleepless nights as he wrestled with the fate of such a choice. 

Fortunately, in B2B marketing and sales, we do not have to make such choices on this level or order of magnitude.  Getting a glimpse into how buyers make choices though can make a difference in success or failure.  Gaining insight into how these choices are aligned with a buyer’s goal orientation becomes a marketing and selling imperative for high stakes business model shifts, strategies, and new initiatives.  In a B2C market, understanding persona goals and aligning strategies to help consumers accomplish their goals determines how a product or service is positioned. 

Republished with author's permission from original post by Tony Zambito.

The concept of goals has been around for centuries.  Humans have endeavored to achieve goals for a variety of mundane pursuits to noble purposes.  Here is what Aristotle had to say over 2,000 years ago:

“All men seek a goal—success or happiness.  The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical idea—a goal, an objective. Second, seek the necessary means to achieve your ends—wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”  - Aristotle

Today, in B2B marketplaces, we are seeing the rise of social media expand at a rate unexpected as we climb out of the financial crisis stupor markets found themselves in the past three years.  Amounting to as perhaps Aristotle might say if he were present today – a new means for people to achieve goals.  With all the chatter about social media, have we lost sight of this important and consistent fact about human behavior and choices?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Tony Zambito.

Image by HubSpot via Flickr

The CMO Council Marketing Outlook 2010 Report, published April 19th, points to the digital transformation of marketing.  This annual report serves as a reliable bellwether of trends as indicated by approximately 600 senior marketers surveyed from a cross-section of industries.  Most striking to me is this commentary:

“Globalization of markets and new channels of digital engagement are causing senior corporate marketers to seek new internal skills and capabilities, and re-direct spend towards more inventive and localized go-to-market programs,” notes Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.  “The transformation of marketing organizations, practices and functions is well underway. This is being driven by the need to engage at an individual level, create more content relevance, and leverage a new world of crowd-sourcing Internet communities, omnipresent connectivity, and pervasive mobile device ownership.”

Republished with author's permission from original post by Tony Zambito.