April 26, 2022 • 49 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Joey Strawn (00:00):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
the industrial Marketer Podcastyour place for the tips, tech
trends and tactics forindustrials who care about
driving leads and revenue totheir businesses. I'm so excited
to have you back in to betalking with you again. I'm one
of your hosts industrialmarketer fan on the street.
Joey. As always, I am herejoined by nails showers bring
(00:26):
May flowers Nels Jensen. How areyou? My man? spring time is upon
us.
Nels Jensen (00:30):
I'm, uh, it is I'm I'm doing very, very well I'm,
and I'm, as usual, I think I seethis pretty much for every
episode. But I'm excited aboutthis topic. This is I got some
things to say. So, you know,
Joey Strawn (00:44):
Nelson speaks? I'm so excited. Yeah, to be honest,
I say this a lot too, aboutbeing excited. But I second
that, because to pull back thecurtain on the production a
little bit, I came to you and Iwas like, I What do you want to
talk about? Now, I really wantto know, what's been on your
mind. And you're like, you knowwhat, I have an idea. And I want
(01:04):
to talk about this. And I'm soglad that we get to this is, you
know, as everybody is fans ofindustrial marketer, in our, in
our listener base, no, we're bigon the tactics. We're big on
making things work forconnecting marketing and value,
because that's what we do inindustrial b2b, it's, it can't
(01:26):
just be fluff. It can't just bebig ideas, it has to actually
connect to some sort of value insome sort of revenue. And so
when we really thought todayabout diving into a topic, we
thought, what better topic, thenlooking at the customer journey,
but not just the customerjourney right now Nels?
Nels Jensen (01:47):
Oh, no.
Joey Strawn (01:47):
Where are our how are we specific?
Nels Jensen (01:50):
We are getting into the mid funnel, which and that's
part of my Nelson's rant for theday is the middle of the funnel
consideration. Right? Let's,what if we consider what you
should consider.
Joey Strawn (02:06):
I, I would love to consider that now. So you know
what, I think that a lot oftime. A lot of times it may be
because the acronym is MOF. Andit feels weird to say, but
middle of funnel content, middleof funnel activities,
consideration phase activities,it's like it's like the middle
stepchild. It's like the middlechild of the Brady Bunch family.
(02:28):
It's like oh, Mo FOMO FOMO foo.
No one ever talks about mo fooand I want us we're gonna dive
in today, we're diving into the10 things that people need to
consider during theconsideration phase of their
marketing journey and theircustomers, marketing journeys.
10 Things to think of know aboutto consider when you're putting
your plans together for it,because we love to talk about
(02:51):
Wow, it's a fun campaign slogan,yay, big idea. Let's get people
to aware of us. And we love tobe like, Wow, our salesmen, they
can close any deal. You put adeal in front of them, whoo,
bang, bang, boom, they got itclosed. But what happens in the
middle? How do we connect thosedots?
Nels Jensen (03:12):
You You hit my buttons, and you don't even know
it? I'm, I'm a middle child. Soit's like, why I'm gonna I'm
gonna speak from authority now.
So yeah, so you know, we can gothrough and we've talked a lot
about this buying journey, theindustrial buying journey, the
manufacturing, buying cycles andand journeys, and they're so
complicated, they now involvemore people than ever, the, you
(03:35):
know, 85% of research doneonline before you talk to a
salesperson. Now. I mean, we wehave spent a lot of time talking
about the elongated nonlinear,buying journey. Right, which I
think Ryan's beans, in my, mylittle piece of the of this too,
is, yeah, you can get caught upin the phases a little bit too
(03:58):
much. It's really, it's prettysimple. To me, there's sort of
an intro, there's sort of aconsideration there sort of a
conclusion, you know, and yes,it's it's more nuanced than
that. But my point with the withour sector, the industrial
sector is, you know, we reallythe this idea of education,
awareness, thought leadership isnot as universal as we make it
(04:20):
in the b2b game that is there.
So many of our areas andcampaigns were thought
leadership and education is notas important because once you
get into some of thesesolutions, once you get into
some of this equipment, there,you know, the education is
(04:42):
really more nuanced about thecapabilities. It's not so much,
you know, oh, what is this? Doyou know it's a small universe,
people know what's going on. Andthis is not to say that
education and awareness, itobviously has its place, but I
think in the business In termsof our, our narrow sector,
industrial marketing, you know,maybe we spend a little more
(05:05):
time on that, that we could bespending on the middle of the
funnel, because in this buyingprocess, that is the key step in
converting leads into into trueprospects and intent and
eventually converting intosales. So yes, I'm, I'm a big
consideration fan.
Joey Strawn (05:24):
Well, I love that.
And I think we should dive intoour 10. Because the summary you
just gave is really great iswhere you want to look at kind
of what that middle of thefunnel in the consideration
phase is, the elements that needto be in play during that phase,
and then some of the things thatwe need to be thinking about on
how to target and how to answerthose questions. Because I mean,
now it's to your point it is wespend a lot of time thinking
(05:46):
about how to get attention, weneed more leads, we need more
leads, we need more leads. Andwe spend a lot of time thinking
about how do we get oursalespeople to close more deals?
Well, when the answer may justbe we need better leads, we need
better funneling through oursystem and our and better
management and Sherpa Ng, if youwill, on that journey. And so I
(06:07):
think you know, that these 10,things are going to really help
who's ever listening if theyhaven't really focused on this
yet. And I hope that they willafter this, because sure, a lot
of very unique things that canhappen in the consideration
phase in the middle of thefunnel that people don't
consider. And we think that theyshould. So let's dive in number
one. The first thing is what theH is the consideration phase? So
(06:34):
that's an easier like, well,that one we've we've we've
talked about a little bit, butnow what's the consideration
phase?
Nels Jensen (06:42):
Well, the prospect knows who you are, and they know
what you do. And they know whatthe 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'regoing to begin looking at okay,
what's the best solution for us?
And yeah, you you may be one ofthe options. So I mean, that's
(07:05):
it's pretty, I think it's Ithink it's pretty simple.
Joey Strawn (07:08):
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 alot of that is when we want to
overcomplicate things, let'sovercomplicate how many, how
many things? How long should itbe? What should we do? So well,
let's keep it simple right nowis who are we trying to hit? If
we're building content for theconsideration phase? Or we're
thinking about the considerationphase? are? Are the questions
(07:32):
we're answering aren't? How canwe get people to know what our
brand name is? Or how can we youknow, get them to remember our
logo? It's more like you said,it's information that then
differentiates you from thosecompetitors, they already know
who you are, they have alreadyidentified some sort of problem
that they need solved. They needa solution for current now
they're considering how to solvethat. And you need to be in that
(07:57):
consideration. And your contentneeds to help answer some of
those questions, because that'sgoing to be a big part of some
of these numbers later as we go.
Oh, sure. So we've got thatdown. We know, let's say we've
moved on from number one, weknow what the consideration
phases. Number two is alsopretty important here is who is
involved in the considerationphase. Now, for long listeners
(08:20):
of the industrial MarketerPodcast, you know, what we're
talking about here buyingcommittees? That's what we're
talking about here. Who in yourbuying committee is a part of
the consideration phase? It'snot everybody, let me tell you
that that's the answer is noteveryone. So now, when we're
building thinking about content,when we're thinking about
(08:42):
getting people in thisconsideration phase, who are
some of the people that we'rethinking of, like, who are we
trying to write for? Right?
Nels Jensen (08:49):
So the most, the most obvious answer is going to
be somebody in engineering.
Somebody who's actually, youknow, in the case we're in we're
actually, if you're talkingabout a distributor or
logistics, it's somethingdifferent. We're speaking from
the generic manufacturing lenshere. So yeah, but it's not just
engineering. And it's not justthe operations, it could be a
(09:11):
Facility Manager. It certainlycould be a you know, EHS person,
depending upon what your sectorand industry is. And it's, it's
going to be, you know, a financeperson, as well. It's not and
we'll get into this a littlemore detail, because they all
have different questions. Butthey're all middle of the funnel
(09:33):
questions. It's a middle of thefunnel question in terms of
compliance. It's the middle ofthe funnel question in terms of
the actual processes andengineering. It's a middle of
the funnel in terms of a plant,you know, layout, inventory, and
all those good issue. So it'sjust, I'm gonna go back to, you
know, the, the key people aregoing to be from the disparate
parts of the company, andthey're all going to have middle
(09:56):
funnel questions.
Joey Strawn (09:58):
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 custommanufacturers. And so but there
will be a point person, and alikely this point person will be
the same point person that youwere attracting in the awareness
(10:19):
phase, it's who was ever doingsome of that initial research,
whether it's the engineeringdirector, you know, now that
you're talking about, or thefacility manager, the fixed ops
manager, someone who isimmediately hurt by or affected
by a problem, and is looking forsome sort of solution, that's
gonna be the main core of thisgroup. But as we all know,
(10:41):
industrial market or listeners,it's not going to be just one
person, it's a committee ofpeople. And so the periphery is
everyone who is in the immediateperiphery of this customer of
this context. So if it's anengineering director, he's more
than likely going to run it bysome of his engineers, and be
like, Hey, if you use this, whatdo you think about this? Or his
(11:03):
immediate director and say, if Iwant to do something like this,
would it be possible? So youhave to think of that as your
committee members as well.
Nels Jensen (11:11):
Right. And this also is the mid funnel, where
potentially people who areindependently doing research
arrive at the similarconsideration. So that's sort of
your that's sort of your bigopportunity, as if the finance
person and the facility personare both saying, oh, yeah, hey,
engineer, what about this? Hegoes, Oh, I'm glad you mentioned
that there one environment, oneof the three things I was
(11:33):
looking at. So you know, andagain, then, which also
listeners are going to befamiliar with, oh, well, this is
where Account Based Marketingcomes in, where you can connect
the dots and say, Oh, threedifferent people from Company A
have been looking at us, how dowe proceed differently? So yes,
who's involved is, is is reallyimportant. And it's going to the
(11:55):
answer will always be itdepends. But yes, it's going to
be different people. And they'regoing to have different
questions, but they're all midfunnel questions.
