Positioning, Messaging, and Branding for B2B tech companies. Keep it simple. Keep it real.
B2B tech companies often prioritize sales and product features over understanding customer needs. This leads to failed product launches, copycat marketing, and missed opportunities. To succeed with product-led growth, companies need to be customer-obsessed and deliver frictionless value at every touchpoint instead of betting on the “PLG Field of Dreams.”
I remember listening to two sales calls recently: one from a vendor and one from a client, both SaaS solutions. Each rep started with pleasantries, then asked about the prospect’s biggest challenge. As soon as they got an answer, they jumped into a product demo. Feature after feature, they bored everyone.
Ironically, the vendor pitched their product to this same client, who then proceeded to slam the vendor’s approach, only to do the same thing themselves a few days later.
Why do we think demos solve everything?
When we love our products more than our customers, we fail.
Product-led growth isn’t about pushing features, it’s about understanding and solving real problems with a seamless customer experience. We can’t solve problems we don’t understand.
We must put our customers first at every touchpoint, or product-led and sales-led strategies won’t work.
And while both strategies have their place—depending on the solution, pricing, client size, and sales cycle—neither will succeed without first starting with customer insights and maintaining a customer-centric focus.
Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives customer acquisition and growth.
Lured by the success of Slack and Dropbox, many B2B tech companies chase PLG in the hopes of getting bought out for Bazillions. The idea seems simple: build an amazing product, let users experience its value, and watch them become paying customers.
But many companies misinterpret PLG as a cure-all. They focus only on building a great product and ignore the need for a smooth customer experience.
Sales-led approaches often work better in enterprise organizations with longer sales cycles and complex solutions. Yet, both sales-led and product-led approaches fail if they don’t prioritize customer insights and keep sales and marketing customer-centric.
Haste Makes Waste
We often get caught up in our own innovation and forget to ask, “Who is this actually helping?” And when marketing is only responsible for part of the revenue, they face immense pressure from Sales and Leadership teams to generate leads, which can further distract from understanding and addressing customer needs.
PLG companies must understand their customers deeply. Customers are at the center of everything: product, marketing, sales, and CX. Without customers, we’re just making products, not building a business.
Throughout his excellent book, Product-Led Growth, Wes Bush constantly advocates doing customer research.
Many B2B tech companies gloss over this point.
Instead of communicating their differentiated value, they create free trials or freemium models without investing in the infrastructure needed to deliver a frictionless customer experience. They assume a great product will automatically lead to happy customers.
Slack Gets PLG Right
Slack is a SaaS product that focuses on solving real problems for teams by focusing on their unique value: better communication and collaboration tools. They conducted extensive research to understand their best-fit customers and designed a simple onboarding process for their intuitive app. They constantly get feedback to maintain continuous improvement. This customer-centric approach helped Slack grow organically and exponentially, with users becoming brand advocates and driving widespread adoption. Salesforce acquired Slack in 2021 for $28B. Did I mention Bazillions?
The constant pressure to deliver leads in B2B tech often hurts companies. Marketing and sales teams get tunnel vision, focusing only on hitting their numbers. It isn’t scalable or sustainable.
Pressure to Meet Quotas
Overemphasis on Features and Demos
Insular Thinking and Lack of Differentiation
The Bottom Line
Sales pressure often causes B2B tech companies to cut corners and neglect essential steps. This can lead to product failures, copycat marketing, and missed opportunities.
To get PLG right, we need to do more than just build a great product. We need to obsess over our customers and deliver value at every touchpoint.
“Value is always determined by prospects and customers. No matter how cool you think your technology is.”
Alan Hale, Consight Marketing Group
It’s harder than it sounds, but here’s how to get started:
PLG is an effective strategy, particularly for SaaS products, but it’s not a magic bullet. To succeed, we need a balanced approach that combines customer obsession, exceptional product design, and a frictionless customer experience.
In B2B tech, it’s easy to get caught up in our own hype. Tunnel vision only leads to missed opportunities, frustrated customers, and stunted growth.
Whether you follow a sales-led or product-led approach, stay focused on your customers. Keep developing great products, but create marketing that speaks your customer’s language and sales pitches that tell your unique story and differentiated value.
Obsessing over our customers forces us to understand their needs, learn, and improve. That’s a good thing.
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B2B tech marketing success isn’t achieved by guesswork and chasing shortcuts. It starts with a deep understanding of your customers (aka Insight). Real-world conversations and smart data analysis can help us escape common marketing traps and build a B2B tech brand that builds trust and drives long-term growth.
