Targeting your audience in the business to business (B2B) space is very important for both your sales and marketing teams. Marketing your product or service can be one of the most expensive categories of your business’s budget. Targeting your audience will help ensure that your return on investment will result in plenty of new sales.
When marketing your product or service to other businesses it’s important to introduce yourself, just like you would in a sales setting, by qualifying yourself and the customer. Doing this will help make sure you have the right prospect and the decision maker while also making sure you have landed squarely in your targeted market.
Identify Yourself
Before trying to define your target market, narrow down your overall area to target. The first step is to identify who your direct competition is within your industry, and determine their size, product or service offerings, and client list when possible. The second phase is to identify what pain points or problems your potential client group faces and how you could help them solve those problems.
Now, you must clearly understand and define yourself and your business offerings, meaning you should outline your business details and your goals. Determine what specific needs and wants your product or service fulfills. Understand, in detail, the issues that you solve and how.
The starting point to defining your audience is to understand the problems that your product or service solves. Make a table with the features of your product/service.
Example:
Who and What: Web developer offers high-quality web page development.
Problem: Small and large businesses need a polished presence online these days more than ever before in history in order to compete in their marketplace, appeal to the greatest audience via search engines, and have a place to send prospects looking for more details.
How the Client’s Problem is Solved: A well-crafted, professional-looking website will attract more potential customers via search engine optimization, and when they first land on the site and see a trustworthy and reliable business at first glance, they are more likely to become interested in the products or services offered and therefore purchase.
Long Term Benefits: Having a polished website leads to better brand image, a bigger customer base, and an increased number of leads and sales for the client.
Identify Your Customer
Identify Your Customer’s Needs
Now that you have an idea of who your perfect customer is, you need to find the desires that your customers want fulfilled. Your clients are looking for businesses that prove they understand their needs, a business that is an expert at solving their specific problems, and you must cater to these needs. Prove you are listening to your market and eager to deliver, and this will pay off.
Here are a few keys to fully understand your customers and build a solid foundation with them from the start:
See through your customer’s eyes. Analyze your business customer’s full range of wants and needs, as well as his or her suppliers. Keep in mind that you’re not their only choice in your industry. This exercise will also help you understand the behavior of your competitors and maybe even predict their next move.
Stand in your client’s shoes. By going through what your business customer’s experience, you’ll discover your strengths and weaknesses and what a client would like to see change. Some businesses ask their employees to go through a customer’s experience by going into the store as an “undercover client” or secret shopper, and you can do this and experience your own added value and what areas of improvements exist for your company.
Identify your customer’s needs. In this step, you’ll need to determine what would make your customer’s life easier. Open your mind to creative ideas; what your product is intended for might not be its only possible use.
Listen to what your market is saying. Take advantage of the feedback from your business customers. If you see reviews, comments, or any opinion someone has about your product or service, read it and learn from it. People tend to talk about what they like and dislike. You may even see that your customers have found a new way to use your product.
Keep your target audience as focused as possible. Is your product something that is suitable for everybody, or just specific people? You can’t be all things to all people and hope to sell your products or services. People, and businesses are made up of people, tend to do business with those they like and trust, so when you have a clear vision of who will love your product, it makes it easier to attract customers and business partnerships.
Targeting every business is a bad strategy. If you target everyone and make a fantastic ad, it’s unlikely anyone will see it. If you target a specific audience with near-perfect precision, you can reach your ideal business customers repeatedly — making them more aware of your product or service through repetition.
When Looking for Business Clients, Consider Demographic and Geographic Information:
Determine the following to find your best clients:
- Geographic Location
- Size of Company
- Annual Revenue
- Number of Branches
- Number of Employees
- Industry
- Age of Company
Psychographics
Business customers can be described in psychographic terms. Some companies view themselves as cutting edge or high tech, while others consider themselves socially responsible, stable, and dependable, and these distinctions help in determining how your company is positioned and how you can use the company’s position as a marketing tactic for your own product or service.
Consider:
- Business Style
- Industry Leader
- Business Stage
- Innovative
- Employee Relations
- Conservative
- Trade Associations
- Socially Responsible
- Business Products/Stable
- Services Used
- Employee Friendly
- Publication Subscriptions
- Workforce Type
- Management Style
Behavioristic Connection:
Products and services are purchased for a variety of reasons.
Business owners must determine what those reasons are, such as: brand, loyalty, cost, how frequently and at what time of year customers in a segment use and consume products. It’s important to understand the buying habits and patterns of your customers. Consumers do not rush and buy the first car they see, or the first sofa they sit on. A Fortune 500 company doesn’t typically make quick purchasing decisions.
Answer the following questions regarding your market, and consider the businesses who would be your customer in this case rather than the individual, as they have behavioral characteristics as well.
- Reason/occasion for purchase?
- Number of times they’ll purchase?
- Timetable of purchase, every week, month, quarter, etc.?
- Amount of product/service purchased?
- How long does it take to decide to purchase?
- Where customer purchases and/or uses product/service?
Once you have the answers to these questions and have a complete understanding of who your business customer is, what their needs are and how you can fulfill those needs, you will find that marketing to them is much easier. Don’t be discouraged by a reduction in social media reach, it will take a bit of time, but you will find more engagement and with the right touch you’ll obtain an increase in specifically targeted loyal fans that convert to customers. Build on these relationships with regular communication. Trial and error in the beginning will secure a system that works, so be creative!
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