Section five:
Helping customers buy
With this level of agreement on what matters, we could reasonably expect marketers to be well prepared to give buyers the kind of resources they need to get their elusive colleagues on board with making a purchase.
Yet here, we see gaps emerging in the self-service experience…
A quarter (25%) of buyers want to be able to get all the information they need online before contacting a salesperson. Yet this is offered by just 9% of marketers.
Twenty five%
of buyers want to be able to get all the information they need online before contacting a salesperson
Nine%
of marketers offer this
Some 28% of buyers want to be able to view testimonials, case studies and reviews from named businesses. Again, only 9% of marketers offer this on their sites.
And we see 27% of buyers wanting to be able to access references from existing users that they can contact directly. Just 5% of marketers offer this.
of buyers want to be able to access references
of marketers offer this on their sites
But hold up, 42% of marketers do offer pre-recorded demos. Shame that under a quarter (23%) of buyers want these.
And 40% of marketers ensure customers get easy access to the sales team. Of course, as we’ve seen, just a fifth (21%) of customers see value in this.
Forty two%
of marketers offer pre-recorded demos
Twenty three%
of buyers want these
Looking across comments that regularly appear on social media, you’ll often see complaints about how difficult it is to access pricing information on many vendors’ sites. So we asked whether this was a deal-breaker.
Surprisingly, just 18% of buyers put this in their top three key factors for making the purchase decision faster and easier.
Seen as a whole, these gaps mean that marketers could be squandering valuable opportunities to make the research-to-purchase journey as painless and friction-free as possible. Because where buyers encounter friction, their first instinct is not to struggle through, it’s to go elsewhere.
