Back in 2000, Google came out with a revolutionary advertising product - AdWords, and with it marketers were given access to an incredible tool. Adwords gave marketers something amazing - the ability to target ads to people at the point of purchase, matching their ads to user’s intent. You could market truck parts to someone who happened to be searching for truck parts. 

Thus began the key income driver of one of the most innovative companies ever. However, in recent years, Google has been working to diversify beyond that for a few different reasons. Adwords continues to work for certain situations, but consumer behavior has changed significantly since then. Some of the best research on this is actually from Google’s own research on the Zero Moment of Truth. 

The Zero Moment of Truth research showed that consumers are embracing a much more complex buying process than previously appreciated. This is largely driven by the fact that they have a wealth of information available to them even compared to a few years ago. Rather than just searching for something they intend to buy, they tend to research a lot more about competitors, and attempt to educate themselves extensively before making a purchase decision. 

The study even shows that the number of sources people research before making a decision doubled from 5.2 to 10.4 between 2010 and 2011. That’s across all age groups and industries. They found that even people buying consumer packaged goods are starting to research before buying online. If people research for items costing less than $10, you have to assume they’ll be researching even more on the products and services your company offers if you’re in the B2B market. 

Google has done a good job of getting it’s point across about Pay-Per-Click with Adwords over the years and how it captures prospects at the point of intent. That’s largely still true. If I’m searching for “best in class enterprise resource planning system”, I’m probably in the market for an ERP. 

But according to the ZMOT research, this is probably 10 steps too late in my research. I started researching this at least 10 search terms ago, and probably a month earlier when I first typed in “accounting manufacturing integrations”.

Preparing for Extended Research

How do you handle someone like that, who’s so early on in the research process that they can’t enumerate what they even want and are still a long way off from making a purchasing decision?

Providing useful content around that subject is a good first step. SMBs will probably need more help establishing a need for your system as opposed to enterprises which will be more interested in the technical capabilities of it and how it handles large companies. 

Think about designing content that addresses the needs of your various buyer types and what information they may want to know at this early stage in the process. Helping them to establish that you can integrate disparate systems like the accounting and manufacturing systems is a good step, and then establishing some of the business cases for why they may want to do so would also be helpful. 

Also work to pair accessible information with something that people will considering downloading and/or signing up for. This provides you with a great list of leads that may be early in the buying process, but that if treated right, can become very educated prospects. It also gives you the ability to follow up with them and to further assist them in their process.

Building out education paths for prospects isn’t getting any easier, but in a world where people begin researching long before they’re even certain of what they’re looking for, it’s more and more important. Rather than hoping to catch people at the very last moment in their decision with an Adwords campaign, it can be more beneficial to provide them with the resources to educate themselves. 

This gives you a few big advantages:

You can educate prospects on your own terms.

Your company probably has something unique or proprietary about how you work or how you treat customers. Educate customers to expect that. 

It's an opportunity to build your brand.

Becoming a trusted source of information not just about your own products, but about the industry in general is a valuable achievement. If you can help customers genuinely learn, not just help them make a purchasing decision, you gain the opportunity to educate them more in the future. This is a great opportunity for repeat business.

Educate your competitors prospects.

Putting together content comparing your offering compared to a competitor isn’t revolutionary. But by giving a clear explanation of the differences and advantages, and actually educating visitors, you’ll be more likely to pick them off.

Creating content that’s designed to educate is the future of lead generation and customer acquisition. This can work with the most experienced people or the complete beginner, but if you actually educate someone on the value of your product, they’ll be much more likely to decide to purchase from you. Ditch the PPC campaigns that target people at the very last moment and instead focus on the education journey your prospect is on. 

Need help educating your prospects? Download our content calendar to get started today: