Industrial Marketer
Industrial Marketer
10 Things to Consider in Your Consideration Phase
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The industrial buying journey has evolved into buying committees and an extremely elongated, complicated process. That makes the consideration phase especially crucial for sorting out who you will be doing business with.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the industrial Marketer Podcast your place for the tips, tech trends and tactics for industrials who care about driving leads and revenue to their businesses. I'm so excited to have you back in to be talking with you again. I'm one of your hosts industrial marketer fan on the street. Joey. As always, I am here joined by nails showers bring May flowers Nels Jensen. How are you? My man? spring time is upon us.
Nels Jensen:I'm, uh, it is I'm I'm doing very, very well I'm, and I'm, as usual, I think I see this pretty much for every episode. But I'm excited about this topic. This is I got some things to say. So, you know,
Joey Strawn:Nelson speaks? I'm so excited. Yeah, to be honest, I say this a lot too, about being excited. But I second that, because to pull back the curtain on the production a little bit, I came to you and I was like, I What do you want to talk about? Now, I really want to know, what's been on your mind. And you're like, you know what, I have an idea. And I want to talk about this. And I'm so glad that we get to this is, you know, as everybody is fans of industrial marketer, in our, in our listener base, no, we're big on the tactics. We're big on making things work for connecting marketing and value, because that's what we do in industrial b2b, it's, it can't just be fluff. It can't just be big ideas, it has to actually connect to some sort of value in some sort of revenue. And so when we really thought today about diving into a topic, we thought, what better topic, then looking at the customer journey, but not just the customer journey right now Nels?
Nels Jensen:Oh, no.
Joey Strawn:Where are our how are we specific?
Nels Jensen:We are getting into the mid funnel, which and that's part of my Nelson's rant for the day is the middle of the funnel consideration. Right? Let's, what if we consider what you should consider.
Joey Strawn:I, I would love to consider that now. So you know what, I think that a lot of time. A lot of times it may be because the acronym is MOF. And it feels weird to say, but middle of funnel content, middle of funnel activities, consideration phase activities, it's like it's like the middle stepchild. It's like the middle child of the Brady Bunch family. It's like oh, Mo FOMO FOMO foo. No one ever talks about mo foo and I want us we're gonna dive in today, we're diving into the 10 things that people need to consider during the consideration phase of their marketing journey and their customers, marketing journeys. 10 Things to think of know about to consider when you're putting your plans together for it, because we love to talk about Wow, it's a fun campaign slogan, yay, big idea. Let's get people to aware of us. And we love to be like, Wow, our salesmen, they can close any deal. You put a deal in front of them, whoo, bang, bang, boom, they got it closed. But what happens in the middle? How do we connect those dots?
Nels Jensen:You You hit my buttons, and you don't even know it? I'm, I'm a middle child. So it's like, why I'm gonna I'm gonna speak from authority now. So yeah, so you know, we can go through and we've talked a lot about this buying journey, the industrial buying journey, the manufacturing, buying cycles and and journeys, and they're so complicated, they now involve more people than ever, the, you know, 85% of research done online before you talk to a salesperson. Now. I mean, we we have spent a lot of time talking about the elongated nonlinear, buying journey. Right, which I think Ryan's beans, in my, my little piece of the of this too, is, yeah, you can get caught up in the phases a little bit too much. It's really, it's pretty simple. To me, there's sort of an intro, there's sort of a consideration there sort of a conclusion, you know, and yes, it's it's more nuanced than that. But my point with the with our sector, the industrial sector is, you know, we really the this idea of education, awareness, thought leadership is not as universal as we make it in the b2b game that is there. So many of our areas and campaigns were thought leadership and education is not as important because once you get into some of these solutions, once you get into some of this equipment, there, you know, the education is really more nuanced about the capabilities. It's not so much, you know, oh, what is this? Do you know it's a small universe, people know what's going on. And this is not to say that education and awareness, it obviously has its place, but I think in the business In terms of our, our narrow sector, industrial marketing, you know, maybe we spend a little more time on that, that we could be spending on the middle of the funnel, because in this buying process, that is the key step in converting leads into into true prospects and intent and eventually converting into sales. So yes, I'm, I'm a big consideration fan.
Joey Strawn:Well, I love that. And I think we should dive into our 10. Because the summary you just gave is really great is where you want to look at kind of what that middle of the funnel in the consideration phase is, the elements that need to be in play during that phase, and then some of the things that we need to be thinking about on how to target and how to answer those questions. Because I mean, now it's to your point it is we spend a lot of time thinking about how to get attention, we need more leads, we need more leads, we need more leads. And we spend a lot of time thinking about how do we get our salespeople to close more deals? Well, when the answer may just be we need better leads, we need better funneling through our system and our and better management and Sherpa Ng, if you will, on that journey. And so I think you know, that these 10, things are going to really help who's ever listening if they haven't really focused on this yet. And I hope that they will after this, because sure, a lot of very unique things that can happen in the consideration phase in the middle of the funnel that people don't consider. And we think that they should. So let's dive in number one. The first thing is what the H is the consideration phase? So that's an easier like, well, that one we've we've we've talked about a little bit, but now what's the consideration phase?
Nels Jensen:Well, the prospect knows who you are, and they know what you do. And they know what the problem is that they want to solve. Or they think they know, or they think they know the problem that they have. Right? Yes. And the end so that they're going to begin looking at okay, what's the best solution for us? And yeah, you you may be one of the options. So I mean, that's it's pretty, I think it's I think it's pretty simple.
Joey Strawn:Yeah. And that's what I liked that you said that earlier is like, you know what, let's keep it pretty streamlined. Because I think a lot of that is when we want to overcomplicate things, let's overcomplicate how many, how many things? How long should it be? What should we do? So well, let's keep it simple right now is who are we trying to hit? If we're building content for the consideration phase? Or we're thinking about the consideration phase? are? Are the questions we're answering aren't? How can we get people to know what our brand name is? Or how can we you know, get them to remember our logo? It's more like you said, it's information that then differentiates you from those competitors, they already know who you are, they have already identified some sort of problem that they need solved. They need a solution for current now they're considering how to solve that. And you need to be in that consideration. And your content needs to help answer some of those questions, because that's going to be a big part of some of these numbers later as we go. Oh, sure. So we've got that down. We know, let's say we've moved on from number one, we know what the consideration phases. Number two is also pretty important here is who is involved in the consideration phase. Now, for long listeners of the industrial Marketer Podcast, you know, what we're talking about here buying committees? That's what we're talking about here. Who in your buying committee is a part of the consideration phase? It's not everybody, let me tell you that that's the answer is not everyone. So now, when we're building thinking about content, when we're thinking about getting people in this consideration phase, who are some of the people that we're thinking of, like, who are we trying to write for? Right?
Nels Jensen:So the most, the most obvious answer is going to be somebody in engineering. Somebody who's actually, you know, in the case we're in we're actually, if you're talking about a distributor or logistics, it's something different. We're speaking from the generic manufacturing lens here. So yeah, but it's not just engineering. And it's not just the operations, it could be a Facility Manager. It certainly could be a you know, EHS person, depending upon what your sector and industry is. And it's, it's going to be, you know, a finance person, as well. It's not and we'll get into this a little more detail, because they all have different questions. But they're all middle of the funnel questions. It's a middle of the funnel question in terms of compliance. It's the middle of the funnel question in terms of the actual processes and engineering. It's a middle of the funnel in terms of a plant, you know, layout, inventory, and all those good issue. So it's just, I'm gonna go back to, you know, the, the key people are going to be from the disparate parts of the company, and they're all going to have middle funnel questions.
Joey Strawn:I would agree, I'll add on to that. My thoughts in this is, you know what, regardless of the industry and you mentioned it, you know, distributors are going to have different kinds of points, research people, then, you know, engineering teams or custom manufacturers. And so but there will be a point person, and a likely this point person will be the same point person that you were attracting in the awareness phase, it's who was ever doing some of that initial research, whether it's the engineering director, you know, now that you're talking about, or the facility manager, the fixed ops manager, someone who is immediately hurt by or affected by a problem, and is looking for some sort of solution, that's gonna be the main core of this group. But as we all know, industrial market or listeners, it's not going to be just one person, it's a committee of people. And so the periphery is everyone who is in the immediate periphery of this customer of this context. So if it's an engineering director, he's more than likely going to run it by some of his engineers, and be like, Hey, if you use this, what do you think about this? Or his immediate director and say, if I want to do something like this, would it be possible? So you have to think of that as your committee members as well.
Nels Jensen:Right. And this also is the mid funnel, where potentially people who are independently doing research arrive at the similar consideration. So that's sort of your that's sort of your big opportunity, as if the finance person and the facility person are both saying, oh, yeah, hey, engineer, what about this? He goes, Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that there one environment, one of the three things I was looking at. So you know, and again, then, which also listeners are going to be familiar with, oh, well, this is where Account Based Marketing comes in, where you can connect the dots and say, Oh, three different people from Company A have been looking at us, how do we proceed differently? So yes, who's involved is, is is really important. And it's going to the answer will always be it depends. But yes, it's going to be different people. And they're going to have different questions, but they're all mid funnel questions.
Joey Strawn:I would agree. Now, moving on to our number three on our list, is we've you know, we know what consideration is we know who we're talking to. The third one is what how do we know the consideration phase has started? How do we know that someone has moved out of the awareness phase and into the consideration phase, this one is one that I you know, have a personal love of nails, because this is all about lead scoring and data around the contacts and understanding what they have done and how they've engaged with us. Moving people from one stage to another is always going to depend on the lifecycle of the sale, the type of item or solution or product involved, but we do know there will be gates, we know, we will know who the contact is, it's not going to be nobody. We know that they're going to have engaged with us at some point in time, likely through some of our top of funnel content. And most often, if you have the leads a lead scoring system set up within your marketing tool stack, then you can understand those gates of saying, Oh, well, he has visited our website so many times and open this many emails and and has downloaded a piece that's that indicates to us that they are now considering solutions. And so all of those little elements are all the internal data points needed to basically raise your hand and say, I am aware that this person has moved from the awareness stage. And we should consider getting them consideration content for middle of the funnel.
Nels Jensen:Sure. And I suppose that's an argument for having consideration type content in your monthly newsletters because of the potential for remarketing. And for you know, not just fishing for new leads. But you know, as we say, it's always easier to do business with the people you've done business with before. So yeah, the known contact is, is is really big.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, I would agree 100%. Now, now, I want this next, moving on to number four. Number three was kind of my tech stack domain. But number four is, well, what questions do you need to answer as a company to win your consideration phase? You know, we know we got to build content around stuff. We know we have to answer questions. And we know that people, you know, from the last step, have moved from awareness into consideration. So what quest gents? Do we need to be thinking of an answering in the consideration? Phase? Yes, equal?
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And this is all about this is the heart and soul of industrial marketing, right? So you're, you're answering spec, slash technical questions, right. You could, you could put out a spec sheet about a machine that just lists the really technical terms and the capabilities and the engineer gets it. Okay. But that doesn't necessarily translate to the executive, maybe it's the, you know, owner with an operational background who's just like, Yeah, but does this actually do X or Y? You know, that's where you're answering from a solutions perspective.
Joey Strawn:Right That's what I wanted to get to it right? Solutions based answers. It's how are so right. Yeah. How well do you differentiate
Nels Jensen:Right, but for in some engineers are like, yeah, yeah, everybody says that they can, you know, have tapered airflow to reduce the waste of, you know, going through your, your drying room, you know, how do you do that? What is it that what's your magic, you know, whatever. So, again, different questions, but mid funnel. And, you know, so the products and services, this is also where you can begin to compare this is, this is why we are better than some of our competitors, all of our competitors, whatever.
Joey Strawn:And then the QC a lot of content, you'll see a lot of content in that vein based around like, the best DMS for the best thing, this versus this, a lot of those searches are consideration. facers oh, I want to know, what deed versus CareerBuilder, or whatever the service is.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And your and your matrices, where sometimes it's like, Good, better best, is asked, you know, a good one. Yes. And the but the, but that also, some of this content can live in more than one, phase two, that's important to have in the decision making phase as but it's also to get to the point. To me one of the key points here, which is pricing, but the the rate that the comparison is important in consideration, right, you don't have to get as in depth, perhaps, but some of this content can live in more than one phase, you know, in your funnel. So yeah, pricing. Right. The, this is a tricky issue.
Joey Strawn:Age old question.
Nels Jensen:When do you introduce pricing? Okay. And one of the things about the move to online research, and one of the things about the growth in E commerce for manufacturers, which is growing faster than you think it is, it is the top of everybody's mind. And there are almost every buddy that is doing things in marketing is is digitally marketing is on on board with the idea of providing these better answers. Right. So once you provide better answers, of course, one of them is how much is this going to cost? So if you're if you're afraid of introducing pricing online, in some publicly available place, you know, you might, you're gonna have these issues, pricing questions anyway. Right? You're at some point, you have to introduce pricing, or somebody's going to drop out. So whether your this is done, like the old fashioned way in person, if it's just a handout, if it's never in printed material, and it's just a price? Well, it's the answer is it always depends that we have, you know, channel conflict. So, you know, we can't publish a price that is different than our distributors have. I mean, yes, it's complicated. But if you're afraid to qualify a lead with pricing, then you're probably going to have other issues blocking your growth. So this is where you can certainly introduce a quick price estimate tool, right? Get somebody's email in return for offering up a estimate. Everybody knows an estimate is not a final figure. You can have all the, you know, little phrases in there to, you know, disclaimers, and everything else. But here's a stat that I was kind of blown away by. And this is an attitudinal research, not behavior. So maybe maybe this is more people talking and doing. But Gartner did a big research project on sales behavior. Manufacturing, buyers want to engage with suppliers through user friendly online ordering features, right? That makes sense. Because even with custom products, 64% said they would switch to another vendor if the company provides real time personalized pricing. Two thirds basically say I want to see pricing, and I want to see something that's actually potentially unique to me. So this is a really important got,
Joey Strawn:You've got data to back that opinion up. Now. I can't it's How dare you come to me with proof that this thing that we've talked about that pushes the mold and ask some tough questions about the status quo is maybe not as real as we thought, How dare you?
Nels Jensen:Yeah, well, it's attitude, no research, right. It's what people say, as opposed to what people actually do. So you know, but it's worth the point is this by what questions right? What do you need to consider in the consideration phase? I'm going to say pricing gets my gold star for something that you really need to have a good strategy for, and you need to understand, you know, the intended consequences and the unintended consequences but If you think about it as a possibility of a quick estimate tool, you're gathering some information, it's always on 24/7 it weeds out prospects who are okay, you're not in their price range. That's a good thing, right? You're not going to waste your time with somebody who's not. So I'm going to just say that pricing should be a top your considerations for what you need to answer
Joey Strawn:That gets the Nels bullet. For the number one with a bullet. I would agree, I think, you know, in that we've, with the questions that we've kind of dived into, and this number five are really comparative. It's, you know, how are we better? How do we solve this solution better than someone else? We should do this because this reason we're the best, or to your point, and else, what questions are your prospects going to be asking? What how's it gonna affect my bottom line? What does it cost? Just because it historically, those questions have been tough to answer does not mean that their prospects are not asking them. So that's the way to differentiate yourself is to be open and honest, and give them that user friendly experience. Like, wow, no one else does this. For me, this is pretty unique.
Nels Jensen:Right? Or the idea that, okay, so I'm sharing this information with, within my personal sales network with somebody I know and have done business before, doesn't mean that that information doesn't get out beyond your, you know, relationship, right? Again, it's, it's, it's not an easy topic to, to work through. But my point is, you got to work through it, because many, many more transactions are going to be conducted online, the research is not going to, you know, revert back to the old ways, you have to figure out the key consideration is pricing.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, and I think you know, that's a good segue into our number five, the middle of our 10 Things to consider during the consideration phase list, because it's all about timing. And our number five thing to consider is how long should the consideration phase be? And I'll start this one, because I'll be the bad guy here. It depends, haha, that is going to be the answer. But what we do know is that it will depend based on your industry and your needs and your clients. So if you're an E commerce vendor, and all of your deals are done over a 2448 36 hour basis, then your consideration phase might be quicker. If a sale takes 18 months to even get into the contract phase, your consideration phase is probably going to be a little bit longer. So those types of things will make a difference. But it is a question we get asked a lot is like how long? Should we keep someone in the consideration phase? My answer is as long as they're considering the solution.
Nels Jensen:Well, that isn't that, isn't this an argument for really leveraging your CRM, you know, if you're if you're monitoring these different touchpoints, then you do have an idea that Okay, so if you have a good automated system, that you know that once somebody looks at the comparative piece of content, that, you know, okay, they clearly are in consideration phase. So you can activate whatever your, you know, nurturing system is from there. So it could be okay, within two weeks, you've made sure you've had two touch points, or that you don't dare do more than a certain frequency or whatever.