You’ve developed a B2B tech solution you’re proud of. But are the right customers finding it?
Who are the key decision-makers?
What are their motivations and priorities?
What influences their buying decisions?
Before redesigning your website or launching another campaign, consider this: Do you truly understand your customers?
Great marketing stems from deep customer insights. The most effective way to gain these insights is through meaningful conversations with our customers, the decision-makers behind complex purchases.
If marketing feels like a hamster wheel, you’re not alone. Many B2B tech companies struggle because they don’t treat marketing as a core business function, and they don’t ask their customers what they need on a regular basis.
Leading to more of this:
In the long run, we end up chasing our tail instead of gaining insights that can point us in the right direction.
A shift in mindset can be the difference between winning and losing.
Instead of assuming what customers want, ask them directly. Regular, honest conversations reveal what’s really happening.
Believe it or not, your customers will tell you what to say, how to say it, and how to make your solution the obvious choice.
When and how often you reconnect with your customers depends on the size of your customer base and the size of your team. Once a quarter is ideal but aim for at least once each year.
You can use the process I have followed over the past 10+ years; it has worked very well for me.
TIP: Prepare ahead of time and don’t boil the ocean. Focus on the ONE thing you want to accomplish with your interview. Schedule follow-ups if you have more than one topic to cover.
You can also customize your own process by using the following resources:
I’m not a data scientist, but after 20+ years in B2B tech marketing, I’ve seen one mistake made repeatedly: neglecting to invest in proper measurement.
Data is abundant, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed or misled. Guesswork is not the answer; it only perpetuates outdated stereotypes.
B2B tech buying journeys are complex and lengthy. To be effective, we need to understand the entire customer journey.
As we build our brand reputation as a trusted source, customers will begin interacting with us through multiple touchpoints. That can take many months or even years before a decision is made. We want to make sure we show up on their radar when they are ready.
How can we unravel these multi-touch journeys? How can we identify the marketing efforts that truly impact our bottom line?
Predictive analytics and multi-touch attribution models offer potential solutions. However, approach vendors’ claims cautiously, as some overpromise and repackage legacy tech as new tech.
“What you see determines what you understand, and that, in turn, drives your decisions.”
Mark Stouse, CEO, Proof Analytics
You’ve done your research: talked to customers, analyzed data, and identified the pitfalls and opportunities. Now what?
Customer research is the starting point for achieving market success. The most successful B2B tech companies are the ones that deeply understand their customers.
Talk to your customers regularly. Find out what they really need; what’s changed. Use that insight to help them get what they need.
Don’t guess or chase shortcuts. Markets change slowly and buyers take their time. Focus on consistent effort and adding value at every touchpoint.
Use data to track and validate what’s working and what’s not. But don’t just measure, understand. Why are some things working better than others? What patterns do you see?
Try new things like brand storytelling. It works wonders in both B2C and B2B. Just don’t expect instant B2C results. B2B marketing is still a marathon.
Need help making sense of it all? Let’s talk.
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B2B tech marketing requires a long-term perspective. Instead of chasing leads, prioritize building a strong brand that fosters trust and credibility. You’ll have a better chance at capturing and maintaining the attention of future buyers and getting on their shortlist.
We’re all guilty of cutting corners and searching for the elusive “secret.” The reality is that achieving B2B market success rarely happens overnight.
And while B2B and B2C marketing have more in common now than they did a decade ago, expecting B2C results in B2B is unrealistic. B2B marketing is still a marathon, not a sprint. There are no shortcuts or magic pills, no matter what the sales-led or product-led hype wants us to believe.
Jack Welch’s message? Stop the wishful thinking.
Important: Before continuing, if you only care about pumping up your tech product so you can dump the company on the highest bidder in the shortest time, stop reading. This is not for you. Good luck with whatever you do.
But if you’re genuinely interested in building a lasting tech solution like Slack, Hubspot, or Salesforce, put your expectations, opinions, and assumptions aside for a few minutes.
Many B2B tech companies, especially startups, think their products are so good they’ll sell themselves and attract loads of new leads. The reality is that the majority of B2B tech buyers simply aren’t ready to buy no matter how many times they look at our website. The solution they currently use is good enough (for now).
“A lot of companies haven’t fully realized yet that most people are not in the market for any product at any given time. You need to target them with a long-term lens.”
