In my last post, I introduced the concept of opportunistic learning. I wrote that information has become so abundant and easily accessible that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they become involved in an active buying process.
As a result, most business buyers don’t begin a buying process with a “clean slate.” In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.
Several recent research studies have shown that most business buyers have a small number of potential vendors in mind when they begin a buying process and that they almost always buy from one of the vendors on their “Day One” shortlist.
These research findings demonstrate that reaching opportunistic learners is critical because the opinions they form while engaged in opportunistic learning have a major impact on buying decisions.
To accomplish this goal, B2B marketers need to understand the mindset of opportunistic learners and then use marketing tactics and content that are specifically designed for these potential future buyers.
The Opportunistic Learning Mindset
When business people engage in opportunistic learning, they have different objectives and a different mindset than when they are seeking information relating to an ongoing buying process.
Opportunistic learners are not performing focused research, and they aren’t looking for information about a particular topic.
They are scanning trusted sources of information for ideas that are relevant to their business or job or beneficial for their career development. When they encounter content that appears to fit this description, they will pause to read, watch, or listen to it.
Antonia Wade, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of PwC, provided a compelling perspective on the mindset of opportunistic learners in her recent book, Transforming the B2B Buyer Journey.
In her book, Ms. Wade proposed a new B2B buyer journey framework that has five phases – Horizon Scanner, Explorer, Hunter, Active Buyer, and Client. Her names for these phases symbolize the buyer’s needs and thought processes that are important during each phase of the buying journey.
Ms. Wade’s Horizon Scanner phase is similar to my concept of opportunistic learning. She wrote that Horizon Scanners are people in strategic roles who are always assessing how big market trends and/or innovations will impact their business. Horizon Scanners, Wade wrote, “. . . aren’t looking for answers and they’re certainly not looking for a sales message: they’re looking for ideas.”
In the Wade framework, Horizon Scanners are usually senior-level executives. However, people at all business levels engage in opportunistic learning in some form.
Connecting with opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form about companies or brands during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become active buyers. Therefore, if marketers can nurture positive impressions in the minds of opportunistic learners, they will have a competitive head start when those opportunistic learners become true buyers.
The Overall Goal Is Mental Availability
So, what kinds of marketing tactics can B2B marketers use to connect with opportunistic learners?
In marketing terms, your primary goal with opportunistic learners is to create and then enhance your company’s mental availability.
The mental availability concept was popularized by Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In How Brands Grow, Sharp provided a simple definition of mental availability: “Mental availability/brand salience is the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations.”
Marketing content must meet three basic requirements to create mental availability with opportunistic learners.
Address Appealing Topics
As simplistic as it sounds, the first requirement is that your content must be about topics that opportunistic learners will find appealing. It’s vital to remember that opportunistic learners are not looking for information relating to an active buying process. They are seeking ideas that will help them improve their business or perform their job better or easier.
This means most content intended for opportunistic learners should focus on business or job-related problems, challenges, or opportunities for improvement.
Be Memorable
Marketing content must also be memorable to create mental availability with opportunistic learners.
By definition, opportunistic learners are not engaged in an active buying process. You make content available to opportunistic learners at a given point in time, and you hope they consume the content. But equally important, you hope they will remember your content and your company at a future point in time when they are ready to begin a buying process.
There are several techniques you can use to make your content more memorable to opportunistic learners. To learn more about these techniques, I recommend that you read Impossible to Ignore by Dr. Carmen Simon.
Be Easy to Consume
The third basic requirement for content that will effectively create mental availability with opportunistic learners is that it must be easy to consume. By “easy to consume,” I mean content that doesn’t require the people in your audience to expend a lot of cognitive energy.
As I’ve indicated, opportunistic learners are not engaged in an active buying process and therefore won’t be inclined to expend much effort consuming content that (at the moment) isn’t a high priority.
As a practical matter, this means most content intended for opportunistic learners should be relatively brief. In B2B, we have the leeway to use somewhat longer content because opportunistic learners believe acquiring information about industry trends and innovative business practices is important for their career progression.
Two Additional Considerations
In addition to the basic content requirements just discussed, there are two other issues you should keep in mind when marketing to opportunistic learners.
First, when business people engage in opportunistic learning, they usually turn to trusted sources of information. These often include respected general business publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review, and publications focusing on specific industries or business functions.
While some of these publications don’t accept content from “outside” contributors, some do, and you should look for opportunities to create content that will appear in those publications.
Second, opportunistic learners tend to pay more attention to content created by journalists and other third parties than to content created by your company or by someone related to your company. Therefore, you should aggressively pursue opportunities to have your company leaders and subject matter experts interviewed for content being developed by professional journalists and other third-party creators.
Top image courtesy of John Donges via Flickr (CC).
