MARKETING TO GROUPS

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Patrick Spenner of the CEB and frequent contributor to Forbes, details the complexities of group buying in a series of compelling and convincing articles.

Spenner states: “In a complex B2B sales environment, there are multiple stakeholders and decision makers causing the ‘buying group’ to behave in an unpredictable way.”

Even those marketers sitting upon the most sophisticated technology stacks aren’t equipped to measure this important dynamic in enterprise B2B marketing and selling.

Which brings us back to a question that CEOs and CFOs are constantly posing to their CMO counterparts: “Why aren’t ‘qualified’ leads converting into sales?”

Complex enterprise purchase decisions are rarely, if ever, decided by one individual.

And, while this notion of a buying group is not new, this group buying dynamic is now front and center facing marketers who are trying to market to only one member of the group and wondering why their organizations’ sales conversions are tanking.

Whether your organization passes leads at the MQL or SQL level, all of these leads have a “Q” in the middle of their acronym, which stands for qualified.

The CEO and CFO want to know: what does qualified really mean? After all, if leads are passed to sales in your organization, somehow, these leads are deemed qualified.

How many of marketing’s qualified leads don’t convert due to the dysfunction and unpredictable behavior of the buying group?

No matter how complex the marketing technology stack, regardless of the mountains of engagement data that marketing automation and CRM provide, group buying dysfunction flies under your radar.

Group dynamics is an unequal mixture of personal feelings, fear, risk, politics and positioning, where the status quo is always the perceived safest choice.

What is your organization currently doing to counteract the unpredictability and dysfunction that takes place within the confines of the buying group meetings?

HOW MANY OF MARKETING’S QUALIFIED LEADS

DON’T CONVERT DUE TO THE DYSFUNCTION AND

UNPREDICTABLE BEHAVIOR OF THE BUYING GROUP?

WHY DO MODERN MARKETERS NEED TO PRACTICE GROUP-BASED MARKETING?

According to a recent study by the CEB, a group is considerably less likely to buy than a single decision maker. When one additional person is added to the buying decision, those two people are 26% less likely to buy than the individual was. In groups of six or more people, the group is 50% less likely to buy than the individual would be. These are eye-opening numbers. If the average buying team or group is approximately 5.4 people, enterprise marketers are, and have been, fi ghting an uphill battle to convert corporate buying decisions that are being made by groups.

As marketers, we’re usually fi rst to point out that dealing with group buying dynamics is a sales problem. After all, sales is intricately and personally involved in the back and forth with the prospects. Therefore, sales should know if there is a group problem and sales should know how to deal with it.

The truth is, group consensus isn’t a sales problem; it’s a marketing problem. The reason why is fairly straightforward. According to a combined Google/CEB study, group confl icts peak when the buying cycle is only 37% complete. Sales usually steps in at 57% completion of the buy cycle. Because group confl ict peaks early, marketing cannot rely on sales for early confl ict resolution.

Therefore, marketing must take on responsibility for resolving, or better yet, preventing or mitigating early group confl ict to positively drive purchase consensus.

When you consider the possible mixed dynamics of any six people in one room trying to decide whether or not their corporation should purchase something, it’s a miracle anything gets sold.

Group decision-making dysfunction can be attributed to a multitude of things; however, we can narrow it down to three distinct dysfunctional areas.

Disparate perspectives: Everyone has a point of view. The sole reason corporations have groups making buying decisions is to bring multiple perspectives and points of view into balance, in theory, to make the best possible decision for the organization. It’s a great philosophical idea; however, with diff erent perspectives also come diff erent personalities, goals, worldviews and personal agendas.

Fear: One of the greatest motivational factors known to humankind is fear. Individuals are

LIK

EL

IHO

OD

TO

PU

RC

HA

SE

100% Purchase likelihood drops dramatically as soon as a second decision maker is present.

50%

0%1 2 3 4 5 6+

SIZE OF BUYING TEAM

81%

55%60% 60%

53%

31%

5.4AVERAGE BUYING

GROUP SIZE

SOURCE: CEB/MOTISTA 2013 B2B BRAND SURVEY, CEB ANALYSIS N=3,000LIKELIHOOD TO PURCHASE

uncertain how others in the group will perceive them and their points of view and perspectives. There may be previous baggage between some of the group members that will influence and motivate them to behave one way or another. There are those who avoid conflict at all costs and, on the other end of the spectrum, those who seek out and thrive on conflict.

Resistance: Maintaining the status quo, or simply doing nothing, is always the safest choice for decision makers. Other forms of dysfunctional resistance include unwillingness to reason or compromise, the usual political power struggles and the effects of interpersonal struggles on the rest of the group.