- Jann Martin Schwarz, LinkedIn B2B Institute
Studies like the 95-5 rule show that only 5% of B2B buyers are actively in-market looking for a new solution. Yet our wishful thinking still makes us believe otherwise.
“Our surveys show that 95% of B2B marketers expect to see significant sales within the first two weeks of a campaign.”
Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
Most B2B tech buyers, Professor Dawes points out, are on a much longer decision-making journey than we want to admit.
Here’s a real-world dose of reality (there’s that word again) from a recent interview with a procurement leader, courtesy of Mark Stouse over at Proof:
“Risk has always been the biggest part of any B2B deal. Since 2022, that has increased exponentially. It’s why we have so many ‘no decision’ decisions. The vendors fail the test more than half the time.”
Decision-makers are risk-averse for good reason. Buying tech is harder than selling it. Choose the wrong solution and we end up with egg on our face, an expensive mistake, or worse, shown the door.
The safest decision? No decision.
Brands aren’t born great. Market success in any business is a long-term investment. Ask any established tech brand, from Apple to Salesforce, to kill their brand and replace it with a sales-led or product-led approach, and they will tell you where to go. Brand equity trumps all.
“B2B marketers shouldn’t be spending time and money convincing out-of-market buyers to consider a purchase but instead invest in making every buyer remember their brand next time they need its product.”
Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo
That sums up the problem with B2B marketing as we know it today. It’s flawed because it focuses only on short-term linear “funnel” outputs and metrics, sales-led and product-led thinking, leads and quotas, blah, blah, blah. You get the point.
Think of brand building as farming. The seeds we sow today are not harvested in the same season or even in the same year. It takes time to generate demand, earn trust, establish authority, and create loyal fans.
B2B tech buying is not a neat, linear path—it’s not a funnel! Yet we still expect linear and immediate results.
The majority of B2B tech companies think in terms of lead generation and pass off brand marketing (demand generation activities) as wasted effort that takes too long and is too hard to measure.
It’s why B2B marketing is measured in linear stages (leads, sales, etc.). It’s also why B2B marketing teams scramble to justify their turf with linear metrics.
We end up with the wrong results because we set the wrong expectations, create the wrong outcomes, and look at the wrong data.
Short-term thinking can also lead to schizophrenic stop-start marketing tactics that confuse the market, dilute our value, and kill any potential momentum that brand marketing produces.
It’s better to provide helpful and current content at every stage at any given time because the reality is that we don’t know when someone is ready to buy, upgrade, or switch.
Supporting your sales activation (lead generation) activities with brand marketing (demand generation) gives you the best chance to stay top-of-mind and capture the attention of your future best-fit customers when they embark on their search.
Monday.com launched in 2014 to compete with the likes of Asana, Trello, and Wrike. Three years later (not three months), the project management SaaS solution began an explosive 6-year run.
In 2023, Monday.com’s annual revenue was estimated at $702 million to $717 million but made over $729 million, an increase of 41% year-over-year. Forecasts for 2024 are expected to be between $926 million and $932 million.
That’s impressive growth for a B2B tech brand that’s only 10 years old!
Monday.com has invested heavily in brand building with a tongue-in-cheek style that’s not typical for B2B. Their most recent Work Without Limits campaign (below) aired during the 2022 Super Bowl. Their previous Manage Your Team campaign ran for over three years with regionally targeted ads.
Take a page out of Monday.com’s playbook. Invest in a B2B marketing strategy that balances sales activation with brand marketing. That will lay the foundation for long-term growth, building trust with your audience. The rewards are well worth the effort.
“So follow the 95-5 Rule to grow: invest in lead-generation efforts targeting the 5% of people who are “in-market” today, but don’t forget to invest far more heavily in reaching the entire category with brand advertising that resonates with future buyers, and thus generates future cash flows.”
Ty Heath, LinkedIn B2B Institute
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Digital marketing has changed B2B over the past decade, making it more like B2C in some ways. However, there are still important differences—B2B buying decisions remain harder to make, and take longer. B2C companies aim for quick sales to move inventory and use marketing to support those sales. B2B companies, on the other hand, build partnerships with clients over time. More B2B brands are also balancing brand marketing with sales activation instead of prioritizing one over the other.
There was a time when the “B” in B2B stood for “boring,” a stark contrast to the exciting world of B2C. I covered these differences in 2012 when there were about 350 martech solutions and B2B was still averse to social media. Digital transformation has blurred those lines and now there are boatloads more martech solutions competing for attention.
