The Importance of a Buyers Journey with Nick Petros
Welcome to another episode of Exploring Growth! This week, our host, Lee Murray, engages in a captivating conversation with Nick Petros, Principal at PinchForth. Together, they explore the critical concept of using the buyer's journey as a guiding force to navigate the course of your marketing campaigns and shape the content they encompass. They also discuss the significance of nurturing leads in the B2B market and the role of timing in the buyer's journey.
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Lee Murray:
All right. Welcome back to Exploring Growth Podcast. I'm your host Lee Murray and I'm excited for this episode. I really am. I've been looking forward to this for a little while because we are now one more episode into how to build a strategic marketing plan, this course that I'm building and today we're talking about the importance of using a buyer's journey to inform the type of campaigns that you run and the content then that's created inside of them. And I'm most excited to have Nick Petros on today, CEO of Pinchforth, digital marketing agency, because I've worked closely with his team now for probably close to a year or more than a year on various different
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
client projects. And I've seen the way they operate and they are in the minutiae every single day. Him and his team run complicated campaigns for their clients every single day. And the buyer's journey is central to those campaigns being successful. So. Um, I'm really excited to have Nick on. Thanks for joining me.
Nick:
Yeah, glad to be here. Excited to talk journey with you.
Lee Murray:
Yeah. So let's just jump right into it. I, I want to kind of start on a high level, like a lot of what I do with my clients and then a lot of that, a lot of the value I want the people taking this course to get from is what, how does this have application in my business? You know, if we're going to spend time and resources and money on this, um, what's the return, right? So the question to you is why is it important to spend time? creating a buyer's journey, outlining it, and what can we expect to get from spending that time?
Nick:
Yeah, let me start with a little backstory for
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
you.
Lee Murray:
sure.
Nick:
We'll dial back to, this is 2014, 2015, at Gold School Facebook advertising. So I was working at a startup at a Harvard iLab called Rally Point, vertical social network for the military, and we were trying to get people to sign up just to be members of the network. And back in the day, this is before funnels were cool.
Lee Murray:
Thanks for
Nick:
I
Lee Murray:
watching!
Nick:
think Brunson was just getting going with ClickFunnels, but
Lee Murray:
who was just getting
Nick:
they
Lee Murray:
born
Nick:
weren't
Lee Murray:
probably
Nick:
really...
Lee Murray:
at that time.
Nick:
Yeah, right. Hey, I'm not that old. No grades yet. But I think everyone was running these like one or two step funnels, right? Where here's an ad, here's a conversion action go. And Facebook was also trying to figure out their advertising model, right? So they weren't fully monetized yet. They had a powerful platform, but they're basically trying to deliver as much value for dollars spent as possible. Fast forward to today, you can no longer pixel track. Everything is offline, so conversions are not nearly as efficient as they used to be. And everybody, including the big box brands that weren't really touching Facebook back then, is on Facebook with mega spend, vying for the same eyes that you are. So you have decreasing audience size, increasing advertising size, increasing cost. Suddenly people are paying 100% of their money. initial transaction size to acquire a customer. So, you know, all their profits coming in the back and second, third, fourth, fifth touch. So bringing that back up to the journey, I think the reason why things are so inefficient today is a hybrid of, you know, brands moving into digital space at record pace and spend, you know, increasing. That's the only way to get more revenue for a lot of these guys. And the fact that when you're only running one or two touches before you ask someone to buy. you're really biasing all of your conversions towards an early adopter, like someone willing to roll the
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
dice. This is like, if we're gonna use an obscure analogy, this is like the person who agrees to go on a date with you after you buy them a beer or the bar and haven't had any conversation. It's like, here's a beer, I wanna go on a date.
Lee Murray:
Hahaha.
Nick:
Yes, we do, you know, it's weird in a bar, but it's okay online,
Lee Murray:
And we
Nick:
right?
Lee Murray:
all
Nick:
You
Lee Murray:
know
Nick:
can ask
Lee Murray:
it
Nick:
someone
Lee Murray:
takes
Nick:
for their card.
Lee Murray:
at least three beers, right?
Nick:
I know. So the buyer journeys we build are seven. I'm not going to apply those to a beer analogy so we don't get in trouble. But
Lee Murray:
Yeah, that's right.
Nick:
when you're thinking about ROI, think about it like dating. The more time you spend together, the more you know each other and the more you're prepared to make an educated decision about whether or not you want to spend more time together. I think today it's so easy and so cheap to reach customers. The onus is on us as marketers to find more ways to deliver value and establish trust before we ask for that investment. And I think that that's where the ROI from a buyer journey comes from. Do you want me to break that down in terms of metrics? Like what the returns
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
could look
Lee Murray:
well,
Nick:
like?
Lee Murray:
that'd be good. But just before you do that, let's, let's first for, you know, some of the, some of the marketers in the room are maybe hearing buyer's journey for the first time, right? So let's start, let's start there and kind of say, what is a buyer's journey? Let's just define that real quick.
Nick:
Yeah, yeah. So it's the path through which a buyer goes from totally unaware of your product or service to transacting with you, trusting you with their money and their card or bank information, and all the steps in between. So it's not like an emotional experience. Everyone knows, like attract, acquire, so on the acronyms. The buyer journey is literally the steps that they take.
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
Search for you on Google, find you on Facebook, download a PDF, sign up for your email list. put a product in cart, transact,
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
take a demo if it's a service, that sort of thing. Does that make sense?
Lee Murray:
Yeah, I think that's good. And then if we dove a little deeper, um, I think there are some broad strokes that generally speaking, most marketers can take, which are awareness, you know, in nurture, engagement and conversion. So if you
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
break them up that way, that's already going to help you have like a second layer of thinking as you're getting closer to the actual steps. Um, and then maybe a hybrid of those two is going to get you closer to the, you know, putting the, you know, plug in the socket, I guess, so that there's power behind the whole thing. Um, so that's good. I think that's a good sort of framework to start, to start from. And I think some marketers listening to this are not running ad, you know, paid campaigns yet, or they're looking to run paying campaign. So from an organic standpoint, posting on social posting on LinkedIn, specifically, um, running email
Nick:
blogs,
Lee Murray:
campaigns,
Nick:
podcasts.
Lee Murray:
you know, doing those kinds of things. And maybe even just, uh, you know, honestly, I see a lot of, um, mid tier. company marketers, they are running the two step and they may be doing it both on all different aspects from their awareness through to conversion. And I see
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
the thing I see is most of them are starting with that bottom of the funnel. They're starting with the conversion
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
and they're running
Nick:
Yep.
