Leverage Buyer Goals to Drive Breakthrough Marketing Results

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I've always been skeptical of claims that using any one technique or tactic will consistently result in superior marketing performance. Simple, "silver bullet" solutions for big, complex challenges are incredibly rare in the real world.

But, if there is one key to decoding the formula for effective marketing, it is the ability to understand how people make decisions and what drives human behavior.

Understanding what will cause a potential buyer to respond to your marketing messages and ultimately buy your product or service is a prerequisite for developing an effective marketing strategy and creating persuasive marketing messages and content.

When you can't identify the factors that underlie human decision-making and behavior, it's nearly impossible to design marketing programs that are consistently successful. It's like trying to navigate by the stars on a cloudy night. 

The good news is, you can use established principles of decision science to identify and better understand the mechanisms that drive your potential buyers' decision-making and behavior.

The Critical Role of Buyer Goals

Recent advances in decision science have established that motivation is the primary driver behind all human behavior, including buying behavior.

The American Psychological Association defines motivation as, "a person's willingness to exert physical or mental effort in pursuit of a goal or outcome." Put another way, motivation is the willingness to take action to achieve a goal. The goal may be to solve a problem, satisfy a need, or get a particular "job" done.

As humans, we pursue a goal because we expect to receive a reward if the goal is achieved. Neuroscience has shown that the human brain has a "reward system," which is a group of structures and neural pathways that are activated when our brain processes sensory inputs that signal a reward we value.

When our brain's reward system is activated, we are motivated to pursue the goal that will enable us to reap the expected reward. And the more we value the expected reward, the more motivated we become to achieve the goal.

Our goals also largely dictate what we pay attention to. Research has shown that our brain automatically scans our environment for information that aligns with our goals. So, in essence, our brain causes us to pay attention to information that is closely related to our goals.

Lastly, goals can be explicit or implicit. Explicit goals are those we set and pursue at a conscious level. An implicit goal operates primarily at a subconscious level. These goals arise out of basic human physical, psychological, and social needs, things like safety, security, and autonomy. We are motivated to pursue implicit goals even when we aren't consciously thinking about them.

Implications for Marketers

These principles of decision science have major implications for marketers. The most important lesson is that the ability of any marketing message to provoke a response from a potential buyer is determined by how closely the message aligns with the buyer's goals. That degree of "fit" is what makes the message relevant to the buyer and what will prompt him or her to respond.

This means you need to identify what the goals of your potential buyers are and then craft messages that are linked to those goals. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done for two main reasons.

First, buyer goals are highly individualistic. They can differ even among buyers who have similar demographic attributes, work in similar types of businesses, and have similar job titles and functions. Therefore, even well-constructed buyer personas may not reveal what goals are most important for an individual buyer.

Second, the goals of a business buyer can and will change as the opportunities and challenges facing the buyer's organization change. This means that a buyer who doesn't respond to a particular marketing message today might well respond to the same message received a month from now.

The challenges presented by these two factors are always present, but they are more pronounced when you're seeking to acquire new customers.

If you are properly nurturing your relationship with an existing customer, you should be well-positioned to understand what your customer's high-priority opportunities and challenges are at any point in time. And that gives you greater insight into the goals your customer's buyers are likely to have.

When you're seeking to acquire new customers, the most effective strategy is to ensure that your marketing messages feature links to one or more of the implicit goals I discussed earlier. This approach has two main advantages.

First, implicit goals are universal because they arise out of fundamental psychological and social needs that all humans share. And second, implicit goals are durable; they don't change much over time. Therefore, marketing messages linked to these goals will likely resonate with most of your buyers whenever they are used.

The bottom line is:  If you want to achieve consistent marketing success, there's no substitute for understanding your buyer's goals.

Empathetic Marketing Will Be Vital in 2022 . . . But It's Not Easy

Empathy has become a hot topic in marketing circles over the past couple of years. The increased interest has been largely driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the personal and professional lives of millions and wreaked havoc on the operations of businesses almost everywhere. Astute marketers quickly recognized that communications with customers and potential buyers would only be effective if they embodied a healthy dose of empathy.

If anything, empathy will become even more essential for effective marketing in 2022. So marketing leaders need to make empathy an important focus of their planning for next year.