Joey Strawn:We'll see. And now, again, I you're dipping your toe in my world, because I love this techstack talk from you. Because as listeners of the podcast, we'll know we love to plan content. And we had an episode A little while ago, about planning out the content calendar, making sure that we have content in like identified at different phases. And the reality is, is to your point, if we have a good text deck, and we have a good, our buttons crossed on the back end, if you will, and we know what pieces of content we've identified as consideration, phase content, can tag those in the system. And every anytime that a single one of our prospects engages with consideration content three times in a particular time period, we can identify them as a consideration prospect and move them along the line. And we can do it automatically and get them in front of the salesperson to move that funnel along. It's having those data points and having those systems connected just becomes more and more vital, the more in depth and the more account based you want to be.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, and in a quick reminder tip from our biz dev guru Jim from a show long ago. Don't forget the possibility of a sort of closing email in the consideration phase. Hey, we know you've been checking this out whatever we talked a couple of months back, haven't heard from you, whatever. We're gonna go ahead and move along so we don't waste your time. And amazing how often somebody's like No, don't go we're actually you know, going to be picking this up again soon. So, you know, even the consideration, you can close the book on the consideration phase. There's nothing wrong with doing it. And sometimes the proactive act of saying, hey, you know, we haven't heard from you in a while we get it. If we're not right for you, let's not waste your time. You know, offering to close the book on the consideration phase is a tactic a touch point that can work to reengage the prospect,
Joey Strawn:It may remind them that they haven't quite finished considering it. Like, you know, what I'm gonna consider continuing to consider this. I, we talked about that's, again, a perfect segue. It's like we put this list together on purpose nails, but the the segue of Alright, well, well, you know, we need to have a lot of touch points. We know we need to identify if they're engaging with our considerate consideration content. Well, what are the best types of pieces? I mean, we've, we've kind of rattled off a handful of these in the episode now. So I've heard you say, like pricing sheets. You know, I'll throw in case studies, you know, a good case study of saying, Oh, this is studies company solved this exact problem for these other companies can help you be like, oh, yeah, that that's a good one for me, too. So what other like types of content? Do you feel like really fall well into like, I think, you know, blog posts, we've talked about, like best, best DMS for something something something or, you know, this our tool versus the standard Pro. And and those types of site pages are always real good. But like getting further beyond that, what what types of things do you think fall? Well, and I think
Nels Jensen:that, I think the easiest way to think of this is that how do you replicate the material you bring to a trade show. So you know, you have a, you have a really a cool part that you've made that you want to show off, you know, so you bring that to the trade show, you bring some spec sheets, you bring some other printed material, you can hand out, you have your video that you're gonna play on your iPad, or your display screen, or whatever, it's like, whatever you're bragging on at a trade show you want to brag on on your website. So it could be 3d renderings, it could be a video of a use case, we've mentioned spec sheets a couple of times, you know, so that that ultimately, is your goal. And then one of the trends too, as you see advances in technology, we can talk about almost AR and VR could be but the true when you hear the phrase, you're gonna hear the phrase digital twin, more often, yes, you know what that means in terms of simulation and, and mimicking your production to learn from it before you actually do the production, where you can kind of do the same a little bit with your marketing where it's like, it's, it's, I've heard it referred to as four dimensional, it's a three dimensional view of, of something cool, that also has the specs overlaid into it. So, you know, you're you're turning around the park and looking at it. And meanwhile, the narratives,
Joey Strawn:Is the fourth dimension, word formation.
Nels Jensen:You know, I like that animation. I don't, I don't know. But it's, it's I love that. It's like putting it all together in one cool view where yes, you can turn it around and look at this different part or take the tour of the machine. And that also is narrating you with what you what you're seeing. Or it's showing you, you know, text about the specs or whatever. So this yeah, that's, that's advanced level, right?
Joey Strawn:That's an interesting thought to me now. Because what you're what you're saying what I hear, and this is very interesting to me is a conference or a trade show is sort of like a microcosm of the consideration phase. Because there are people who have raised their hand and said, Hey, my name is this, and I'm in this industry, and I am interested in these types of problems and solutions. They are actively walking up to tables, and asking very specific questions about hey, how are you guys better than those guys at the other table over there, or, you know, so all of the things that you wish you could do, or that you would do at a trade show, showing a video, talking through case studies and testimonials, walking them through like a 3d render, or like an actual experience of your product. Those are the same types of things you should be doing in the digital realm. At this huge trade show we call the Internet where people are typing in their, their the tables they want to visit. And so when they're there and they are considering your table, what do you wish you could have on hand? I love this. I love this kind of thought process of blowing out that mindset because that is a good microcosm of the mindset people are in at trade shows.
Nels Jensen:Yes, Your website should have a component. Listen to me, right? Should you should do this, you should do that. Wouldn't it be cool if your website had a component that was like a virtual tradeshow?
Joey Strawn:It's so real, it is good. And I love that digital twin. It's the idea of well, the mindset that you would be in at a trade show to convince somebody to use you. That's the same mindset you need to be in when you're building content around the strategy for your consideration phase. And those are the states that you'll be talking to. Yep, I love it.
Nels Jensen:Your teammates will get it too, right. It's like trying to interact, instead of trying to, you know, explain some of the benefits of content marketing and various things like that, you know, if your sales and marketing people get together and basically say, how do we put our trade show on our website, I think it'll spark a lot of good ideas.
