This client brought us in to help develop foundational content for the enterprise buyer. Unquestionably, enterprise buyers are very different than SMB buyers. The buying cycle is different. Influencers are different. Roles are different. Pain points are different. We knew that if we approached enterprise buyers with the content that had proven effective for SMBs, we’d fall flat.
Our goal was to create engaging content that would generate enterprise leads and enable the sales team in walking enterprise prospects through the buying cycle. Given the challenges we faced, our first step on the path toward achieving that goal was to develop enterprise buyer personas and map the buyer journey. Here’s what we explained to the leadership at AppointmentPlus:
Buyer personas are fictional representations of the real people you need to influence in order to sell your service. These buyer personas are created to guide our marketing and content decisions; they help us to align our strategy with our buyers’ needs and behaviors. Benefits of personas include more effective marketing and better quality leads. Once we’ve agreed on the enterprise buying process and buyer personas, we’ll map a strategy for marketing to them.
One of the enterprise buyer personas is Janet, VP of Operations at a multi-location retailer. We learned that Janet needs a more efficient, effective, and transparent scheduling system to manage an average of 750,000 appointments per month. But if Janet is going to implement a new scheduling system, she expects that it will solve her problem without disrupting the business processes already in place.
Knowing that expectation, we decided to create a piece of content that would help Janet understand how to implement a new SaaS solution without disrupting existing processes. The content would not explicitly sell AppointmentPlus, and it would be valuable to Janet whether she decided to engage with the company or not.
So our aim was to create engaging content for the enterprise buyer. Did we succeed? Yes, we did, as evidenced by: 136% higher engagement than the client’s LinkedIn benchmark; 78% higher time on page than average; and 47% more pageviews than average.