What B2B Buyers Rely On to Make Purchase Decisions

Earlier this month, TrustRadius published the findings of its fifth annual B2B buying disconnect research. The 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect report is based on two surveys that were conducted in September of this year.

One was a survey of 907 individuals who are involved in making business technology purchases for their organization, and the second was a survey of 227 individuals who work for technology vendors in a sales or marketing capacity. More than 75% of the respondents in these surveys were based in the United States.

In my last post, I described some of the characteristics of the technology buying process identified by the TrustRadius research. In this post, I'll discuss what the TrustRadius study discovered about how technology buyers learn about products or services and research potential purchases. I'll also review where there are still disconnects between technology buyers and sellers.

It's important to note that the TrustRadius research focused exclusively on the attributes of technology sales and purchases and on the attitudes and behaviors of technology buyers and vendors. Therefore, the results of the TrustRadius surveys may not be completely applicable to all types of B2B purchases and sales. However, these research findings are relevant for those that involve high-consideration products or services.

Information Used to Inform Buying Decisions

A primary focus of the TrustRadius surveys has been to identify what sources of information technology buyers use to inform and support purchase decisions and which sources they view as trustworthy and influential. The latest survey found that buyers used an average of 6.9 sources of information when researching potential purchases, up from 5.1 sources in last year's survey.

The sources of information most widely used by technology buyers have not changed for the past five years, although their rank order has varied slightly. In the latest TrustRadius buyer survey, the five most frequently used sources of information were:

1. Product demos (58% of buyer respondents)
2. Vendor/product websites (51%)
3. User reviews (45%)
4. Vendor representatives (43%)
5. Free trials/accounts (41%)

The Disconnect - In the seller survey, TrustRadius asked technology vendors what marketing tactics they used to engage buyers in 2020. The following table compares the percentage of sellers using each marketing tactic (the top 5 identified by seller respondents) with the percentage of buyer respondents who reported using that source of information. As the table shows, buyers and sellers generally agree about the importance of product demos and vendor/product websites, but sellers overvalue the importance of marketing collateral, case studies, and customer references.

Information Trust and Influence

TrustRadius also asked technology buyers about the trustworthiness and influence of the information sources they use to support purchase decisions. Three of the five most widely used sources of information - free trials/accounts, product demos, and user reviews - also received high marks from buyers for trustworthiness and influence. This suggests that buyers favor sources of information that provide direct hands-on experience with a product and those that feature the opinions of actual users of a product or service.

The Disconnect - Only one of the three most trusted and influential sources of information - product demos - is among the top five marketing tactics used by vendors. In addition, three of the marketing tactics most widely used by vendors - marketing collateral, case studies, and customer references - were not rated highly by buyers for trustworthiness or influence.

How Buyers First Learn About Products

The top three ways that technology buyers first learn about new products are:

1. Their own prior experience with the product (25% of buyer survey respondents)
2. Recommendations from their network (15%)
3. Online search for top products (15%)

On this issue, there isn't much of a disconnect between buyers and sellers. In the TrustRadius seller survey, the respondents identified the same three top ways that buyers first learn about products. 

One noteworthy difference between buyers and sellers relates to industry events. Nearly half of the surveyed sellers (49%) believe that buyers first learn about products at conferences and tradeshows, but only 10% of surveyed buyers said they first learn about products at such events.

The buyers' response on this point may have been influenced by the absence of in-person events this year, but it also may be that sellers tend to overestimate how often buyers first learn about products at conferences and tradeshows.

Top image courtesy of Jinx! via Flickr CC.

New Research Unveils the Attributes of B2B Technology Buying and Selling

Image Source:  TrustRadius

This month, TrustRadius published the findings of its fifth annual B2B buying disconnect study. The 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect report provides a wealth of valuable insights regarding the sale and purchase of business technology solutions.

The report is based on two surveys that were fielded in September of this year. One was a survey of 907 individuals who were involved in making business technology purchases for their organization, and the second was a survey of 227 individuals who work for technology vendors in a sales or marketing capacity. More than 75% of the respondents in both surveys were based in the United States.

These surveys addressed a broad range of topics. The buyer survey includes findings about the technology buying process, how technology buyers learn about products and services and research potential purchases, and how they view technology vendors. The seller survey explored how technology vendors seek to engage potential buyers and how they rate the effectiveness of their marketing and sales tactics. And of course, both surveys addressed how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted technology buying and selling in 2020.

