Aligning content marketing to facilitate buyer’s purchasing process can drive higher B2B marketing and sales enablement effectiveness.

1. Optimize Content Marketing by Facilitating the Buyer’s Journey
Content marketing represents a significant investment, consuming over 26% of total marketing budgets
annually, according to surveys of 1,100 marketers by the Content Marketing Institute. This already significant
spending is increasing, with 51% of respondents indicating plans to increase their content marketing spend
over the next 12 months.
However, even though budgets are significant and growing, marketers have serious doubts in the returns on
these investments, with only 41% indicating that their content marketing efforts are effective.
Junta42 and MarketingProfs surveyed over 1,100 North American B2B marketers from diverse industries and a
wide range of company sizes. The survey responses indicated a decided lack confidence in newer tactics like
social media, blogs and videos, and even some stall worth tactics such as white papers and case studies.
Content Marketing: A Crises of Confidence
Examining the sentiment in detail, 60% of respondents reported that efforts in new marketing channels such
as social media and blogs are being reported as ineffective / less than effective, and over 50% indicate
effectiveness doubts with videos and white papers. Even print magazines, case studies, eNewsletters and

2. webcasts are ineffective or less than effective for more than 40% of respondents. There is clearly a crisis in
confidence in content marketing.
One of the reasons for the crisis in confidence is that content marketing success is measured, more often than
not, not by how effective the content is at facilitating sales, but by how much content is produced in the
shortest amount of time, and how it is distributed through as many channels as possible – success by the
pound. As content continues to proliferate, relevancy to buyers is often lost in the mix, as buyers become
overwhelmed by the sheer volume that needs to be weeded through.
Relevancy is a Requirement
According to IDG Connect’s IT Buyer Survey, current content marketing strategies are producing too much
content that is not relevant to buyers, and seen as ineffective. And this lack of relevancy has a significant cost,
including:
o Driving up content creation costs
o Increasing the buyer’s decision making process by two weeks or more
o Reducing the chances of making the buyer’s selection shortlist by 1/3rd
o Shrinking the chance of getting the sale by almost 50%.
Making content more relevant to buyers can have a substantial impact, improving effectiveness and driving a
tangible ROI to the business. In fact the level of relevant content affected whether made the vendor made the
short list of alternative choices, with 86% of respondents indicating that relevant content drove the buyer’s
decision.1
With relevancy being key to content marketing effectiveness, is there a strategy to better focus the content
that is produced so it can be more precisely developed / targeted to be more relevant to buyers, and to
ultimately drive effectiveness success?
Achieving Relevancy by Mapping Content To the Buyer’s Journey
In order to improve content relevancy, content development needs to be concise and important, with the right
content developed to best facilitate buyer’s decisions, and enable sales to leverage the content to engage
most effectively.
Content Marketing and the Buyer’s Journey
One way to achieve relevancy, is to be sure content is aligned to help guide the buyer’s journey, facilitating
the change management process that buyers need to go through within their own organization, with multiple
stakeholders and executives.
1
Making the Case for Shorter Content, IDG Connect, Bob Johnson, Analyst, n=389, October 30, 2008
http://www.idgconnect.com/view_abstract/6005/making-case-shorter-content?source=connect

3. The buyer’s journey consists of several different steps that a buyer goes through to make a decision.
In the beginning, the Discovery phase, the buyer has to realize they have an issue and want to change. The
pain point needs to be recognized and prioritized, and the existing status quo needs loosened in order for the
process to proceed.
Once the buyer has committed to a change, the Consideration phase is next, where the buyer explores
potential solution options, and then commits to a solution set (but not necessarily to a single provider). The
selected solution set, especially in today’s frugal times, needs to be justified, providing stakeholders and
executives with a quantification of key financial indicators that the project is worthy of investment, including
bottom-line impacts, investment requirements, return on investment and payback calculations.
Once the solution is justified, a particular provider needs to be selected in the Decision phase. With buyer’s so
frugal, often the lowest purchase price is a dominant criteria for selection, however, this may not deliver the
lowest total cost over the useful life of the product / service, may require untoward risks, or may not deliver all
of the expected benefits. In the final selection phase, the best overall value is selected.
For a marketer the buyers’ journey represents an opportunity to provide content and tools better aligned to
help the buyer overcome resistance at each step in the decision making cycle, providing specific deliverables
to facilitate buyer’s decisions. For sales enablement, tools need to be provided to sales in order to empower
engagements at each step in the process, especially earlier in the sales cycle where sales professionals are
often excluded from the decision making process.
With content now having a specific purpose, aligned to facilitate each step, the overall amount of content
needed can often be substantially reduced, relevancy improved, and effectiveness assured.
Facilitating the Buyer’s Journey
Across the buyer’s journey different branded content tools can help facilitate buyer’s decisions, and help sales
better connect, engage and sell using this content. The more aligned the tools are to helping the buyer
through the journey, the better.
For today’s more conservative buyer, it is often easier to do nothing, than to change because change that
comes with an investment in resources and capital, and has risks that many are not willing to take. In the
beginning of the buyer’s journey, during the discovery phase, interactive research and diagnostic tools can be
used to be provocative, helping confirm and prioritize the buyer’s current issues, as well as potentially
uncovering issues they might not know they have. The insight from these diagnostic tools can help the buyer
realize that addressing a specific issue and changing the status quo is a priority, and worthy of pursuit.