Why Empathy Matters

Empathy is generally defined as the ability to understand and vicariously experience the thoughts and feelings of another person. It's the ability to put yourself in the "heart and mind" of someone and "see the world" as that person sees it.

Empathy is essential for effective human communications of all kinds, and it's particularly important in marketing. One of the primary objectives of marketers is to craft messages that will resonate with customers and potential buyers, and empathy is necessary for achieving that goal.

To create messages that are truly empathetic, marketers must perform two sequential tasks:

• First, they must put themselves in the shoes of their target audience(s) and see the world through their eyes. This step is often called perspective-taking.
• And second, marketers must adapt their messages to fit the mental and emotional perspective(s) of their target audience(s).

In short, marketing messages must be tailored based on all relevant aspects of the audience's perspective in order to produce maximum effectiveness.

Why Empathetic Marketing Is Hard

If you think my description of empathetic marketing sounds a bit like "Marketing 101," you'd be right. Understanding potential buyers and leveraging those insights to create compelling marketing messages has been the fundamental job of marketers for decades. But while empathetic marketing isn't new, it remains very difficult to do well.

One reason is that empathetic marketing requires deep insights about potential buyers, and those insights can't be totally derived from the demographic and behavioral data that most marketers rely on. Therefore, marketers are required to make inferences about several important aspects of their audiences' perspectives.

For marketing messages to be empathetic, those inferences must be reasonably accurate, but drawing accurate inferences about potential buyers isn't easy, even under the best conditions. And that brings us to the second reason that empathetic marketing is difficult to do well.

The Problem of Marketer Bias

Remember that empathetic marketing requires marketers to take on the mental and emotional perspective of their target audience. This means that marketers must be able to set aside their own likes, dislikes and feelings and adopt the persona of their audience. As the insightful Mark Ritson recently wrote:

". . . the first rule of marketing is that you are not the market. All your thoughts and immediate responses to things like advertising, price and packaging are not just incorrect - they are dangerous . . . Learning to separate your own instinctive thoughts and feelings from the actual insights from real consumers is, literally, the first thing a trained marketer learns to do well."

Recent research suggests that many marketers have more work to do to master this vital skill. Over the period of 2017-2020, Reach Solutions (the advertising arm of Reach, plc, the largest national and regional news publisher in the UK) published the results of four studies that provide a wealth of fascinating insights about the state of advertising in the UK. I've provided links to the study reports at the end of this post, and I encourage you to read them.

The first study in 2017 found that the relevance of brands and advertising had declined significantly in the UK, and it revealed that the UK advertising industry was out of touch with the mainstream UK population. The next three studies were designed to explore the potential causes of this disconnect.

The Reach research uncovered several stark differences between the people working in the UK advertising industry and the mainstream UK population. For example:

• People between the ages of 18 and 40 represent just 35% of the UK adult population, but they account for 84% of the UK advertising workforce.
• Less than a third of UK adults have received a college degree, but in the UK advertising industry, ". . . a degree is the minimum requirement for entry level roles."
• Forty-four percent of people working in advertising self-identify as being on the left of the political spectrum vs. only 25% of the mainstream UK population.

Just as important, Reach found that the people working in advertising and marketing do not have an above-average aptitude for empathy. Only 30% have high levels of perspective-taking and affective empathy vs. 29% of the mainstream population.

Reach concluded that the people who work in the UK advertising industry have cognitive biases that cause them "to literally see and experience the world differently from the modern mainstream" and that people in the ad industry "are driven by distinctive personality traits that are not shared by the modern mainstream."

The Reach research was conducted exclusively in the UK, but if comparable studies were done in the U.S., I suspect many of the findings would be similar.

The bottom line is, marketers must make a concerted effort to put aside their emotions, beliefs and cognitive biases in order to take the perspective(s) of their target audience(s). That's not easy to do on a consistent basis, and that's why truly empathetic marketing is hard to do well.

Image courtesy of Ian Burt via Flickr (CC).

