Listen to the second part of Episode 2, where we investigate the ever-changing buyer journey in today’s multi-channel world. 

Kelly Mancuso, joined by Brian Easter, Marisa Remmers, and Haley Stauffer, discuss personalization, utilizing the power of new technologies and the need for marketers to reinvent the B2B buyer journey in part two of this thought-provoking episode.

Kelly: And we keep dancing around this topic of personalization and focusing on the user, not just the goal.

At the end of the day. And so I think something that these new mediums - digital out of home, streaming, radio, addressable TV bring us are the available to the ability to use data not just for targeting but also for personalization and having a stronger impact so leveraging AI and machine learning to not only target the right users at the right time but also to shift the messaging or shift the creative and shift your strategy in real time. It's just a really awesome opportunity for us as marketers to be able to take advantage of. 

Marisa: I think you're absolutely right. And I think if you go back to what we're talking about at the beginning about the new buyer journey, it's more of a conversation and more of a dialogue and I think in the past it it might have been a conversation, but it was like all in like verbal.

It was verbal dialogue. It was obvious things. And now it's a lot more of those subtle nonverbal cues. So, we as marketers have to learn how to pick up on those cues and those new mediums. Like how do we understand what people are asking Alexa? How do we navigate how people are using streaming media?

How do we make sure that we're tapping into what they're telling us and really understanding what those cues are when we've never seen them before?  So it's in order to build that relationship. We have to figure out what a lot of these things mean. It's really interesting. 

Brian: One thing to add to that and I don't want to I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent, but I think that from a buyer Journey perspective too often we don't look at and I loved what Marissa said we look at that standard funnel that awareness consideration interest purchase, but we don't really think about and what we don't do is really focus on the relationship.  At the end of the day of Brands building a relationship with somebody and part of that relationship is introducing the brand.

You know get brand familiarity something purchasing but realistically you're building a lifetime relationship. The most privileged thing you can do or the most privileged thing that a person can give a brand is mindshare. I'm allowing you in my heart and mind and we need to take that seriously and that really comes to the post purchase aspect of it as well. And not enough not enough time and energy has really been put there in the buyer journey of my perspective.

We always talk about acquisition acquisition not. You know engagement fulfillment, you know, really making sure that brand is there in the right way and I think there's a lot that we can think about their but where I was going to sort of pull my tangent back is we're trying to create this podcast so that we can build this community of paid media marketers and we can learn together and we can grow together. And I still think that where we have to sort of bring it home and I don't know that anybody has is we still have to have mental models to map out campaigns because if your Coke and you have 300 million people in the u.s. Drinking Coke, I can't create 300 million marketing campaigns. So, you know, I don't know maybe Haley or Marissa or Kelly, what a sort of practical advice could we give somebody as we're trying to figure out this mass customization strategy around a buyer journey in a way?

Marisa: I think that's a great question Brian. You know, we can't have just this one mental model that we apply to every brand every client. Every person out there.  What we can do is t he Upfront work that we should do to really understand. You know, whose needs are we trying to meet and how can we make their lives better?

And so what we do for a lot of our clients here on the research and strategy side at Nebo is to do that discovery work up front and really understand them and where they're coming from what are their motivations? What are their lifestyles? To understand what is the persona? And I'm not saying it in the traditional persona sense?

But much more like in essence who is the type of person we're trying to talk to. What are their interests? What are their behaviors? And then what does that mean for their journey? And it might not be a typical linear journey, and we actually create something that's very custom to each of our clients.

You know, what are they looking at along that journey that they have in the relationship they're building with you as a brand?  In order to help navigate them through that journey more easily. So we still have those models but they're a bit. They need this have to be a bit more bespoke to each industry and each person that we're looking to reach.

Kelly: Yeah and from a paid media perspective, you know coming from from that phase of it. What we do, you know, in terms of advertising strategy is identify what messages are appropriate for what format and what channel so how do we take that foundational strategic work that our intelligence team has done and translate that into something that can be executed through paid media?

So, you know, we might have multiple different audience segments that we want to reach and different areas of the buyer journey that we want to go after. But not every single avenue is going to be appropriate for that, so how do we map that and make it work? And there are also different technology providers that can help with the personalization peace and do some dynamic cool things.

So do your research look into what opportunities are out there and see if anything makes sense for you and your client and their goals. 

Haley: I'm certain brands also might not make sense to be on certain channels. You just again back to what both Marissa and Kelly were saying do research into the types of people you're trying to reach.

You might have a initial goal of 300 million people like Coke, but the specific high score that you're wanting to reach will love to be reached via Instagram after school. That's you know, the right time in the right place for that group of people, even though the you know, that's just an idea of how you can group somebody but it's all going to be different depending on the brand and and what the brand means to the people within your audience.

Brian: It's one of those things I think is easy to feel overwhelmed. And I feel like I'm adding stress to the show because I'm like listening to you all and I'm like listen to all the different elements that you could leverage you could pull but I'm thinking even at high school example, I could start going down pretty complex road.

Okay, here's a high school. And here's what Coke means to these students in this area but maybe a third of them are watching TV and a linear model the third of them are watching it on their mobile device as a third of them are watching it. And and so. And how you consume media also changes what you expect from media in some way.

So, you know, obviously there's a lot there but I agree Marissa there has to be something where we can digest or else we have some crazy model that nobody can understand.  

