Rob Sanchez is CEO of Anteriad, a leading provider of B2B marketing solutions. Data-Driven. Tech-Enabled. Growth-Obsessed.
There is an interesting conundrum inherent in today’s “self-service” buyer. Forrester finds that while more younger B2B buyers are embracing self-service compared to older generations, they are also more likely to express dissatisfaction with their buying experience. Technology like AI can help deliver automation scale and relevance, but buyers do typically want human expertise on top of that.
Even though data, technology and analytics are foundations of B2B marketing, I have found that delivering the right experience for prospects and providing expertise for clients is important to their success and ours. Complementary human insights can amplify those data and technology solutions in the form of strategic planning, technical integration, data strategy, reporting and more. Service, when done right, is actually a powerful way to scale the products we offer.
If you’re a B2B marketer moving your organization toward a self-service model, keep in mind that “self-service” is not the same thing as “no service.” B2B buyers want to be in control, and self-service capabilities can help them gain that sense of control, but they often need more. Here are some insights I’ve gained over the years on how we as B2B marketers can get further faster when we deliver strategic value to amplify the experience.
Where Service Belongs In the Buyer Journey
The B2B buyer journey is changing quickly. Numerous B2B marketers now have customers who act more like B2C consumers. Winterberry Group found that 58% of B2B marketers have customers who research online more than before, and 54% have said that “social media has become an increasingly important source of information for customers.” This has led many B2B sellers to move their businesses to digital channels, automate portions of the buyer journey, and use data to segment their audiences to deliver personalized marketing and content.
The “path to purchase” is often complex and difficult. This breakdown of a typical buyer journey illustrates many of the places where services and support are valuable. For example, in the review process, you need to be better at providing prospects with the information they need than your competitors. This might include a live customer service hotline or a custom data report. In the purchase decision step, when you’re helping prospects determine if your service is the best fit, you might utilize a special demo or simulation. And in the engagement step, you can use strategies like custom training, technology integration, database configuration and more to ensure your onboarding experience for new clients is exceptional.
These human-led activities can serve to complement and augment the new data-driven buyer journey. Marketing teams can still segment audiences, automate triggered campaigns and create self-service websites, but you can also map out your new buyer journey to see where you need to layer in support that meets or exceeds your prospects’ needs.
Improving AI With Human Insight
Just like the tech that came before it, AI requires deep collaboration and customization—very few AI processes can be completely automated and ignored. Humans still have the best understanding of broader business contexts, data quality, regulations, target audiences and many other factors that need to be considered and applied to AI inputs and outputs. AI models improve with human input and typically need the expertise of a human to be molded into something relevant.
Take the example of a B2B company that sells data and technology products to financial services companies. That data is likely becoming extremely complex. It might need to comply with different state and country regulations, needing to be encrypted or reconfigured to comply with internal requirements for different customers. What’s more, customers might need human experts to help them make the most of the data they’re buying. They might lack the resources needed to segment the data, build models or move the data through their processes. The B2B company has an opportunity to augment their data products with valuable human insight, providing a custom experience that can facilitate a tighter relationship.
Offering Best-In-Class Service
While there are always baseline services that can help move buyers through the funnel and answer questions, the real win is when you can create a truly differentiated experience with services that help customers use your company’s products more effectively. Now that generative AI is working its way into so many parts of B2B marketing, I believe it’s important that marketers support this technology with expertise to create the best possible connections with buyers and customers. In my experience, this comes when you do the hard work to truly understand your buyer journey and your customers’ needs, and that means prioritizing customer relationships.
The deeper a company knows its customers, the more they are able to drive their business forward with better product development, thought leadership and support. Adding these kinds of services to your offerings can not only help keep prospects in the purchase funnel but act as a true competitive differentiator. After all, despite the move to self-service, a human connection (subscription required) is still a top driver of positive B2B experiences.
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