Why You Should Shift From Nurturing Leads to Influencing Accounts

Today I’m going to share a real buying journey to help you understand the value of content for B2B sales.

The image depicts the buying journey of a B2B account. Each "dot" on the timeline represents a touchpoint from a person—an employee of the target account (whether or not they belong to the buying committee)—with a company's content, be it an impression, a video view, or engagement, organic or paid.

It is during this period, long before a conversion form and before the pipeline, that content can play its primary role: participating in building purchase preference.

As you can see, much of this journey occurred anonymously. The contact didn’t fill out a form, didn’t download a gated asset; the buying journey remained anonymous.

But the fact that the contact doesn't exist as a lead for the company doesn't stop the journey from continuing. People keep consuming content, forming perceptions, and eventually bringing those perceptions into the buying committee.

Research by DreamData analyzed over 3.5 million B2B buying journeys and revealed that the average time between the first impression with a LinkedIn ad and first revenue is 281 days. In the case illustrating this post, it was 347 calendar days between the first touchpoint and conversion.

The research also revealed that the time an account spends in the sales pipeline dropped from 62 to 52 days, which seems to make sense considering that much of the research and preference-building time happens before entering the pipeline.

Why This Matters for Your Strategy

And why does this matter to your business? You shouldn't be nurturing leads anymore; you should be influencing accounts.

The buying decision that could turn that contact into a lead in the future needs to be influenced today, while they aren't actively buying yet. The content you produce must work intentionally to take an active part in shaping this decision, in such a subtle and insightful way that the buying committee doesn't even realize they already have a preferred company.

And if these data points and evidence still weren't enough for you to understand the importance of content production for decision-making, another study—this one from 6sense—indicates that a company on the buying committee's pre-contact wishlist wins in about 80% of cases, and 95% of ultimate winners were already on the buyer's shortlist on day one.

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References:
* Dreamdata: Analyzing 3.5M+ B2B buying journeys; 281-day average journey duration.
* 6sense: Pre-contact wishlist favorite wins ~80% of deals, with 95% of winners on the day-one shortlist.