There are more things in the buyer's journey than are dreamt of in your tracking system.
Illustration of the streetlight effect or the drunkard's search
The mistake marketers, especially SaaS B2B marketers, make in focusing on what is easy to measure rather than on what is truly meaningful reminds me of an old joke that has gained the distinction of the name "the drunkard's search" or the streetlight effect." It goes like this:
A police officer sees a drunken man searching the ground under a streetlight. He asks what he's looking for, and the man answers that he dropped his wallet (or a quarter or keys in some versions).
The policeman aids him in the search for a few minute but doesn't find anything. He then ask the man if he's certain he dropped it there.
No, he said, he dropped the wallet across the street.
"Then why are you looking here?" “The light is better on this side."
In the same way, B2B marketers go for the light -- whatever is easily tracked -- even if the key information like what really made an impression on the customer cannot be found in the click stats and the like. The actual trigger that converted the prospect into a customer may not be something you sent at all but a recommendation on a review site or even one given orally by a friend.
But you wouldn't likely discover that if you limit your understanding to what your analytics tell you about your site, blog, and social media content.
Content marketing is the heart of an organic growth strategy. When you do it right, you keep things RRREAL, as you increase:
Reach, as more people in your target market become aware of your brand Retention, thanks to nurturing the relationship with relevant content Revenue from gaining new customers and increasing the LTV of existing ones Engagement, as people read, like, respond to, and share your content Authority in the eyes of readers and Google's algorithms as your content gains more clicks and rises in the ranks Leads when people in your target market who respond to your content connects with you
Some of the work I do for clients extends to drafting Letters of Introduction (LOI) for them to use as a cold email or introduction on LinkedIn. The general principles behind crafting such letters is to keep them brief (like five sentences long), focused on the interests of the receiving party, and not to attempt to sell on the spot.
Rarely do people get all the above right. Instead of starting with LOIs to ease into gauging interests, they tend to move directly into pitches, and many of those are the opposite of intriguing.
I recently put up a post on LinkedIn about red flags in cold pitches. Someone seems to have mistaken that as an invitation. Today I saw an Inmail that ticks most of the boxes for how not to message me.
This message came from someone who describes himself as a content writer and ghostwriter hitting up someone who also offers exactly those services for potential work. Here's the screenshot:
Shooting yourself in the foot from the opening
The person claiming writing expertise already gets everything he could get wrong in just the opening with "Hello Mr. Ariella Phd."
I have 3 strong objections plus one more nitpicky one.
1. Why assume Mr.?
2. Why not use my last name that is listed before the the PhD?
3. Why show that you don't know what a PhD means by treating it as a last name and not using it to come up with a gender-neutral title of Dr.?
4. In direct address, you really should have a comma between the Hello and the name. I know very few people bother with that for emailed messages, but a professional writer should still know that.
Using cliches and vague terms
It doesn't really get better after that. After the "Good Day!" greeting, the writer goes on to say, "I'm asking for a few seconds of your valuable time to offer my content writing expertise in your endeavor to keep the industry thriving."
1. You can't literally mean just a few seconds of my time, as that wouldn't suffice for your pitch.
2. What do you think is my "endeavor," and which industry do you have in mind with the definite article?
Not showing an understanding of the recipient's perspective
The next sentence is: "It will be my pleasure to get the chance for a progressive discussion with you."
Of course it will be your pleasure. You're the one reaching out to me to try to pitch your services, so you assume it will be beneficial -- "progressive" not the right word in this context -- for you. But that's hardly a point to convince me to hear you.
Credit for keeping the service in automated service
When was the last time you were delighted by an automated process from your credit card?
Tech innovation doesn't always deliver a better customer experience, as we saw in Customers and brands are not on the same page about tech. A lot of automations that companies implement tend to frustrate customers as they're designed for cost-cutting rather than service.
Customers are discouraged from even attempting to speak to people at companies that either offer only "live" chat or email for contact or who put customers through endless rounds of menus and wait times that can extend to an hour. But when a company does get it right with an automated response that saves the customer time while delivering just the outcome hoped for, the company deserves credit for doing it right.
Such is the case for Bank of America. This week I discovered that I retained a large credit on the card. That was due to my having put in the payment for the statement balance twice. I first put it on July 3 and didn't see it applied, so I put it in again on July 5. When an email let me know that my balance was a negative number, I inferred that both payments went through.
Not wanting to keep that balance until I'd spend it down, I wanted to request a refund check. When calling in and putting in the number, the system identified the credit balance and offered the option to get a refund. This was then confirmed with an email.
That was wonderfully easy and fast.There was no additional time spent on going over the account, the mailing address, or any of the other things one has to review when calling an online seller like Amazon about an issue on a delivery.