Lee Murray:
an ad and asking someone to buy, right? And then because, back to my first point is they are wanting to demonstrate to leadership. that they can sell something with the ad or they can have a return on the spend that they're spending, whether it's $500 a month or $50,000 a month. And so there's there, that can be problematic. Um, and I, I just stopped for a second, just to say, and underscore this point that I have to say a lot. And that is because marketing is not sales. Sales of
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
sales marketing is marketing. Marketing can be used to support sales and should be, and used to influence sales. Um, and in the e-commerce world, which you spend a lot of time in, um, you know, it can actually be a sale. Um, but
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
that's going to be something very different than a buyer that is B2B typically that has a much higher price point. You know, so there, maybe they're buying something that's over 50 or a hundred thousand dollar price point, the longer sales cycle, there's a lot more touch points with people. So in that case, which I think a large majority of the people watching this, that marketing is not sales. So,
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
you know, there's a lot of different ways to slice what we're talking about. And I think clearing the air first and getting people to understand that, you know, first and foremost, it is understanding that people are not aware and then people will buy and there's a process that they go through. And then as you were saying, you know, more specifically, the actual touch part of each of those parts of the journey is what have to be mapped in order to create some kind of You know next step or conversion to the next step so That's a lot. And of course, well, i'm gonna, you know kind of deep dive all a lot of this or you know the module of the course but at a more high level I think it's important for marketers to spend time on this and uh And that there definitely is a result And to your point just to bring this all back full circle you're talking about, you know the old days and the new days I think what I draw out of your story is that Simply if you're spending money on ads and we can spend the rest of our time here assuming that the marketer we're talking to Is having you know spending money on ads? What you're spending on ads matters because you want to spend less Or you want to spend more? depending on the quality of what's coming through each part of your, of your funnel or each part of the journey. Um, so, you know, a small tweak to your knowledge about what that buyer is doing and then how you meet them with your ad spend is going to mean so much. Um, to the return on that investment of, in terms of ad spend. So that's what I'm kind of drawing from the analogy you were given.
Nick:
Yeah, I think, I mean, dead on, right? Um, I was trying to think of this while you were speaking, like, is there another, um, analogy for buyer journey than funnel? Cause I feel like as marketers, we're always trying to find a way to drive impact and drive sounds like force. Um,
Lee Murray:
Sure.
Nick:
but in reality, even if you're the most compelling person in the world and you have the most clever ad and it hits on the right emotional touch points, you can't get somebody to really want something that they didn't want before they saw your ad, it's
Lee Murray:
Exactly,
Nick:
just not going to happen.
Lee Murray:
exactly.
Nick:
So the analogy, it's just popping up into my head. This might get confusing because of web, but breadcrumbs
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
seemed a little more relevant. The reason why is following breadcrumbs, you're getting some kind of piece of value every
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
time
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
you move forward. So you're being gently led, but more allowed to purchase. That's kind of the way I think about the buyer journey. You're not. You're not trying to force somebody to do something or creating a path. You're trying to pull people through because it won't work that way. Um, rather you're trying to give them things that they already want. Like very, very high value things for very, very low costs or time on their, on their standpoint, um, to allow them to find their way into transacting with your business.
Lee Murray:
Yes,
Nick:
Um,
Lee Murray:
like
Nick:
that makes sense.
Lee Murray:
100% and I think the more you know, your buyer which we talked about in the first couple episodes
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
The closer you're going to get to be able to do that you the it's all about speaking their language, right? when it comes down to the Brass tacks of what you guys do every day a big piece of the impact comes through copy and Copy is language that you're speaking to your buyer You're essentially saying, Hey, we get you, we get what you're struggling with. And we might have something that could interest you. And that could be the very first time they've heard of your product service brand keyword, whatever. Um, or that same type of mentality applies all the way through to, um, the conversion where, Hey, since this is all worked up to this point, you know, I think we could have. we could do something together. It could look like this, right? So that's kind of the way I think of it.
Nick:
Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, to make this hit a little more, because you and I are talking in the theory space and maybe
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
for the listeners, I think we need to create a company right now and I think we need to apply this buyer journey thinking to that company. I think we need something that's service based. You said it's B2B. And maybe something like super general, something that's like relatable to everybody. So I'm thinking like a major service firm, like law firm or CPA firm. What do you think? It can't be a marketing firm because it's too
Lee Murray:
Well,
Nick:
close to
Lee Murray:
I
Nick:
home.
Lee Murray:
really don't like attorneys and I really
Nick:
Hahaha.
Lee Murray:
don't like CPAs because they're super boring. So maybe something that was sexy like 10 years ago, like a SaaS company.
Nick:
And it's going to be, but it's
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
still, it's still automated. Let's think
Lee Murray:
No,
Nick:
like
Lee Murray:
it's still
Nick:
actual B2B
Lee Murray:
automated.
Nick:
service, right? We want that. We want the heavy funnel, the complex, um,
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
buyer journey funnel. What, um,
Lee Murray:
Well, okay.
Nick:
what about
Lee Murray:
So
Nick:
engineering? What about
Lee Murray:
yeah,
Nick:
an engineering firm?
Lee Murray:
engineering or software development where you're actually having to code, you know, build something
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
that has to work and you have a lot of people involved
Nick:
Sure.
Lee Murray:
and you have tech people involved, salespeople involved, you know, so
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
I think that would be a pretty common, um, applicable property
Nick:
That's fantastic.
Lee Murray:
software development.
Nick:
All
Lee Murray:
We've got it.
Nick:
right, so software development firm, just for benchmarking sake, average transaction size, 65, 70K, I think.
Lee Murray:
I think, well, you know, what I've seen, it could be higher. I'd say at a hundred thousand.
Nick:
All right. So average,
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
average transaction, a hundred thousand. You know, we do everything from websites to mobile, or is it, is it niche? Do we think.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, let's make it, let's make it niche, you know, because I think to the, to the analogy speaking their buyer's language, it, it proves that, you know, again, from a, from a business strategy, it helps to go niche.
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
Obviously when you start a company, things go crazy, but let's just say it's, you know, they, they chose the right. Niche and it's there's a good product market fit. They found
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
the audience that. Potentially is going to love what they're doing and needs a lot of, uh, of what they're doing. Um, So yeah, I'd say, you know, they build, how about they build web, and I don't know a ton about this space, but they build wrapper software, I don't even know if you call it software, I guess it is software to AI, existing AI LLMs, right? So
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
that's a hot thing right now, but it includes developers, et cetera, and lots of conversations about data and privacy. So
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
it could work. So they're
Nick:
All
Lee Murray:
a
Nick:
right.