Reach Solutions Research Reports

When Trust Falls Down (2017) (Note: Reach Solutions was formerly Trinity Mirror Solutions)

Why We Shouldn't Trust Our Gut Instinct (2018)

The Empathy Delusion (2019)

The Aspiration Window (2020)

The Magic of "Job-Focused" Content

When Theodore Levitt taught marketing at the Harvard Business School, he frequently reminded his students that "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole." The point Professor Levitt was making is that people don't usually buy a product or service because they want the product or service itself. What they really want is what the product or service will help them accomplish.

In The Innovator's Solution, Clayton Christensen built on Professor Levitt's idea to describe what is called the jobs-to-be-done framework. The basic idea of this framework is that when people become aware of a "job" they need to get done, they look for a product or service they can "hire" to perform the job.

Christensen argues that this is how customers "experience life." Their thought processes begin with an awareness that they need to get something done, and then they seek to hire something or someone to do the job as effectively, conveniently, and inexpensively as possible.

The attributes of the jobs that people are needing to get done constitute the circumstances in which they buy. Therefore, Christensen says, the jobs-to-be-done framework can enable company leaders to reliably predict what features and functionality will cause people to buy a product or service.

The jobs-to-be-done framework is often used to guide the process of developing new products and services, but it also has implications for marketing. What it tells us is that one key to effective marketing is to focus the majority of our marketing messages and content on the jobs our potential buyers need to get done. 

To create compelling "job-focused" messages and content, marketers need a thorough understanding of the jobs their potential buyers are trying to get done. Specifically, marketers need to know:

• What the specific jobs are
• Why the jobs are important
• What happens if the jobs don't get done
• How potential buyers are trying to perform the jobs - what tools and processes are they using
• What is preventing prospects from getting the jobs done effectively and efficiently - what are the limitations and shortcomings of their existing tools and processes

Using content that is built around the jobs that your buyers are trying to get done provides several important benefits:

• Content that can help buyers get an important job done is more likely to earn their attention and engagement because it provides meaningful value.
• When you use the jobs-to-be-done framework to guide your content marketing program, content development efforts become more focused, and less time is wasted creating content that won't resonate with potential buyers.
• Job-focused content typically has a longer shelf life. As long as the identified job exists, the content relating to that job will remain valuable and useful. While job-focused content does need to be reviewed and possibly updated on a regular basis, the longer shelf life can ease the content development burden.
• In many cases, multiple members of the buying group will need to get the same job done. Therefore, job-focused content can often be used with several buyer personas. And such content can be easily customized for each relevant persona. Plus, by identifying the jobs that multiple buyers have in common, job-focused content can help the buying group reach consensus.

It's abundantly clear that content marketing success is becoming more difficult to achieve. Using content that buyers will instinctively see as meaningful and valuable will increase your odds of success, and the jobs-to-be-done framework can help you develop such content.

Illustration courtesy of Mufidah Kassallas via Flickr CC.

Does Account-Based Marketing Make Buyer Personas Unnecessary?

Last week, Jason Stewart, the Vice President for Strategic Content at Annuitas, published a great article at LinkedIn titled "What the C-Suite Needs to Know About Account-Based Marketing."

In this article, Jason argues that ABM represents a major step in the right direction for many B2B companies, but he also contends that it falls short of being a comprehensive demand generation strategy. He writes, "ABM is an extraordinarily smart way to make the right tactical decisions when it comes to demand generation, but the elite Account-Based Marketers are still building personas, nurturing every step of the buyer's journey, and know exactly which activities and leads are driving revenue."

I would suggest that Jason's article is particularly on point when it comes to the issue of buyer personas. Most ABM experts say that account-based marketing involves a fundamental shift from "lead-centric" marketing to "account-centric" marketing. But does this mean that ABM diminishes the importance and value of buyer personas? The answer to this question is an emphatic "No," and I'll explain why momentarily. But first, a little historical perspective is in order.

Buyer personas have been a core element of B2B marketing for more than a decade. The origin of buyer personas is usually traced to the practice of creating user personas to help software engineers develop more user-friendly applications. User personas made their appearance in the late 1990's, and we started hearing about buyer personas a few years later.

In the B2B world, buyer personas are intended to help marketing and sales professionals better understand the people who influence business buying decisions, but the importance of this understanding was recognized long before anyone had ever heard of buyer personas. Consider, for example, the following quotation from Organizational Buying Behavior by Frederick E. Webster, Jr. and Yoram Wind published more than four decades ago:

"Although organizational buying is the result of organizational decision making, individual behavior defines this decision-making system. Each person involved in the buying process brings to it a set of needs, goals, habits, past experiences, information, attitudes, and so on which he applies in each specific situation. . .

An efficient and effective marketing strategy for organizational buyers must be aimed at specific individuals who have authority and responsibility for buying decisions, not at some broad conception of the 'organization,' for individuals, not organizations, make organizational buying decisions."

When you implement account-based marketing, the first two steps in the process are to select target accounts and identify the relevant contacts (i.e. buyers) in each target account. The third step in the process is to develop deep insights regarding each account. With ABM, therefore, you will identify the actual buyers, and you will develop deep account insights before you begin your marketing program. Doesn't this knowledge reduce the need for buyer personas?

In reality, buyer personas are still essential for effective ABM because every buyer at each target account will bring his or her individual perspectives to the buying process, and it's still important to have marketing messages and marketing content resources that address those individual buyer perspectives. Today, it is possible to learn more about our actual buyers than in the past, but even "big data" won't consistently reveal the goals, objectives, and motivations of individual buyers.

So, we still need buyer personas to fill those gaps in our understanding. As we interact with actual buyers, we can and should use those interactions to learn more about the specific goals, interests, and perspectives of our buyers. And we should use those insights to fine-tune our marketing messages and content. As we learn more about our actual buyers, we can rely less on buyer personas for insights about those specific buyers. But buyer personas still provide a critical starting point for effective ABM.

Illustration courtesy of Rick B via Flickr.

Content Personalization Comes of Age

For the past several years, experts have been urging B2B marketers to use marketing content that is tailored or personalized for specific audiences. Most astute marketers now recognize that personalized content increases relevance and boosts marketing effectiveness.

A new research study by Demand Metric provides an interesting snapshot of the state of content personalization in B2B companies. The 2016 Content Personalization Benchmark Report was based on a survey fielded in February 2016 that produced 186 qualified responses. Almost half (49%) of the survey respondents had marketing job titles, and almost all of the respondents (91%) were affiliated with B2B or B2B2C companies.

Demand Metric found that the use of personalized content is widespread. Sixty-one percent of survey respondents said they personalize at least some of their marketing content. The survey also revealed, however, that content personalization is relatively new in most B2B companies. More than half of the survey respondents said they have been personalizing content for less than two years.

As might be expected, users of personalized content have a high opinion of its effectiveness. In the Demand Metric survey, 80% of the respondents who use personalized content said that it is "more effective" or "much more effective" than content that isn't personalized.

The Demand Metric research also suggests that personalized content improves overall content marketing performance. When study participants were asked to rate the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts, 56% of the respondents who use personalized content said that their content marketing is "effective" or "very effective." Only 29% of the respondents who are not using personalized content rated their content marketing programs as effective or very effective.

Demand Metric also examined how much content is personalized and found that among survey respondents who use personalized content, the average amount of content that's personalized is just over 50%. However, the survey also revealed that there is wide variation in how much content companies are personalizing. Nearly two out of ten survey respondents (17%) said they personalize more than 80% of their content, while 20% of the respondents said they personalize 20% or less of their content.

The Demand Metric study also provides important insights regarding the types of personalization that companies are using. As the following diagram illustrates, there are six degrees or levels of content personalization, ranging from generic content (no personalization) to content that is tailored or personalized for an individual lead.

Demand Metric found that companies are using all types or levels of personalized content, as the following table shows.

In the Demand Metric survey, about half of the respondents who personalize content said they use three or more of these types of personalized content, and the three types that are most often used simultaneously are segment-specific, persona-specific, and account-specific.

Why Marketing Can't Always Produce "Goldilocks" Content

Does this scenario sound familiar? You're talking with a marketer for a B2B company, and she says, "We're creating great content - and lots of it - but our sales reps don't use half of the content we develop." Then, you talk with sales reps from the same company, and they say," We need better content! A lot of the content that marketing provides doesn't really help us advance our sales opportunities."