Joey Strawn:And as everybody knows, who listens to us, we're big fans of team collaboration. So the more touch points, the more communication you can have between departments and teams. So one hand knows what the other is doing, the better everything is going to work. So yeah, I, I like that a lot. And kind of, again, segwaying off of that idea into our number seven thing on the 10 things you consider during the consideration phase, is what channels you should use. We talked a lot about trade shows right there, you know, obviously going to trade shows as being in inside that microcosm, but in the digital realm. I mean, what does that look like? I mean, obviously, you're I was like, Well, Google, like, yeah, you know, we should you should be on Google, you probably should be putting PPC ads out there that lead to like very specific landing pages like, Oh, someone in the back was that in the back? Social media? Yeah, you should probably be on social media during the consideration phase and sharing some of these elements that you're making. But like, I'm the more comparison things like, are you on Jeetu? Crowd? If you're a software company, or Capterra? You know, are you on those comparison markets? What about directories and trade journals? Are you in those comparative markets? Where your competitors are? Now it's like, what what kind of channels
Nels Jensen:I think you have when you're built by others. And this gets really tricky, because it's all of these can work, right? This is the hard part where how do you decide to put your resources but, you know, YouTube is very clearly an engineer tool of choice in terms of seeing, you know, how machines work and what they produce? And don't discount the sort of discussion, the old discussion group. And, and even though yes, we know, Facebook is not magic for manufacturers, right? We get it. But there are there are Facebook groups specific to manufacturing and engineering, they're more likely to be on Reddit than they are to be on Facebook. But there are, you know, maybe it's maybe it's a discussion channel in SME or something like that. I mean, there's, there are places where people go to chat. So yes, that's all much more difficult in there.
Joey Strawn:To your point earlier. Now, if you're making a video out of a case study, or if you're, you know, creating a well done video that answers a question for the consideration phase, there's no reason you couldn't drop that in a Reddit thread that's related to that problem, or that solution. There's no reason you couldn't share that on social media, or cut that up into a YouTube ad, or pre roll or just a YouTube video to host on a website, there are a lot of ways you can use a single good piece of consideration, content, and then distribute it to the different channels, just as you know, just in like we were talking about, it may be hard to make 1000 things for 1000 different places. But you can make one thing you can use in a lot of places.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, and if, and I would also suggest that you maybe it's not me, or because I'm just going to be ageist here, whatever. How to Leverage video is really important in the consideration phase, if nothing else, you know, turn some people loose at your place on how to leverage YouTube, it's good to be aware of that it's going to be a worthy exercise, you're going to learn something and it will help you position your content much better. If you have the the people who know the product and know how they like to consume it, consume.
Joey Strawn:Couldn't have said it couldn't have said it better myself. So moving on to our number eight thing that they people need to consider in the consideration phase is how to put all of this together and actually differentiate yourself. That's what all of this is about. The consideration phase boils down to they know who you are and your competitors. And they know the problems that are trying to solve. So how can you differentiate yourself? Now the awareness phase, this is where it gets a little tricky and feelings can kind of get hurt sometimes when we're building strategies for the consideration phase because in the awareness phase, you just want to scream from the mountaintops that way We are neat, and we are great. And we can do the thing that you want us to do. But in the consideration phase, that's usually not enough. And to Nelson's point earlier, they're asking questions around pricing around specs around turnaround time uptime, guarantees. And if you're not willing to dive down into those types of topics, then the consideration phase is going to be an area where where people fall out of your funnel, because those are the questions that they're asking. So differentiating yourself, could be, you have the best product on the market and your features and your benefits. And you're you add so much ROI to the bottom line of the factory that you just wouldn't believe it. And that's your differentiator. Great. Yeah, it's not that dry. Dig a little deeper.
Nels Jensen:I think the interesting point right now is what you do now is a table stake versus a differentiator. Yes, involving and going to change, right? So right now, if you are providing expert based sales support, in the consideration phase, you are differentiating yourself from the competition. Two or three years from now, expert based sales support in the consideration phase is a table stake, it's no longer going to be a differentiator. So I think this is just the world's evolving and you just diving in there helps but but leveraging if you if you are leveraging your internal experts, if you are leveraging your CRM so that you are touching people at the right times, then I think you know it's a combination, it's the full combo platter, you differentiate yourself with the willingness to discuss pricing, you differentiate yourself with the expert based sales support, you differentiate yourself with a personalized, good times touchpoints. So yeah, that's, and I think how you differentiate yourself in the future? I'm not sure I can answer that really well, it might be a whole lot more digital twin sort of things. But it may be it's easy to do it now. Because it's here I go again, right? You need to you'd be wise to do it now. Because what differentiates now is sort of a big basic table stakes down the line.