The TrustRadius study focused exclusively on the attributes of technology sales and purchases and on the attitudes and behaviors of technology buyers and vendors. While the results of these surveys may not be completely applicable to all types of B2B purchases and sales, it's likely they would be similar to those involving complex, high-consideration products or services.

It will take a few posts to unpack the results of the TrustRadius research. In this post, I'll describe some of the basic attributes of technology buying and selling in 2020 and what we may see in 2021.

Technology Spending in 2020 and 2021

In the TrustRadius buyer survey, 49% of the respondents said their spending on technology products and services decreased in 2020, 27% reported increased spending, and 19% said their spending had not changed. It's noteworthy that only 21% of the buyer respondents expected their 2020 technology spending to decrease "substantially."

These responses reflect the uneven economic impacts of the pandemic. COVID-19 has severely affected companies in some industries (travel and hospitality, for example), while several other types of businesses have experienced dramatic revenue growth (think Amazon and Zoom).

TrustRadius found that the outlook for technology spending in 2021 is mixed. Fifty-six percent of the respondents in the buyer survey expect their technology spending to return to pre-pandemic levels or increase in 2021, while 17% expect spending to decrease next year, and 27% aren't sure what their technology spending will look like in 2021. More specifically, a majority of the buyer respondents expect to spend more on video and web conferencing software (64%) and online collaboration/project management software (53%) in 2021.

More Time Spent on Buying

TrustRadius also found that the pandemic has changed how much time buyer spend on technology purchases. In the buyer survey, about one-third of the respondents said they spent more time this year:

• Clearly defining the expected ROI of technology investments
• Researching products
• Comparing products
• Prioritizing selection criteria

Interestingly, 26% of the buyer respondents said they spent less time in 2020 talking with vendor representatives, and 20% reported spending less time consulting with their buying committee.

Despite buyers' efforts to streamline the buying process, vendors believe the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in longer sales cycles. In the seller survey, 57% of the respondents said their deal cycles are longer than before the pandemic. One in four respondents said the length of their sales cycle hasn't changed, and 19% reported shorter sales cycles.

Buying Groups Get Slightly Smaller

During 2020, a significant number of employees at B2B companies have been working from home. Online conferencing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have enabled remote employees to perform their work fairly effectively. However, the pandemic appears to have caused some companies to reduce the number of people involved in purchase decisions.

In the latest TrustRadius buyer survey, respondents indicated that 67% of buying decisions are made by buying groups composed of 2 to 5 individuals. That was up from 61% of buying decisions in last year's survey. Meanwhile, the percentage of buying decisions made by buying groups composed of 6 or more people fell from 34% in last year's survey to 29% in this year's survey.

Coming Up

In my next post, I'll discuss what the TrustRadius research says about how technology buyers learn about and research products and services.

More Evidence on How B2B Marketers Have Responded to COVID-19

Image Source:  Allocadia

Over the past six months, I've devoted several posts to reviewing research studies that have examined the impact of COVID-19 on B2B marketing and buying behaviors.

• The first series of posts (available here, here, and here) discussed the findings of a special edition of The CMO Survey that was fielded in May.
• In July, I published a post (Research Highlights How COVID-19 Has Changed B2B Buyer Behaviors) that described the results of an April survey conducted by Wunderman Thompson Commerce. The research focused primarily on the expanding role of e-commerce in B2B buying.
• Most recently, I published a post (Mid-Summer Research Updates COVID's Impact on B2B Marketing) discussing a June survey by Edelman and LinkedIn. This survey asked B2B marketers about how buying behaviors had changed and what actions they need to take to respond to those changes.

COVID-19 has obviously been the issue of 2020, and these three surveys have provided important insights about how both marketers and buyers have responded to the pandemic. A recent report by Allocadia provides more valuable insights on this topic from a somewhat different perspective.

Allocadia provides marketing management and budgeting software, and the 2020 State of Spend report is based on aggregate data from Allocadia's customer base. The data was pulled in June. Allocadia's report is particularly useful because in describes actual spending decisions made by companies dealing with real-world circumstances.

Key Findings from Allocadia's Analysis

Marketing Spending - More than half (56%) of Allocadia's customers saw their marketing program spending reduced by more than 10% in the first half of 2020. Fifteen percent of the companies lost more than one-third of their marketing program budgets in that period.