Unfortunately, this scenario is far too common, and it's clear that sales reps don't use content resources produced by marketing for two main reasons. Either they can't find the resources when they need them, or they don't believe the resources will be useful in the selling situation they're facing.

SiriusDecisions recently estimated that 28% of all the content owned by B2B companies goes unused because it's unfindable, and that 37% isn't used because of low quality or lack of relevance. In a survey last year by Demand Metric, only 43% of sales respondents rated their marketing content assets as somewhat effective, and only 3% said they were very effective.

Some people argue that both of these problems can be solved.

• Sales enablement technology can be used to make content resources easily findable by sales reps, and some sales enablement solutions can use data analytics to recommend specific content resources for specific sales interactions.
• By collaborating with sales reps during the content development process, marketers can create content resources that will better meet the needs of salespeople.

Technology can certainly be used to make finding content assets easier, and collaboration between marketers and salespeople should enable marketers to develop content resources that will be more compelling to potential buyers. But can marketing be expected to always provide "Goldilocks" content - content that will be "just right" for every interaction that a sales rep has with a potential buyer? I don't think so, and here's why.

One vital characteristic of effective marketing content is personalization. By personalization, I mean the degree to which the material in a content asset is tailored based on the attributes and anticipated interests of the intended recipient. The following diagram shows the six levels of content personalization.

The table below describes each level of personalization.

Today, we know that marketing content should be segment-specific, persona-specific, and stage-specific. In other words, marketers should consistently develop and use content resources that are tailored for specific buyer personas who are affiliated with specific types of prospect organizations, and who are at specific stages of the buying process.

However, it's just about impossible for marketers to develop prospect-specific and lead-specific content because those levels of personalization require insights that can only be gained through personal interactions with potential buyers. So, these types of personalized content can only be produced by someone who is having direct conversations with the potential buyer - and that usually means a business development representative or a salesperson.

Last year, David Brock addressed this issue in a post at his Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog. Dave described prospect-specific and lead-specific content in captivating terms:

"It's marketing content for an audience of 1 - at this very moment . . . It's content that addresses my specific problem, concerns, and priorities right now - because they may be slightly different from those I have tomorrow . . . The content I need comes from you engaging me in conversations and a discussion about what I do, what my people do, what my boss is expecting of me, what my customers and suppliers want . . . It is specific to me and my priorities today."

For the past few years, the conventional wisdom has been that salespeople should not be spending their time developing content. But the reality is, there are some types of content that only a sales rep can produce. Instead of trying to eliminate all salesperson-created content, marketers should support sales reps in performing this vital job. And salespeople should stop expecting marketers to provide ready-made content for every selling situation.

Top illustration courtesy of CW Wells via Flickr CC.

Seven Questions Your Content Marketing Strategy Must Answer

It's now abundantly clear that content marketing has become an integral part of the marketing efforts of most B2B companies. Recent research by several organizations has shown that an overwhelming majority of B2B companies are using content marketing in some form. But despite this widespread use, many B2B marketers aren't particularly happy with their content marketing program. In the latest B2B content marketing survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, only 38% of respondents rated their content marketing efforts as effective.

Research has also shown that having (and following) a content marketing strategy is critical to success. In the 2015 CMI/MarketingProfs survey:

• Only 35% of respondents said they have a documented (written) content marketing strategy, while another 48% said they have a strategy, but it's not in writing.
• 60% of respondents with a documented strategy said their company is effective at content marketing, but only 7% of respondents without a documented strategy said their content marketing efforts are effective.

A comprehensive content marketing strategy will address numerous issues. The Content Marketing Institute has published an excellent white paper on content marketing strategy which includes thirty-six questions that marketers should consider when they're developing their strategy.

While all of the questions in CMI's white paper are important, I usually recommend that clients begin by focusing on a set of seven core questions. The answers to these questions won't constitute a complete content marketing plan, but they will provide a solid foundation for your content marketing strategy.

