B2B Monday Myth: All B2B Audiences Are the Same
by MGB2B
The Myth: All B2B Audiences Are the Same.
The Truth: Not All Audiences Are Created Equal, and You Need to Personalize Your Content for Each One.
If you’re sending out one set of content to all audiences, you are missing out on a prime opportunity for engagement. Chances are, your company deals with more than one industry. Chances are even higher that many different people, with different roles and positions throughout the buying cycle, are all receiving your content. It is no surprise that people are more likely to respond to something of relevance to them. But there’s no way that every piece of content you send out resonates with each group. Over-simplifying your strategy or generalizing your content can deeply hamper your B2B marketing efforts. Personalizing B2B content may take time, but it’s well worth it.
Segmenting and personalizing can help you engage with each specific prospect, and increase the chance that they’ll develop into a higher quality lead. When developing or changing your strategy, keep these things in mind:
Know Your Segments
You must know who you are targeting before you can attempt to attract or engage them. Who are your subscribers, visitors, or followers? What has resonated with them in the past? Use the vast amount of data and analytics to see when your content is resonating with whom. Did one specific email get a large number of click-throughs from a a certain segment? Continue to pursue that. Testing your emails is a great way to gain these insights.
Core User Studies (sometimes referred to as Voice of Customer (VoC) Research) can also be helpful when attempting to capture the expectations and preferences of your various audiences. This market research technique gets down to the true wants and needs of your customers, and will allow your company to connect with them at many different stages of the buying cycle. Research can be time consuming, but the insights you get from it can change the entire direction of your marketing plan and make increase its effectiveness exponentially.
Approach Each Vertical Differently
As a B2B business, it is common to deal with a number of different industries. Each of your verticals has different interests and faces different challenges; it doesn’t make sense to talk to them as one collective whole. While some cross-industry pieces can be appealing, it is important to deliver content that addresses each vertical specifically. This is especially important when creating content or advertisements for trade publications, where niche B2B audiences tend to spend a lot of their time.
Keep Job Titles in Mind
There are many different people along the buying cycle, all who may be coming into contact with your company’s content. However, each person will have different concerns based on their role within the company. Think about it: a purchaser might be interested in finding a low-cost product, while an engineer is more worried about the quality. The CEO, on the other hand, is in charge of big picture thinking and long-term goals. Any of these three, and a host of others, could be reading your content. Be sure to change your message and propose a different call to action based on who you’re talking to.
Create Personas
One thing that will help you with everything created above is the creation of personas. You’ll likely have at least two, but it could be many more depending on how many verticals and job titles you have on your list. The more you know about those verticals and job titles the easier it will be for you to create personas. A persona is a fictional character who represents a buyer in one of your audience segments. Having a clear idea of who you are creating content for makes it easy to show how your company can provide them solutions. Here’s a guide for creating personas that will help fine-tune your content program and give it more direction.
While it may be easier to blanket all of your audiences with the same content, you need to drill down a little more for it to be effective. The relevance and quality of your content is what will make a lasting impression. Consistently delivering personalized content to your audiences will prove a successful strategy for cultivating meaningful B2B engagement. Invest the time in doing it right — it will be worth it in the long run.