Lee Murray:
wrapper company, they're building wrappers.
Nick:
All right. All right. Yeah. So they basically build the front end for people don't own wrappers. They build a front end for an AI that serves some sort of specific query protocol
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
and delivers
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
some sort of specified value from the AI. Sure, sure.
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
All right. So 100K transaction size software firm. There's
Lee Murray:
I
Nick:
probably,
Lee Murray:
got my notebook
Nick:
I know,
Lee Murray:
out.
Nick:
right? There's probably a thousand, right? A thousand new software firms that claim that they could do this every single day. So you're dealing with a very, very crowded space. And the customer, the people that are buying your help, are people, you know, the startups with an idea, investors with an idea, as a startup to raise from investors or the investors themselves,
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm. Or
Nick:
or
Lee Murray:
big
Nick:
your
Lee Murray:
companies.
Nick:
mid-markets,
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
yeah,
Lee Murray:
big companies that
Nick:
yeah.
Lee Murray:
have private data that they want to somehow navigate.
Nick:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I wonder if we could niche down to big companies are going to be a different buyer journey than the direct investors. What's more appealing do you think for our little firm?
Lee Murray:
Yeah, I think maybe let's go with investors. You know
Nick:
All right,
Lee Murray:
that world.
Nick:
investors. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. All right, so we're selling into investors. You know, they're trying to find a way to capitalize on this AI demand, and they're basically going straight to the development shops. They're not looking for founders to hire, invest in, to take the risk for them and lead the charge for them. So we need a very, we need a very complex, and by complex, I mean, long buyer journey for this customer. to establish trust, to allow the investor to understand that engaging with this firm is going to produce a result that they can go to market with right away because time is of the essence for them, and proves that the firm already knows how to do this. So there needs to be some kind of either long white paper combined with a case study or two separate documents that without a doubt solidify for the investor that this firm knows how to do what he's trying to do or she's trying to do. So when you start thinking about your buyer journey, like your top of funnel, your awareness stages, the first thing that you're going to want to do is find a very, very high value thing you can put in front of somebody that costs them next to nothing to consume. Right? So if you're an investor, you're trying to get into this market, you're trying to find a firm that you can qualify, what can we put in front of you that you need, like will help you along that process and won't cost you, we'll say more than 15 seconds of your time to consume. Any ideas?
Lee Murray:
Maybe some type of business modeling calculator. I don't know, maybe that's further down the pipeline.
Nick:
It could be that that'd be more, you know, in our, our buyer journeys, that's more of the conversion. So we call capture the actual sale stage and conversion is when you start grabbing contact information and calculators. Calculators are good. It's a little bit of friction, but it's still fairly quick. I would think
Lee Murray:
Okay.
Nick:
in top of funnel, some kind of, um, like checklist or guides, right? You're an investor. You have an idea for what type of face you want to put on this thing, but maybe you haven't thought about the components that go into it. For example, what technologies you need, what different types of models can do, what type of data you can access with these models, what fit the data you have, can you acquire the data you need to support it?
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
You could do all that in a one-page PDF. As you're planning your AI business, keep these seven things in mind with a list
Lee Murray:
Okay.
Nick:
of top market players you can reference that will include your business.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, I like it.
Nick:
You can put that up on Facebook, LinkedIn, You could capture an email, that's a little friction, but generally we just give it away for free and then everybody who engages with that becomes our target market. So our TAM is literally everyone who engages with this first step and you keep pushing that wider and wider and wider. So your follow-on campaigns, your calculators, like you suggested,
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
can aim at an audience that you already know is shopping for an AI front end because they engage with that piece.
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
So going back to your first question, talking about ROI, you can get someone to engage with that for a penny or two, cost next to nothing, and they automatically become your new audience pool. So everything else is now aiming at someone who's at least tangentially familiar with who you are.
Lee Murray:
Right.
Nick:
That kind
Lee Murray:
So
Nick:
of makes
Lee Murray:
you've
Nick:
sense?
Lee Murray:
automatically
Nick:
You know
Lee Murray:
qualified
Nick:
how we build this thing?
Lee Murray:
a certain percentage of the market down without having to go and find them. They found you.
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
Um, and, um, or you found each other. It sounds more romantic, right?
Nick:
Yeah, yeah.
Lee Murray:
You found each other on the web, you know, an over thirties chat room. Uh,
Nick:
Uh-huh.
Lee Murray:
so then how does that bleed into nurture? How does that like, to me, what I immediately think is that those seven points, if they're strong enough, could then become their individual videos or content that you'd elaborate
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
on. into your nurture phase that has a call to action to something that is more, um, you know, content, you know, constantly engaging.
Nick:
Yeah, I think nurture, the point to nurture is actual qualification because I think everyone in B2B has heard the old, these are bad leads before. I fundamentally believe there are no bad leads. They're just not at the right stage yet. And
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
I think, you know, you mentioned the calculator top of funnel. A lot of companies do that and you will get people to sign up for a calculator, like right at the top of the funnel,
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
but they're not ready to buy. So
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
like, then you're trying to get them into a demo and they won't open the emails because they don't know who you are.
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
So we like to do, you know, three or even four different free pieces of information that generally don't require any contact info, maybe the third or fourth piece, we finally ask for an email, but we can see you at least in the platform, like inside of Facebook, inside of LinkedIn, we can see if you clicked on it, we can target you if you clicked on it. And we're pushing free stuff for you. So the networks love it because we're keeping them in the network. The
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
audience loves it because they can just click and get value. And you're also creating this little behavior. You know, every time they engage with you, they get something of value. Like, okay, I'll keep engaging with this brand because I keep getting free stuff. That's super useful to my, my AI hunt. So coming back to nurture, once they've shown, they have a pattern of engaging with the stuff you put in front of them. That's your real qualifier. It's not even the piece itself. It's the pattern of conversion. Like I've shown them X number of ads. They've clicked on every single one on the first or second impression. These people are interested in who we are. Give me your email. You
Lee Murray:
Gotcha.
Nick:
can get way higher open rates and those people, you can do the exact same thing, send them three or four different things that are super high value. Pay attention to the ones that are opening, ignore the ones that just shut you out. You know, they might even have forgotten who you are. You shouldn't send anything to them if they don't open a second time. And those are the guys you go for demo with, the ones you keep opening and keep engaging. There's real intent
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
there.
