Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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Survey: What Do Buyers Really Want?

By Juliann Grant, Vice President and Scott Sommer, Jacobs Engineering

Last month at the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit we presented findings from a survey we ran over the summer to highlight buyer preferences. After all, those of us who market products and services to engineers and scientists want to know what really works from the buyer's point of view, not ours. Often times, marketers can get caught up in their own ideas and not really serve up what matters to your audience. Mediocre marketing doesn't cut it anymore, and we are all looking for new insights to make our programs, offers, incentives more appealing. So we thought we'd share some of those findings with you and hopefully affect some of your future marketing plans.

The Survey Sample

We sent a 9 question survey to approximately 300 end users who are buyers of technology products and services. We received 77 responses in total, which did provide consistent results to draw some conclusions.

Buyer Contact Preferences

One question that we get at Telesian is how often should a company communicate with their customers and prospects? How much is too much and how much is too little? Our first questions were centered on understanding these preferences.

72% of folks in our survey want to be contacted at least once per month. They realize that technology changes and things happen quickly. They want to stay up to speed with information.

But the problem is how many communications are they receiving weekly? What are all our communications competing with on a week to week basis?

When we asked how much "stuff" do they receive in a week, the study showed 90% receive anywhere from 25-100 vendor communications in a given week, with 54% of that number getting on average 50-100 communications.

With that kind of contact pollution, what are they really reading? What is getting through? Or are they just glazing over and deleting emails that we are sending them? This is where it gets interesting.

The 1 in 100 Factor

So we know that our buyers are receiving many contacts per week across many vendors. We wanted to find out next how often did they actually read and take action on the communications that they are receiving:

61% survey respondents indicated they read less than 10% of the information they receive through vendor contacts. If we included those who indicated they read less than 25% of their communications, that number would jump to 88%. The message is clear: They are not doing more scanning than reading. Much.

But, we didn't stop there, because we wanted to know how often did they take action on a vendor communication:

80% take action on a communication less than 10% of the time. See chart below, the top range percentages indicate how often they respond.

So what does this all mean:

• An average buyer digests only about 1 in 10 marketing contacts
• Of those 1 in 10, only about 1 in 10 lead to a follow-up or significant action.
• That means about 1 in 100 marketing contacts results in a buyer taking any further action.

Is this acceptable for the volume of marketing dollars we spend? It's concerning at best. Let's take a look at the types of communications survey respondents received during a week's period:

One of the things that jumped out at us was the top five categories of marketing contacts are all non-personal, passive contact strategies. There is a lack of personal contact by phone call, visit, etc, and social media sites like Twitter are relatively new. There appears to be a heavy reliance on email communications as our way to "dialog" with our customers and prospects. Maybe we need to be thinking of ways to balance that out a bit. Sales and business development folks should not be so shy to reach out in person, nothing substitutes for real human interaction. In addition, social media tools offer new communication channels to bring more intimacy and open up 2-way communications.

So, What Do Buyers Want?

There' s got to be something we can do to help increase the chances of winning the 1 in 100 lottery of communications. So we asked a couple of probing questions:

• What are a few things that you find will make you stop and read a marketing ad?
  • Free stuff: training, downloads, webcasts, whitepapers, software, etc. (>20%)
  • Customer testimonials
  • Information on new technology/innovation
  • Technical information on products
  • Clues to increased performance, greater ROI, better yields, etc.
  • Answers to problems, not widgets
  • Well-organized, well-presented ads

Direct quotes from survey participants:

"Sample parts, app engineer assistance on my specific project, VAR discount offer, good and detailed technical info, application notes and examples"

"Technical specifications, pricing, whitepaper downloads."

"Ads that specifically offer technical information. Not only specifically for the product but also general for continued education purposes or refreshers."

"Offers the answer to a problem rather than look at my cool widget."

• What are a few things that you would like to see in promotions from vendors that would help improve your response to the messages the vendors are trying to convey?
  • Video demonstrations and live demos
  • Unbiased, end-user based comparative data and testimonials
  • "Ruthless honesty"
  • Web links to entire catalog, with pricing, applications data, and technical manuals
  • References to standards compliance
  • Case studies with ROI benefits (>15%)
  • Respect for privacy (email, contact info, etc.)

Direct quotes from survey participants:

"If the ad is about a 'Cutting Edge' technology or product I will be more inclined to open it. "

"New products that I haven't seen before. Not "New and Improved" like laundry detergent."

"I will target ads that either contain specifics of information that I might use with my job, or ads that offer a link to detailed information."

"As an end-user of products, I will always look for products that may be tested in our plant to prove their value."

"..with our 'green' push, I'd really like to start seeing real comprehensive energy usage numbers."

Conclusions:

1. Re-evaluate the balance of your communication methods. See if you are relying too heavily upon email and identify new ways to mix it up, including some customer love visits.
   
   
2. Give them what they want. How well are you providing information that your buyers want to read? Go back and review the list of things that do stop a buyer in their tracks and add a few new items to the mix. Remember they want:
   
   
   • Free stuff: Make it of a technical/educational nature.
     
     
   • Relevant information: How can you strike a chord with your readers?
     
     
   • Presentation counts: A well formatted email or paper can help improve the readership of that communication. Make sure that you are presenting information so that it is readable and pulls the reader into the material. Mix up the variables too, if you are too heavy on PDF downloads, then turn one of those pieces into a podcast or video to allow people to get information the way they prefer.
     
     
   • Juicy subject: It goes back to sharing relevant information - but make sure your subject line has the right hooks in it to turn a buyer's head.
     
     
3. Introduce new ways to solicit buyer feedback into your marketing and sales programs. Look into how social media tools can help your company become a better listener, and offer ways for your audience to contribute to the conversation through two-way dialog opportunities.