When the automations are set up to offer what people really want, then they do save everyone time and aggravation. We need more of this and less of the kind of tech that is used only for the seller's immediate benefit and not for the customers.
In truth, what benefits customers benefits the business because happy customers are the ones you retain and who add the most lifetime value (LTV).
Learn to distinguish differentiation from merely different
Don't wallpaper the ceiling.
What do I mean?
When you revise your site content, don't just make changes to make it different. Make changes to make it better.
You improve the title, sentence structure, coherence, consistency, and make sure to hit all those SEO best practices. You can also find better images to catch the eye that are optimized for web view and identified with alt text for both ADA compliance and search engine reads.
But you don't need to change the general order of things if what was there makes sense. In other words, you don't have to make a point of putting wallpaper on the ceiling while painting the walls just to switch around the way you had it before.
That's not to say your can never put wallpaper on the ceiling, but it's a design choice that has to have more of a reason behind it than change. The key thing to remember is what you're trying to do: make the content more appealing to the reader.
Some of that entails making changes but they shouldn't be made just to arrive at a different result. They should all be made with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would say, and that end is not just being different but better.
Today is 7/11 in the US. That used to be "Free Slurpee" day. But that has turned into "Pay with your privacy forever instead of shelling out a buck for the Slurpee" Day.
That's the disastrous result of 7-Eleven attempting to take a page out of the B2B playbook. It turned what had been a simple way to capitalize on a date that matched the store name with an offer that made people happy.
People could simply come in for a free small Slurpee. While they were there, they may have bought something else. Even if they didn't, the frozen treat was actually a very cheap way to build positive feelings for the brand for the cost of just pennies per person per year.
But that's not good enough for someone with a B2B mindset who wants to track everything and be assured that nothing is given away without getting something of value in return. Enter the demand to put in your cell phone number and granting the convenience store permission to bombard you with messages and offers in perpetuity before you walk out with your "free" treat. #brand
If you think about it rationally, it's really not worth it to give a brand so much for something that sells for just a buck. Most brands that try to get you to opt into emails or messaging offer at least a percentage off discount that can amount to $20.
I pointed this out to my daughter. But lured by the siren call of "free" (see Dan Ariely's analysis of this in his books and articles), she insisted, "It's worth it." So I made the trip over, waiting in line to pay by relinquishing the right to privacy, and then punched in her phone number.
After all, the Slurpee was for her, and it really is way too sweet for my taste.
It amazes me how many marketers still cling to the image of a linear funnel for the customer journey. Do you know of anyone whose path to purchase just proceeded smoothly from awareness to consideration to conversion. Real life just isn't like that.
A much more apt visualization of the customer journey is a Rube Goldberg machine designed to propel a single marble (representing your targeted customer) to a designated endpoint, which in the case of businesses would represent the conversion of purchase. A Rube Goldberg machine is not typically designed for a direct, linear path.
Aiming to visualize your customer journeys? Are you picturing funnels? Forget about it! Funnels are wholly inadequate to represent a journey that is far from linear without a lot of recursive steps along the way.
A much more apt visualization of the customer journey is a Rube Goldberg machine designed to propel a single marble (representing your targeted customer) to a designated endpoint. In this case, that's , the conversion to purchase.
A Rube Goldberg machine is not typically designed for a direct, linear path.In fact, the setup for such machines lead the marble on a merry dance in which it moves in multiple directions as it comes into contact with different objects that push, pull, spin, and redirect it.
Set it up
In the same way, a customer's journey may begin with a single push. But it can only continue if the framework to keep up the momentum is planned and put into place by someone who understands where an email is needed, where a case study would drive one forward, and also when to give the marble some time to just roll a bit until it hits your next lever.
You don't just build the frames on the fly once the journey begins, which would be tantamount to leaving everything in the hands of your sales rep. Instead, you plan them out ahead of time, so the sales rep is only one of the levers in the whole machine.
See the video below for one such example, and keep your eye on the blue marble.
The same channel has multiple variations of a blue marble's journey from start to endpoint with different touchpoints pushing it along. That's also a great reminder that not every customer should be directed on the same path. Some will be ready sooner and some only later. You need to have several different maps available to suit your different customers. So think segmentation if not fully tailored personalization.
You won't always succeed
One final lesson to derive from Rube Goldberg machines as customer journeys is the fact that a lot of careful planning and setup can go into it without arriving at the desired result of a marble landing in the cup. This happens with the best-laid plans for purchase journeys, as well.
Various things can come up in life that alter the path you were counting on. All builders of Rube Goldberg machines encounter setbacks and failures along the way when things don't go according to plan. You have to be prepared to accept that possibility and work through it.
For example, your prospect's business might have taken a major hit that makes it necessary for him to put off the purchase. That's a setback, but it can be merely a temporary one if you take note of the situation and get a sense of when your customer will be ready to resume the journey.
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