Three marketing tips for better B2B communication

In this article I dive into more detail on three marketing tips for understanding your B2B target audience and how to communicate with it.

Three marketing tips for better B2B communication

1. Target Audience Analysis to ensure you communicate with the right audience

You’d be surprised how many companies (at least among start-ups/scale-ups) that have a quite vague idea of who their target audience is, how to reach them and what makes them tick. That makes it difficult to create relevant content and choose the right marketing channels for awareness and adoption. So do your homework and make sure that you know your audience(s).

A target audience analysis typically consists of:

• Identifying primary and secondary target groups: customers, partners, media, investors, employees, etc

• Understanding their characteristics, behaviors and needs (in your specific industry)

• Some kind of segmentation of your main audiences based on typical roles (audience personae), behaviors and needs – this helps determine the type of content you need to develop

• Where to find them – this helps determine the marketing channels to reach them.

2. Ensure the right tools, processes & content for the (customer) journey

Earlier this week, I wrote an article called Building long-term brand value & business growth through three stages of maturity, which gives examples of marketing activities that are suitable during a company’s growth journey.

Based on an understanding of where your company is at on its growth journey, and a solid understanding of your target audience(s) as per number (1) above, you need to create the right processes and select the right tools and marketing channels to reach your audience. This includes making sure your own website is set up properly and has the right content to support the customer journey.

The result or 'action' you want to achieve among your audience generally follows three stages: 

• Awareness 

• Adoption 

• Preference

To achieve tangible results, your marketing and sales tools, marketing channels, processes, and content need to be focused on:

• Attracting the right people to your website (or event) to start exploring what you have to offer – to do this you need have a) relevant messaging/value proposition that resonates with your audience and builds trust, b) the ability to stand out and create visibility in the right channels, and c) a clear call to action.

• Converting initial interest to action (download a product sheet, watch a video, subscribe to newsletter, register for a workshop/seminar, book a meeting or other) – this forms part of the lead-generation process which typically consists of several steps aimed at pre-qualifying “marketing leads” into “sales leads”, and of supporting sales with value proposition materials, company/product presentation pitch decks, customer case studies/success stories, etc, to help them eventually land the deal.

• Nurturing customer relationships to ensure customer satisfaction and generate repeat business. This involves customer onboarding, understanding the customer lifetime journey, listening to and acting on customer feedback, and making sure that the customer experience remains positive throughout the journey.

3. Emotional vs rational communication

To build a strong and successful brand you need to address both emotional and rational aspects of your brand promise and desired market perception in external communication.

In my experience, engineering-heavy organizations are often more comfortable with identifying and using rational, logical and analytical facts to try and convince the target audience and, as a result, often end up in what I call ”the tech trenches” with their communication, i.e. focusing on technical facts and proof-points instead of explaining the real value of a solution or what problems it solves for their customers.

However, research shows that customers typically make the purchase-decision based on emotions and then justify their buy with rational/logical arguments. Emotions lay the foundation for the decisions we make – emotions affect the buyers’ journey, nudging them from initial trigger (of interest) to action. To convince them we must first deliver a strong emotional communication, then provide the rational arguments to back up their decision.

This means that emotional vs. rational arguments should be used in different parts of the buyers’ journey, so plan your content creation appropriately.

Learn more in this article: Lessons about emotional communication in marketing & advertising.