PERCEIVED INDIVIDUAL RISK INCREASES AS THE SIZE OF THE BUYING GROUP INCREASES

One might think if fewer people are involved in the buying decision, the greater the sense of risk for each person involved will become. Not so. Most people believe there is greater risk for themselves as the size of the buying group increases.

Specifically, losing respect and credibility was a concern of 50% of respondents in the CEB study as the group size reached six members. The fear of losing a job is significantly less than the fear of losing respect and credibility.

How, then, can we as marketers best address the dynamics of group buying in an enterprise environment? How can we speak to disparate perspectives of the buying group members? By identifying shared needs, wants or goals of the stakeholders and leveraging those shared needs within the messaging of the content, marketers can find the buying group’s common ground and address common needs to establish a positioning and message that resonates with all or most of the group.

What can we do to reduce the resistance from group members, while simultaneously arming those most likely to be change agents to champion our cause? Enable the change agents by providing them with the persuasive and compelling facts, tips, tools and coaching they need to engage other group members.

How do we address and reduce the fear that group members are feeling? To mitigate the fear of change, position the reward as being worth the risk by focusing on the personal, group and organizational benefits. Group based marketing begins with understanding customers’ personal goals and emotions.

PEOPLE MAKE UP THE AVERAGE BUYING GROUP

5.4According to CEB/MOTISTA According to TECHTARGET

PEOPLE MAKE UP THE AVERAGE BUYING GROUP

2 4TO

OF ALL COMPANIES GROUP BUY

84%OF ALL COMPANIES

OVER 500 EMPLOYEES GROUP BUY

91%

BUYING IN GROUPS IS THE NORM

WHAT IS GROUP-BASED MARKETING?

Marketers need to understand the unpredictable behavior and the other dynamics of group buying to quell the dysfunction of the buying group with group-based marketing. In order to mitigate dissention among group members, in a quest to help the group make a positive decision, marketers can include the following:

• Focus on the shared needs of the group What is the rally point that all members of the group can get behind? What do all members of the buying group need? Start with the shared need to build the positive thought process that provides the positive consensus.

• Address personal stakeholder risk Rather than avoid the issue of why each of the stakeholders is vulnerable to risk, address the risk head-on. Doing this provides marketers with opportunities to nullify the perceived greater risk, by discussing the actual risk, along with the greater risk of organizational inertia—the risk of doing nothing.

• Enable change agents of the group Use communication and response devices to identify the likely change agent or agents of the group, and arm them with the information or materials that they need to champion your cause amongst the other members of the group.

• Understand and leverage interrelations The interpersonal interrelation of group members is an important dynamic to address. There are generally followers, leaders, change agents, apathetic members and proactive members of the group. Develop communications that relate to each of these different dynamics within the group.

• Group content strategy When setting a content theme, top line message and strategy for content across the 10-stage modern buyer’s journey; develop different content that addresses the different points of view across the group buying dynamic.

• Group lead scoring, nurturing One of the major issues with current best-practice demand generation is that an individual member of the group may meet the criteria to be passed to sales as an MQL, SAL or SQL, while the other members may be nowhere near ready to be passed to sales. Scoring and nurturing needs to be rethought—with the group dynamics top of mind.

•Groupinfluencermarketing There are influencers of each member of the group, as well as influencers within the group. Understanding the organizational structure of the targeted prospect company will enable you to market around the prospect and the group, as well as within the group.

• Personalization within groups We know that personalization works to significantly lift response and engagement. Using personalization within the group allows the proposition to be framed for the group.

• Group lead distribution Working within the new parameters of group lead nurturing and group lead scoring will require a new criteria threshold to be determined for the passing of group leads that meet the MQL, SQL and SALs.

During our development of group-based marketing (GBM), we fielded several repeated questions that queried us on the difference between GBM and account-based marketing (ABM).

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING

The goal of a successful ABM inititive or campaign is to treat named key strategic accounts as one rather than as individuals in order to gain greater share of wallet and/or to acquire net new accounts.

GROUP-BASED MARKETING

The goal of GBM is to market to members of a buying group addressable as individuals and as part of the group to help acquire net new customers in a complex B2B sale with multiple stakeholders and decision makers. GBM can be a sub-strategy of an ABM campaign.

Within the key strategic accounts being targeted in an ABM campaign, there are business units that are the segmented targets. Each business unit may have BANT; however, a group decision is needed to convert the sale. This is a perfect example of how GBM works as a sub-strategy of ABM—marketing to the decision makers in each business unit being targeted in an ABM campaign.

According to Siriusdecisions

WHO MAKES UP THE BUYING GROUP?

CHAMPION

CXO

INFLUENCER

USER

RATIFIER