Lee Murray:
So let's stop here for a second. And I want to, I want to underscore one major thing that we kind of just glossed over in that is
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
timing. Um, I think that what I see. An experience with marketers and companies is that whenever I bring up this concept of timing, I can sort of see it, the light bulb go on or come back on where they know that timing. is a huge deal for whether something's going to work or not, whatever part of the journey. And I've heard this one stat that I've seen play out time and time again over the years, and that is one to three percent of the market's always buying. There's always one to three percent of the market buying. So if you're going after a hundred thousand people, you know, what's that? Three thousand people or one to three thousand people or whatever that may be. Maybe it's 100
Nick:
Hehehehe
Lee Murray:
Right. There's a small percent and those people, you don't have to influence them as much because they're already there in, in whatever's happening in their world. Knees, desires, pains, whatever. So, you know, as you're crafting, um, uh, strategy to project sales in your market, um, and, uh, you know, we're, we're mostly, mostly speaking to companies that have been around for a little while, these are not startups that don't know their market. Um, and if you haven't a pretty good idea of how big your market is, well, that's your. Go conservative 1%. Those are the people you could sell today, tomorrow, next, you know, on a quarterly basis, a salesperson in the territory, that kind of thing. The rest of them, the next stat is like 20 to 25 to 30% above that is going to be the people that you could influence into a conversation, right? So that's where you want to spend a lot of your, all the stuff we're talking about.
Nick:
Mm-hmm. Yes, yes.
Lee Murray:
That's where all that stuff drives to
Nick:
Yes.
Lee Murray:
it. Right. But then the people above that, what's, what's that? 1%. So 29% or again,
Nick:
70,
Lee Murray:
bad with math,
Nick:
yeah.
Lee Murray:
69% of the rest of the people, which is a big percentage of people, are not ready to do anything. They may click through and look at the content. They may save it. They may do some of the top of the funnel type activity, which again, it's good to see who those people are, but they won't do anything for the time that... is left in their mind of when they need to actually take an action. And there's trigger points in everyone's world that marketers should start to learn. You learn this by learning your customer trigger points, meaning industry shifts that are regulatory, um, you know, economic shifts. Um, there's, there's lots of trigger points that, you know, supply chain type stuff, whatever it is that will trigger a decision or decisions to start looking for a solution like yours. You know, all those trigger points now. You can grab hold of the 69% and be ready to influence them when those triggers happen. So you have a little bit more control over that bigger number, but there's still a huge number of people in your, in your qualified market that are not ready to buy and they're not going to buy. So don't make them mad by trying to get them to buy. Right.
Nick:
Anyway. Yeah.
Lee Murray:
So the job of marketing is to focus on the, well, to align themselves with sales to, to close the 1%. but it's also to focus on that bottom 25 to 30% to influence them and then
Nick:
to move into the 1%.
Lee Murray:
get ahold of the rest of that big number and nurture them longer term so that you and your brand are in front of them and they recognize you as the expert when that trigger point happens. So I want that whole sort of shift to happen in a marketer's mind where timing is the critical thing that we sort of can control, but really can't control. So we're creating a strategic plan around the timing of, uh, your buyer and how they're going to choose to engage you at whatever level in the buying journey. But as you can see, as we start breaking this down, it becomes a little bit more. Uh, controllable a little bit more. Um, you know, uh, You know, you can, you can make it influence a little bit more in your buyer's world. So I think it's good to stop and talk about that because if they keep that front of mind, they're going to remember, okay, well, we can't sell all of these people, we can't get them all to download something, we can't get them all to do something, but if we think in terms of these percentages, that helps with projections and, and so on and so forth. So, so back to, back to nurture.
Nick:
Yeah, well, I mean, I want to stick with the pie for a second there. It's kind of the market pie or the interest in demand pie, if you want to give it a name.
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
And I think that the biggest value that a business gets, the biggest ROI they get out of building a journey and building their marketing plans around the journey, is you can start to penetrate into bigger chunks of the pie. You know, when you're just doing the two-step, you know, here's my product by now.
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
You're only targeting the 3%. You've automatically
Lee Murray:
that's it.
Nick:
constricted your TAM to 3% of the market. Because
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
anyone who's not buying is going to ignore you, and they're going to forget about you, because you're that company which is saying, buy.
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
But by building five, six, seven stages on top of that, particularly for this AI firm we're creating here, they'll know who you are, and they'll have some time to think about you long before they're in a position to buy. And in time, through free and one penny, two penny touches, you become their Geico. When you think about insurance, Geico comes to mind, Liberty Mutual,
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
the guys who run ads to 24-7, so you're there.
Lee Murray:
that's it.
Nick:
That's their funnel.
Lee Murray:
That's right. And, and all of that starts to bleed into this conversation of building a brand. Well, you're building a brand for the full funnel and pipeline. Um, but your brand is going to have the most impact for the people who the timing isn't right now, but it might be right in 18 months, um, because you know, they're going to be seeing you and seeing you demonstrate that, you know, the industry, you know how things work together and you are the key company to build this wrapper for them. Um, you know, when it comes to awareness or when it comes to nurture, I've had so much success with email newsletters or not necessarily newsletters, but, um, cold email and, um, and warm email. I really feel like for B2B service based, uh, companies email is the magic. for nurturing because you can deliver, if you do it right, you can deliver so much value on a week to week or bi-weekly basis that points
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
them to all of the other pieces that you're building, right? So if we talk about paid getting you, you know, two in one scenario, getting you to the email, now you own that audience and you have a better feedback loop on from open click through and it replies
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
on What's actually resonating with them? Um as you're demonstrating over time that you're the right suitor So i'm curious to know in your world, you know, obviously email is probably pretty big but from a paid standpoint How do you approach? um the nurture stage Because we were talking
Nick:
Um
Lee Murray:
about building a guide and now we're talking about building something else, right?
Nick:
Yeah, yeah. So recapture, right? As much as you can qualify people into your buyer journey by giving them something for free that's super low friction, they still forget about you or, you know, they're on vacation or, you know, they're distracted with all the other million important things they have to get done at that point in time. So they don't happen to see a stage. We'll use ads to, you know, bring people back in at whatever touch point they're in. when we lose them. And again, huge ROI lift because you're not spending that ad to buy a purchase,
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
which is the most expensive thing you can do. You're just getting someone to click back into something they found interesting before, which is going to click at a pretty high rate and it's going to convert at a pretty high rate too. It's kind of a double whammy lift for you.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, I like that. What comes to mind when you're talking about that is competitors. So if your competitors are not astute marketers, they're going to be spending to compete with you for that bottom of the funnel keyword or sequence, and you're playing a different game. So therefore your ROI could be better. Um, which flows downhill.
Nick:
Yeah. I mean, for our own firm, we have, it's an eight-step program, but it's all like all of it is free. It's all on our website. We have a bunch of different eBooks we put together on different stages of building your marketing team. And we have a visual tool. I think I might have shown you about like how we do planning.
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
Full disclosure, we work with strategists like you at all times to do the real stuff, but just helping people organize the work so we can execute it. We have some tools for that. And that's the only thing we advertise. Like we don't promote anything about us or our services. It's really kind of hard to find if you don't know who we are. But if you're looking for a way to visualize your marketing plan, then we start to show up for you or,
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
you know, how to hire a team really quickly. After you raise funding, like we have stuff out there for those. Um, and we have tons of free material that we send people through. Um, and again, we only pay attention to the guys who go all the way through. And if you hit all eight of those, okay, you're building something.
Lee Murray:
It's a
Nick:
Can
Lee Murray:
pretty
Nick:
I help
Lee Murray:
serious
Nick:
you?
Lee Murray:
buyer prospect and timing is probably pretty close.
Nick:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they have to basically raise their hand by participating in all those things to prove that, okay, I'm really doing something right now. And then we save a lot of time and a lot of money not advertising to people who are just kicking tires or
Lee Murray:
That's right.
Nick:
competitors themselves.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, I love that. I think that's great because you're, you're making it, it's, it's like. Still quantitative, but you're making it qualitative. You're at the same time, um, as people are raising their hands, as they work through each stage of the, of that like mini-vinyl, that's
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
good. I like that.
Nick:
I mean, even more metrics. So this probably relates pretty well to our technology firm, right? If you're selling $100,000 product, you're probably going to be spending $1,000 to $2,000 to win a customer. You know, for us, generally speaking, it's like 500 bucks for us to win a customer. But that includes the work it takes to build the proposal and get everything kind of landed. It costs us $3.5 to get someone into our nurture flow.
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
So... When you compare the two, like three bucks, they're in the flow. They basically raise their own hand. It's all
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
automated,
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
which is
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
a SaaS fee.
Lee Murray:
It's amazing.
Nick:
ROI is massive, yeah.
Lee Murray:
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not even something that really is calculable because it's so there's such a big disparaging gap there. I
Nick:
Yeah,
Lee Murray:
mean, that's amazing.
Nick:
yeah, yeah.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so if we look at, we looked at awareness and we gave the example of building a guide, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to follow this all the way through. Um, then
Nick:
Hehehe
Lee Murray:
nurture phases where, what, what are we building there? I mean, you gave the example of your company building a kind of a step by step, but for this AI
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
fake company,
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
what, what do they need to build
Nick:
So, an
Lee Murray:
or
Nick:
AI
Lee Murray:
create?
Nick:
company, you need to have a free planning session, I think, because someone's not going to decide to buy you because of the stuff you put in front of them. I think an investor in particular, if that's our target market,
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
they're an investor because they made a lot of really good decisions and they know how to avoid being sold things. Like they buy, they don't get sold. So selling them is not the strategy. A free demo is not the strategy. But a planning session is a way you can give them value and also highlight areas they haven't thought through yet
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
and highlight where your business is different. And for service firms, we recommend this all the time. Because there's so many reach out and say, hey, we have cheap developers or we develop high quality products and look at these logos. That
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
doesn't convince you anymore
Lee Murray:
No.
Nick:
because everyone says the same thing.
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
But
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
if you reach out and say, hey, I know you're planning a project, I'll dedicate my time and resources to helping you break it down. you're probably gonna wanna see how you do it. And the things that hook you are not your pricing or even the positioning of your business. It's the things you do in planning that nobody else does.
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
You know, now as a buyer, as an informed buyer, I'm gonna go ask everyone else, well, hey, do you do this thing?
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
And if you don't, there's some differentiation there. Suddenly I'm hooked to you.
Lee Murray:
So
Nick:
Make
Lee Murray:
it
Nick:
sense?
Lee Murray:
allows you to demonstrate your uniqueness.
Nick:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
And then as you said, and I've seen this happen many times where you do the right thing, you know, you shake your hips the right way, and then they go to the other person that they're looking at that they thought so highly of, and they say, by the way, can you do this? And then,
Nick:
Yeah, yeah.
Lee Murray:
and then they're like, why are you asking about that? I, I'm, we've never had anybody ask us about that.
Nick:
Hehehe
Lee Murray:
Well, that immediately right there shines a light on.
Nick:
Nope,
Lee Murray:
That's you're
Nick:
nope,
Lee Murray:
the
Nick:
nope.
Lee Murray:
you're the one because you were even you gave him gave him the question to ask that they didn't know to ask That's to me You know the big change there and so you're talking about a free planning session what comes to mind Which is kind of similar is like an audit um, and if we're talking about ai rappers, um Wra pper, um, i'm sure there's
Nick:
Yeah,
Lee Murray:
ai
Nick:
rovers.
Lee Murray:
rappers out there, you know, but uh Well, I could think, you know, one, if you looked at the pillars of like, what are the pillars that make up, um, you know, a successful, uh, attempt at building something like this, one of them is probably going to be centered around the topic of data. So maybe helping them audit their data in a way that's secure and whatever, um, for free is. Gonna reveal things again, like the planning session reveal things to them that they didn't know. Um, and you start that working relationship. Um, I, I worked for a consulting firm up in Birmingham, Alabama for a number of years and, uh, you know, I had a, um, uh, a great, um, boss, uh, who on the firm and, uh, super smart guy and he, um, he said something one time that really stuck with me and that was like, let's just start working for him. Let's just start doing work for him. You know? And it was like kind of this crazy, like Are you sure? Like we don't really need to get them to like buy something. And it clicked for me. What he was really saying is let's just go ahead and start demonstrating that we know what we're doing and we'll do it with their stuff, right? If as long as they'll give
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
us permission to start working on stuff, we'll do it for free because it's only going to make more and more sense to them that we need to be part of their team to help them do what we do for our clients. Um, and he's right. I mean, I've tried to take that principle and, and into consulting. And, um, you know, there's a, there's a boundary you're going to have to draw at some point where, you know, if you're not, you're not in front of the right buyer, you can end up getting used and that doesn't work that well, but assuming you're in front of the right buyer and all the metrics that add up, um, it's a great approach. And so for the nurture stage, I think it's such a great, um, pass through to the conversion because now we're already kind of working together in some capacity. I mean, we're having
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
as zoom call and you're working with your team. I know John and Betty and whoever like,
Nick:
Good.
Lee Murray:
like we're kind of already working together. And that's pretty cool.
Nick:
Yeah, then they have to stop something. I'd have to go backwards to move away.
Lee Murray:
Yes,
Nick:
Now,
Lee Murray:
that's a good
Nick:
I
Lee Murray:
point.
Nick:
mean, on the one hand, you don't want to trap anybody, but I think what you're talking about is like free value. It goes back to our first point that we're allowing people to convert. We're not pulling them or forcing them or pushing them or anything. And, you know, by just starting to work for them, we're allowing them to keep it moving. Right. We're making it extremely easy for them to continue to, you know, ask questions. participate in the buying process, scope out the engagement. And as long as that's there, you know, you don't need to do any selling. You can allow the project to move to a point where something is gonna cost money to keep it going and make sense to spend the money to make it happen.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, that's right. And I would say a slightly different way, but it's kind of not an or, but more of an and that
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
is you're leading them through the process, which allows them to go through the process. And so
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
I think a lot of the times that I'll win business, I, I get the business simply because I have taken all the steps and, and proven to them through the steps that I've done this before. And I can, they can, the confidence that they can just purchase or, you know, sign the agreement. And we can continue moving down the road with the steps. You know, that's a lot of confidence to say, Hey, we know the way, and we'd love to have you come along with us and we'll lead you the whole way. Um,
Nick:
Mm hmm.
Lee Murray:
you know, if they're not getting that from the other company or from other people, it's going to shine another light on competitors.
Nick:
Yeah, huge, huge differentiation. I think that, I mean, that's, that's the entire nurture funnel. Like how do we, we've gone from giving you free value that's related to the product or service that we deliver for you into actually delivering part of the value
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
that
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
our product or service gives you. And, um, you know, by doing that, we earn trust, we let you experience working with us, we demonstrate how we're different. Um, you know, we, we create. I mean, it's effective leverage, right? By offering things that you know, other people don't or can't. In that in that free value session, you're creating some leverage with your customer and We're making it extremely easy for them to decide because at the end of the day, you know, just like the sales conversion rate It's not going to be a hundred percent like people are gonna say no
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
But both of you will know if they say no after they've engaged to that level that it wasn't the right fit
Lee Murray:
That's right.
Nick:
You
Lee Murray:
It'll
Nick:
know the
Lee Murray:
be
Nick:
people who say no. Yeah
Lee Murray:
very
Nick:
Yeah,
Lee Murray:
obvious. Yeah.
Nick:
those are the people you probably wouldn't have wanted to say yes. Anyway,
Lee Murray:
Completely
Nick:
it's a good thing
Lee Murray:
completely. Yeah, you know the way I look at this path between nurturing conversion is sort of like you're demonstrating Expertise so you can demo your product or demo your service as you would To get an agreement, right? So they
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
kind of are separate but they kind of go together and I look at that gray area there is where marketing and sales need to be just completely aligned and I call that gray area meaningful conversations. So the goal is to get, you can call them opportunities and call them whatever, but meaningful conversations makes the most sense to me in the B2B context, because when you start having these type of conversations we're talking about, it's meaningful to both sides, one's leading the other, and you probably are not going to turn around and go back the other way unless it is sort of commoditized and it's really just going to come down to price. And in that case, you have a business model. issue more than you do a marketing or sales issue. Um, so that's the way I try to paint the picture for my clients is you want to get to meaningful conversations. And again, those could sort of parachute in, you know, they could be the first conversation or second conversation or having somebody and they give you access to the data, they say, yeah, sure. Go ahead and show us what you can do on the free audit. The next conversation is a demo and you're working together because of the timing happened to be right. Um, but focusing in on getting, getting people through to what can be meaningful for both sides is should have a very high conversion rate to demo, to
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
say it'll opportunity, whatever you want to call it.
Nick:
What's your thought? I'd love your thought on demos as a nurture tool. And the reason why I'm asking, I'll kind of frame it up. I think in the beginning, when it wasn't super easy to find 10 YouTube videos and every product that exists,
Lee Murray:
Yeah, right, right.
Nick:
demos had a lot of value because you couldn't
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
see the tool unless you did
Lee Murray:
sure.
Nick:
one. But I think today we're actually seeing a negative correlation between demo and conversion rate just because Today demos are usually used as bait to get people on the phone and sell to them. And I'm seeing it's pretty clean B2B. Folks don't really want to be sold to they know what they want. They have
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
a specific
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
checklist. Um, so you can, you know, even, even if the demo is your objective to win, like you can win the exact same conversion by calling it something else, like, you know,
Lee Murray:
Yeah,
Nick:
a consultation or like a,
Lee Murray:
agreed.
Nick:
like a tailored walkthrough or, um, like a value consultation or something like give it, give it a different name. and frame it up against something that you think your customer really wants. Because they don't just want to see the tool. Nobody wants to sign up to see the tool and get sold. But they're happy listening to a pitch if the pitch is tailored to them or their
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
specific solution in some way.
Lee Murray:
Well, I mean, I get emails all the time from companies asking me if it could pay me a hundred dollars or a gift card or whatever to just sit in on a demo. It's like,
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
I don't care. I don't know about your company. I don't care about your company. I don't even care about that solution. And
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
so you're asking me to just to make an, kind of what I, the way I think of it as an ethical discussion of, do I want to spend, you know, 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever of my time to get potentially a Walmart gift card or Amazon gift card for
Nick:
Yeah
Lee Murray:
this amount. Like that answer is always no. Um,
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
and it's obvious that these tactics that you're using are completely disconnected from your actual buyers who would want to sit into this and not need to get paid. So I think that to me, that's where I would start since we're already there. Or since we're finally there, maybe that these sort of sales tactics are happening with, um, Mostly sass or you know these software type of solutions it shows it's so commoditized that you're right you can get on and find 15 other solutions that do the same thing and even with ai Um, we're starting to already see, you know the birth of all of these different new companies that do supposedly do all these things So I would say in the case of this example an ai wrapper company My guess with a little bit of the knowledge I have about ai. It's going to be a more bespoke solution. So You know, it's not going to be at this moment in time as commoditized. So, um, a demo of the product kind of doesn't really exist. It's really more of a demonstration of your expertise to build a product for the client. Um, but even more generally speaking, if it's not a hyper commoditized and you, you can, let's say you're just development firm and you want to build a product for them mobile or, or web. Um, you're going to probably want to demo some kind of technical example, right? So here's an example of what we build and how it functions. But that's really, I think now relegated to, um, further down the sales pipeline where you're actually putting a proposal together and you're using that as an example to showcase the work that you could do for them again, it being more bespoke, um, but it's not like, let me show you how my widget works. And how it's different than the next person's widget that you're going to watch after mine I
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
would say that's one thought the second thought is I think that I sort of subscribe to this now here 2023 and beyond marketing um philosophy of Demonstrating your expertise all the way through and being the leader of your qualified market um, so, you know When you get to the free planning session or the audit, that's an actual literal demonstration, but you can, you can demonstrate even further up. I would say I would also call it nurturing with a podcast or an email. Um, and even with the awareness, once they become aware, they can become aware through, uh, referred to an email, a podcast, all the things that are nurturing can be, you know, bring awareness. But if they're, let's say they see an ad on Instagram reels ad, they click through. Um, I think that you have to quickly get. to demonstrating as quickly as you can, that you are an expert or your team has the tools of expertise or the knowledge of expertise. In this case, we understand data, we understand how to manipulate data, we understand how to develop software that is going to affect change in these types of ways. You have to be able to communicate that and quickly get them into the conversation that matters. so that it becomes a constant demonstration of expertise all the way through down to proposal and then even after proposal, they are fully already ready, know your team, working with your team kind of thing and now you're just actually working on the actual project. So that's the way I look at it.
Nick:
Yeah. I mean, it's a great way to look at it. I think we're both indirectly agreeing that the days of like a static product demonstration are kind of dead. Um, and particularly with development firms, it's about earning trust and proving that you can do what you say you can do. And,
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
um, you know, demo doesn't really have a place there anymore. It's a lot, it's a lot more bespoke. It's a lot more tailored to the solution they're looking at. And, uh, you know, what I was thinking as you were talking through this, It's so easy to train, you basically train it, you know, to a simple level,
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
not train an entirely new bot, but you can, like we use a tool called WriteSonic, and they have their own subsystem called BotSonic. And you can upload a spreadsheet with a bunch of different responses in it, and the bot will train itself
Lee Murray:
Oh, cool.
Nick:
on your response format and suddenly be able to answer the way that your response is dictated to answer. So if you're an AI company, you could very easily put... you know, potential customers, zero question error and offer something totally ridiculous. Like we'll make a beta of what we think your product is and demo that to you. And you know, you're going to get a 90% call in rate.
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
Um, and it doesn't matter if it's total crap, you know, the only
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
thing that
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
matters is that you tried and
Lee Murray:
It's
Nick:
you're giving
Lee Murray:
a mock-up.
Nick:
them something to give you feedback on. Yeah.
Lee Murray:
That's right. It's a mock-up.
Nick:
Um, and people will get on the phone and you're going to build the whole thing and then show it to me or like a lower expectations. It's just a demo, but. That's, you know, you're going above and beyond, you're creating a reason to talk, you're creating a reason for feedback, and it's probably something other people aren't doing, so someone's going to respond to something like that.
Lee Murray:
For sure. And it's in the world that I want marketers to live in, it's not such an uncommon novel thing to do that, to have, it's a mindset more that we're gonna identify our market, we're gonna qualify these buyers, you know, in the B2B world, you can literally buy a list of everyone and their title and their email and their phone and their LinkedIn, you have it all right there on a spreadsheet. So it's up to you to translate and communicate the value through to them, right? You can find them, you can, you can find them on social, you can find them on the web. They can find you, you can meet out there somewhere. You can do all these things, but it's how are we translating the value through? Um, and I think that's probably a good, a good point to, to make when it comes to content creation, because as we start to delineate what we're trying to do with the buyer based on what we know about the percentages in the market, the timing, all of these things, and what we, the path that we think they're going to travel. Um, both internally with their decision makers and then externally as they're seeking to find a solution. Um, your content that you create, we're talking about building a guide or a white paper, um, you know, offering a free, free planning session. So there's content that has to lead up to that. All of this content is now going to become so much more valuable to them wherever they are in that, that journey. So, you know, I'd love to get your thoughts on how you've seen that play out in the campaigns that you guys run. Um, where, you know, what the type of content you create, whether it's a, you know, an infographic versus a video, um, you know, so format, but also, uh, the, the type of content in terms of, um, you know, impact that you're trying to have at each part of the, of the journey, um, how does that play out? Because if you were to map all this out, And now you're like, okay, we have to create content. We have to create something to put in all these different slots. Um, what's the direction that you would give the marketer at that point?
Nick:
Yeah, I mean, so it's just about ease of consumption and that applies
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
throughout the entire journey. So video is great for delivering value super quickly because they just push play. They don't even have to
Lee Murray:
Yes,
Nick:
leave where they are
Lee Murray:
yes.
Nick:
to consume it. That's why podcasts like this are so effective. People can see how smart you are.
Lee Murray:
No.
Nick:
But I think downloads are a little more invasive. Downloads that require signups are a little more invasive. Calculators are a little more invasive. So you leave those a little later in the funnel. And depending on how much demand there is, you dial up the friction or dial it down. So if you're a B to C, you don't want any friction. So if you can make this as slippery as possible, you make it as slippery as you possibly can. But B to B, you almost want a little bit of friction because you don't want to spend time making a proposal for a company that's not legitimate. And I'll give you,
Lee Murray:
That's right.
Nick:
if you want to have a chuckle as marketers before we close this out, I'll give you a little story. We've been working with this company on a proposal for an affiliate program for the last week, week and a half. This is totally my fault. This is a big egg on the face, but it's an investment company. It's one of those like bot traders, but they have a crazy return rate and they guarantee it. We did some work for one of the big e-brokers, one of the top three in the world four years ago that we bought an affiliate program for them. I know all the partners to go to. It's going to be really easy. easy win for us and the returns just looked crazy. But because of that, I didn't qualify the buyer. So we think about like the buyer funnel, they came right in at the bottom. They hadn't expressed interest. I didn't really go through the qualification steps. So we're through proposal. They've verbaled everything. They're looking at the agreement ready to go. I'm looking at this company thinking about how to onboard it and they just started doing some diligence on the firm. And it turns out they're not even a registered entity.
Lee Murray:
Oh wow,
Nick:
So
Lee Murray:
yeah.
Nick:
Yeah, so didn't pull the trigger on the contract, walked away. But I shot them a note and just said, can you send me your business registration or business license, because this is kind of highly regulated space and I don't want to send millions of investment into your business if someone's going to get sued for fraud down the line. And they gave me a bunch of lip about not trusting them this late in the process.