4. Later during the buyer’s journey, economic focused executives demand that every investment deliver a
bottom-line impact, positive return on investment, and quick payback. For marketers, it is vital to proving the
value of the solution to ever more frugal buyers, quantifying the potential savings, incremental benefits, and
that the selected solution represents the lowest total cost / best value.
Across the buyer’s journey, the recommended branded content and tools include:
The following is a recommendation for specific content to address the buyer’s needs at each step in the
Buyer’s Journey:
Stage in Buyer’s Journey Buyer Needs Recommended Content
Discovery Investigate and prioritize the issue(s) as Provocative Research-Based White
one(s) to be addressed Papers
Loosening of the status quo Interactive White Papers
Committing to change Provocative Webcasts and Events
Diagnostic Assessment Tools

5. Consideration Exploring possible solutions Solution Case Studies
Committing to a solution set Video Testimonials
Justifying the decision Solution Oriented White Papers
Interactive ROI / Business Case Tools
Decision Making the right product / service Feature / Function Comparisons
selection
Value Oriented White Papers
Assuring that the selected solution
represents best value Total Cost of Ownership Comparison
Tools
Buyer’s Demand More: Interactive versus Passive Content
It is harder than ever to connect and engage today’s more overloaded, skeptical and frugal buyer. These
buyers are demanding marketers to create content that is more concise, relevant and personalized.
Traditional content such as white papers, case studies and even webcasts and videos are often created for a
broad audience. The one-size-fits-all approach means that the content often has to be lengthier than today’s
time pressed buyers want, and often contains irrelevant content. For example, the same white paper is often
used to connect and engage a manufacturer and a financial services executive, or an enterprise and a medium
sized business.
New technology is available however to profile users, serving up content to better match their unique needs.
Interactive tools go further, letting the buyer completely personalize the engagement, delivering content
perfectly tuned to their needs and opportunities.
Personalization can pivot content around the buyers industry, geographic location, size, as well as around the
buyers’ stage in the buying journey, role in the decision making process, and pain points. The customization
can include qualitative information, such as presenting only case studies matching the buyers industry and
size, or just the opportunity overview and solutions that match the buyer’s pain points. Quantified information
can also be personalized, including presenting personalized diagnostic benchmark comparisons to peers and
leaders, personalized benefit and ROI quantification, or a tally of expected total cost of ownership savings
versus legacy solutions or competitive options.
The Bottom-Line
Content Marketing is a significant investment, yet most marketers have little faith that their current content
marketing strategies are effective. Marketers often measure content marketing success ―by the pound‖, yet
buyer’s, already suffering from information overload, want only the right information at the right time.

6. Marketers who map content to the buyer’s journey can help reduce the amount of content that is produced to
just the relevant content needed to facilitate purchase decisions. This enables buyers to make better / quicker
decisions, and sales to leverage content to engage earlier and more effectively.
Taking advantage of the latest personalization and interactive content can further improve the ability to
connect, engage and close today’s more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyer.
About Alinean
Alinean, the leading provider of dynamic sales and marketing tools, empowers B2B vendors to better sell to
today's economic-focused buyer. Alinean-powered interactive white papers, assessments, ROI calculators and
TCO comparison tools create more compelling value-based connections, workshops, presentations and
proposals — delivering customized diagnostics, benchmarks, solution recommendations, benefits,
investments, ROI, payback and TCO advantage proof points.
Leading B2B firms leveraging Alinean tools include: HP, IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Dell, Intel, IDC/IDG, AT&T,
Siemens, Unisys, Thomson Reuters, NetApp, Citrix, Symantec, Novell, Cisco, Oracle, Sybase, and CA.
Learn more: at the Fight FrugalnomicsTM Resource Center http://www.fightfrugalnomics.com, by visiting
http://www.alinean.com, or calling 407.382.0005.
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