Events - Spending on events fell by 46% in the second quarter of this year. However, Allocadia's customers were forecasting a 24% increase in spending on events in the third quarter. Allocadia believes that much of the forecasted increase is attributable to spending on virtual events, and I tend to agree with this hypothesis.

Digital Advertising - Overall spending on digital advertising increased by 2% in the second quarter, but spending varied significantly based on company size. The smaller companies in the study (those having less than $250 million in revenue) increased digital advertising spending by 9.3% in the second quarter, while the largest companies in the analysis (those having more than $5 billion in revenue) cut spending on digital advertising by 30.7% in that quarter. Companies of all sizes were forecasting higher levels of digital ad spending in the third quarter, with the over $5 billion companies projecting an increase of 183.6%.

Brand vs. Demand Spending - According to decades of research studies, companies that continue to market aggressively during a recession will recover faster and probably gain market share when the recession ends. This is particularly true when the marketing focuses on building brand awareness and brand preference. Most of Allocadia's customer did not follow this strategy.

Spending on brand marketing fell by 16% in the second quarter, and 45% of the companies in this study cut public relations budgets by more than 20% in that quarter. These companies did forecast a 17% increase in brand identity spending in the third quarter, which suggests that the cuts in brand marketing may only be temporary.

Meanwhile, spending on direct marketing increased by 23% in the second quarter, but was forecast to decrease by 1% in the third quarter. If this forecast was accurate, it means that direct marketing spending in the third quarter was 22% higher that in the first quarter of this year.

 Content Marketing - Overall spending on content marketing grew by 12% in the second quarter of this year, and nearly four in ten companies (39%) increased spending by more than 20%. Allocadia's customers were also forecasting an additional 8% increase in the third quarter. Allocadia believes that the second quarter increase in content marketing spending resulted from the increased use of direct marketing in that quarter.

My Take

The spending decisions made by Allocadia's customers are not surprising given the economic shock created by the pandemic. The more to reduce spending on brand marketing and increase investments in direct marketing is particularly understandable.

When faced with a sudden economic downturn that threatens revenues, marketing leaders have a strong tendency to favor those activities that seem most likely to produce a short-term impact on sales. The irony is, many marketers shift resources to short-term "performance" marketing programs exactly when the prevailing business and economic conditions are likely to make those short-term tactics largely ineffective.

Mark Ritson, the noted marketing expert and a regular columnist for MarketingWeek, stated his view of a better approach when he wrote:

"Confronted with a 50% cut in marketing budgets, the smarter play is to actually focus more of it on the longer-term brand-building mission. Performance marketing is going to under-perform in the current market conditions. But this virus, too, shall pass. At some point consumers will return to the streets, the cafes and the various other activities that they have been denied during the dark days ahead. Keep the brand light burning, because the cost of snuffing it out for the rest of 2020 and then trying to reignite it next year is gigantic."

Research Maps Spending on Content Marketing

 

Image Source:  The Branded Content Project/Borrell Associates Inc.

Companies in the United States will spend $63.3 billion on content marketing this year, according to new research commissioned by The Branded Content Project. In 16 business categories, the use of content marketing is nearly ubiquitous, and it accounts for between 45% and 66% of the total marketing budget.

In mid-2020, The Branded Content Project engaged Borrell Associates Inc. to measure and analyze the economic landscape of content marketing. Sizing the Content Marketing Opportunity is based on a multi-faceted analysis of the business of content marketing. Borrell used data from its periodic surveys of small and mid-size businesses, SEC filings of public companies, and a variety of other data sources.

Content Marketing Spending

Borrell's analysis found that U.S. companies spent $64.3 billion on content marketing in 2019. Because of COVID-19, Borrell projects that content marketing spending will decline by 1.5% to $63.3 billion in 2020. This slight decline is almost entirely attributable to major spending cuts by companies that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

For example, Borrell found that companies in travel/tourism, live entertainment, sporting events, clothing and recreation have reduced spending on content marketing in 2020 by an average of 19%. Meanwhile, several other types of businesses - including financial services firms and real estate agents - have actually increased spending on content marketing this year.

The Growing Importance of Content Marketing

This analysis also found that content marketing is becoming a more important part of marketing for many companies. In Borrell's October survey of SMB's, 45% of the respondents said that content marketing had become more of a priority in 2020, and 57% said they are planning to increase content marketing in 2021.