Marisa: I'm gonna go off on a tangent just because I realized we've gotten through I think almost the majority of this episode of the podcast and we've been talking a lot about the buyer journey, but I think we've all been looking at it very much from a consumer standpoint. And we really haven't talked about the impact on B2B. And when you think about everything we've said in terms of marketing being about building relationships in the past for B2B that relationship was your sales person. And so you would go in there was one decision maker and they would meet with the sales rep and they get a great rapport and they designed the deal and I think with the introduction of digital into that B2B buyer journey it is so much more complicated because there's no longer one point person on the client side because they have a whole group of people who can go and Google something and have a point of view. And so there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen on that side.

And then also even for the person who is in charge of making the decision, they get through a good portion of the relationship that they're going to have with you as a B2B company before they even reach out to your sales person. So the way you have to think about building a relationship in the B2B world has also shifted significantly.

Kelly: Haley, I know you were a lot with B2B clients. Is there any takeaways that you have from there in terms of how you approach strategy? 

Haley: I think what's the most important? From a B2B standpoint and we talked a lot about this with our clients here at Nebo is really being able to track those leads at the personal level and making sure your accounting.

You know, that five individual people from this company have reached out. What stage are they? What can we show them next that will help them move along? It's not just that one person making that initial contact. It's going to be multiple people doing the research. How can you get people from that company to all have the same positive opinion of your company?

And not just one person thinking positively another person, you know not interacting anymore. 

Brian: Good point. I'm so glad Marissa brought that up because there is there's definitely been a shift of buyer journey one of the things that we've always said and I do think that we B2B marketing don't have to be boring and too often we market B2B like it's an organization marketing to an organization. And sort of forgetting that there are humans evolved. Yeah, they're real people when they want to read things don't read like a 20-page white paper at a certain stage that 20-page white paper's way down the line, but from a B2B perspective what also was interesting is that, there used to be a withholding of information, you know, and you were reliant on that salesperson.

It wasn't just there wasn't the internet you just you didn't have access. So transparency has played a big role in shifting the buyer journey from a B2B perspective and that's something that's really really hard. And I don't think we've done enough to really understand the hierarchy of needs that a B2B marketer makes in a decision because if I buy tennis shoes I buy them because I like them, but if I'm choosing a new accounting firm then if I'm working for a major corporation, I could have all the information I could have. We do all the things understand me. But do you really understand me because I'm worried about is this accounting firm going to botch it? I could get fired. You know, you know, what does this mean in terms of all the other people that are around that even on my mentality. And I think it's very complex and people sometimes they don't put enough work into that. 

Haley: And just to jump back in. It's important for us marketers to be talking with these companies that were helping Market them for me. Like we're seeing a lot of people go to the specific page talking about your MO and we need to you know highlight that more maybe explain that more take that information that you know, you're receiving from your analytical side and your you know, the platforms that you're using and making sure that you're communicating that with your client. 

Marisa: I think exactly what you're saying. Like, how can we measure and how can we make sure that we're helping to ease that journey for those B2B purchasers because it's a struggle like dealing with like all the people in that room that they have to get aligned and on board is tough so they don't want to face more difficulties when they're engaging with you on digital or elsewhere.

And but I think what's also interesting is, you know from a tracking perspective what you'll see a lot is it looks like things are going swimmingly and relationship and people are progressing through that lead-gen funnel and then it just stalls and I think one of the issues we need to solve as marketers is how can we figure out why it really stalled because.

It may be that the person we've been talking to is here and he's ready to make that next step but something has happened organizationally where what he was scoped to go by has changed or there's misalignment; or someone who just got hired came in with like, oh I use this platform when I worked at Coke and the whole thing becomes derailed and starts over.

So, how can we start to keep a pulse on that and really get more insight into everyone who's involved in that decision making process not just the person that we've been tracking. And that had air quotes too 

Brian: Yeah, but this is more of a PSA.  

For all the marketers out there for on this includes all the people in this room.

We're talking about how exciting the buyer journey is how complex by our journey is but a lot of marketers try to use this one-size-fits-all drip email campaign. That is the bane of all of our existence when you're interested in a product and then you get that drip email campaign that makes all these buyer dirty assumptions and some of those may even be right or wrong but a lot of times they're really wrong and it's.

like that you feel like you're a little bit be installed just like what retargeting used to be and there's some great platforms, you know, I eloquent and all these other platforms are really really powerful but you're like, "I just received the 7th email today from this programmatic vendor and they're chasing me everywhere and I feel like like, oh my gosh, this has got to stop" and then what happens is me being very interested being that educated turns into me sort of not liking your brand at all.

Kelly: Respect of the user is a big takeaway and understanding the power of the tech that we're using as well and how to reach your audience with the tech in a respectful way. Awesome. Well, thank you three for coming and chatting with me today. 

Brian: Thank you for inviting us.

Marisa: Thanks for having us, Kelly. 

Kelly: Our next episode is going to be focusing more on specific channels, so we're going to be diving into TV and video talking about streaming video, programmatic video, OTT, connected TV, Advanced TV, all of that fun stuff. So yeah tune in and if you have any questions or comments thoughts feedback, please email us at paidmediacoffee@neboagency.com, and please rate, like, or subscribe to the podcast.

Thanks!