Even though B2B marketing plans have some significant differences from B2C marketing, there’s a core marketing principle that unites the two. Learn how to use person-based marketing in B2B effectively, and you’ll be leveraging one of the most powerful tools in the marketer’s toolbox, forging new business through effective connections.
Strictly speaking, B2B does concern transactions between one business and another. However, person-based marketing looks deeper at those connections to the people who make the business run. Even though the products and expectations may be different, the psychology that drives buying decisions remains consistent. For this reason, understanding your customers is about understanding individuals, not just their business or the vertical in which it resides.
While data collection and relationship building are vital, these are but first steps. What matters is how you’ll ultimately leverage that data and those relationships to your advantage. So, how can you benefit from a person-based approach to marketing?
When you’re plodding through layer upon layer of gatekeepers, your sales journey can seem somewhat like the tale of the blind men and the elephant. You know there’s a need, and you’re sure you can meet it. However, because the information you’re getting is fragmentary—and the information you’re sending up the chain of command ends up fragmented further still—you and your prospects alike are ultimately in the dark. Getting to the right person early ensures that there’s less chance of miscommunication and a higher chance of a favorable decision.
Client acquisition comes at a significant investment of time, resources, and cash. The more often you need to repeat that process, the thinner your profit margins will be. Building relationships with higher-level contacts helps bypass low- to mid-level managers who may make your job harder even if their actual decision-making power is minimal.
Having taken the time to understand customers as individuals ensures that you’re tailoring solutions individualized to their needs. This, in turn, improves retention and helps to cultivate repeat business, making your sales process more cost effective overall.
We’ve come a long way from the time when a purchasing decision was impersonal, relatively low tech, and low touch. Getting to that decision now involves a higher volume of research that takes place across a wider number of touchpoints than before. Omnichannel marketing recognizes that change and creates a user experience that is tailored to the user across a wide range of devices and channels.
Reaching your customers where they are means considering where they’ll be looking for solutions, the better to meet them on their terms. Traditionally, this has happened through multichannel marketing, which tends to silo goals, strategies, and methods in the name of being everywhere at once.
However, we’re now seeing a shift to omnichannel marketing, which differs from multichannel marketing in that it puts the customer, rather than the channel, first. When it’s tailored properly, this approach can unify and more precisely target all your marketing, in effect allowing it to work smarter rather than harder. This relies on data collection that can account for offline as well as online behavior , so the right message goes to the right person, right on time.
For nearly half a century, Cain & Company has evolved with a rapidly changing B2B marketing landscape and has helped our clients in the Rockford area and beyond to do the same. For help meeting your latest marketing challenges, reach out for a consultation today.