Joey Strawn (12:04):
I would agree. Now, moving on to our number three on
our list, is we've you know, weknow what consideration is we
know who we're talking to. Thethird one is what how do we know
the consideration phase hasstarted? How do we know that
someone has moved out of theawareness phase and into the
consideration phase, this one isone that I you know, have a
(12:27):
personal love of nails, becausethis is all about lead scoring
and data around the contacts andunderstanding what they have
done and how they've engagedwith us. Moving people from one
stage to another is always goingto depend on the lifecycle of
the sale, the type of item orsolution or product involved,
but we do know there will begates, we know, we will know who
(12:50):
the contact is, it's not goingto be nobody. We know that
they're going to have engagedwith us at some point in time,
likely through some of our topof funnel content. And most
often, if you have the leads alead scoring system set up
within your marketing toolstack, then you can understand
those gates of saying, Oh, well,he has visited our website so
(13:12):
many times and open this manyemails and and has downloaded a
piece that's that indicates tous that they are now considering
solutions. And so all of thoselittle elements are all the
internal data points needed tobasically raise your hand and
say, I am aware that this personhas moved from the awareness
(13:33):
stage. And we should considergetting them consideration
content for middle of thefunnel.
Nels Jensen (13:38):
Sure. And I suppose that's an argument for having
consideration type content inyour monthly newsletters because
of the potential forremarketing. And for you know,
not just fishing for new leads.
But you know, as we say, it'salways easier to do business
with the people you've donebusiness with before. So yeah,
the known contact is, is isreally big.
Joey Strawn (14:01):
Yeah, I would agree 100%. Now, now, I want this
next, moving on to number four.
Number three was kind of my techstack domain. But number four
is, well, what questions do youneed to answer as a company to
win your consideration phase?
You know, we know we got tobuild content around stuff. We
(14:23):
know we have to answerquestions. And we know that
people, you know, from the laststep, have moved from awareness
into consideration. So whatquest gents? Do we need to be
thinking of an answering in theconsideration? Phase? Yes,
equal?
Nels Jensen (14:38):
Yeah. And this is all about this is the heart and
soul of industrial marketing,right? So you're, you're
answering spec, slash technicalquestions, right. You could, you
could put out a spec sheet abouta machine that just lists the
really technical terms and thecapabilities and the engineer
(15:00):
gets it. Okay. But that doesn'tnecessarily translate to the
executive, maybe it's the, youknow, owner with an operational
background who's just like,Yeah, but does this actually do
X or Y? You know, that's whereyou're answering from a
solutions perspective.
Joey Strawn (15:15):
Right That's what I wanted to get to it right?
Solutions based answers. It'show are so right. Yeah. How well
do you differentiate
Nels Jensen (15:25):
Right, but for in some engineers are like, yeah,
yeah, everybody says that theycan, you know, have tapered
airflow to reduce the waste of,you know, going through your,
your drying room, you know, howdo 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 youcan begin to compare this is,
(15:48):
this is why we are better thansome of our competitors, all of
our competitors, whatever.
Joey Strawn (15:54):
And then the QC a lot of content, you'll see a lot
of content in that vein basedaround like, the best DMS for
the best thing, this versusthis, a lot of those searches
are consideration. facers oh, Iwant to know, what deed versus
CareerBuilder, or whatever theservice is.
Nels Jensen (16:12):
Yeah. And your and your matrices, where sometimes
it's like, Good, better best, isasked, you know, a good one.
Yes. And the but the, but thatalso, some of this content can
live in more than one, phasetwo, that's important to have in
the decision making phase as butit's also to get to the point.
(16:33):
To me one of the key pointshere, which is pricing, but the
the rate that the comparison isimportant in consideration,
right, you don't have to get asin depth, perhaps, but some of
this content can live in morethan one phase, you know, in
your funnel. So yeah, pricing.
Right. The, this is a trickyissue.
Joey Strawn (16:56):
Age old question.
Nels Jensen (16:58):
When do you introduce pricing? Okay. And one
of the things about the move toonline research, and one of the
things about the growth in Ecommerce for manufacturers,
which is growing faster than youthink it is, it is the top of
everybody's mind. And there arealmost every buddy that is doing
(17:18):
things in marketing is isdigitally marketing is on on
board with the idea of providingthese better answers. Right. So
once you provide better answers,of course, one of them is how
much is this going to cost? Soif you're if you're afraid of
introducing pricing online, insome publicly available place,
you know, you might, you'regonna have these issues, pricing
(17:42):
questions anyway. Right? You'reat some point, you have to
introduce pricing, or somebody'sgoing to drop out. So whether
your this is done, like the oldfashioned way in person, if it's
just a handout, if it's never inprinted material, and it's just
a price? Well, it's the answeris it always depends that we
have, you know, channelconflict. So, you know, we can't
(18:02):
publish a price that isdifferent than our distributors
have. I mean, yes, it'scomplicated. But if you're
afraid to qualify a lead withpricing, then you're probably
going to have other issuesblocking your growth. So this is
where you can certainlyintroduce a quick price estimate
tool, right? Get somebody'semail in return for offering up
(18:25):
a estimate. Everybody knows anestimate is not a final figure.
You can have all the, you know,little phrases in there to, you
know, disclaimers, andeverything else. But here's a
stat that I was kind of blownaway by. And this is an
attitudinal research, notbehavior. So maybe maybe this is
more people talking and doing.
But Gartner did a big researchproject on sales behavior.
(18:49):
Manufacturing, buyers want toengage with suppliers through
user friendly online orderingfeatures, right? That makes
sense. Because even with customproducts, 64% said they would
switch to another vendor if thecompany provides real time
personalized pricing. Two thirdsbasically say I want to see
pricing, and I want to seesomething that's actually
(19:10):
potentially unique to me. Sothis is a really important got,
Joey Strawn (19:15):
You've got data to back that opinion up. Now. I
can't it's How dare you come tome with proof that this thing
that we've talked about thatpushes the mold and ask some
tough questions about the statusquo is maybe not as real as we
thought, How dare you?
Nels Jensen (19:32):
Yeah, well, it's attitude, no research, right.
It's what people say, as opposedto what people actually do. So
you know, but it's worth thepoint is this by what questions
right? What do you need toconsider in the consideration
phase? I'm going to say pricinggets my gold star for something
that you really need to have agood strategy for, and you need
(19:53):
to understand, you know, theintended consequences and the
unintended consequences but Ifyou think about it as a
possibility of a quick estimatetool, you're gathering some
information, it's always on 24/7it weeds out prospects who are
okay, you're not in their pricerange. That's a good thing,
right? You're not going to wasteyour time with somebody who's
not. So I'm going to just saythat pricing should be a top
(20:17):
your considerations for what youneed to answer
Joey Strawn (20:20):
That gets the Nels bullet. For the number one with
a bullet. I would agree, Ithink, you know, in that we've,
with the questions that we'vekind of dived into, and this
number five are reallycomparative. It's, you know, how
are we better? How do we solvethis solution better than
someone else? We should do thisbecause this reason we're the
(20:41):
best, or to your point, andelse, what questions are your
prospects going to be asking?
What how's it gonna affect mybottom line? What does it cost?
Just because it historically,those questions have been tough
to answer does not mean thattheir prospects are not asking
them. So that's the way todifferentiate yourself is to be
open and honest, and give themthat user friendly experience.
(21:04):
Like, wow, no one else doesthis. For me, this is pretty
unique.
Nels Jensen (21:10):
Right? Or the idea that, okay, so I'm sharing this
information with, within mypersonal sales network with
somebody I know and have donebusiness before, doesn't mean
that that information doesn'tget out beyond your, you know,
relationship, right? Again,it's, it's, it's not an easy
topic to, to work through. Butmy point is, you got to work
(21:32):
through it, because many, manymore transactions are going to
be conducted online, theresearch is not going to, you
know, revert back to the oldways, you have to figure out the
key consideration is pricing.
Joey Strawn (21:46):
Yeah, and I think you know, that's a good segue
into our number five, the middleof our 10 Things to consider
during the consideration phaselist, because it's all about
timing. And our number fivething to consider is how long
should the consideration phasebe? And I'll start this one,
because I'll be the bad guyhere. It depends, haha, that is
(22:09):
going to be the answer. But whatwe do know is that it will
depend based on your industryand your needs and your clients.
So if you're an E commercevendor, and all of your deals
are done over a 2448 36 hourbasis, then your consideration
phase might be quicker. If asale takes 18 months to even get
(22:32):
into the contract phase, yourconsideration phase is probably
going to be a little bit longer.
So those types of things willmake a difference. But it is a
question we get asked a lot islike how long? Should we keep
someone in the considerationphase? My answer is as long as
they're considering thesolution.
Nels Jensen (22:50):
Well, that isn't that, isn't this an argument for
really leveraging your CRM, youknow, if you're if you're
monitoring these differenttouchpoints, then you do have an
idea that Okay, so if you have agood automated system, that you
know that once somebody looks atthe comparative piece of
content, that, you know, okay,they clearly are in
(23:13):
consideration phase. So you canactivate whatever your, you
know, nurturing system is fromthere. So it could be okay,
within two weeks, you've madesure you've had two touch
points, or that you don't daredo more than a certain frequency
or whatever.
Joey Strawn (23:29):
We'll see. And now, again, I you're dipping your toe
in my world, because I love thistechstack talk from you. Because
as listeners of the podcast,we'll know we love to plan
content. And we had an episode Alittle while ago, about planning
out the content calendar, makingsure that we have content in
(23:49):
like identified at differentphases. And the reality is, is
to your point, if we have a goodtext deck, and we have a good,
our buttons crossed on the backend, if you will, and we know
what pieces of content we'veidentified as consideration,
phase content, can tag those inthe system. And every anytime
that a single one of ourprospects engages with
consideration content threetimes in a particular time
(24:12):
period, we can identify them asa consideration prospect and
move them along the line. And wecan do it automatically and get
them in front of the salespersonto move that funnel along. It's
having those data points andhaving those systems connected
just becomes more and morevital, the more in depth and the
more account based you want tobe.
