Create Assets to Accelerate the Buyer Journey

Increase high-quality leads, and drive revenue with a data-driven asset strategy.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Data-driven buyer journey asset optimization

Getting the buyer journey right has never been more important. Since buyers frequently engage in simultaneous buyer journeys involving multiple competitors, companies that ignore the importance of a data-driven strategy risk losing to competitors with a better-built asset strategy. With so much riding on the successful acceleration of the buyer journey, marketers must identify and collect the right data to optimize assets and foster a successful journey for our buyers.

Globally, low-value asset strategies lead to missed revenue targets, poor growth, and a low CAC to LTV ratio (ROI). Said differently, we see high buyer journey abandonment rates when the assets we produce fail to convert. And low conversions that stifle growth and damage brand identity can even lead to leadership losing confidence in the ability of the CMO.

More than 60% of content marketers say they need to create better marketing assets for their prospects and buyers. Yet, they also feel the pressure of limited time and budget when creating assets. Constrained by resources, they are left guessing what type of asset will deliver the highest value for the lowest effort, and they lack a clear understanding of how buyers value marketing asset types, leaving marketers without a roadmap to success.

Our research shows leaders use data to make the right decisions when it comes to creating and retiring assets. A data-driven asset strategy optimizes the buyer journey, takes the guesswork out of the types of assets the buyer likes, and helps marketers decide when to sunset outdated assets. Retiring outdated assets and building high-value marketing assets increases ROI and grows brand reputation. Content marketers must create high-value assets for their buyers and then deliver them with the right cadence to meet the right stage of their journey.

Our approach teaches marketers to identify and interview their valuable buyers and then collect the right data to optimize the cadence and nurture sequences. Building the right "What's in it for me?" (WIIFM) message optimizes a journey and is a data-based approach to building competitive differentiation.

Terra Higginson
Principal Research Director, Marketing Advisory
SoftwareReviews

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Content marketers without a data-driven asset strategy experience the following:

• Poor conversions and low engagement from existing assets.
• Assets that focus on the product instead of the buyer's needs.
• High customer acquisition cost (CAC) and poor-performing campaigns.

Common Obstacles

Content marketers often experience the following barriers that prevent them from creating the right assets:

• Inadequate budget.
• Inadequate staffing.
• Lack of experience.
• Leadership overinvests in sales initiatives.
• Lack of integration between Sales and Marketing.

SoftwareReviews' Approach

Using the SoftwareReviews methodology, content marketers will learn to use a data-driven approach to:

• Benchmark current asset performance.
• Retire outdated and low-performing assets.
• Identify the right asset type, the right delivery channel, and the right cadence to move valuable buyers through their journey.
• Test and optimize assets and paid campaigns.

SoftwareReviews Insight

Buyer journey interviews, outreach cadence, and A/B testing are essential for successfully designing and activating your lead magnets. Data-driven assets deliver value to the buyer, accelerate their journey, and lower the CAC to LTV ratio.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help content marketers who are facing these challenges:

• Low engagement: Poor assets result in disengaged prospects. Content is left unread, and many old pieces are outdated.
• Poor conversions: Uninteresting assets lead to poor conversions. Even worse, if the cadence is wrong, they risk losing annoyed prospects, or if it isn't fast enough, they risk losing bored prospects.
• Lack of metrics: Many marketers struggle to measure and record asset performance. Without this data, marketers are left to guess at what is working and what is not.
• Myopic focus on product: SaaS companies are notorious for focusing the content on their product and their company, instead of focusing content on the pain points of the customer and customer-focused value.
• High customer acquisition cost: Poor content doesn't help move the buyer through their journey. This leads to higher customer acquisition costs and a higher burden on expensive sales staff.

42% of B2B marketers feel they are creating the right assets. This means that about half of B2B marketers are struggling to create assets that deliver measurable results and contribute to business goals.

– Content Marketing Institute, 2021

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

• Inadequate budget: Lean marketing budgets mean that a CMO often creates piecemeal assets instead of having an adequate budget to invest in creating high-quality assets.
• Inadequate staffing: Small marketing teams mean that individuals are wearing many hats. A long list of to-do items can mean consistently creating the right B2B assets gets pushed to the bottom.
• Lack of experience in moving beyond marketing campaigns: Many marketers lack expertise in how to move beyond focusing on campaigns to thinking about how marketing campaigns create the structure of the journey for buyers.
• Leadership overinvests in sales initiatives: An outdated understanding of the buyer journey fails to recognize the importance of marketing assets to accelerate revenue objectives.
• Lack of integration between sales and marketing: Leadership fails to grasp the importance of creating a full view of the buyer and a seamless journey through the marketing and sales funnel.

There is a crisis of relevance between companies and consumers.
– Accenture, 2023

Tactics for creating assets to accelerate the buyer journey

Focus on making data-driven decisions for the asset strategy.

The asset strategy process

Asset strategy requires identifying and collecting the right information to make data-driven decisions about asset types, sequence, and cadence.

Identify marketing assets

Evaluate your existing marketing asset inventory.

Marketing asset (noun): Any digital or non-digital content, image, video, interactive web app, website, report, etc., that a business uses to promote itself or a product.

Similar to financial assets, marketing assets drive revenue. Markets should create a diverse portfolio of assets to move a buyer through their journey. Data-driven selection of assets is essential in the acceleration of the buyer journey.

Key Actions: Content marketing leaders offer buyers a wide variety of asset types. The types of assets are listed in the table on the right. Leaders should also identify and record asset metrics and set objectives for asset performance. Finally, they should track how their asset strategy impacts revenue and acceleration of the sales cycles.

Top B2B Digital Marketing Assets

Benchmark marketing assets

Focus on metrics that accelerate the buyer journey, such as conversion rate.

Asset types that are specifically used as lead magnets are categorized into a lead magnet category. The remaining assets and benchmarks list metrics that are most commonly associated with the acceleration of the buyer journey.

Assets that are commonly used as lead magnets include: Animation, comparison chart, datasheet, infographic, white paper, eBook, case study, image, presentation, testimonial, technical paper, ROI calculator, report, article post

Key Actions: Content marketing leaders should record their current asset performance and compare it to the industry benchmarks on the right. They ensure they are recording and benchmarking metrics that are relevant for accelerating the buyer journey.

Identify the metrics that matter most in accelerating the buyer journey

Sunset low-performing assets

Identify and remove assets that slow the buyer journey.

Assets that perform poorly slow the buyer journey, damage the brand, and reduce long-term competitive viability for the company. Those assets that are well below industry benchmarks should be evaluated for either retirement (sunsetting) or an update.

The SoftwareReviews Asset Sunsetting Tool helps marketers collect the right data to determine which assets are no longer effective and which assets simply require updates.

Industry asset benchmarks are only part of the story behind asset improvement. Assets should also be evaluated on the basis of year-over-year performance, feedback from internal and external customers, whether the asset supports the product's competitive differentiation, and whether it supports the company strategy.

Key actions: Sunset all assets that exhibit declines year-over-year, negative feedback from internal or external customers, poor competitive differentiation, or those that do not support the company strategy.

Measure personas according to engagement value

Use lead scoring to identify your most valuable and engaged buyer personas.

Key actions: Segment your personas and ensure the personas you select have a high LTV. You can measure buyer persona engagement value by:

1. Using lead scoring to identify the engagement of various personas.
2. Comparing it to customer lifetime value.

Content marketing leaders focus their efforts on creating assets for the personas that spend a lot and are engaged with the company. They also focus on moving buyers that have, up until now, spent more time and money with the competition to the upper right quadrant. They do this through a targeted asset journey that leads the buyers that have historically bought with competitors to become more engaged with your company and product.