Digital Dominates Content Marketing

It should not be surprising that most content marketing is conducted via digital channels. The following table depicts the top five media channels used for content marketing in 2020. As the table shows, digital media accounts for about two-thirds (66.3%) of all spending on content marketing this year, and collectively, these five channels account for 92.3% of all content marketing spending.

Borrell argues that digital channels dominate content marketing for two main reasons. First, digital channels can accommodate a wide variety of content formats (text, video, audio, etc.), and many types of digital content can be interactive, which makes them more engaging to potential buyers. More importantly, many digital channels enable companies to publish large volumes of content without incurring incremental advertising costs.

Business Category Rankings

The Borrell report also provides detailed estimates for 100 distinct types of businesses. Borrell placed each type of business into one of six groups based on how likely that type of business is to engage in content marketing and what percentage of their marketing budget is devoted to content marketing. Borrell used the letters "A" through "F" to identify the six groups.

The 16 types of business organizations in group "A" (shown in the following table) are those that are most likely to be making extensive use of content marketing. In these businesses, the use of content marketing is nearly ubiquitous, and they spend between 45% and 66% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. These businesses are not necessarily the biggest spenders (on content marketing) in absolute terms, but they are devoting the highest percentage of their total marketing budgets to content marketing.

Organizations in group "B" aren't far behind. Borrell estimates that 75% to 85% of businesses in group "B" are using content marketing, and they are spending 40% to 60% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Group "B" includes general merchandise stores (think Walmart, Target, etc.) and several types of media companies.

Two Caveats

It's important to make two points about the methodology used for this analysis. First, Borrell used an expansive definition of "content marketing." The report states:

"For this report, we considered Content Marketing to be the over-arching term that encompasses all facets of marketing - with content. This could be advertorials, native advertising, testimonials, many kinds of sponsorships, many kinds of branding, and any advertising that delivers some amount [sic] content besides a direct call to action."

This definition encompasses some marketing activities that many practitioners would not classify as "content marketing." So Borrell's spending estimates may be somewhat elevated.

On the other hand, Borrell's analysis did not include the internal costs that businesses incur to create and distribute content. Other research has shown that most companies are using internal resources to produce a significant about of marketing content. Therefore, Borrell's estimates probably understate the amount of spending actually devoted to content marketing.

Despite these caveats, Borrell's analysis makes an important contribution to our body of knowledge about content marketing.

Gartner Research Maps the Landscape of Marketing Operations

 Image Source:  Gartner, Inc.

Gartner recently published the findings of the 2020 Gartner Marketing Operations and Organization Survey. The survey results are described in two reports - the 2020 Marketing Operations Survey report, and the Marketing Organization Survey 2020 report.

This year's survey was conducted in May and June, and produced 429 respondents in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. All respondents were required to be involved in decisions regarding marketing operations and/or the alignment of marketing budgets, resources and processes. The respondents came from a variety of industries, and 91% were with organizations having $1 billion or more in annual revenue.

Given the composition of this survey panel, the findings are most reflective of circumstances in large enterprises. However, many of the findings will also be useful for marketing leaders in mid-size companies.

Here's a  brief overview of some of the more interesting survey findings. Unless otherwise indicated, these findings are described in the 2020 Marketing Operations Survey report.

Adoption of Marketing Operations

Forty-nine percent of the survey respondents said that at least one marketing team in their organization has a dedicated marketing operations leader. Frankly, I was somewhat surprised by this finding. I would have expected this percentage to be higher, given the composition of the survey panel.

Other research has indicated that marketing operations functions have been implemented by many large and mid-size companies. In fact, Gartner's 2019 Marketing Organizational Survey found that more than two-thirds of marketing organizations have a discrete marketing operations function. And in Gartner's 2020-2021 CMO Spend Survey, marketing leaders ranked marketing operations as their third most vital marketing capability, behind only brand strategy and marketing analytics.

Current Scope of Marketing Operations

The 2020 survey also revealed that the responsibilities assigned to the marketing operations function vary significantly across companies. Gartner presented the survey participants with a list of 12 marketing activities and asked which of these activities was currently led or managed by their marketing operations function. The following table shows the percentage of respondents who selected each activity.

As this table shows, companies are using their marketing operations function to manage a wide variety of activities, and no activity was selected by a majority of survey respondents. This finding should not be surprising, given that marketing operations is still a relatively young business function.