Nels Jensen (24:31):
Yeah, and in a quick reminder tip from our biz
dev guru Jim from a show longago. Don't forget the
possibility of a sort of closingemail in the consideration
phase. Hey, we know you've beenchecking this out whatever we
talked a couple of months back,haven't heard from you,
whatever. We're gonna go aheadand move along so we don't waste
(24:53):
your time. And amazing how oftensomebody's like No, don't go
we're actually you know, goingto be picking this up again
soon. So, you know, even theconsideration, you can close the
book on the consideration phase.
There's nothing wrong with doingit. And sometimes the proactive
act of saying, hey, you know, wehaven't heard from you in a
while we get it. If we're notright for you, let's not waste
(25:14):
your time. You know, offering toclose the book on the
consideration phase is a tactica touch point that can work to
reengage the prospect,
Joey Strawn (25:26):
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 putthis list together on purpose
nails, but the the segue ofAlright, well, well, you know,
we need to have a lot of touchpoints. We know we need to
(25:49):
identify if they're engagingwith our considerate
consideration content. Well,what are the best types of
pieces? I mean, we've, we'vekind of rattled off a handful of
these in the episode now. SoI've heard you say, like pricing
sheets. You know, I'll throw incase studies, you know, a good
case study of saying, Oh, thisis studies company solved this
exact problem for these othercompanies can help you be like,
(26:11):
oh, yeah, that that's a good onefor me, too. So what other like
types of content? Do you feellike really fall well into like,
I think, you know, blog posts,we've talked about, like best,
best DMS for something somethingsomething or, you know, this our
tool versus the standard Pro.
And and those types of sitepages are always real good. But
(26:32):
like getting further beyondthat, what what types of things
do you think fall? Well, and Ithink
Nels Jensen (26:38):
that, I think the easiest way to think of this is
that how do you replicate thematerial 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 wantto show off, you know, so you
bring that to the trade show,you bring some spec sheets, you
(26:59):
bring some other printedmaterial, you can hand out, you
have your video that you'regonna play on your iPad, or your
display screen, or whatever,it's like, whatever you're
bragging on at a trade show youwant to brag on on your website.
So it could be 3d renderings, itcould be a video of a use case,
we've mentioned spec sheets acouple of times, you know, so
that that ultimately, is yourgoal. And then one of the trends
(27:23):
too, as you see advances intechnology, we can talk about
almost AR and VR could be butthe true when you hear the
phrase, you're gonna hear thephrase digital twin, more often,
yes, you know what that means interms of simulation and, and
mimicking your production tolearn from it before you
actually do the production,where you can kind of do the
(27:46):
same a little bit with yourmarketing where it's like, it's,
it's, I've heard it referred toas four dimensional, it's a
three dimensional view of, ofsomething cool, that also has
the specs overlaid into it. So,you know, you're you're turning
around the park and looking atit. And meanwhile, the
narratives,
Joey Strawn (28:03):
Is the fourth dimension, word formation.
Nels Jensen (28:07):
You know, I like that animation. I don't, I don't
know. But it's, it's I lovethat. It's like putting it all
together in one cool view whereyes, you can turn it around and
look at this different part ortake the tour of the machine.
And that also is narrating youwith what you what you're
seeing. Or it's showing you, youknow, text about the specs or
whatever. So this yeah, that's,that's advanced level, right?
Joey Strawn (28:30):
That's an interesting thought to me now.
Because what you're what you'resaying what I hear, and this is
very interesting to me is aconference or a trade show is
sort of like a microcosm of theconsideration phase. Because
there are people who have raisedtheir hand and said, Hey, my
name is this, and I'm in thisindustry, and I am interested in
(28:51):
these types of problems andsolutions. They are actively
walking up to tables, and askingvery specific questions about
hey, how are you guys betterthan those guys at the other
table over there, or, you know,so all of the things that you
wish you could do, or that youwould do at a trade show,
showing a video, talking throughcase studies and testimonials,
(29:13):
walking them through like a 3drender, or like an actual
experience of your product.
Those are the same types ofthings you should be doing in
the digital realm. At this hugetrade show we call the Internet
where people are typing intheir, their the tables they
want to visit. And so whenthey're there and they are
considering your table, what doyou wish you could have on hand?
(29:36):
I love this. I love this kind ofthought process of blowing out
that mindset because that is agood microcosm of the mindset
people are in at trade shows.
Nels Jensen (29:48):
Yes, Your website should have a component. Listen
to me, right? Should you shoulddo this, you should do that.
Wouldn't it be cool if yourwebsite had a component that was
like a virtual tradeshow?
Joey Strawn (30:00):
It's so real, it is good. And I love that digital
twin. It's the idea of well, themindset that you would be in at
a trade show to convincesomebody to use you. That's the
same mindset you need to be inwhen you're building content
around the strategy for yourconsideration phase. And those
are the states that you'll betalking to. Yep, I love it.
Nels Jensen (30:22):
Your teammates will get it too, right. It's like
trying to interact, instead oftrying to, you know, explain
some of the benefits of contentmarketing and various things
like that, you know, if yoursales and marketing people get
together and basically say, howdo we put our trade show on our
website, I think it'll spark alot of good ideas.
Joey Strawn (30:43):
And as everybody knows, who listens to us, we're
big fans of team collaboration.
So the more touch points, themore communication you can have
between departments and teams.
So one hand knows what the otheris doing, the better everything
is going to work. So yeah, I, Ilike that a lot. And kind of,
again, segwaying off of thatidea into our number seven thing
(31:06):
on the 10 things you considerduring the consideration phase,
is what channels you should use.
We talked a lot about tradeshows right there, you know,
obviously going to trade showsas being in inside that
microcosm, but in the digitalrealm. I mean, what does that
look like? I mean, obviously,you're I was like, Well, Google,
like, yeah, you know, we shouldyou should be on Google, you
probably should be putting PPCads out there that lead to like
(31:29):
very specific landing pageslike, Oh, someone in the back
was that in the back? Socialmedia? Yeah, you should probably
be on social media during theconsideration phase and sharing
some of these elements thatyou're making. But like, I'm the
more comparison things like, areyou on Jeetu? Crowd? If you're a
software company, or Capterra?
You know, are you on thosecomparison markets? What about
(31:51):
directories and trade journals?
Are you in those comparativemarkets? Where your competitors
are? Now it's like, what whatkind of channels
Nels Jensen (31:59):
I think you have when you're built by others. And
this gets really tricky, becauseit's all of these can work,
right? This is the hard partwhere how do you decide to put
your resources but, you know,YouTube is very clearly an
engineer tool of choice in termsof seeing, you know, how
machines work and what theyproduce? And don't discount the
(32:23):
sort of discussion, the olddiscussion group. And, and even
though yes, we know, Facebook isnot magic for manufacturers,
right? We get it. But there arethere are Facebook groups
specific to manufacturing andengineering, they're more likely
to be on Reddit than they are tobe on Facebook. But there are,
(32:44):
you know, maybe it's maybe it'sa 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 (32:58):
To your point earlier. Now, if you're making a
video out of a case study, or ifyou're, you know, creating a
well done video that answers aquestion for the consideration
phase, there's no reason youcouldn't drop that in a Reddit
thread that's related to thatproblem, or that solution.
There's no reason you couldn'tshare that on social media, or
cut that up into a YouTube ad,or pre roll or just a YouTube
(33:20):
video to host on a website,there are a lot of ways you can
use a single good piece ofconsideration, content, and then
distribute it to the differentchannels, just as you know, just
in like we were talking about,it may be hard to make 1000
things for 1000 differentplaces. But you can make one
thing you can use in a lot ofplaces.
Nels Jensen (33:38):
Yeah, and if, and I would also suggest that you
maybe it's not me, or becauseI'm just going to be ageist
here, whatever. How to Leveragevideo is really important in the
consideration phase, if nothingelse, you know, turn some people
(34:00):
loose at your place on how toleverage YouTube, it's good to
be aware of that it's going tobe a worthy exercise, you're
going to learn something and itwill help you position your
content much better. If you havethe the people who know the
product and know how they liketo consume it, consume.
Joey Strawn (34:21):
Couldn't have said it couldn't have said it better
myself. So moving on to ournumber eight thing that they
people need to consider in theconsideration phase is how to
put all of this together andactually differentiate yourself.
That's what all of this isabout. The consideration phase
boils down to they know who youare and your competitors. And
(34:42):
they know the problems that aretrying to solve. So how can you
differentiate yourself? Now theawareness phase, this is where
it gets a little tricky andfeelings can kind of get hurt
sometimes when we're buildingstrategies for the consideration
phase because in the awarenessphase, you just want to scream
from the mountaintops that wayWe are neat, and we are great.
And we can do the thing that youwant us to do. But in the
(35:05):
consideration phase, that'susually not enough. And to
Nelson's point earlier, they'reasking questions around pricing
around specs around turnaroundtime uptime, guarantees. And if
you're not willing to dive downinto those types of topics, then
(35:26):
the consideration phase is goingto be an area where where people
fall out of your funnel, becausethose are the questions that
they're asking. Sodifferentiating yourself, could
be, you have the best product onthe market and your features and
your benefits. And you're youadd so much ROI to the bottom
line of the factory that youjust wouldn't believe it. And
(35:46):
that's your differentiator.
Great. Yeah, it's not that dry.
Dig a little deeper.
Nels Jensen (35:52):
I think the interesting point right now is
what you do now is a table stakeversus a differentiator. Yes,
involving and going to change,right? So right now, if you are
providing expert based salessupport, in the consideration
phase, you are differentiatingyourself from the competition.
(36:16):
Two or three years from now,expert based sales support in
the consideration phase is atable stake, it's no longer
going to be a differentiator. SoI think this is just the world's
evolving and you just diving inthere helps but but leveraging
if you if you are leveragingyour internal experts, if you
are leveraging your CRM so thatyou are touching people at the
(36:39):
right times, then I think youknow it's a combination, it's
the full combo platter, youdifferentiate yourself with the
willingness to discuss pricing,you differentiate yourself with
the expert based sales support,you differentiate yourself with
a personalized, good timestouchpoints. So yeah, that's,
and I think how youdifferentiate yourself in the
(37:01):
future? I'm not sure I cananswer that really well, it
might be a whole lot moredigital twin sort of things. But
it may be it's easy to do itnow. Because it's here I go
again, right? You need to you'dbe wise to do it now. Because
what differentiates now is sortof a big basic table stakes down
the line.
