The Riddle of The Buyer’s Journey
The riddle of the buyers journey
I’ve always been intrigued by riddles and problems from since I was in short trousers. Here’s one of my favourites.
Mr. Jones lives on the fifteenth floor of an apartment building in uptown Manhattan. Each morning at 8 a.m., he leaves his apartment and descends by elevator to the ground floor. Each day at about 6 p.m., he returns to his building and takes the elevator back up. But not all the way! Most days, he takes the elevator up to the eleventh floor and ascends the last four floors using the stairs. Most days. Because on rainy days, he ascends all the way to the fifteenth floor by elevator….
Answer: click here
Now you have the answer – it’s pretty obvious. I’ve got another one for B2B Marketers. “How do you Plan Campaigns that move buyers? This one has been troubling me for years and the solution was explained to me by Hugh Macfarlane author of ‘The Leaky Funnel’. Hugh coined the concept of ‘The Buyer’s Journey’
The Buyer’s Journey is a thought process that takes place in the heads of your B2B Buyers. It’s the chain of continuous decision-making that we through when making big-ticket purchases for our businesses. Here is the buyer’s journey:
Progress prospects through each stage
Stage of the Buyer’s Journey – In Summary
1. Untroubled & Unaware: “I have no problems and I’m not spending any money today.”
2. Position Vendors : “I’m keeping my on vendors in [insert your market here] but times are still tough
3. Acknowledge Pain: “A problem in my business has become so acute I’m ready to do something (like tyre-kick a few vendor’s products)”
4. Define Needs: “So colleagues what shall we do…?”
5. Receive Offers: “I’ll contact a few of those vendors who impressed me back in stages 2&3. However that was over nine months ago strange that only one has kept in regular contact. They are definitely on my list.
6. Rationalise Options/Select First Choice/Engage: “I’m in buying mode. I’ve carefully selected all the potential vendors and solutions to my problem. Now I need to choose the right one (filtering out all the sales blather)
So buyers buy and don’t like to be sold to. This is starting to make sense for my marketing campaigns.
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