Joey Strawn:Well, and you know, to that, it's like, well, what's gonna differentiate, differentiate you in the future? To your point, that's gonna be really hard to answer. But I know, it's gonna be probably based around user experience, if you can make a process easier for your clients, or, you know what, here's, here's a question I'll leave you listeners with. And it's not an easy question. And it's not a fun one. But what is every company? What does every one of our competitors afraid to do? And then are we willing to do that? So if it's added guarantee to your website, if it's put pricing on the website, if it's put up a calculator, or a very true comparison between your product and a competitor product, whatever it may be, that's not going to get you like legally in problems? But like, what are our competitors afraid to do? And then are we brave enough to do it? If you can answer those two questions, you can probably find some ways to easily differentiate yourself. Yeah, quickly.
Nels Jensen:And at a plug to James Soto who has the, you know, industrial strength Marketing Podcast, he's got this great episode on experiential based marketing. And yes, this is exactly what you are talking about the the buying experience sales experience, customer experience. It's, it's really good.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, I also would plug and, and push that episode, I think it was very good one. But yes, building processes around the experiences of your customers is one surefire way to differentiate your brand or your customer, and then marketing that in your consideration content. The number nine one, I wanted to put a very tactical, I was like, Hey, I'm gonna put a keyword one on here, and you're like, now it's probably a little in the weeds. I'm like, No, I'm gonna do it. And I was like, Okay, so number nine on what you consider in the consideration phase, or what keywords you need to think about. And this is big for me, I love keywords. And we've talked a lot about this. So I just wanted to summarize it but if you're putting out ads, if you're building content around keywords, if you have tags that you're building keywords around, please make sure that you're considering you know, solution based content x x x solutions, versus content your brand versus somebody else or the number one brand versus you to get some of that search content, how to solve a problem, how to win if your product best based products, and then a lot of solutions based.
Nels Jensen:I get I gotta and I I concede I am not a keyword guru, so I frequently go to Joey or shout out tamale Brandon for or, you know, keyword stuff. So we're not talking about your, you know, basic keywords in many cases here, right? Because you're not going to win the game if you're trying to do you know, industrial marketing, right. So you're talking about the keywords that are that are going to be very associated with the solution or the product or the problem that somebody's trying to solve, right? We're not We're not Yeah, we're not talking top of the funnel keywords, we're talking middle of the funnel
Joey Strawn:What were you what we in the game, and some of our keywords, listeners are probably screaming in their cars, right? Now longtail keywords, yes. And then now this is what you and I have talked about, it's those keywords that are have more modifiers that are more specific, it's not shoes, it's black, Nike running shoes, 2022, you know, it's, it is the longer of the, because if I'm just searching shoes, it could be for a research paper, it could be for a video, it could be for a video game, it could be whatever. But if I'm searching a very specific pair, brand style and year of shoes, I'm probably thinking about buying that shoe. You know, and that's kind of the type of thing that we want to be thinking of is best DMS for my fixed stops auto Bay's best, you know, how, how to lower ROI on ads for my custom manufacturer, you know, very solutions based, oh, well, this is a problem that our solution and our brand our company our product solves. And those are the keywords that we're thinking of when people already know what they're looking for. And they're trying to dive a little bit deeper. So that's it. We're here at the number 10 thing now. So I'm going to run through our top 10 things really quickly before we hit number 10. Just to stir wrap up, but number one, what is the consideration phase? Number two, how involved and who was involved in the consideration phase from your buying committee? Number three? What information do you need, from the awareness phase to know that it's done? And number four, what questions do you need to face for your process? What questions do you need to answer for your prospects? Number five, how long should the consideration phase be? And then number six, what content pieces need to be involved in it? Number seven, which channels? Should you put those those content pieces out through? And number eight? How can you differentiate yourself in the messaging through those channels? Number nine, what keywords should you consider when building ads or building content. And that finally brings us to the number 10 thing you need to consider during the consideration phase is, well what happens next, they're not done at the consideration phase they've just considered and now they need to revert and to decide. And that's where we're that's the whole part of this point of this is to take people through this phase help them consider your problem, your solution your brand, and then come to the decision that you are right for them, you are the right partner. And that's that's what we you know, same types of things is before understanding what those gates are moving people through. But this is where a lot of it comes into the ABM style is knowing how close you can get to that sale and how many people are involved correctly. I mean, Nelson, you and I talk about ABM a lot. We're going to be talking about it more this season on the show. And a lot of this plays into that. So you know, how do you how do you find these like, alright, well what happens next, after the consideration phase?
