The Thomas Blog

Stand Out on the Shortlist: The B2B Buying Cycle, Part 4

Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. What’s most important to them when sourcing? Early on, speed and efficiency are key — conducting research on their terms, without worrying about an email or a call back. That doesn’t change once they reach the shortlist stage — they’re still not ready to spend time on queries. In fact, you likely won’t even know you’re on the shortlist until the first time they contact you.

How does the shortlist work, and how can you improve your chances of getting there — and getting selected?

Learn What Your Prospects Are Really Looking For: The B2B Buying Cycle, Part 3

It’s not enough just to be listed. Keep that in mind as you consider the third stage of the industrial B2B buying cycle: Evaluation. Buyers arrive at this stage once they’ve identified a need and begun a high level, general search. You’re a possibility to reach their shortlist — but you’re still not a lock. Buyers need to see that it’s worth their time to keep considering you. How? It’s all in the details.

Don’t Play Hide and Seek With Buyers: The B2B Buying Cycle, Part 2

How do you search for information when you already have a general idea of what you need? Often, you go right to a niche source rather than conducting a web search. For example, if you’re looking for a book, you head to Amazon. Need yesterday’s basketball scores? Right to ESPN.com. Many industrial buyers get started the same way.

Impacting Prospects Before the Sales Funnel: The B2B Buying Cycle, Part 1

Last week, we took a bird’s-eye view of the entire B2B buying cycle, and how you can impact each stage of it. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to zoom in on each step of the way to a sale, and take a closer look at the strategies that can work best for you in reaching buyers.

Impact Your Prospects at Every Stage of the Buying Cycle

Content marketing is a great tool for reaching your prospects at every stage of the buying cycle — it’s a benefit we’ve revisited time and again.

This week, let’s take a closer look at that B2B industrial buying cycle — and the marketing tools that are best suited to making an impression at each step of the way.

Six Reasons You Need Responsive Design On Your Website

We talked a few weeks ago about some first steps toward optimizing your website for mobile devices — and responsive design is a great start. Need a refresher? Think of responsive design this way: imagine if movies were only available in the original dimensions they played in at the theater. Whether you later watched it on the flatscreen in your living room, a smaller set in your bedroom, or on your iPad, it only came in that one, giant size.

5 Organization Tools to Clean Up Your Marketing Strategy

Can you think of a brand where their marketing strategy doesn’t always seem like it’s on the same page — where it seems like throwing darts to see what hits? For me, the Geico commercials come to mind: there are the ones with the gecko. The ones with the banjo players. And let’s not forget “Hump Day.” They’re memorable ads, and no doubt effective — why else would Geico keep rolling them out? — but does this sort of “purposely disorganized” messaging work for every company?

Marketing on the Move: 4 Ways to Optimize Your Mobile Strategy

Are you still unsure if you need a mobile strategy?

Let’s look at some numbers: 91% of all American adults own a cell phone, and 55% have a smartphone. 63% of U.S. smartphone users use their device to access the internet – and 34% of them get online primarily via mobile. Worldwide? There are 1.2 billion people getting online through their phones. And if you thought the first digital revolution happened quickly, buckle up: mobile web adoption is occurring eight times faster.

5 Ways to Dig For Content When You’re Stuck

Yesterday morning, I walked past a truck driver stuck in some snow.

I didn’t want to get too close, because he was really having a hard time getting out and looked a bit out of control: wheels spinning, back end fishtailing, not making any headway. Luckily, he had a coworker with a shovel helping to dig him out and get unstuck. It can be easy to get stuck with our content creation in these early months of the year, too. Business has yet to pick up, news is slow, and we’re in danger of just spinning our wheels with uninteresting, uninspired content.

How can you dig yourself out?