Gartner hypothesizes that marketing leaders often create a marketing operations function to address whatever operational issues are most pressing at that time. Therefore, Gartner contends that the marketing operations role resembles that of a "chief of staff" whose primary job is to support the CMO.

Marketing Operations is Expanding

Gartner's research also indicates that marketing leaders plan to expand the scope of their marketing operations function in the near future. Gartner presented the survey participants a list of 12 marketing activities - plus a "none of the above" choice - and asked which of these activities would become part of their marketing operations mandate within the next 12 to 24 months. The five most frequently selected activities were:

• Data sourcing, consolidation and management (29% of respondents)
• Performance management, benchmarking and analytics (29%)
• Strategic planning, alignment and oversight (28%)
• Marketing technology management (27%)
• Maintaining talent audits and capacity needs (26%)

My Take

In my view, marketing operations is destined to become a more important function in the marketing departments of most large and mid-size companies for two main reasons. First, marketing is increasingly dependent on a multitude of technology applications, so the selection, implementation, integration, and management of technology tools is increasingly critical. That is a classic role for marketing operations.

Second, many companies are moving significant portions of marketing work in-house. In Gartner's 2020-2021 CMO Spend Survey, the respondents reported that they had shifted an average of about one-third of the work previously done by external suppliers to in-house teams. For "in-housing" to be successful, companies will need to design and implement effective and efficient work processes, and that too is a classic job for marketing operations.

Understanding the "Non-Rational" Dimensions of B2B Buying

 

It's now clear that human decision making is usually a mix of rational and non-rational components. The recognition of this fact began to emerge in the 1950's when leading behavioral scientists started challenging the concept of human rationality that had dominated mainstream economics for decades. The work of these scientists laid the foundation for a new discipline that would later be called behavioral economics.

In 2008, two books - Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein - raised public awareness of behavioral economics and put it on the radar screens of business and marketing leaders.

In reality, marketers have been using principles of the behavioral sciences for years, albeit largely unwittingly. As a 2010 article by McKinsey put it, "Long before behavioral economics had a name, marketers were using it."

A paper recently published by Google provides several fresh insights about how people make buying decisions. Decoding Decisions:  Making Sense of the Messy Middle is based on research conducted by Google in association with The Behavioural Architects, a research and consulting firm that specializes in the application of behavioral science to marketing.

Based on this research, Google and The Behavioural Architects developed a new model of the consumer buying process, which I described in my last post. The research also tested the influence of six heuristics and cognitive biases on buying decisions.

Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts or "rules of thumb" that humans use to simplify decision making. The use of heuristics enable us to reduce the mental effort required to make decisions. Behavioral scientists generally agree that heuristics can work reasonably well most of the time. However, the use of heuristics will also sometimes result in cognitive biases, which are decisions that deviate from what pure logic would indicate is more desirable.

Google and The Behavioural Architects evaluated the impact of six heuristics and biases on consumer buying decisions. The researchers observed 310,000 simulated purchase scenarios across 31 product categories. Each purchase scenario involved 1,000 participants who were asked to research a product they were actually in the market for.

Two of the six heuristics/biases tested in this study are particularly important for B2B marketers.

Social Proof

The most powerful heuristic identified in this study was social proof, which can be defined as our tendency to rely on the opinions and actions of other people when we're faced with a decision that involves ambiguity or uncertainty. In this study, social proof had the largest or second-largest effect in 28 of the 31 product categories tested.

While the Google research focused on consumer decision making, we also see evidence of social proof in the B2B space. For example, in a 2019 survey of technology buyers by TrustRadius, 52% of the respondents said they consult user reviews in their buying process, and they rated the trustworthiness of user reviews, on average, at 3.21 on a 4-point scale. In the 2020 Content Preferences Study by Demand Gen Report, 49% of the survey respondents reported they are using review sites to source information.

Authority Bias

Authority bias is the tendency of humans to rely on the opinions of individuals or firms that are viewed as authorities on a given subject. Google and The Behavioural Architects found that the authority bias was impactful in consumer buying decisions, although not quite as impactful as social proof. The authority bias was particularly strong in circumstances where consumers were less familiar with the product being researched.

We also see the authority bias at work in the B2B space. In the TrustRadius survey, 29% of the respondents said they used third-party publications in their buying process, and 24% reported using analyst reports. In the Demand Gen Report study, survey respondents rated content authored by a third-party publication or analyst as the type of content they give greatest credence to when evaluating a prospective purchase.

