“Market segmentation” and “buyer personas” are often overlooked as unimportant parts of a marketing strategy. However, it’s essential to identify these audiences before creating any marketing materials. This is particularly true for a website, which acts as the main branding and lead generation tool for a business.

Couple this with the need for a positive user experience (e.g. navigation, content, design), many businesses fail to create a website that truly addresses their audience’s web browsing goals.

In this post, we will discuss four different market segments to think about for your website. It’s important to keep in mind that you shouldn’t use all these segmentation strategies at the same time. It’s best to focus on two or three traits to prevent making a cluttered and confusing website.

Industry

This is the most obvious choice for B2B websites. Many companies service multiple industries and tailor content on their website to the specific needs of that industry.

For example, consulting firm Deloitte features “Industries” on the top navigation of their website, with any easy drop down listing the 20+ industries they serve. While your industry list may not be as robust, it’s important to use the appropriate language for each.

Seniority & Function in Company

In B2B, most of the time the prospect is working with a sphere of influencers. Meaning, the individual you’re selling to is rarely the sole decision maker in the process. They may have to report back to team members, senior manager, C-suite executive or even the CEO. For example, the primary buyer may have a staff that is dictating software requirements. Your website content should make it easy for that prospect to share information with leadership and other influencers.

Education technology provider BlackBoard, Inc. serves institutions ranging from kindergarten to universities. Within each education level, “Solutions by Role” is outlined to address the different needs of each party involved in purchasing and applying their product (e.g. teachers, administrative leaders, presidents and provosts and IT departments).

Size of Company

If you service a broad range of company sizes, it may be appropriate to create separate pages on your website to address their specific needs. An IT firm that offers storage for large enterprises and small businesses will have different packages and solutions for each.

Another example is insurance firms who serve a wide variety of employers. On the Aetna employers and organizations page, their menu lists small businesses, mid-sized businesses and national accounts as just of a few of their important audiences.

Services

Many B2B websites still fail to break out all their services into multiple pages on their website. It’s a huge mistake to force your prospect to scroll through content unrelated to their needs until they find the service of interest to them. Additionally, make sure your top, most valued services are getting the most attention throughout your website. Nuances and variations of a service can still be addressed, but not every aspect of the business needs equal attention.

Qualcomm is a great example of prioritizing all their technologies. On their products page, mobile is given the greatest attention, with networking, automotive and health care ranking below. Anything else is grouped in “All products” for prospects interested in more.

Conclusion

We must remember that people browse the web differently. Implementing a content strategy that organizes your web content based on two to three browser characteristics will ensure that website visitors find what they’re looking for in a timely manner. Most importantly, this strategy gives you the best chance to convert.

Read more: