Introducing PathFactory’s New Buyer Enablement Capabilities
There’s something familiar about logging into today’s leading consumer platforms. When I open up Netflix, I’m usually served a delightful array of British comedies. Don’t mind if I do! I’ll also see categories like Watch it Again, Recommended for You, and Popular on Netflix, making it easy for me to find something I’ll enjoy from an intimidatingly large database.
Similarly, Spotify has Discover Weekly and Heavy Rotation. It knows I love David Bowie, 90s Britpop, and alternative 80s, and that my guilty pleasure is Electric Light Orchestra. (Shh don’t tell anyone!) My Amazon account has Top picks for you that offer me new swimming goggles and art supplies for my young daughter and son. The moment I arrive on these platforms, I can instantly see myself in the experience. My journey is evident, and where to go next is clear.
This level of micro-personalization is an obvious differentiator for these platforms from their competitors. To be the best at what they do, they have each become intimately familiar with your past content consumption, like which movies you’ve finished, if you’ve been listening to an artist regularly, and which products you’re researching. They each show you exactly where left off and have developed sophisticated machine learning algorithms to uncover fantastically accurate recommendations, and a delightfully efficient experience for the consumer.
The B2B buying disconnect
Flip to your average B2B buying process—it is nothing like this! It focuses on poor buying signals—like clicks and page visits—and uses them to disseminate content on the marketer’s terms, creating tremendous friction for buyers. Buyers struggle to find relevant content they need to make purchase decisions, and what’s worse, they’re often bombarded with content that doesn’t help their journey at all.
This poor experience for the buyer is compounded by the siloed use of content across channels. A buyer sees one asset in an ad, something different in an email, and then can’t find either of those assets on the website. The typical B2B customer experience is often frustrating at best, and your buyers fail to see themselves—a clear reflection of their needs and aspirations—in your marketing.
At PathFactory, we believe that the goal of all B2B marketing teams should be buyer enablement. According to a recent Gartner survey, 77% of buyers rated their B2B purchase experiences as “extremely complex or difficult.” Gartner says that “what customers truly want in this complex buying environment is information that helps them simplify the purchase process.”
When marketers enable buyers with everything they need to progress forward in their search, they can move quickly and easily to a purchasing decision, creating value for both the buyer and the marketer. It’s the vision PathFactory has had for B2B from the beginning: to predictively walk buyers through their content journey, removing friction while collecting essential data on the quality of each content transaction.
New buyer enablement capabilities
When it comes to their website, marketers often expect existing personalization tools to solve their buyer enablement problem. This nearly always means macro-personalization—for example, targeting segmented industries with specific campaigns. This solves part of the problem, but rarely has B2B seen the micro-personalization capability that leading consumer platforms do so well… until now.
Today PathFactory is announcing Guide, Concierge, and Website Tracking, which will allow you to provide frictionless buying experiences across your website and create a consistent experience across channels. These new tools allow demand generation marketers to better accomplish their nurture and conversion goals on the website.
Guide is new website content promoter—powered by AI—designed to serve your prospects micro-personalized content recommendations, anywhere on the website. Categories like “Recommended for you,” “Popular,” “ and “History” seamlessly move buyers through the website, ultimately serving them the content they need to progress forward and confidently make a purchase decision. Think of it as an always-on, dynamic nurture capability for your website.
Using visitor audience segment data and our unique, proprietary content consumption data, our AI engine can make the most accurate possible recommendations. Content handpicked by you can complement these recommendations, to enable the buyer with everything they need to progress forward in their journey.
Concierge is personalized resource center, curated based on the content preferences of individual buyers. It’s designed to guide prospects deeper down the funnel and see themselves in your marketing. Think of this as the Netflix home screen for your B2B buyers!
While PathFactory has always been able to track the time each individual spends on every asset inside a Content Track, with Website Tracking, we’re introducing the capability to measure the time they spend on every web page (regardless of whether that page was in a content track). As always, this content consumption data can be used to power more accurate lead qualification, and to show sales exactly what content prospects have consumed so they can have the most relevant, productive conversations possible.
This new suite of tools is designed to complement existing investments in website CMS and personalization technologies. The rise of conversational marketing shows that enabling buyers through easy access to the sales team is of critical importance, and this new suite of capabilities will allow your buyer access to all the content they need, even before they’re willing to engage sales.
This allows your buyer to make faster purchasing decisions and leads to increased funnel conversion and velocity for you. Less content will go unused as your buyers will be able to find it more easily. The results of ABM campaigns will be stronger as they’ll go beyond the macro-personalization capabilities that are so prevalent today. Ultimately your buyers will encounter a far superior experience and your marketing will gain a competitive advantage.
Ultimately, in today’s buyer-centric world, customers are in the driver’s seats of their own journeys. While marketers don’t have the power to control these independent, self-determined buyers, the savviest marketers can fuel these journeys by equipping their buyers with the tools they need to progress. Marketers can’t be the drivers, but they can certainly give buyers a map, a guidebook, and maybe some snacks for the journey—a journey that leads them towards the destination of becoming your next customer.
To learn more, request a demo today!
