In the Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing world, success comes from targeting the right prospects for your brand. It’s different from regular consumer marketing, where you can convince almost anyone to buy products or services, even if they’re not the ideal audience. For example, older adults might be drawn to iPhones, and men might be encouraged to use beauty products.
But in B2B, it has to be the right product, for the right customer, for the right price, at the right time.
That is why targeting your market audience is very important, as it gives focus and understanding to better come up with a strategy to attract the right prospects.
Know thyself first
Just like any other enterprise, a company needs to do introspection – what is it exactly that you sell? Is it a basic business commodity or a luxury? What makes it unique from competitors? Why do your current customers support you? What did they see in your business that made them stick? Knowing your products, services, and influences inside and out can help you identify who you should be targeting and how you would do so.
Be an online stalker
Society may look down upon stalking in general, but in the business of online marketing, stalking is an essential step in acquiring an audience. People reveal themselves publicly in cyberspace– activities they participate in, content pieces they like and comment on, and most importantly, things that they buy online. A lot of businesses do social monitoring to get a bird’s eye view of how they are being talked about (or otherwise) online, so they would know what the next logical step would be.
Create and assign personas
Now that you’ve gotten to “know” your audience, it’s time to categorize them according to their needs, their buying behavior, their online responses, or any other pertinent data you would want them to sort with. Doing this makes it easy for you to develop a “template” on how you would craft a specific strategy or respond to a particular audience persona. This also eliminates the possibility of misunderstanding due to performing actions based on a minority of triggers.
Moving forward with audience-centered marketing
Re-shifting the majority of your focus on the core audience instead of any other aspect of business could bring instant, obvious results. People would be more engaged, and the word spread faster and more effectively. In no time, you would realize that this is the best way to refine your marketing strategy, and all that’s left is to maintain that passionate interest in your audience.
This content originally appeared at B2B Online Marketing: How to Identify your Target Audience.