Marketers from both camps are borrowing from each other by embracing brand, storytelling, emotion, entertainment, and humor to captivate their audience.
The rise of digital platforms has driven a demand for personalized, engaging, and story-driven content in both B2B and B2C marketing. This is clear from the explosion of MarTech solutions, which went from a handful a decade ago to thousands today, as illustrated by Scott Brinker at ChiefMarTec.
Shared Trends
B2B Borrowing from B2C
B2C Learning from B2B
While digital transformation has brought B2B and B2C marketing closer, fundamental differences persist. These differences stem from the distinct nature of their target audiences, decision-making processes, and sales cycles.
Decision-Making
Sales Cycles
While both B2B and B2C marketers aim to build brand awareness, trust, and loyalty, their approaches differ significantly.
B2B Marketing is still a marathon balancing brand marketing with sales activation:
B2C Marketing is still a sprint often favoring sales activation for immediate results:
Brand Marketing Tip: If traffic to your business is driven by local search, optimize your business listings on Google Maps and Apple Maps so they are always up to date and aligned with your brand touch points. This works for B2B and B2C.
B2B Marketing Example:
B2C Marketing Example:
Digital transformation has created a more level playing field, where brand, data, and omnichannel strategies play key roles. But the B2B and B2C marketing games remain inherently different. Think ice hockey vs. field hockey, or tennis vs. pickleball.
Great insight will always be the cornerstone of all great marketing, no matter the discipline. Knowing your best-fit customers, the nuances of their buying decisions, and showing up when they are ready to buy is critical for long-term growth.
Which B2B or B2C marketing trend do you think will have the biggest impact in the next year or two?
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Marketing and innovation are the cornerstones of B2B tech success. Don’t prioritize one over the other. Conduct customer research, integrate marketing early, craft a clear value proposition, and build long-term brand affinity. As Peter Drucker once said, marketing is a basic function of your entire business, so don’t treat it like a department, a tactic, or even a mere piece of revenue.
We pour our hearts into our products. They’re our labour of love. Just like parents adore their children, we believe in our products wholeheartedly.
How many times have we heard, our product is so good it will sell itself?
But that’s like expecting a plant to grow without water or sunlight, or worse, expecting a child to raise itself. It’s unrealistic and irresponsible. It also sounds like Hollywood.
Hang on a sec... didn’t Peter Drucker say that? No. Not exactly. We’ll address this misinterpretation later.
Speaking of Drucker, he challenged such notions back in the 1950s.
In 2008, I read Drucker’s book, The Practice of Management. Thinking I was behind the times (it was written in 1954), I was surprised by the number of business leaders who were unaware of Drucker’s immense contributions to modern management. Even those who knew of him hadn’t necessarily read his work, let alone understood his view on marketing.
You can learn more about Peter Drucker at The Drucker Institute.
Drucker exposes a critical truth often overlooked in B2B tech: marketing and innovation aren’t rivals, but rather forces that propel business success together.
Many B2B tech companies treat marketing as a cost, not an investment, blaming it for wasted resources.
They’re not wrong if their marketing lacks strategy, is only focused on pipeline, and appeases leadership by overpromising and underdelivering on generating leads.
That kind of marketing is NOT what Drucker was talking about.
That kind of marketing is what Dilbert was poking fun at (sadly still a common worldview).
Ironically, with all the new and better martech, digital tools, and analytics to track spending and results (far better than in Drucker’s time), we’re still having this conversation 70 years on.
I would wager Marketing is far more broken today. And that has nothing to do with the tools themselves. It has everything to do with mindset.
Business and Innovation paths are not straight lines. Expecting Marketing to be makes no sense.
Example: “Just create demand. Just get leads.”
To champion the change for this shift in thinking, Marketing needs to take responsibility.
Of all the things that need fixing in B2B tech marketing, I fundamentally believe that the most important first step is in changing the belief that marketing success is judged in terms of how much pipeline or revenue it contributes.
Liam Moroney, Storybook Marketing
The marketing mindset must change because ignoring marketing’s ability to impact long-term business growth is a mistake.
Marketing is what sets your company and product apart from the competition. It’s the voice that connects your business and its offerings with your target audience, builds trust, and ultimately drives customer loyalty.
Drucker reinforces this concept by stating, “Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”
I highlighted business because that’s the piece everyone misses. It’s not just pipeline, or revenue, or pretty ads.