Joey Strawn (37:22):
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 bereally hard to answer. But I
know, it's gonna be probablybased around user experience, if
you can make a process easierfor your clients, or, you know
what, here's, here's a questionI'll leave you listeners with.
And it's not an easy question.
And it's not a fun one. But whatis every company? What does
(37:44):
every one of our competitorsafraid to do? And then are we
willing to do that? So if it'sadded guarantee to your website,
if it's put pricing on thewebsite, if it's put up a
calculator, or a very truecomparison between your product
and a competitor product,whatever it may be, that's not
going to get you like legally inproblems? But like, what are our
competitors afraid to do? Andthen are we brave enough to do
(38:10):
it? If you can answer those twoquestions, you can probably find
some ways to easilydifferentiate yourself. Yeah,
quickly.
Nels Jensen (38:19):
And at a plug to James Soto who has the, you
know, industrial strengthMarketing Podcast, he's got this
great episode on experientialbased marketing. And yes, this
is exactly what you are talkingabout the the buying experience
sales experience, customerexperience. It's, it's really
(38:42):
good.
Joey Strawn (38:42):
Yeah, I also would plug and, and push that episode,
I think it was very good one.
But yes, building processesaround the experiences of your
customers is one surefire way todifferentiate your brand or your
customer, and then marketingthat in your consideration
content. The number nine one, Iwanted to put a very tactical, I
was like, Hey, I'm gonna put akeyword one on here, and you're
(39:05):
like, now it's probably a littlein 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 considerationphase, or what keywords you need
to think about. And this is bigfor me, I love keywords. And
we've talked a lot about this.
So I just wanted to summarize itbut if you're putting out ads,
if you're building contentaround keywords, if you have
(39:26):
tags that you're buildingkeywords around, please make
sure that you're considering youknow, solution based content x x
x solutions, versus content yourbrand versus somebody else or
the number one brand versus youto get some of that search
content, how to solve a problem,how to win if your product best
(39:46):
based products, and then a lotof solutions based.
Nels Jensen (39:50):
I get I gotta and I I concede I am not a keyword
guru, so I frequently go to Joeyor shout out tamale Brandon for
or, you know, keyword stuff. Sowe're not talking about your,
you know, basic keywords in manycases here, right? Because
you're not going to win the gameif you're trying to do you know,
(40:11):
industrial marketing, right. Soyou're talking about the
keywords that are that are goingto be very associated with the
solution or the product or theproblem that somebody's trying
to solve, right? We're not We'renot Yeah, we're not talking top
of the funnel keywords, we'retalking middle of the funnel
Joey Strawn (40:30):
What were you what we in the game, and some of our
keywords,listeners are probably screaming
in their cars, right? Nowlongtail keywords, yes. And then
now this is what you and I havetalked about, it's those
keywords that are have moremodifiers that are more
specific, it's not shoes, it'sblack, Nike running shoes, 2022,
you know, it's, it is the longerof the, because if I'm just
(40:51):
searching shoes, it could be fora research paper, it could be
for a video, it could be for avideo game, it could be
whatever. But if I'm searching avery specific pair, brand style
and year of shoes, I'm probablythinking about buying that shoe.
You know, and that's kind of thetype of thing that we want to be
thinking of is best DMS for myfixed stops auto Bay's best, you
know, how, how to lower ROI onads for my custom manufacturer,
(41:20):
you know, very solutions based,oh, well, this is a problem that
our solution and our brand ourcompany our product solves. And
those are the keywords thatwe're thinking of when people
already know what they'relooking for. And they're trying
to dive a little bit deeper. Sothat's it. We're here at the
number 10 thing now. So I'mgoing to run through our top 10
(41:42):
things really quickly before wehit number 10. Just to stir wrap
up, but number one, what is theconsideration phase? Number two,
how involved and who wasinvolved in the consideration
phase from your buyingcommittee? Number three? What
information do you need, fromthe awareness phase to know that
it's done? And number four, whatquestions do you need to face
(42:04):
for your process? What questionsdo you need to answer for your
prospects? Number five, how longshould the consideration phase
be? And then number six, whatcontent pieces need to be
involved in it? Number seven,which channels? Should you put
those those content pieces outthrough? And number eight? How
can you differentiate yourselfin the messaging through those
(42:26):
channels? Number nine, whatkeywords should you consider
when building ads or buildingcontent. And that finally brings
us to the number 10 thing youneed to consider during the
consideration phase is, wellwhat happens next, they're not
done at the consideration phasethey've just considered and now
they need to revert and todecide. And that's where we're
(42:47):
that's the whole part of thispoint of this is to take people
through this phase help themconsider your problem, your
solution your brand, and thencome to the decision that you
are right for them, you are theright partner. And that's that's
what we you know, same types ofthings is before understanding
what those gates are movingpeople through. But this is
(43:08):
where a lot of it comes into theABM style is knowing how close
you can get to that sale and howmany people are involved
correctly. I mean, Nelson, youand I talk about ABM a lot.
We're going to be talking aboutit more this season on the show.
And a lot of this plays intothat. So you know, how do you
how do you find these like,alright, well what happens next,
(43:29):
after the consideration phase?
Nels Jensen (43:33):
You mean you just don't hand this off to you know,
sales in the middle of theconsideration phase and say,
hey, it's all on you, buddy.
Joey Strawn (43:40):
Exactly. You just toss it, you put it in a little
basket, you wrap it in, you wrapit and burlap, you throw it over
a fence it goes. And that's it.
That's how that's how what wemarketers do, right? No, no, I
refuse it is no, we have tofollow it, we've got to track
it, we've got to know that thosemarketing qualified leads that
we're sending through to salesare turning into revenue that
(44:01):
are turning into bottom linevalue.
Nels Jensen (44:06):
So which just you know, I've been trained so well
this is also speaks to thediligence you need with your CRM
in continuing these touch pointsthrough the decision making
process because you will alsolearn key conversion and drop
off points in the decision. Youknow, stage two, right, so yeah,
(44:27):
in it like
Joey Strawn (44:27):
What other content are needed because everyone
found out when they asked thisquestion,
Nels Jensen (44:33):
Icartt's not always price sometimes it's you know,
availability and deliverabletimelines and things like that.
So, yes, so what happens next,but there is a Okay, so now
we're, we're clearly into asales function as opposed to,
you know, a hybrid situation.
What other information can youhelp for the, for that sales
(44:56):
function?
Joey Strawn (45:00):
I think that's, I think that's a great question. I
mean, because essentially, youknow, we know who the contact
is, we know that wood industryand some of their basic
demographics from the awarenessphase, the consideration phase,
we should really be gatheringmore information, what questions
are they answering? Whatspecific role and service do
they provide within their brand,you know, and we need to be
(45:21):
pushing all of that to sales.
What I would also say, and thisis going to shake, shake some
marketers bones a little bit iswe need to listen to sales.
That's the other part of this isthis handoff is not one way is
when we send those leads, and wesend the people that we are
pushing through theconsideration phase to sales, we
then need to listen and hearthose are good leads, those are
(45:42):
qualified leads, people arestill asking these questions
once they get to me. Could youanswer those earlier? And so
that feedback loop is reallywhere the optimization of this
phase comes in from isunderstanding are we getting the
right people, you know, from theawareness phase? Most likely,
but are we qualifying themcorrectly? And having an
(46:03):
answering their questions whilethey're considering so that once
they get to sales, they'rebetter qualified, they're better
ready for that handoff andlistening to sales. And their
feedback from that is is vitalin that.
Nels Jensen (46:19):
Yeah, very good advice.
Joey Strawn (46:22):
So, man, nails, this has been more fun than I
thought it would be. Actually, Iknew I knew it was gonna be a
blast. I very much like taking adeep dive into some of these
customer journey phases. And Ithink I think we should do it
for more of them. What do youwhat do you think? Yeah. Okay,
good.
Nels Jensen (46:39):
I forget what bill that was. What was what was
number four, again, on yourlist?
Joey Strawn (46:44):
Number four on the list here is what questions do
you need to answer for thepeople? Yeah, in your
consideration,
Nels Jensen (46:50):
Pricing? Pricing?
Yeah.
Joey Strawn (46:56):
Sorry, oh, good, good. You got a little something
in your throat there Nels. SoI'm glad you got it out. I hope
you feel a lot better.
Nels Jensen (47:03):
A lot better. This has been a therapy session for
Nels today. So
Joey Strawn (47:07):
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 aboutthe journey that customers go
on, we're gonna keep talkingabout how industrial marketers
need to connect their contentand their strategies with that
journey. This is going to be ayear of in depth learning. So we
broke apart this, we're going tobreak apart awareness decision
(47:30):
and post up, we're going to makesure that we are in a position
to really drive that bottom lineand connect those dots
throughout the customer journey.
So follow along with us thisyear. If you aren't already
subscribed to the industrialmarketer, podcast, please go
subscribe. We're all we have newepisodes coming out every three
months, we've got special stuffdropping, you need to be you
(47:52):
need to be listening. If youhaven't already been to
industrial marketer.com. Go tothat website, see all the great
content we have on there. Welove to write content. We love
to get content from other peoplethat are making good content,
because this is a community thatwe're building of industrial
marketers, and these b2bprofessionals solving these
problems with each other. And ifyou have ideas for the show, if
(48:15):
you have topics you want us totalk about, email us, send us an
email at podcast at industrialmarketer.com. Let us know how
great you think the show is howsmart Nelson is. You can tell us
topics you want us to talk aboutit. We read the email, we want
to be involved in thiscommunity. We want you to be
involved as well. And finally,last plug, follow us on all the
(48:36):
socials. You know you want toyou're on him. We're on him.
Let's be together on him. Sothis has been so much fun now
thank you again for suggestingthat we do a deep dive into the
garden middle child of thecustomer journey. This This idea
has sparked so much fun andother ideas that we're going to
(48:57):
do for our listeners because ofthis. So thank you. I've really
enjoyed today's conversationknows that you get a lot out of
it too.
Nels Jensen (49:06):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
It's good stuff.
Joey Strawn (49:08):
Good. I hope everyone else feels the exact
same way. We love you guys.
Thanks for listening. And untilnext time, we've been the
industrial Marketer Podcast.