1. Who is the target audience for our content? What are the characteristics of the organizations that constitute our best prospects, and what are the attributes of the people in those organizations who will influence the decision to purchase our products or services?
2. What are the primary marketing objectives (brand awareness, lead generation, etc.) of our content marketing program?
3. What issues or topics will be relevant and compelling to the people in our target market?
4. What content formats will be most effective with the people in our target market?
5. Given the communications behaviors and preferences of the people in our target market, what communications channels will we use to publish, distribute, and promote our content?
6. Who will be responsible for creating our content resources, and who will manage our content marketing program?
7. What financial resources will be needed to fund our content marketing program, and where/how will we obtain those resources?

From these questions, it should be clear that your content marketing strategy must be based on clearly defined marketing objectives and a deep understanding of your potential buyers. This reinforces the point that content marketing is ultimately a means to an end. It is a method of marketing that enables companies to create and sustain meaningful engagement with potential buyers for the purpose of achieving strategic marketing objectives.

Why "Easy" Content is More Persuasive

Creating persuasive content is a perennial challenge for B2B marketers. Producing engaging content has been one of the top three challenges identified by respondents in all five of the annual B2B content marketing surveys by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

Marketers have traditionally viewed B2B purchasing as a rational process, and as a result, we tend to believe that the key to creating persuasive content is to use logical arguments that are supported by credible and convincing evidence. We now know, however, that B2B buying behavior is not completely rational and that business buyers, like all humans, rely on non-rational mental shortcuts when making decisions.

Because B2B buying isn't totally rational, marketing content that relies only on logical arguments and credible evidence will not be as persuasive as content that also appeals to the intuitive aspects of human decision making.

Research from both psychology and behavioral economics has produced several insights that B2B marketers can use to improve the persuasiveness of marketing content. One of the most important concepts is cognitive fluency, which is the term scientists use to describe the ease with which our brains process information. It turns out that we humans have a strong affinity for things that are easy for us to think about. Psychologists say that cognitive fluency signals familiarity, and familiarity makes us feel comfortable.

Cognitive fluency shapes our thinking in many ways. For example, numerous experiments have shown that cognitive fluency:

• Makes us more inclined to believe a statement is true
• Causes us to believe that the author of a statement is more intelligent
• Makes us more confident in our judgment about the truth of a statement

There are two variations of the cognitive fluency "formula" that are important for marketers to understand.

Easy = Familiar = True

This is the most common expression of the cognitive fluency principle, and it states that if marketers want to make content persuasive, they must make it easy to process. There are several basic tactics that marketers can use to improve cognitive fluency.

• Use easy-to-read fonts and contrasting colors for text. (For an authoritative discussion of font "power," read this article.)
• Do not use complex language when simple language will suffice. We actually view the unnecessary use of pretentious language as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility.
• Whenever possible, use images and simple diagrams to anchor and illustrate complex concepts.

Familiar = Easy = True

The second variation of the cognitive fluency formula is more subtle, but just as important for B2B marketers. It states that if marketers want to make content persuasive, they must make it familiar. 

This dimension of cognitive fluency explains why it is important to create content with a specific buyer persona in mind. When I develop content for a specific buyer persona, I use terminology and examples that will be familiar to the target persona. 

So, for example, when I write a white paper or an e-book "for" CFO's, I make liberal use of financial terms and financial concepts. Likewise, if I'm writing for a buyer in a particular industry, I'll use terminology and examples from that industry. These tactics will make the white paper or e-book "feel" more familiar to the target reader, which will make the information easier for the reader to process, which will cause the reader to be more likely to accept and believe my information.

Cognitive fluency is a powerful tool for improving the persuasiveness of marketing content. In a future post, I'll discuss how "framing" content can also improve persuasiveness.

Great Marketing Content Always Requires Trade-Offs

In a landmark article for the Harvard Business Review, Michael E. Porter wrote that the essence of business strategy is choosing to perform business activities differently - or to perform different activities - than competitors. Porter also argued that a powerful strategy always involves trade-offs. If you design and arrange your activities to excel a delivering a specific value proposition, you will be less able to effectively and efficiently deliver other types of value. Therefore, strategy is about deciding both what to do and what not to do.