Lee Murray:
Oh gosh,
Nick:
These are
Lee Murray:
yeah.
Nick:
public documents. This is not a hard thing to share if it actually exists. But I think as marketers, we want to protect ourselves team from doing what I did. Um,
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
we want to make sure that our marketing gets them out of the way. So you're asking about what content mediums, you know, in B2B calculators are great for weeding out, you know, tire kickers, because the folks who use them really understand what they want. You know, they
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
have their core buying principles there. You can line them up with your value points and the guys who complete that with some integrity are actually interested in working with you.
Lee Murray:
Yeah. And I would say to you as a great example, in that case, it's becomes obvious to you at the end, you know, where it's like, they're just really trying to force themselves into an agreement where you're like, wow, this is too easy, right? It's never this easy. There's obviously
Nick:
Something's
Lee Murray:
red flag
Nick:
wrong.
Lee Murray:
here, you know, but that's where I think if you go back up the funnel, you can start to institute a lot of those questions scattered or not through that filter process. And again, you know, kind of speaking more to the sales process than the marketing funnel, but having those baseline filter type of, you know, you guys came in from kind of nowhere. We don't really know each other. You know,
Nick:
Yeah
Lee Murray:
let's, let's make sure we're on the same page. It could take five minutes or 15 minutes to get that out of the way as a standard practice. Well, it creates friction, like you said, but it helps you to not waste the time with. with the buyer through the rest of the, probably the good thing you only spent a week or maybe week and a half here and there on it.
Nick:
Yeah, only a week, only a week if I can have it back. But yeah, I mean, if I had run them through the journey that we already have, I would have disqualified them before we even spoke. So in terms that you're allowing people to come through, but you're also preventing the ones that don't really make sense for your time from not
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
wasting your time too.
Lee Murray:
Well,
Nick:
Particularly
Lee Murray:
you know.
Nick:
with our AI tech, you know, they could spend months quoting things for a business that's never going to transact. And you could probably design your journey to weed out somebody who doesn't really know what they want yet.
Lee Murray:
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
know, every buyer can, we're all buyers, right? We all know when someone's trying to do that. So it's a positive thing And one other thing that came to mind too is this content Whether it were wherever it is it gives us the chance to demonstrate our expertise leave them through but you know shine light for them By doing those things shine light into their world about not only the things that can come from this but also the risk of their Mitigating I always want to come like I always want to bring this up with my clients to say It's not only this, and the calculator thing kind of triggered in my mind is like, if, if a astute business person, whomever that is in the company that's buying can calculate their end result or calculate something that's connected to an end result, then that shows that they probably know their business pretty well, which means they're probably going to be a better prospect for you to continue forward with. Um, so not only have they highly qualified themselves, but they've used the calculator to inform themselves. Um, of potentially a downside or risk that they're going to mitigate, which provides value, you know, you're providing more value, but also shines light on the upside. So there's so much that you can do with content through the whole journey. Um, the more, you know, your buyer, the more, you know, you know, the posit the position they're in. And when they reveal themselves through these different touch points, um, I think it's such a powerful thing to, to get, to get on and get right as you. iterate and have these sort of feedback loops going.
Nick:
Yeah, I think the other piece too, once you have the journey together, it's very, very clear what you need to do to make your marketing work.
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Nick:
And that's actually where we started with it. It wasn't as much as we want to help people convert. It was a lot more for us about making it obvious to business owners
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
what steps need to be taken actually build a successful marketing program. Because we kept getting questions like, is it working yet? Is it working yet? It's like, okay, we have five other pieces that we need to build. It's not there.
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
But once it's all mapped out, you know, hey, for the first three stages, I'm 100% video, so I got to call Lee and Signal Media and help load this thing up to make it actually work. Then what? Okay, now I need to go build a landing page and build a calculator and set up my demo and train the staff on it. But it's all a checklist. I think business
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
leaders
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
do really well with checklists. As marketers, we're so theoretical most of the time. We don't like to put these things down on paper and make them easy to buzz through. Mapping out the journey creates a blueprint that you can follow and it's pretty
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Nick:
easy for everyone to get on the same page with it.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, that's right. And marketers have a hard time historically about proving value. And especially if they're launching something new or trying to have growth around something that hasn't had growth for some time, lifting something that's heavy there, um, but having that checklist is important because they can, they can say, okay, here's very transparent to leadership for this month. I'm building all of these things out with the, with the hopes of launching this campaign that we'll do X. And so, well, what, what did marketing do this month? Well, we built all these things. Right. So that's step one. And then what do we do next month? Well, we launched all these things. And then what do we do
Nick:
Ugh.
Lee Murray:
the next month? Well, you know, I'm, I'm oversimplifying it, but you know, marketers
Nick:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
can then point to the success of the things that they built and launched instead of it just being a complete, you know, well, we, we have overhead with marketing and then we have paid spend and there's no ROI. That's
Nick:
And it's all or nothing. It either works or it
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, it's fantastic when you sit down with a head of sales or a CEO and you have a journey report that shows that you have seven stages, that six out of the seven are converting at 75%. They're like, damn,
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Nick:
well, that's how it's supposed to work. Once they're in, they're
Lee Murray:
That's
Nick:
in.
Lee Murray:
right.
Nick:
But that way they don't, the one stage is converting at 15%. hammering all of your money. It's a simple fix. You fix one specific spot and the rest of it's cranked. And that gives people a lot of confidence in the plan and validity to the work that you're doing.
Lee Murray:
Hey, this has been amazing. As I knew it would be, we're like seconds away from an hour here. It's probably the
Nick:
Heh
Lee Murray:
longest
Nick:
heh.
Lee Murray:
episode I've had this series, which is awesome. So thanks so much. Any last words you want to communicate to marketing leaders about outlining and the importance of building a buyer's journey?
Nick:
Um, yeah, it's a big message when you're making a plan, particularly with a new company, there's a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not you can do it. And most likely the leaders in your firm are counting on you to do something that they're responsible for. And that's the hat we wear as marketers. It's always going to be that way. Um, but putting them down on paper in a journey like this makes it a lot easier for you to bet on the things that you can do. And I pretty much guarantee you'll surprise yourself on what you can achieve once you see it all in a format like that. So make a list, build your plan in a list, aim all your tactics to different stages of the journey. The results will surprise you, guaranteed.
Lee Murray:
100% thanks Nick. This has been great. I appreciate it
Nick:
Yeah, likewise. Great to be on.