In the ever-evolving fintech landscape, Splitit, a buy-now-pay-later provider, faced a challenge that resonates with many B2B organisations: how to create content that engages prospects meaningfully while aligning marketing and sales efforts to improve lead quality. Rigid, traditional funnel models were failing to account for the complexities of the modern buyer’s journey. To address this, Splitit adopted a buyer-centric approach focused on mapping content to journey stages, leading to remarkable results.
The Challenge: A Fragmented Buyer Journey
Splitit’s innovative instalment payment solution allows retailers to offer flexible payment options using their customers’ existing credit lines. Despite its clear value, convincing busy retailers to invest time in understanding and adopting the solution proved challenging.
Traditional B2B sales strategies, which often relied on direct seller-led touchpoints, were no longer effective. Today’s buyers prefer to engage digitally and independently, consuming content at their own pace. Yet, Splitit’s early marketing approach rushed prospects through the buying stage without considering whether they were ready to make a decision. This created friction, stalled conversions, and wasted opportunities.
A New Approach: From Funnels to Journeys
Realising the limitations of traditional sales funnels, Splitit turned to Odyssiant’s Buyer Journey Management platform to reimagine their lead generation strategy. Instead of relying on arbitrary funnel stages, they mapped their buyer journey based on the content prospects engaged with, uncovering critical insights about buyer behaviour.
This data-driven journey map revealed:
- Gaps in the buyer experience, where prospects lacked the information needed to advance.
- Misaligned content, with some pieces pushing prospects to purchase prematurely while ignoring earlier stages of the journey.
- Engagement bottlenecks, where prospects “stalled” due to insufficient or irrelevant content.
Building the Right Content for the Right Moment
Splitit’s next step was to design a content strategy aligned with the buyer journey, ensuring that prospects received the information they needed at each stage. This wasn’t just about producing more content but creating the right content—tailored to resonate with each persona and stage.
For instance, early-stage content focused on building awareness of the benefits of buy-now-pay-later solutions, addressing common concerns such as cost and implementation. Mid-stage content delved into detailed use cases, offering retailers a clear understanding of how Splitit’s solution could integrate seamlessly into their operations. Finally, decision-stage content highlighted proof points, including ROI metrics and customer testimonials, to give prospects the confidence to move forward.
To support this strategy, Splitit implemented Odyssiant’s “Nudge” AI tool, which used engagement data to recommend the next best piece of content to each prospect. This personalised guidance ensured buyers stayed on track, moving steadily toward conversion.
Marketing-Sales Alignment: The Foundation of Success
A key element of Splitit’s success was aligning their marketing efforts with sales objectives. By integrating sales feedback into content planning, marketing could refine messaging to better qualify leads. Sales, in turn, gained access to detailed insights on each lead’s journey, enabling more informed and personalised outreach.
This collaborative approach also helped establish Marketing Qualified Opportunities (MQOs), a critical lifecycle stage that bridged the gap between marketing and sales by focusing on leads that were not just qualified but ready for conversion. By aligning on these opportunities, both teams worked seamlessly to ensure a steady flow of high-quality prospects, creating a pipeline that effectively supported buyers throughout their journey.
The Results: Data-Driven Success
The impact of this shift was clear:
- 30% improvement in conversion rates, driven by content that addressed buyer needs at the right moment.
- Deeper engagement across the journey, as evidenced by increased time spent with content and higher progression rates.
- Stronger collaboration between marketing and sales, with each team leveraging shared insights to optimise their efforts.
Perhaps most importantly, Splitit gained a clearer understanding of how their content influenced buyer decisions, allowing them to continually refine their strategy based on real-world data.
Lessons Learned
Splitit’s transformation highlights several key takeaways for businesses seeking to enhance lead quality:
1. Map the buyer journey: Understand where prospects are in their decision-making process and tailor your content accordingly.
2. Align marketing and sales: Foster collaboration to ensure content and outreach efforts are mutually reinforcing.
3. Invest in data-driven tools: Leverage platforms like Odyssiant to track engagement and identify bottlenecks in the buyer journey.
4. Focus on quality over quantity: Prioritise content that addresses buyer needs, rather than producing content for its own sake.
Conclusion: A New Paradigm for Lead Quality
By embracing Buyer Journey Management, Splitit was able to replace outdated funnel thinking with a more dynamic, customer-focused approach. This strategy not only improved lead quality and conversion rates but also strengthened the alignment between marketing and sales, ensuring a smoother and more impactful buyer experience.
Splitit’s success serves as a blueprint for organisations ready to rethink their approach to lead generation. By focusing on the journey rather than the funnel, businesses can unlock new opportunities to engage buyers, build trust, and drive meaningful results.