B2B Monday Myth: All B2B Audiences Are the Same
by MGB2B
The Myth: All B2B Audiences Are the Same.
The Truth: Not All Audiences Are Created Equal, and You Need to Personalize Your Content for Each One.
If you’re sending out one set of content to all audiences, you are missing out on a prime opportunity for engagement. Chances are, your company deals with more than one industry. Chances are even higher that many different people, with different roles and positions throughout the buying cycle, are all receiving your content. It is no surprise that people are more likely to respond to something of relevance to them. But there’s no way that every piece of content you send out resonates with each group. Over-simplifying your strategy or generalizing your content can deeply hamper your B2B marketing efforts. Personalizing B2B content may take time, but it’s well worth it.
Segmenting and personalizing can help you engage with each specific prospect, and increase the chance that they’ll develop into a higher quality lead. When developing or changing your strategy, keep these things in mind:
Know Your Segments
You must know who you are targeting before you can attempt to attract or engage them. Who are your subscribers, visitors, or followers? What has resonated with them in the past? Use the vast amount of data and analytics to see when your content is resonating with whom. Did one specific email get a large number of click-throughs from a a certain segment? Continue to pursue that. Testing your emails is a great way to gain these insights.
Core User Studies (sometimes referred to as Voice of Customer (VoC) Research) can also be helpful when attempting to capture the expectations and preferences of your various audiences. This market research technique gets down to the true wants and needs of your customers, and will allow your company to connect with them at many different stages of the buying cycle. Research can be time consuming, but the insights you get from it can change the entire direction of your marketing plan and make increase its effectiveness exponentially.
Approach Each Vertical Differently
As a B2B business, it is common to deal with a number of different industries. Each of your verticals has different interests and faces different challenges; it doesn’t make sense to talk to them as one collective whole. While some cross-industry pieces can be appealing, it is important to deliver content that addresses each vertical specifically. This is especially important when creating content or advertisements for trade publications, where niche B2B audiences tend to spend a lot of their time.
Keep Job Titles in Mind
There are many different people along the buying cycle, all who may be coming into contact with your company’s content. However, each person will have different concerns based on their role within the company. Think about it: a purchaser might be interested in finding a low-cost product, while an engineer is more worried about the quality. The CEO, on the other hand, is in charge of big picture thinking and long-term goals. Any of these three, and a host of others, could be reading your content. Be sure to change your message and propose a different call to action based on who you’re talking to.
Create Personas
One thing that will help you with everything created above is the creation of personas. You’ll likely have at least two, but it could be many more depending on how many verticals and job titles you have on your list. The more you know about those verticals and job titles the easier it will be for you to create personas. A persona is a fictional character who represents a buyer in one of your audience segments. Having a clear idea of who you are creating content for makes it easy to show how your company can provide them solutions. Here’s a guide for creating personas that will help fine-tune your content program and give it more direction.
While it may be easier to blanket all of your audiences with the same content, you need to drill down a little more for it to be effective. The relevance and quality of your content is what will make a lasting impression. Consistently delivering personalized content to your audiences will prove a successful strategy for cultivating meaningful B2B engagement. Invest the time in doing it right — it will be worth it in the long run.
Continue ReadingThe Anatomy of a Perfect B2B Persona
by MGB2B
Personas are a key part of any content marketing plan. For the purposes of content creation, a persona is a fictional character who represents a buyer in one of your audience segments. Each piece of content you create should be written for a specific persona. Let’s say you’re a manufacturer with prospects in five different verticals, two of which are defense and medical devices. Each of the five will have a different persona for whom you create content. This is because the content that appeals to your defense prospects is not going to appeal to your medical prospects and vice versa.
The more relevant content you share with the defense guy, the more he’s going to keep coming back for more. Send him something that doesn’t resonate, and you may lose him for good. You might even create different personas for job titles within each vertical (Purchaser, CEO, etc.).
So now you know why you need personas. But do you know exactly how to create a B2B persona?