Have a good one.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
the industrial Marketer Podcastyour place for the tips, tech
trends and tactics forindustrials who care about
driving leads and revenue totheir businesses. I'm so excited
to have you back in to betalking with you again. I'm one
of your hosts industrialmarketer fan on the street.
Joey. As always, I am herejoined by nails showers bring
(00:26):
May flowers Nels Jensen. How areyou? My man? spring time is upon
us.
Nels Jensen (00:30):
I'm, uh, it is I'm I'm doing very, very well I'm,
and I'm, as usual, I think I seethis pretty much for every
episode. But I'm excited aboutthis topic. This is I got some
things to say. So, you know,
Joey Strawn (00:44):
Nelson speaks? I'm so excited. Yeah, to be honest,
I say this a lot too, aboutbeing excited. But I second
that, because to pull back thecurtain on the production a
little bit, I came to you and Iwas like, I What do you want to
talk about? Now, I really wantto know, what's been on your
mind. And you're like, you knowwhat, I have an idea. And I want
(01:04):
to talk about this. And I'm soglad that we get to this is, you
know, as everybody is fans ofindustrial marketer, in our, in
our listener base, no, we're bigon the tactics. We're big on
making things work forconnecting marketing and value,
because that's what we do inindustrial b2b, it's, it can't
(01:26):
just be fluff. It can't just bebig ideas, it has to actually
connect to some sort of value insome sort of revenue. And so
when we really thought todayabout diving into a topic, we
thought, what better topic, thenlooking at the customer journey,
but not just the customerjourney right now Nels?
Nels Jensen (01:47):
Oh, no.
Joey Strawn (01:47):
Where are our how are we specific?
Nels Jensen (01:50):
We are getting into the mid funnel, which and that's
part of my Nelson's rant for theday is the middle of the funnel
consideration. Right? Let's,what if we consider what you
should consider.
Joey Strawn (02:06):
I, I would love to consider that now. So you know
what, I think that a lot oftime. A lot of times it may be
because the acronym is MOF. Andit feels weird to say, but
middle of funnel content, middleof funnel activities,
consideration phase activities,it's like it's like the middle
stepchild. It's like the middlechild of the Brady Bunch family.
(02:28):
It's like oh, Mo FOMO FOMO foo.
No one ever talks about mo fooand I want us we're gonna dive
in today, we're diving into the10 things that people need to
consider during theconsideration phase of their
marketing journey and theircustomers, marketing journeys.
10 Things to think of know aboutto consider when you're putting
your plans together for it,because we love to talk about
(02:51):
Wow, it's a fun campaign slogan,yay, big idea. Let's get people
to aware of us. And we love tobe like, Wow, our salesmen, they
can close any deal. You put adeal in front of them, whoo,
bang, bang, boom, they got itclosed. But what happens in the
middle? How do we connect thosedots?
Nels Jensen (03:12):
You You hit my buttons, and you don't even know
it? I'm, I'm a middle child. Soit's like, why I'm gonna I'm
gonna speak from authority now.
So yeah, so you know, we can gothrough and we've talked a lot
about this buying journey, theindustrial buying journey, the
manufacturing, buying cycles andand journeys, and they're so
complicated, they now involvemore people than ever, the, you
(03:35):
know, 85% of research doneonline before you talk to a
salesperson. Now. I mean, we wehave spent a lot of time talking
about the elongated nonlinear,buying journey. Right, which I
think Ryan's beans, in my, mylittle piece of the of this too,
is, yeah, you can get caught upin the phases a little bit too
(03:58):
much. It's really, it's prettysimple. To me, there's sort of
an intro, there's sort of aconsideration there sort of a
conclusion, you know, and yes,it's it's more nuanced than
that. But my point with the withour sector, the industrial
sector is, you know, we reallythe this idea of education,
awareness, thought leadership isnot as universal as we make it
(04:20):
in the b2b game that is there.
So many of our areas andcampaigns were thought
leadership and education is notas important because once you
get into some of thesesolutions, once you get into
some of this equipment, there,you know, the education is
(04:42):
really more nuanced about thecapabilities. It's not so much,
you know, oh, what is this? Doyou know it's a small universe,
people know what's going on. Andthis is not to say that
education and awareness, itobviously has its place, but I
think in the business In termsof our, our narrow sector,
industrial marketing, you know,maybe we spend a little more
(05:05):
time on that, that we could bespending on the middle of the
funnel, because in this buyingprocess, that is the key step in
converting leads into into trueprospects and intent and
eventually converting intosales. So yes, I'm, I'm a big
consideration fan.
Joey Strawn (05:24):
Well, I love that.
And I think we should dive intoour 10. Because the summary you
just gave is really great iswhere you want to look at kind
of what that middle of thefunnel in the consideration
phase is, the elements that needto be in play during that phase,
and then some of the things thatwe need to be thinking about on
how to target and how to answerthose questions. Because I mean,
now it's to your point it is wespend a lot of time thinking
(05:46):
about how to get attention, weneed more leads, we need more
leads, we need more leads. Andwe spend a lot of time thinking
about how do we get oursalespeople to close more deals?
Well, when the answer may justbe we need better leads, we need
better funneling through oursystem and our and better
management and Sherpa Ng, if youwill, on that journey. And so I
(06:07):
think you know, that these 10,things are going to really help
who's ever listening if theyhaven't really focused on this
yet. And I hope that they willafter this, because sure, a lot
of very unique things that canhappen in the consideration
phase in the middle of thefunnel that people don't
consider. And we think that theyshould. So let's dive in number
one. The first thing is what theH is the consideration phase? So
(06:34):
that's an easier like, well,that one we've we've we've
talked about a little bit, butnow what's the consideration
phase?
Nels Jensen (06:42):
Well, the prospect knows who you are, and they know
what you do. And they know whatthe 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'regoing to begin looking at okay,
what's the best solution for us?
And yeah, you you may be one ofthe options. So I mean, that's
(07:05):
it's pretty, I think it's Ithink it's pretty simple.
Joey Strawn (07:08):
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 alot of that is when we want to
overcomplicate things, let'sovercomplicate how many, how
many things? How long should itbe? What should we do? So well,
let's keep it simple right nowis who are we trying to hit? If
we're building content for theconsideration phase? Or we're
thinking about the considerationphase? are? Are the questions
(07:32):
we're answering aren't? How canwe get people to know what our
brand name is? Or how can we youknow, get them to remember our
logo? It's more like you said,it's information that then
differentiates you from thosecompetitors, they already know
who you are, they have alreadyidentified some sort of problem
that they need solved. They needa solution for current now
they're considering how to solvethat. And you need to be in that
(07:57):
consideration. And your contentneeds to help answer some of
those questions, because that'sgoing to be a big part of some
of these numbers later as we go.
Oh, sure. So we've got thatdown. We know, let's say we've
moved on from number one, weknow what the consideration
phases. Number two is alsopretty important here is who is
involved in the considerationphase. Now, for long listeners
(08:20):
of the industrial MarketerPodcast, you know, what we're
talking about here buyingcommittees? That's what we're
talking about here. Who in yourbuying committee is a part of
the consideration phase? It'snot everybody, let me tell you
that that's the answer is noteveryone. So now, when we're
building thinking about content,when we're thinking about
(08:42):
getting people in thisconsideration phase, who are
some of the people that we'rethinking of, like, who are we
trying to write for? Right?
Nels Jensen (08:49):
So the most, the most obvious answer is going to
be somebody in engineering.
Somebody who's actually, youknow, in the case we're in we're
actually, if you're talkingabout a distributor or
logistics, it's somethingdifferent. We're speaking from
the generic manufacturing lenshere. So yeah, but it's not just
engineering. And it's not justthe operations, it could be a
(09:11):
Facility Manager. It certainlycould be a you know, EHS person,
depending upon what your sectorand industry is. And it's, it's
going to be, you know, a financeperson, as well. It's not and
we'll get into this a littlemore detail, because they all
have different questions. Butthey're all middle of the funnel
(09:33):
questions. It's a middle of thefunnel question in terms of
compliance. It's the middle ofthe funnel question in terms of
the actual processes andengineering. It's a middle of
the funnel in terms of a plant,you know, layout, inventory, and
all those good issue. So it'sjust, I'm gonna go back to, you
know, the, the key people aregoing to be from the disparate
parts of the company, andthey're all going to have middle
(09:56):
funnel questions.
Joey Strawn (09:58):
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 custommanufacturers. And so but there
will be a point person, and alikely this point person will be
the same point person that youwere attracting in the awareness
(10:19):
phase, it's who was ever doingsome of that initial research,
whether it's the engineeringdirector, you know, now that
you're talking about, or thefacility manager, the fixed ops
manager, someone who isimmediately hurt by or affected
by a problem, and is looking forsome sort of solution, that's
gonna be the main core of thisgroup. But as we all know,
(10:41):
industrial market or listeners,it's not going to be just one
person, it's a committee ofpeople. And so the periphery is
everyone who is in the immediateperiphery of this customer of
this context. So if it's anengineering director, he's more
than likely going to run it bysome of his engineers, and be
like, Hey, if you use this, whatdo you think about this? Or his
(11:03):
immediate director and say, if Iwant to do something like this,
would it be possible? So youhave to think of that as your
committee members as well.
Nels Jensen (11:11):
Right. And this also is the mid funnel, where
potentially people who areindependently doing research
arrive at the similarconsideration. So that's sort of
your that's sort of your bigopportunity, as if the finance
person and the facility personare both saying, oh, yeah, hey,
engineer, what about this? Hegoes, Oh, I'm glad you mentioned
that there one environment, oneof the three things I was
(11:33):
looking at. So you know, andagain, then, which also
listeners are going to befamiliar with, oh, well, this is
where Account Based Marketingcomes in, where you can connect
the dots and say, Oh, threedifferent people from Company A
have been looking at us, how dowe proceed differently? So yes,
who's involved is, is is reallyimportant. And it's going to the
(11:55):
answer will always be itdepends. But yes, it's going to
be different people. And they'regoing to have different
questions, but they're all midfunnel questions.