Nels Jensen:You mean you just don't hand this off to you know, sales in the middle of the consideration phase and say, hey, it's all on you, buddy.
Joey Strawn:Exactly. You just toss it, you put it in a little basket, you wrap it in, you wrap it and burlap, you throw it over a fence it goes. And that's it. That's how that's how what we marketers do, right? No, no, I refuse it is no, we have to follow it, we've got to track it, we've got to know that those marketing qualified leads that we're sending through to sales are turning into revenue that are turning into bottom line value.
Nels Jensen:So which just you know, I've been trained so well this is also speaks to the diligence you need with your CRM in continuing these touch points through the decision making process because you will also learn key conversion and drop off points in the decision. You know, stage two, right, so yeah, in it like
Joey Strawn:What other content are needed because everyone found out when they asked this question,
Nels Jensen:Icartt's not always price sometimes it's you know, availability and deliverable timelines and things like that. So, yes, so what happens next, but there is a Okay, so now we're, we're clearly into a sales function as opposed to, you know, a hybrid situation. What other information can you help for the, for that sales function?
Joey Strawn:I think that's, I think that's a great question. I mean, because essentially, you know, we know who the contact is, we know that wood industry and some of their basic demographics from the awareness phase, the consideration phase, we should really be gathering more information, what questions are they answering? What specific role and service do they provide within their brand, you know, and we need to be pushing all of that to sales. What I would also say, and this is going to shake, shake some marketers bones a little bit is we need to listen to sales. That's the other part of this is this handoff is not one way is when we send those leads, and we send the people that we are pushing through the consideration phase to sales, we then need to listen and hear those are good leads, those are qualified leads, people are still asking these questions once they get to me. Could you answer those earlier? And so that feedback loop is really where the optimization of this phase comes in from is understanding are we getting the right people, you know, from the awareness phase? Most likely, but are we qualifying them correctly? And having an answering their questions while they're considering so that once they get to sales, they're better qualified, they're better ready for that handoff and listening to sales. And their feedback from that is is vital in that.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, very good advice.
Joey Strawn:So, man, nails, this has been more fun than I thought it would be. Actually, I knew I knew it was gonna be a blast. I very much like taking a deep dive into some of these customer journey phases. And I think I think we should do it for more of them. What do you what do you think? Yeah. Okay, good.
Nels Jensen:I forget what bill that was. What was what was number four, again, on your list?
Joey Strawn:Number four on the list here is what questions do you need to answer for the people? Yeah, in your consideration,
Nels Jensen:Pricing? Pricing? Yeah.
Joey Strawn:Sorry, oh, good, good. You got a little something in your throat there Nels. So I'm glad you got it out. I hope you feel a lot better.
Nels Jensen:A lot better. This has been a therapy session for Nels today. So
Joey Strawn:And probably for a lot of people who are like, I wish I want to talk about this. And now I have data and I can. We're gonna keep talking about the journey that customers go on, we're gonna keep talking about how industrial marketers need to connect their content and their strategies with that journey. This is going to be a year of in depth learning. So we broke apart this, we're going to break apart awareness decision and post up, we're going to make sure that we are in a position to really drive that bottom line and connect those dots throughout the customer journey. So follow along with us this year. If you aren't already subscribed to the industrial marketer, podcast, please go subscribe. We're all we have new episodes coming out every three months, we've got special stuff dropping, you need to be you need to be listening. If you haven't already been to industrial marketer.com. Go to that website, see all the great content we have on there. We love to write content. We love to get content from other people that are making good content, because this is a community that we're building of industrial marketers, and these b2b professionals solving these problems with each other. And if you have ideas for the show, if you have topics you want us to talk about, email us, send us an email at podcast at industrial marketer.com. Let us know how great you think the show is how smart Nelson is. You can tell us topics you want us to talk about it. We read the email, we want to be involved in this community. We want you to be involved as well. And finally, last plug, follow us on all the socials. You know you want to you're on him. We're on him. Let's be together on him. So this has been so much fun now thank you again for suggesting that we do a deep dive into the garden middle child of the customer journey. This This idea has sparked so much fun and other ideas that we're going to do for our listeners because of this. So thank you. I've really enjoyed today's conversation knows that you get a lot out of it too.
Nels Jensen:Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's good stuff.
Joey Strawn:Good. I hope everyone else feels the exact same way. We love you guys. Thanks for listening. And until next time, we've been the industrial Marketer Podcast. Have a good one.