By: Matt Egan and Doni Lerner
Generative AI has definitely turned up the volume on inbox noise. When your competitors use Generative AI to personalize at scale and the inbox noise has exponentially grown from its already dire state, how do you win an outsized share of attention?
Let’s explore. Lowering the barrier to entry means content proliferates; buyers receive more personalized outreach, but content is less trustworthy and merely carries the appearance of being insightful. Customers become confused, maybe irritated, and conversion rates go down. The easier it becomes to create attractive content that lacks trust, the more impactful it will be to create authentic content. Everything else will get lost in the wash.
Today, at the beginning of this revolution, sales cycles take five times the number of touches to close than five years ago. (Jeremy Donvan, Insight Partners)
When was the last time a customer said, “I wish vendors created more content for me?”
The answer lives in the details and outside the box.
Earlier this year, Foundry pulled together research (from both CMI and Foundry) showing two major trends – First, 96% of buyers want content tailored to them by Industry, Tech Stack, Company Size, and Job Role.
I don’t know 96% of any group of people that agree on anything, perhaps we should listen.
Second, the number one content type buyers prefer is from real user experiences and product testing.
Focus on your buyer. Give your customer the many content insights they need, when they need them. Engage them, and nurture them through the buying process with a blend of insightful content from peers and experts, and tailor it to their role, market, and vertical.
Versioning for curation and personalization at scale is an excellent use of Generative AI in content creation. You can choose channels and formats that suit your organization and customer base. But you must start from an information source that adds real value and insight.
Foundry’s buyer journey research tells us that 91% of ITDMs find challenging to source the high-quality content they need to make purchasing decisions. They look for information from tech content sites such as Foundry’s, and from their peers both face-to-face at industry events and packaged for them from Peerspot. They rely on white papers, webcasts, and webinars from vendors, analysts and editors. And 96% of tech buyers are interested in custom-tailored content, based on their industry, company size, and the platforms they already use. In short, making an IT purchase requires a lot of trusted, tailored information, and buyers aren’t always getting what they need.
Adding value and insight to content is exactly why PeerSpot speaks constantly to IT buyers to generate product reviews and ratings, and comparisons of pricing, performance, and features. With 95% of reviews sourced from phone or in-person interviews of real users, PeerSpot’s methodology produces the most in-depth and credible user content in the industry.
This is also why Foundry’s experienced journalists are in contact daily with practitioners and subject matter experts. It is all in the service of creating unique and insightful content that resonates with buyers. Anything else is, at best, a waste of time, and at worst may even damage relationships with your customers.
If you’re interested in learning about how PeerSpot and Foundry help marketers adapt to this new world, check out some of our new solutions below.
PeerSpot’s new platform, PeerReports, enables marketers to create personalized, user-based content creation at scale. Reach out to me to discuss, I love this topic – Doni@PeerSpot.com.
Get started by downloading the 2023 Customer Journey Poster and partner with Foundry to simplify your marketing with data-driven media and martech solutions.