Joey Strawn (12:04):
I would agree. Now, moving on to our number three on
our list, is we've you know, weknow what consideration is we
know who we're talking to. Thethird one is what how do we know
the consideration phase hasstarted? How do we know that
someone has moved out of theawareness phase and into the
consideration phase, this one isone that I you know, have a
(12:27):
personal love of nails, becausethis is all about lead scoring
and data around the contacts andunderstanding what they have
done and how they've engagedwith us. Moving people from one
stage to another is always goingto depend on the lifecycle of
the sale, the type of item orsolution or product involved,
but we do know there will begates, we know, we will know who
(12:50):
the contact is, it's not goingto be nobody. We know that
they're going to have engagedwith us at some point in time,
likely through some of our topof funnel content. And most
often, if you have the leads alead scoring system set up
within your marketing toolstack, then you can understand
those gates of saying, Oh, well,he has visited our website so
(13:12):
many times and open this manyemails and and has downloaded a
piece that's that indicates tous that they are now considering
solutions. And so all of thoselittle elements are all the
internal data points needed tobasically raise your hand and
say, I am aware that this personhas moved from the awareness
(13:33):
stage. And we should considergetting them consideration
content for middle of thefunnel.
Nels Jensen (13:38):
Sure. And I suppose that's an argument for having
consideration type content inyour monthly newsletters because
of the potential forremarketing. And for you know,
not just fishing for new leads.
But you know, as we say, it'salways easier to do business
with the people you've donebusiness with before. So yeah,
the known contact is, is isreally big.
Joey Strawn (14:01):
Yeah, I would agree 100%. Now, now, I want this
next, moving on to number four.
Number three was kind of my techstack domain. But number four
is, well, what questions do youneed to answer as a company to
win your consideration phase?
You know, we know we got tobuild content around stuff. We
(14:23):
know we have to answerquestions. And we know that
people, you know, from the laststep, have moved from awareness
into consideration. So whatquest gents? Do we need to be
thinking of an answering in theconsideration? Phase? Yes,
equal?
Nels Jensen (14:38):
Yeah. And this is all about this is the heart and
soul of industrial marketing,right? So you're, you're
answering spec, slash technicalquestions, right. You could, you
could put out a spec sheet abouta machine that just lists the
really technical terms and thecapabilities and the engineer
(15:00):
gets it. Okay. But that doesn'tnecessarily translate to the
executive, maybe it's the, youknow, owner with an operational
background who's just like,Yeah, but does this actually do
X or Y? You know, that's whereyou're answering from a
solutions perspective.
Joey Strawn (15:15):
Right That's what I wanted to get to it right?
Solutions based answers. It'show are so right. Yeah. How well
do you differentiate
Nels Jensen (15:25):
Right, but for in some engineers are like, yeah,
yeah, everybody says that theycan, you know, have tapered
airflow to reduce the waste of,you know, going through your,
your drying room, you know, howdo 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 youcan begin to compare this is,
(15:48):
this is why we are better thansome of our competitors, all of
our competitors, whatever.
Joey Strawn (15:54):
And then the QC a lot of content, you'll see a lot
of content in that vein basedaround like, the best DMS for
the best thing, this versusthis, a lot of those searches
are consideration. facers oh, Iwant to know, what deed versus
CareerBuilder, or whatever theservice is.
Nels Jensen (16:12):
Yeah. And your and your matrices, where sometimes
it's like, Good, better best, isasked, you know, a good one.
Yes. And the but the, but thatalso, some of this content can
live in more than one, phasetwo, that's important to have in
the decision making phase as butit's also to get to the point.
(16:33):
To me one of the key pointshere, which is pricing, but the
the rate that the comparison isimportant in consideration,
right, you don't have to get asin depth, perhaps, but some of
this content can live in morethan one phase, you know, in
your funnel. So yeah, pricing.
Right. The, this is a trickyissue.
Joey Strawn (16:56):
Age old question.
Nels Jensen (16:58):
When do you introduce pricing? Okay. And one
of the things about the move toonline research, and one of the
things about the growth in Ecommerce for manufacturers,
which is growing faster than youthink it is, it is the top of
everybody's mind. And there arealmost every buddy that is doing
(17:18):
things in marketing is isdigitally marketing is on on
board with the idea of providingthese better answers. Right. So
once you provide better answers,of course, one of them is how
much is this going to cost? Soif you're if you're afraid of
introducing pricing online, insome publicly available place,
you know, you might, you'regonna have these issues, pricing
(17:42):
questions anyway. Right? You'reat some point, you have to
introduce pricing, or somebody'sgoing to drop out. So whether
your this is done, like the oldfashioned way in person, if it's
just a handout, if it's never inprinted material, and it's just
a price? Well, it's the answeris it always depends that we
have, you know, channelconflict. So, you know, we can't
(18:02):
publish a price that isdifferent than our distributors
have. I mean, yes, it'scomplicated. But if you're
afraid to qualify a lead withpricing, then you're probably
going to have other issuesblocking your growth. So this is
where you can certainlyintroduce a quick price estimate
tool, right? Get somebody'semail in return for offering up
(18:25):
a estimate. Everybody knows anestimate is not a final figure.
You can have all the, you know,little phrases in there to, you
know, disclaimers, andeverything else. But here's a
stat that I was kind of blownaway by. And this is an
attitudinal research, notbehavior. So maybe maybe this is
more people talking and doing.
But Gartner did a big researchproject on sales behavior.
(18:49):
Manufacturing, buyers want toengage with suppliers through
user friendly online orderingfeatures, right? That makes
sense. Because even with customproducts, 64% said they would
switch to another vendor if thecompany provides real time
personalized pricing. Two thirdsbasically say I want to see
pricing, and I want to seesomething that's actually
(19:10):
potentially unique to me. Sothis is a really important got,
Joey Strawn (19:15):
You've got data to back that opinion up. Now. I
can't it's How dare you come tome with proof that this thing
that we've talked about thatpushes the mold and ask some
tough questions about the statusquo is maybe not as real as we
thought, How dare you?
Nels Jensen (19:32):
Yeah, well, it's attitude, no research, right.
It's what people say, as opposedto what people actually do. So
you know, but it's worth thepoint is this by what questions
right? What do you need toconsider in the consideration
phase? I'm going to say pricinggets my gold star for something
that you really need to have agood strategy for, and you need
(19:53):
to understand, you know, theintended consequences and the
unintended consequences but Ifyou think about it as a
possibility of a quick estimatetool, you're gathering some
information, it's always on 24/7it weeds out prospects who are
okay, you're not in their pricerange. That's a good thing,
right? You're not going to wasteyour time with somebody who's
not. So I'm going to just saythat pricing should be a top
(20:17):
your considerations for what youneed to answer
Joey Strawn (20:20):
That gets the Nels bullet. For the number one with
a bullet. I would agree, Ithink, you know, in that we've,
with the questions that we'vekind of dived into, and this
number five are reallycomparative. It's, you know, how
are we better? How do we solvethis solution better than
someone else? We should do thisbecause this reason we're the
(20:41):
best, or to your point, andelse, what questions are your
prospects going to be asking?
What how's it gonna affect mybottom line? What does it cost?
Just because it historically,those questions have been tough
to answer does not mean thattheir prospects are not asking
them. So that's the way todifferentiate yourself is to be
open and honest, and give themthat user friendly experience.
(21:04):
Like, wow, no one else doesthis. For me, this is pretty
unique.
Nels Jensen (21:10):
Right? Or the idea that, okay, so I'm sharing this
information with, within mypersonal sales network with
somebody I know and have donebusiness before, doesn't mean
that that information doesn'tget out beyond your, you know,
relationship, right? Again,it's, it's, it's not an easy
topic to, to work through. Butmy point is, you got to work
(21:32):
through it, because many, manymore transactions are going to
be conducted online, theresearch is not going to, you
know, revert back to the oldways, you have to figure out the
key consideration is pricing.
Joey Strawn (21:46):
Yeah, and I think you know, that's a good segue
into our number five, the middleof our 10 Things to consider
during the consideration phaselist, because it's all about
timing. And our number fivething to consider is how long
should the consideration phasebe? And I'll start this one,
because I'll be the bad guyhere. It depends, haha, that is
(22:09):
going to be the answer. But whatwe do know is that it will
depend based on your industryand your needs and your clients.
So if you're an E commercevendor, and all of your deals
are done over a 2448 36 hourbasis, then your consideration
phase might be quicker. If asale takes 18 months to even get
(22:32):
into the contract phase, yourconsideration phase is probably
going to be a little bit longer.
So those types of things willmake a difference. But it is a
question we get asked a lot islike how long? Should we keep
someone in the considerationphase? My answer is as long as
they're considering thesolution.
Nels Jensen (22:50):
Well, that isn't that, isn't this an argument for
really leveraging your CRM, youknow, if you're if you're
monitoring these differenttouchpoints, then you do have an
idea that Okay, so if you have agood automated system, that you
know that once somebody looks atthe comparative piece of
content, that, you know, okay,they clearly are in
(23:13):
consideration phase. So you canactivate whatever your, you
know, nurturing system is fromthere. So it could be okay,
within two weeks, you've madesure you've had two touch
points, or that you don't daredo more than a certain frequency
or whatever.
Joey Strawn (23:29):
We'll see. And now, again, I you're dipping your toe
in my world, because I love thistechstack talk from you. Because
as listeners of the podcast,we'll know we love to plan
content. And we had an episode Alittle while ago, about planning
out the content calendar, makingsure that we have content in
(23:49):
like identified at differentphases. And the reality is, is
to your point, if we have a goodtext deck, and we have a good,
our buttons crossed on the backend, if you will, and we know
what pieces of content we'veidentified as consideration,
phase content, can tag those inthe system. And every anytime
that a single one of ourprospects engages with
consideration content threetimes in a particular time
(24:12):
period, we can identify them asa consideration prospect and
move them along the line. And wecan do it automatically and get
them in front of the salespersonto move that funnel along. It's
having those data points andhaving those systems connected
just becomes more and morevital, the more in depth and the
more account based you want tobe.
Nels Jensen (24:31):
Yeah, and in a quick reminder tip from our biz
dev guru Jim from a show longago. Don't forget the
possibility of a sort of closingemail in the consideration
phase. Hey, we know you've beenchecking this out whatever we
talked a couple of months back,haven't heard from you,
whatever. We're gonna go aheadand move along so we don't waste
(24:53):
your time. And amazing how oftensomebody's like No, don't go
we're actually you know, goingto be picking this up again
soon. So, you know, even theconsideration, you can close the
book on the consideration phase.
