Part 3 Doing More with Less - KYC

In times of austerity, businesses are often forced to tighten their belts and cut back on marketing expenses. B2B marketers are not immune to this, and they too may find themselves facing the challenge of doing more with less. However, with the right strategies in place, it is possible for B2B marketers to continue to drive results, even when resources are limited. In this article, we'll explore some practical ways that B2B marketers can do more with less through on key method - focussing on your core audience. Know Your Customer.

Understanding your audience's needs and pain points can be challenging, especially if you have limited resources. In this section, we'll explore some techniques that B2B marketers can use to focus and understand their core audience.

1. Develop buyer personas

One of the most effective ways to understand your core audience is to develop buyer personas. A buyer persona is a detailed description of your ideal customer, based on market research and data analysis. By developing buyer personas, you can gain a deeper understanding of your audience's needs, preferences, and pain points, and create targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with them.

To develop buyer personas, start by conducting market research to gather data on your audience's demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can use surveys, focus groups, and interviews to gather this data. Once you have the data, analyze it to identify patterns and insights that can help you create detailed buyer personas.

1. Conduct customer research

In addition to developing buyer personas, it is essential to conduct customer research to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. Customer research can take many forms, including surveys, interviews, and user testing. By conducting customer research, you can gather feedback on your products and services, understand your audience's pain points and challenges, and identify areas for improvement.

When conducting customer research, it's important to ask open-ended questions that allow your audience to provide detailed and candid feedback. This can help you identify areas where your marketing messaging is not resonating with your audience, or where your products or services may be falling short of their expectations. We have some great AI enabled tools that can get to key issues quickly and in a pretty cost effective way compared to other techniques.

3. Marketing message testing and concept testing is the process of evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing messaging to ensure that it resonates with your audience. This involves testing different versions of your marketing message, such as headlines, taglines, and value propositions, to see which performs best. By testing your marketing messaging, you can identify the messaging that generates the most engagement, conversions, and sales. This can help you refine your messaging to make it more effective and efficient, ultimately leading to better ROI on your marketing spend. Marketing message testing can be done through various methods, such as A/B testing, focus groups, surveys, and user testing.

4. Sales Ride-alongs: One effective way for B2B marketers to better understand their customers' pain points is to do "ride-alongs" with sales reps. A ride-along is when a marketer joins a sales rep on a customer visit or call to observe the customer's pain points firsthand. By doing this, marketers can gain a deeper understanding of the customer's needs and pain points, and create marketing messaging that is more targeted and effective. For example, a marketer may hear a customer express a common pain point that the sales rep can address in real-time, which can inform future marketing messaging. Ride-alongs also provide marketers with the opportunity to ask questions and gather feedback directly from the customer, which can be valuable for developing more targeted marketing campaigns. By working closely with sales reps and customers, marketers can gain insights that they may not have otherwise discovered, ultimately leading to better results and stronger customer relationships.

5. Setting up customer boards or working groups is another effective way for B2B marketers to better understand their customers' needs and pain points. A customer board or working group is a group of customers who meet regularly with a company to provide feedback on their products, services, and marketing efforts. By involving customers in the product development and marketing process, companies can gain a deeper understanding of their customers' needs and pain points and create more effective marketing campaigns. Customer boards or working groups can also provide valuable insights into industry trends, competitive landscapes, and emerging challenges. By working collaboratively with customers, B2B marketers can build stronger relationships, foster loyalty, and generate valuable word-of-mouth referrals.

6. Holding a customer summit is a great way for B2B marketers to engage with customers and gain insights into their needs and pain points. A customer summit is a one or two-day event that brings together customers, prospects, industry experts, and company leaders to share knowledge, insights, and best practices. By hosting a customer summit, B2B marketers can create a platform for customers to connect with each other, learn from industry leaders, and engage with the company's products and services. This not only strengthens customer relationships but also provides valuable feedback and insights that can be used to shape future marketing campaigns. Customer summits can be costly to organize and require significant resources, but they can generate a high return on investment by driving customer loyalty, increasing sales, and boosting brand awareness.

B2B marketers can utilize various techniques, such as developing buyer personas, conducting customer research, analyzing website analytics, testing marketing messages, doing ride-alongs with sales reps, setting up customer boards or working groups, and holding customer summits. These methods allow marketers to gain a deeper understanding of their audience's needs and pain points, create more targeted marketing campaigns, and build stronger customer relationships. By leveraging these techniques, B2B marketers can optimize their marketing efforts and achieve greater ROI, even when resources are limited.

Questions? Just ask Nancy Hoffman [email protected]

Also check out the previous article in this series here: