Understanding Digital Body Language
Learning to recognize clues during the online sales process will improve the measurability of marketing - and its success.
By Steve Woods, Eloqua
Apr. 20, 2009
As a software buyer progresses through the various phases of the buying process, he or she interacts with the vendor's organization by seeking, receiving, using, and responding to information. In the past, all interactions were largely face to face or by telephone and the sales professional was able to read the subtle clues and nuances - the forward-leaning posture, the raised eyebrows, the tone of voice, and more.
Can that same level of interaction and interpretation be achieved in the digital world? Can marketers define and read a "digital body language" that offers consistently predictive clues and insights into buyer behavior?
Absolutely.
Digital body language is an art and science that revolves around detecting and understanding prospective buyers' signals and intentions to better communicate with them. The transition that began a decade ago with the arrival of the Internet and its many new sources of information, will require a significant rethinking on the part of marketers, sales professionals, and the organizations they serve.
The Shift in the Funnel
First and foremost, the increasing relevance of digital body language is creating a very real shift in the hand-off between marketing and sales. Marketing is moving further into the buying process as the buyer leverages new sources of information instead of relationships with sales professionals. That's placing a greater premium on the marketer's ability to create, target, and deliver relevant and credible information.
Similarly, that increasing relevance makes it even more important to capture, understand, and process the subtle signals that are part of the marketing process - even online. In so doing, the marketer can gain an increasing ability to objectively - and more fully - understand the prospective buyer, his purchasing inclinations, intentions, concerns, objections, and more. These breakthrough insights also bring a corresponding responsibility to the marketer to ensure that the leads handed off to the sales team reflect those that are most likely to purchase - with appropriate dollar volumes and timeframes.
Marketing Based on Digital Body Language
Once marketers begin to leverage an awareness of the buyer's digital body language, the very approach to marketing itself begins to change. An ever-increasing body of knowledge about where the buyer is in the buying process, what they're interested in, and how interested they are all combine to enable the marketer to target subsequent messaging to the buyer based on that buyer's demonstrated preferences and stage in the buying process.
Traditionally, the best marketers could hope for were campaigns predicated on demographic or firmographic criteria - the target's job title, role, or industry. There was little to no awareness of the stage in the buying process that the prospective buyer was in, leading to messages that did not optimally or fully connect with the intended audience. It's like a sales professional delivering the same presentation to every group of potential buyers while completely disregarding whether they are fully engaged and interested or distant and skeptical. To fully leverage the buyer's digital body language, the marketer must approach marketing process with two important concepts in mind. These two concepts form the foundation of a new approach to thinking about marketing approaches.
1. Prospect Profiling
A marketer must first observe prospects in all interactions with the company. But where can you gather this kind of information on a prospect's area and level of interests? It comes from multiple sources - and, in fact, multiple sources are required to achieve a level of validity.
Like most data analyses, care must be taken in the selection, aggregation, and interpretation. Body language is comprised of multiple tiny details of posture, expression, motion, and tone. But just as we interpret it at a higher level - grouping the signals collectively under the label of "interest" or "hesitation" - so, too, must we interpret digital body language.
-
Can that same level of interaction and interpretation be achieved in the digital world? Can marketers define and read a "digital body language" that offers consistently predictive clues and insights into buyer behavior?
Absolutely.
Digital body language is an art and science that revolves around detecting and understanding prospective buyers' signals and intentions to better communicate with them. The transition that began a decade ago with the arrival of the Internet and its many new sources of information, will require a significant rethinking on the part of marketers, sales professionals, and the organizations they serve.
The Shift in the Funnel
First and foremost, the increasing relevance of digital body language is creating a very real shift in the hand-off between marketing and sales. Marketing is moving further into the buying process as the buyer leverages new sources of information instead of relationships with sales professionals. That's placing a greater premium on the marketer's ability to create, target, and deliver relevant and credible information.
Similarly, that increasing relevance makes it even more important to capture, understand, and process the subtle signals that are part of the marketing process - even online. In so doing, the marketer can gain an increasing ability to objectively - and more fully - understand the prospective buyer, his purchasing inclinations, intentions, concerns, objections, and more. These breakthrough insights also bring a corresponding responsibility to the marketer to ensure that the leads handed off to the sales team reflect those that are most likely to purchase - with appropriate dollar volumes and timeframes.
Marketing Based on Digital Body Language
Once marketers begin to leverage an awareness of the buyer's digital body language, the very approach to marketing itself begins to change. An ever-increasing body of knowledge about where the buyer is in the buying process, what they're interested in, and how interested they are all combine to enable the marketer to target subsequent messaging to the buyer based on that buyer's demonstrated preferences and stage in the buying process.
Traditionally, the best marketers could hope for were campaigns predicated on demographic or firmographic criteria - the target's job title, role, or industry. There was little to no awareness of the stage in the buying process that the prospective buyer was in, leading to messages that did not optimally or fully connect with the intended audience. It's like a sales professional delivering the same presentation to every group of potential buyers while completely disregarding whether they are fully engaged and interested or distant and skeptical. To fully leverage the buyer's digital body language, the marketer must approach marketing process with two important concepts in mind. These two concepts form the foundation of a new approach to thinking about marketing approaches.
1. Prospect Profiling
A marketer must first observe prospects in all interactions with the company. But where can you gather this kind of information on a prospect's area and level of interests? It comes from multiple sources - and, in fact, multiple sources are required to achieve a level of validity.
Like most data analyses, care must be taken in the selection, aggregation, and interpretation. Body language is comprised of multiple tiny details of posture, expression, motion, and tone. But just as we interpret it at a higher level - grouping the signals collectively under the label of "interest" or "hesitation" - so, too, must we interpret digital body language.
-