It’s how your best-fit customers experience your business in its entirety: the brand, the products and services, the people, the support, etc.
Brand marketing as an investment in long-term customer acquisition and retention.
The key here is “long-term” because markets react to marketing on their own time, not ours. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Innovation can be a seductive siren song for B2B tech companies. It’s easy to push marketing to the sidelines when we’re caught up in chasing our shiny new object.
Without doing our homework (customer and market research), we can, just as easily, end up developing the latest and greatest technology without knowing whether the market even needs it.
This blind faith leads to dismissing marketing early and then scrambling to get the word out, a decision with potentially disastrous consequences.
We often misquote Peter Drucker, assuming a great product will sell itself. This thinking is dangerously wrong.
A fantastic product in a vacuum is just another engineering marvel no one knows about.
Countless B2B tech products fell victim to the “build it and they will come” mentality. Google+, Amazon Fire Phone, FaceBook Home, and even the Metaverse (cringe) are cautionary tales.
And although it’s a B2C example, who can forget Bic For Her? (the video is hysterical)
The consequences of limiting and neglecting marketing go deeper than missed sales.
Drucker never said, “Make the product so good it’ll sell itself.” But he did stress understanding the customer:
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter Drucker
That’s the quote that is often misquoted. Without marketing context, it misleads us into thinking all we have to do is build our Field of Dreams (did I mention Hollywood?).
In full context, however, it perfectly captures how and why marketing connects innovative solutions with our best-fit customers.
Prioritizing customer research, differentiated value, and long-term brand marketing ensures our innovative solutions don’t vanish into thin air.
Brand marketing becomes the bridge, connecting real-world problems with innovative solutions and the people behind them at every touch point of the business.
Think of Marketing as your customer’s champion, advocating for their needs. Innovation is your solution’s voice, the response to those needs.
The good news is there are numerous B2B tech companies that excel at balancing innovation and marketing. Take Apple’s Think Different campaign, or Salesforce’s No Software campaign. Both are masters at combining these two forces and building lasting brand recognition.
But let’s look at two B2B tech examples:
HubSpot, a leader in B2B marketing, sales, and customer service SaaS solutions, perfectly blends innovation and marketing.
Siemens Insights Hub (formerly MindSphere), an IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) platform, proves that innovation and marketing can flourish in the industrial tech space.
These are just a few examples; there are countless others.
The key? Understanding customer needs, developing solutions that address them, and creating brand marketing that consistently beats the drum to reach the target audience.
Peter Drucker’s wisdom on marketing and innovation remains relevant. B2B tech companies can achieve the perfect balance between these two crucial functions.
Moving forward, remember that marketing isn’t a cost centre or a pipeline checkbox; it’s a long-term investment no different than innovation. By allocating resources towards brand marketing strategies that complement your entire business operations, everything gets better.
Marketing impacts the entire effectiveness and efficiency of the sales and marketing and customer success effort. More brand awareness in the market means everything gets better. Better perceptions of your product means everything gets better.
Liam Moroney, Storybook Marketing
Don’t be lured by innovation alone. Limiting and neglecting marketing is a recipe for disaster.
Similar to Apple and Salesforce, B2B tech companies like Hubspot and Siemens excel because they understand customer needs and craft compelling marketing messages, on top of their innovative products. Remember that Apple was virtually bankrupt when it launched Think Different in 1996 and Salesforce took on Siebel in an all-out David vs Goliath battle in 1999.
Focus on building the brand through customer research and integrated marketing across the entire organization, not just a piece of the pipeline. This ensures you create a lasting and memorable impression for your innovative solutions. Brand marketing bridges the gap between groundbreaking technology and real-world customer problems.
And listen to experts like Peter Drucker: marketing and innovation are the cornerstones of business success. A balanced approach is key to achieving long-term growth.
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Buyer personas that focus solely on demographics miss the mark when connecting with B2B procurement teams. Personas focused on the “buying audience” provide added insight into understanding their motivations, pain points, and how and when they buy B2B tech. This article outlines how you can create “audience personas” that give your sales team a better chance at connecting with the procurement team.
Procurement decisions are complex and lengthy, involving a team with diverse and sometimes conflicting priorities.
In my experience, the traditional B2B sales approach is flawed because it focuses on a single person who isn’t always the decision-maker. Complex B2B purchases involve a series of decisions made by various team members. To win, companies must understand the “buying committee” and adapt their approach. Many procurement teams also have a champion who connects them with the vendor.