The Other Heuristics/Biases

The other four heuristics/biases evaluated in the Google research were:

• Category heuristics - rules of thumb and enable us to make fast and satisfactory decisions within a given product or service category.
• Power of now - our tendency to prefer products or services that are immediately available.
• Scarcity bias - our tendency to act when we believe that the offer of a product or service is limited in terms or time, quantity, or access.
• Power of free - the special appeal of a price that is exactly zero. Other studies have shown that we tend to prefer the offer of a free product over the offer of an alternative product that is more valuable, but not free.

These four heuristics and biases can also affect B2B buying decisions, although their impact is probably not as broad or significant as social proof and authority bias.

What B2B marketers should take from the research by Google and The Behavioural Architects is that understanding human decision making is essential for improving marketing performance.

Illustration courtesy of Abhijit Bhadurl via Flickr CC.

Google Takes a Fresh Look at the Buying Process

 Marketers have been striving to understand how people make buying decisions for decades. In fact, the earliest formal description of the buying process - Elmo Lewis' famous AIDA model - is now more than 100 years old. The effort to decode how people make buying decisions - and to identify what can influence those decisions - has been the marketing equivalent of the quest for the Holy Grail or the search for El Dorado.

A paper recently published by Google provides several fresh insights on this vital topic. Decoding Decisions:  Making Sense of the Messy Middle is based on an extensive research project conducted by Google in association with The Behavioural Architects, a research and consulting firm that focuses on the application of behavioral science to marketing.

The objective of Google's research was to answer what is probably the most important and most perplexing question in marketing:  How to people decide what they want to buy and who they want to buy it from? Much of the recent research about the "buyer's journey" has focused on the actions people take along the path to purchase and on what sources of information and communication channels they rely on. In contrast, the Google research focuses on the mental processes that people use when faced with a purchase decision.

Based on this research, Google and The Behavioural Architects created a new model of the buying process and identified several mental shortcuts (heuristics) that people use to help them make buying decisions. While this research focuses on consumer buying decisions, the buying process model works equally well for many B2B buying decisions, and some of the heuristics also apply to B2B.

I'll describe Google's model of the buying process in this post, and I'll discuss the heuristics in a future post.

The Google Buying Process Model

The diagram below shows the buying process model that emerged from the research by Google and The Behavioural Architects. This research involved the observation of 310,000 simulated purchase scenarios across 31 product categories. Individuals participating in the study were asked to research a product they were actually in the market for. All the product research was performed online.

The study revealed that between the event or events that trigger a buying process and an actual purchase, there is what Google calls the "messy middle." The researchers concluded that there are no "typical" purchase journeys, but they also found that most people do engage in two distinct mental processes that are key to understanding what happens in the messy middle.

• Exploration - This is an expansive group of activities during which people explore their options, learn about products or services, brands, and companies, and expand their consideration sets.
• Evaluation - This is an inherently reductive group of activities during which people evaluate their options and narrow down their choices.

What makes the middle "messy" is that many people tend to jump back and forth between these two types of activities multiple times during the buying process, particularly when the potential purchase involves a complex or high consideration product or service. Google represents this back and forth movement as an endless loop in its buying process model.

This behavior creates a significant challenge for marketers because these two types of activities are cognitively different and therefore require different marketing tactics and different types of messaging and content. It can be difficult for marketers to discern whether a particular person is in exploration or evaluation mode, but if they send the wrong message at the wrong time, the prospective buyer may well eliminate their product or service from consideration.

Google also argues that buyers' activities in the messy middle take place against a backdrop of the buyer's awareness of (and perceptions about) products or services, brands, and companies in a given category. These perceptions are often driven by advertising, but they can also be influenced by stories in the media, information provided by family, friends, and associates, and what buyers have read or heard online.

Google calls this phenomenon "exposure," and they contend it is not a stage or step in the buying process, but rather ". . . an always-on, constantly changing backdrop that remains present throughout the duration of the decision-making process."

As I noted earlier, the research by Google and The Behavioural Architects focused on how consumers make buying decisions, but the buying process model also applies to B2B buying decisions. If anything the middle is even messier in B2B because many B2B buying decisions involve multiple people who are moving between exploration and evaluation at different times and speeds.

In my next post, I discuss what Google and The Behavioural Architects discovered about the role of heuristics in buying decisions.

Source of images:  Google