Here are the Elements that Make Up a Perfect B2B Persona:
The Name. Get creative with it. Give them a personality. No-Nonsense Nancy. Type-A Todd. Decisive Dave.
The Photo. A lot of brands skip this step, but it’s nice to put a face with a name. What does Decisive Dave look like? What does he wear? You’re only using this internally, so feel free to find a picture online and use that. Visualization can help your content team write the appropriate content.
Age, Title, and Type of Company. These are likely demographics you’re already targeting. But no persona should be without them. They are the perfect jumping-off point for the rest of your persona development.
What His/Her Day Is Like At Work. Sitting in front of a computer all day is not what we’re looking for here. You want to have an idea of how they interact with staff, what their short- and long-term goals are, and what they need to help them do their jobs better.
At What Point He or She Is Involved In Decision Making. This is important. Is this a person that introduces ideas to their boss? Or the person that makes the final decision about purchasing? Is it someone who is more concerned with money than quality or vice versa? Are you talking to engineers or IT people? That’s a whole new ball game. All of this can and should influence your content.
Media Consumption. How does this person find new products? What do they read when they need insights to help them thrive in their position? When do they read articles online? How often?
What Home Life Is Like. This may seem irrelevant, but it’s not. Does Nancy have a husband and two kids or is she single? Is Todd married? Does he spend too much time commuting? Any little bit of personality you give to your personas is helpful (as long as it’s not completely off-base).
What He or She Does in His/Her Spare Time. Does Decisive Dave spend a lot of time on the golf course? Is Nancy a world traveler? Again, this stuff is gravy, but it can make a big difference for certain types of content. For instance, let’s say you’re targeting doctors, and you have solid information that the majority of doctors like to golf on the weekends. Amidst all of the insights you send their way, you might mix in a comparison between a golf game and the manufacture of medical devices. This is a unique B2B approach that will draw them in and keep them engaged.
These are the elements you need to look at while creating your brand’s B2B personas. Getting them right is one of the most important things you can do for an effective Content Strategy. Need help getting started? Drop us a line.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: Social Media Isn’t Measurable
by MGB2B
The Myth: Social Media Isn’t Measurable.
The Truth: The Question Isn’t Whether Social Is Measurable, But What Specifically to Measure.
Here’s some good news: social media is one of the most measurable marketing approaches. The bad news: there is no single metric that determines your overall success. Sounds discouraging. But just because you can’t snap your fingers and find the magic number doesn’t mean you can’t get incredibly useful analytics – data that can help you generate quality leads. So, how can you use your findings to build awareness, connect with customers, and ultimately bring in money for your company?
Here Are Three B2B Social Media Measuring Tips to Get You Started:
- Assess the right social media metrics:
- Demographics: Your audience offers a whole host of metrics that can help you measure your overall success on social media. Using each channels’ analytics (more on that below), you can determine what your audience is interested in, their ages, locations, and more. This can help drive your social media advertising efforts and guide your overall content program, too.
- Engagement: While growing your network should always be a goal, the number of people who are interacting with your content is key. Quality is better than quantity when it comes to social media. And your followers won’t stick around and engage if your content is lacking. Engagement levels on each piece of content you post can tell you which types of content and what topics resonate most with your audience.
- Utilize analytics tools: Measuring your reach and engagement manually can be daunting. Individual social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, all have easy-to-use analytics tools through their websites. You can also employ outside third-party services to track these metrics for you, such as Google Analytics or Klout. The more robust the program, the better.
- Understand how people move from social media to your website: How do you turn your social media insights into action? You can utilize Google Analytics to track the traffic from your social media sites to your website. The data can tell you which social media platforms are the most effective and what content best resonates with your audience. For example: If you are sharing the same white paper across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but find in Google Analytics that the only conversions are coming from LinkedIn, consider shifting your strategy on Twitter and Facebook to focus on other forms of content.
Measuring your social media correctly is worth the time and effort. It helps you fine-tune your strategy to drive more engagement and add new prospects into your sales funnel. And your analysis can help your content department determine what will work best. Assessing the success of your social media can add value to your company in more ways than one. Time to start fine-tuning!
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