There's nothing wrong with doingit. And sometimes the proactive
act of saying, hey, you know, wehaven't heard from you in a
while we get it. If we're notright for you, let's not waste
(25:14):
your time. You know, offering toclose the book on the
consideration phase is a tactica touch point that can work to
reengage the prospect,
Joey Strawn (25:26):
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 putthis list together on purpose
nails, but the the segue ofAlright, well, well, you know,
we need to have a lot of touchpoints. We know we need to
(25:49):
identify if they're engagingwith our considerate
consideration content. Well,what are the best types of
pieces? I mean, we've, we'vekind of rattled off a handful of
these in the episode now. SoI've heard you say, like pricing
sheets. You know, I'll throw incase studies, you know, a good
case study of saying, Oh, thisis studies company solved this
exact problem for these othercompanies can help you be like,
(26:11):
oh, yeah, that that's a good onefor me, too. So what other like
types of content? Do you feellike really fall well into like,
I think, you know, blog posts,we've talked about, like best,
best DMS for something somethingsomething or, you know, this our
tool versus the standard Pro.
And and those types of sitepages are always real good. But
(26:32):
like getting further beyondthat, what what types of things
do you think fall? Well, and Ithink
Nels Jensen (26:38):
that, I think the easiest way to think of this is
that how do you replicate thematerial 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 wantto show off, you know, so you
bring that to the trade show,you bring some spec sheets, you
(26:59):
bring some other printedmaterial, you can hand out, you
have your video that you'regonna play on your iPad, or your
display screen, or whatever,it's like, whatever you're
bragging on at a trade show youwant to brag on on your website.
So it could be 3d renderings, itcould be a video of a use case,
we've mentioned spec sheets acouple of times, you know, so
that that ultimately, is yourgoal. And then one of the trends
(27:23):
too, as you see advances intechnology, we can talk about
almost AR and VR could be butthe true when you hear the
phrase, you're gonna hear thephrase digital twin, more often,
yes, you know what that means interms of simulation and, and
mimicking your production tolearn from it before you
actually do the production,where you can kind of do the
(27:46):
same a little bit with yourmarketing where it's like, it's,
it's, I've heard it referred toas four dimensional, it's a
three dimensional view of, ofsomething cool, that also has
the specs overlaid into it. So,you know, you're you're turning
around the park and looking atit. And meanwhile, the
narratives,
Joey Strawn (28:03):
Is the fourth dimension, word formation.
Nels Jensen (28:07):
You know, I like that animation. I don't, I don't
know. But it's, it's I lovethat. It's like putting it all
together in one cool view whereyes, you can turn it around and
look at this different part ortake the tour of the machine.
And that also is narrating youwith what you what you're
seeing. Or it's showing you, youknow, text about the specs or
whatever. So this yeah, that's,that's advanced level, right?
Joey Strawn (28:30):
That's an interesting thought to me now.
Because what you're what you'resaying what I hear, and this is
very interesting to me is aconference or a trade show is
sort of like a microcosm of theconsideration phase. Because
there are people who have raisedtheir hand and said, Hey, my
name is this, and I'm in thisindustry, and I am interested in
(28:51):
these types of problems andsolutions. They are actively
walking up to tables, and askingvery specific questions about
hey, how are you guys betterthan those guys at the other
table over there, or, you know,so all of the things that you
wish you could do, or that youwould do at a trade show,
showing a video, talking throughcase studies and testimonials,
(29:13):
walking them through like a 3drender, or like an actual
experience of your product.
Those are the same types ofthings you should be doing in
the digital realm. At this hugetrade show we call the Internet
where people are typing intheir, their the tables they
want to visit. And so whenthey're there and they are
considering your table, what doyou wish you could have on hand?
(29:36):
I love this. I love this kind ofthought process of blowing out
that mindset because that is agood microcosm of the mindset
people are in at trade shows.
Nels Jensen (29:48):
Yes, Your website should have a component. Listen
to me, right? Should you shoulddo this, you should do that.
Wouldn't it be cool if yourwebsite had a component that was
like a virtual tradeshow?
Joey Strawn (30:00):
It's so real, it is good. And I love that digital
twin. It's the idea of well, themindset that you would be in at
a trade show to convincesomebody to use you. That's the
same mindset you need to be inwhen you're building content
around the strategy for yourconsideration phase. And those
are the states that you'll betalking to. Yep, I love it.
Nels Jensen (30:22):
Your teammates will get it too, right. It's like
trying to interact, instead oftrying to, you know, explain
some of the benefits of contentmarketing and various things
like that, you know, if yoursales and marketing people get
together and basically say, howdo we put our trade show on our
website, I think it'll spark alot of good ideas.
Joey Strawn (30:43):
And as everybody knows, who listens to us, we're
big fans of team collaboration.
So the more touch points, themore communication you can have
between departments and teams.
So one hand knows what the otheris doing, the better everything
is going to work. So yeah, I, Ilike that a lot. And kind of,
again, segwaying off of thatidea into our number seven thing
(31:06):
on the 10 things you considerduring the consideration phase,
is what channels you should use.
We talked a lot about tradeshows right there, you know,
obviously going to trade showsas being in inside that
microcosm, but in the digitalrealm. I mean, what does that
look like? I mean, obviously,you're I was like, Well, Google,
like, yeah, you know, we shouldyou should be on Google, you
probably should be putting PPCads out there that lead to like
(31:29):
very specific landing pageslike, Oh, someone in the back
was that in the back? Socialmedia? Yeah, you should probably
be on social media during theconsideration phase and sharing
some of these elements thatyou're making. But like, I'm the
more comparison things like, areyou on Jeetu? Crowd? If you're a
software company, or Capterra?
You know, are you on thosecomparison markets? What about
(31:51):
directories and trade journals?
Are you in those comparativemarkets? Where your competitors
are? Now it's like, what whatkind of channels
Nels Jensen (31:59):
I think you have when you're built by others. And
this gets really tricky, becauseit's all of these can work,
right? This is the hard partwhere how do you decide to put
your resources but, you know,YouTube is very clearly an
engineer tool of choice in termsof seeing, you know, how
machines work and what theyproduce? And don't discount the
(32:23):
sort of discussion, the olddiscussion group. And, and even
though yes, we know, Facebook isnot magic for manufacturers,
right? We get it. But there arethere are Facebook groups
specific to manufacturing andengineering, they're more likely
to be on Reddit than they are tobe on Facebook. But there are,
(32:44):
you know, maybe it's maybe it'sa 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 (32:58):
To your point earlier. Now, if you're making a
video out of a case study, or ifyou're, you know, creating a
well done video that answers aquestion for the consideration
phase, there's no reason youcouldn't drop that in a Reddit
thread that's related to thatproblem, or that solution.
There's no reason you couldn'tshare that on social media, or
cut that up into a YouTube ad,or pre roll or just a YouTube
(33:20):
video to host on a website,there are a lot of ways you can
use a single good piece ofconsideration, content, and then
distribute it to the differentchannels, just as you know, just
in like we were talking about,it may be hard to make 1000
things for 1000 differentplaces. But you can make one
thing you can use in a lot ofplaces.
Nels Jensen (33:38):
Yeah, and if, and I would also suggest that you
maybe it's not me, or becauseI'm just going to be ageist
here, whatever. How to Leveragevideo is really important in the
consideration phase, if nothingelse, you know, turn some people
(34:00):
loose at your place on how toleverage YouTube, it's good to
be aware of that it's going tobe a worthy exercise, you're
going to learn something and itwill help you position your
content much better. If you havethe the people who know the
product and know how they liketo consume it, consume.
Joey Strawn (34:21):
Couldn't have said it couldn't have said it better
myself. So moving on to ournumber eight thing that they
people need to consider in theconsideration phase is how to
put all of this together andactually differentiate yourself.
That's what all of this isabout. The consideration phase
boils down to they know who youare and your competitors. And
(34:42):
they know the problems that aretrying to solve. So how can you
differentiate yourself? Now theawareness phase, this is where
it gets a little tricky andfeelings can kind of get hurt
sometimes when we're buildingstrategies for the consideration
phase because in the awarenessphase, you just want to scream
from the mountaintops that wayWe are neat, and we are great.
And we can do the thing that youwant us to do. But in the
(35:05):
consideration phase, that'susually not enough. And to
Nelson's point earlier, they'reasking questions around pricing
around specs around turnaroundtime uptime, guarantees. And if
you're not willing to dive downinto those types of topics, then
(35:26):
the consideration phase is goingto be an area where where people
fall out of your funnel, becausethose are the questions that
they're asking. Sodifferentiating yourself, could
be, you have the best product onthe market and your features and
your benefits. And you're youadd so much ROI to the bottom
line of the factory that youjust wouldn't believe it. And
(35:46):
that's your differentiator.
Great. Yeah, it's not that dry.
Dig a little deeper.
Nels Jensen (35:52):
I think the interesting point right now is
what you do now is a table stakeversus a differentiator. Yes,
involving and going to change,right? So right now, if you are
providing expert based salessupport, in the consideration
phase, you are differentiatingyourself from the competition.
(36:16):
Two or three years from now,expert based sales support in
the consideration phase is atable stake, it's no longer
going to be a differentiator. SoI think this is just the world's
evolving and you just diving inthere helps but but leveraging
if you if you are leveragingyour internal experts, if you
are leveraging your CRM so thatyou are touching people at the
(36:39):
right times, then I think youknow it's a combination, it's
the full combo platter, youdifferentiate yourself with the
willingness to discuss pricing,you differentiate yourself with
the expert based sales support,you differentiate yourself with
a personalized, good timestouchpoints. So yeah, that's,
and I think how youdifferentiate yourself in the
(37:01):
future? I'm not sure I cananswer that really well, it
might be a whole lot moredigital twin sort of things. But
it may be it's easy to do itnow. Because it's here I go
again, right? You need to you'dbe wise to do it now. Because
what differentiates now is sortof a big basic table stakes down
the line.