While individual buyer personas can be useful for certain marketing programs, they often miss the mark when it comes to understanding the dynamics of the procurement team as a whole.
Buyer personas that clarify how the audience (the buying team) makes purchase decisions provide a holistic view of the team’s psychology and can help you tailor your approach for maximum impact. Don’t rely solely on demographics—that’s a mistake.
Unfortunately, most buyer personas are bullshit. They focus too heavily on demographics like age, title, income, gender, etc. They’re almost always aspirational and rarely tested.
And because they are focused on one person, they don’t capture the complexities of B2B procurement teams or help them navigate internal hurdles like budget approvals and risk management. Too often they are focused on the buyer, not the buying decision.
According to Adele Revella, likely THE authority on buyer personas, most B2B companies merely have snippets of buying intent information. Rarely do they truly know who will listen, what they want, and why they prefer the competition.
If we forget to pay attention to how our customer’s make their buying decision, we’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
Jeff Goldenberg, Abacus
Here’s why relying on demographics alone is a losing strategy:
That said, when you couple demographics with the qualitative and quantitative insights of psychographics (including firmographics), you have a deeper understanding of a procurement team’s inner workings. You can tailor your message and content for each member, leading to better sales conversations.
Sales and marketing teams have to substantially improve their skills in guiding buying teams. The days of sophomoric ROI justifications are over. Purchases are not made based on a salesperson’s glib assertion of a rapid payback, and most salespeople today simply receive some orders. Precious few actually navigate these complexities to win them.
Ed Marsh, IntentData
B2B marketing campaigns often fail to generate high-quality leads because they rely on assumptions instead of real-world customer insight. Sales and marketing end up missing the mark on the specific needs of B2B procurement teams.
Without deep and insightful conversations with your best-fit customers, you can't paint a full picture of how procurement teams find and purchase your solution.
Yes, demographics are helpful and I’m not suggesting to discount them. But you also need the qualitative and quantitative insight that psychographics provide (I’m including firmographics here).
Audience personas can help:
Audience personas can help bridge the gap between your B2B tech solution and the complexities of procurement decisions. Understanding the motivations, challenges, and decision-making process, goes beyond demographic data and helps clarify your sales strategy. Instead of assuming your buyer is only interested in a feature list or product demo, your audience persona spells out what they want to see, who they will listen to, and whether or not they will shortlist you.
TIP: Don’t Boil the Ocean
Build your buyer persona with the buying audience in mind first. This way, you can see if the champion’s characteristics are already covered by the broader audience. Depending on the size of your business and product portfolio, you may only need one persona. As you grow your products and reach, you can scale the number of personas accordingly.
Maximizer CRM, a well-established SaaS and OnPrem CRM player in the SMB space, faced a decline in market share due to a lack of differentiation in an ever-increasing crowded market.
Regain market prominence and reclaim its value proposition for SMBs, particularly Financial Advisors and Wealth Managers.
Maximizer implemented a strategic repositioning campaign called “Grow With Confidence.” This campaign focused on:
The “Grow With Confidence” brand campaign not only revitalized Maximizer internally but also resonated deeply with customers, particularly in the Financial Services sector. This resulted in:
Maximizer continues to benefit from Achim’s contributions, market research, strategy, positioning, and messaging for our financial services product. It’s still going strong.
Vivek Thomas, President
Learn more about Maximizer’s success story.
1. Gather Data
2. Pinpoint Shared Goals & Challenges
3. Map the Decision-Making Hierarchy
Key elements to consider when building your audience persona:
Tips for Building Effective Audience Personas
Your audience personas hold the key to crafting content marketing that resonates with each member of the procurement team. Don’t just use them for sales—leverage them to build targeted content that solves their problems. Below are 4 ways audience personas can help guide your content marketing.
1. Create Targeted Content
2. Address Specific Pain Points
3. Build Credibility and Trust
4. Personalize Where Possible
Guide each team member through informative and relevant content that addresses their specific needs and concerns. By doing this, you position your B2B tech solution as the answer they’ve been looking for.
Building buyer personas that are focused on decision criteria is the key to connecting with B2B procurement teams. Audience personas can give you a deeper understanding of the motivations, decision-making processes, and preferred communication styles.
Your sales and marketing teams can also facilitate better sales conversations with targeted messaging and useful content that addresses the needs of each team member.
Remember that demographics alone won’t cut it. You need the qualitative and quantitative insights that psychographics provide.
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