Joey Strawn (37:22):
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 bereally hard to answer. But I
know, it's gonna be probablybased around user experience, if
you can make a process easierfor your clients, or, you know
what, here's, here's a questionI'll leave you listeners with.
And it's not an easy question.
And it's not a fun one. But whatis every company? What does
(37:44):
every one of our competitorsafraid to do? And then are we
willing to do that? So if it'sadded guarantee to your website,
if it's put pricing on thewebsite, if it's put up a
calculator, or a very truecomparison between your product
and a competitor product,whatever it may be, that's not
going to get you like legally inproblems? But like, what are our
competitors afraid to do? Andthen are we brave enough to do
(38:10):
it? If you can answer those twoquestions, you can probably find
some ways to easilydifferentiate yourself. Yeah,
quickly.
Nels Jensen (38:19):
And at a plug to James Soto who has the, you
know, industrial strengthMarketing Podcast, he's got this
great episode on experientialbased marketing. And yes, this
is exactly what you are talkingabout the the buying experience
sales experience, customerexperience. It's, it's really
(38:42):
good.
Joey Strawn (38:42):
Yeah, I also would plug and, and push that episode,
I think it was very good one.
But yes, building processesaround the experiences of your
customers is one surefire way todifferentiate your brand or your
customer, and then marketingthat in your consideration
content. The number nine one, Iwanted to put a very tactical, I
was like, Hey, I'm gonna put akeyword one on here, and you're
(39:05):
like, now it's probably a littlein 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 considerationphase, or what keywords you need
to think about. And this is bigfor me, I love keywords. And
we've talked a lot about this.
So I just wanted to summarize itbut if you're putting out ads,
if you're building contentaround keywords, if you have
(39:26):
tags that you're buildingkeywords around, please make
sure that you're considering youknow, solution based content x x
x solutions, versus content yourbrand versus somebody else or
the number one brand versus youto get some of that search
content, how to solve a problem,how to win if your product best
(39:46):
based products, and then a lotof solutions based.
Nels Jensen (39:50):
I get I gotta and I I concede I am not a keyword
guru, so I frequently go to Joeyor shout out tamale Brandon for
or, you know, keyword stuff. Sowe're not talking about your,
you know, basic keywords in manycases here, right? Because
you're not going to win the gameif you're trying to do you know,
(40:11):
industrial marketing, right. Soyou're talking about the
keywords that are that are goingto be very associated with the
solution or the product or theproblem that somebody's trying
to solve, right? We're not We'renot Yeah, we're not talking top
of the funnel keywords, we'retalking middle of the funnel
Joey Strawn (40:30):
What were you what we in the game, and some of our
keywords,listeners are probably screaming
in their cars, right? Nowlongtail keywords, yes. And then
now this is what you and I havetalked about, it's those
keywords that are have moremodifiers that are more
specific, it's not shoes, it'sblack, Nike running shoes, 2022,
you know, it's, it is the longerof the, because if I'm just
(40:51):
searching shoes, it could be fora research paper, it could be
for a video, it could be for avideo game, it could be
whatever. But if I'm searching avery specific pair, brand style
and year of shoes, I'm probablythinking about buying that shoe.
You know, and that's kind of thetype of thing that we want to be
thinking of is best DMS for myfixed stops auto Bay's best, you
know, how, how to lower ROI onads for my custom manufacturer,
(41:20):
you know, very solutions based,oh, well, this is a problem that
our solution and our brand ourcompany our product solves. And
those are the keywords thatwe're thinking of when people
already know what they'relooking for. And they're trying
to dive a little bit deeper. Sothat's it. We're here at the
number 10 thing now. So I'mgoing to run through our top 10
(41:42):
things really quickly before wehit number 10. Just to stir wrap
up, but number one, what is theconsideration phase? Number two,
how involved and who wasinvolved in the consideration
phase from your buyingcommittee? Number three? What
information do you need, fromthe awareness phase to know that
it's done? And number four, whatquestions do you need to face
(42:04):
for your process? What questionsdo you need to answer for your
prospects? Number five, how longshould the consideration phase
be? And then number six, whatcontent pieces need to be
involved in it? Number seven,which channels? Should you put
those those content pieces outthrough? And number eight? How
can you differentiate yourselfin the messaging through those
(42:26):
channels? Number nine, whatkeywords should you consider
when building ads or buildingcontent. And that finally brings
us to the number 10 thing youneed to consider during the
consideration phase is, wellwhat happens next, they're not
done at the consideration phasethey've just considered and now
they need to revert and todecide. And that's where we're
(42:47):
that's the whole part of thispoint of this is to take people
through this phase help themconsider your problem, your
solution your brand, and thencome to the decision that you
are right for them, you are theright partner. And that's that's
what we you know, same types ofthings is before understanding
what those gates are movingpeople through. But this is
(43:08):
where a lot of it comes into theABM style is knowing how close
you can get to that sale and howmany people are involved
correctly. I mean, Nelson, youand I talk about ABM a lot.
We're going to be talking aboutit more this season on the show.
And a lot of this plays intothat. So you know, how do you
how do you find these like,alright, well what happens next,
(43:29):
after the consideration phase?
Nels Jensen (43:33):
You mean you just don't hand this off to you know,
sales in the middle of theconsideration phase and say,
hey, it's all on you, buddy.
Joey Strawn (43:40):
Exactly. You just toss it, you put it in a little
basket, you wrap it in, you wrapit and burlap, you throw it over
a fence it goes. And that's it.
That's how that's how what wemarketers do, right? No, no, I
refuse it is no, we have tofollow it, we've got to track
it, we've got to know that thosemarketing qualified leads that
we're sending through to salesare turning into revenue that
(44:01):
are turning into bottom linevalue.
Nels Jensen (44:06):
So which just you know, I've been trained so well
this is also speaks to thediligence you need with your CRM
in continuing these touch pointsthrough the decision making
process because you will alsolearn key conversion and drop
off points in the decision. Youknow, stage two, right, so yeah,
(44:27):
in it like
Joey Strawn (44:27):
What other content are needed because everyone
found out when they asked thisquestion,
Nels Jensen (44:33):
Icartt's not always price sometimes it's you know,
availability and deliverabletimelines and things like that.
So, yes, so what happens next,but there is a Okay, so now
we're, we're clearly into asales function as opposed to,
you know, a hybrid situation.
What other information can youhelp for the, for that sales
(44:56):
function?
Joey Strawn (45:00):
I think that's, I think that's a great question. I
mean, because essentially, youknow, we know who the contact
is, we know that wood industryand some of their basic
demographics from the awarenessphase, the consideration phase,
we should really be gatheringmore information, what questions
are they answering? Whatspecific role and service do
they provide within their brand,you know, and we need to be
(45:21):
pushing all of that to sales.
What I would also say, and thisis going to shake, shake some
marketers bones a little bit iswe need to listen to sales.
That's the other part of this isthis handoff is not one way is
when we send those leads, and wesend the people that we are
pushing through theconsideration phase to sales, we
then need to listen and hearthose are good leads, those are
(45:42):
qualified leads, people arestill asking these questions
once they get to me. Could youanswer those earlier? And so
that feedback loop is reallywhere the optimization of this
phase comes in from isunderstanding are we getting the
right people, you know, from theawareness phase? Most likely,
but are we qualifying themcorrectly? And having an
(46:03):
answering their questions whilethey're considering so that once
they get to sales, they'rebetter qualified, they're better
ready for that handoff andlistening to sales. And their
feedback from that is is vitalin that.
Nels Jensen (46:19):
Yeah, very good advice.
Joey Strawn (46:22):
So, man, nails, this has been more fun than I
thought it would be. Actually, Iknew I knew it was gonna be a
blast. I very much like taking adeep dive into some of these
customer journey phases. And Ithink I think we should do it
for more of them. What do youwhat do you think? Yeah. Okay,
good.
Nels Jensen (46:39):
I forget what bill that was. What was what was
number four, again, on yourlist?
Joey Strawn (46:44):
Number four on the list here is what questions do
you need to answer for thepeople? Yeah, in your
consideration,
Nels Jensen (46:50):
Pricing? Pricing?
Yeah.
Joey Strawn (46:56):
Sorry, oh, good, good. You got a little something
in your throat there Nels. SoI'm glad you got it out. I hope
you feel a lot better.
Nels Jensen (47:03):
A lot better. This has been a therapy session for
Nels today. So
Joey Strawn (47:07):
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 aboutthe journey that customers go
on, we're gonna keep talkingabout how industrial marketers
need to connect their contentand their strategies with that
journey. This is going to be ayear of in depth learning. So we
broke apart this, we're going tobreak apart awareness decision
(47:30):
and post up, we're going to makesure that we are in a position
to really drive that bottom lineand connect those dots
throughout the customer journey.
So follow along with us thisyear. If you aren't already
subscribed to the industrialmarketer, podcast, please go
subscribe. We're all we have newepisodes coming out every three
months, we've got special stuffdropping, you need to be you
(47:52):
need to be listening. If youhaven't already been to
industrial marketer.com. Go tothat website, see all the great
content we have on there. Welove to write content. We love
to get content from other peoplethat are making good content,
because this is a community thatwe're building of industrial
marketers, and these b2bprofessionals solving these
problems with each other. And ifyou have ideas for the show, if
(48:15):
you have topics you want us totalk about, email us, send us an
email at podcast at industrialmarketer.com. Let us know how
great you think the show is howsmart Nelson is. You can tell us
topics you want us to talk aboutit. We read the email, we want
to be involved in thiscommunity. We want you to be
involved as well. And finally,last plug, follow us on all the
(48:36):
socials. You know you want toyou're on him. We're on him.
Let's be together on him. Sothis has been so much fun now
thank you again for suggestingthat we do a deep dive into the
garden middle child of thecustomer journey. This This idea
has sparked so much fun andother ideas that we're going to
(48:57):
do for our listeners because ofthis. So thank you. I've really
enjoyed today's conversationknows that you get a lot out of
it too.
Nels Jensen (49:06):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
It's good stuff.
Joey Strawn (49:08):
Good. I hope everyone else feels the exact
same way. We love you guys.
Thanks for listening. And untilnext time, we've been the
industrial Marketer Podcast.
Have a good one.
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