A variation of Porter's principle applies to content marketing. To be highly effective, each content resource you develop must be designed to address the concerns and interests of a specific target audience. And when a content resource is truly designed for a specific target audience, that resource will inevitably be less appealing to other audiences, some of which may be important to your company. It can be tempting to design content resources that will appeal to multiple audiences, but this is usually a mistake. The title of a recent blog post by Joe Pulizzi makes the point clearly:  "If Your Content Marketing is for Everybody, It's for Nobody."

Whenever I talk with prospective clients about starting a content marketing program, one of the first questions they ask is:  "Why can't we create one content resource, say a white paper or an e-book, that tells the whole story? It could include a description of the problems we can solve and the benefits our solution can provide, and we could include a couple of customer success stories to demonstrate that we can deliver what we promise."

At this point in the conversation, the image of a Swiss army knife always flashes in my mind. As you probably know, a Swiss army knife is a tool that's about the size of a large pocket knife. In addition to regular knife blades, it has several other attachments, such as a bottle opener, a can opener, a screwdriver, and a file. So, a Swill army knife is a real multi-tasking tool and a handy thing to have on a camping trip or a hike.

Some B2B marketers believe they can create one content resource that will appeal to all of their target audiences and fill all (or most) of their content needs. In essence, they want to create the content marketing equivalent of a Swill army knife. Unfortunately, however, the Swiss army knife approach to content marketing doesn't work well. Here are two of the primary reasons.

Diluted Relevance - When you create a content resource that's designed for multiple audiences, it will inevitably include information that's not very relevant or interesting to some of those audiences. Suppose, for example, that you offer a technology product that must be sold to plant managers, IT directors, and CFO's. Each of these buyer types will have distinct concerns and priorities. If you create one content resource for all of these buyer types, you are essentially asking each potential buyer to wade through material that doesn't particularly interest him or her in order to find the information that addresses his or her primary concerns.

Excessive Length - Even if the relevance problem didn't exist, when you try to "cover all the bases" in one content resource, you are likely to end up with a very long resource. The problem with long content resources is that most potential buyers now have short attention spans. They usually prefer to consume content in small doses, especially when they are in the early stages of the buying process. Most early-stage buyers simply won't be willing to invest the time it takes to read a 50-page white paper or e-book.

The bottom line is that developing good marketing content always requires you to make trade-offs. When you develop a content resource for a specific target audience, it probably won't be appropriate of other audiences. For an effective content marketing program, you'll need distinct resources for most of your primary audiences.

One Way to Make Feeding the Content Beast Easier

Other than lack of time, the biggest challenge now facing B2B content marketers is producing enough content, according to the latest content marketing survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

The volume of content required for effective B2B marketing has increased dramatically over the past few years in part because publishing new content frequently is important for improving search engine rankings. More significantly, though, companies must produce more content because of the need to make marketing messages more relevant for potential buyers. To improve relevance, marketers are increasingly using two best practices:

• They are creating buyer personas and developing content that is tailored to address the particular needs and interests of each persona. This increases what I call personal relevance.
• They are developing content that is specifically designed for each stage of the buying process, which increases what I call situational relevance.

This approach can be extremely powerful and effective, but it can also turn content development into an overwhelming job for many companies. For example, suppose that you've created four buyer personas and that you use the traditional four-stage buying process (Awareness-Interest-Consideration-Decision). This scenario would literally require 16 unique content assets to fully implement a persona-specific/stage-specific content marketing strategy, as illustrated by the following table.

While there is no "easy" button for content development, there are some steps you can take to make the job more manageable. One important step is to ask how much customization is really required to achieve the necessary level of relevance.

For example, the reality is that you probably would not need 16 distinct content assets to have an effective marketing program in the circumstances described above. If you take a close look at your buyer personas, you would probably find that they have similar interests, concerns, and information needs when they are in the early stages of the buying process. In many cases, the need for content that is customized for each buyer persona increases as potential buyers move through the buying process.

What this means is that you can often use one early-stage content asset to "cover" multiple buyer personas without incurring a significant loss of relevance. The table below shows how this approach could be used to reduce the number of assets needed for an effective content marketing program. In this example, the number of required assets goes from 16 to 11, which represents a 31% reduction in the number of assets needed.

The above example is for illustration purposes only. There's no universal rule that predicts how much streamlining this approach will enable you to achieve. Your business circumstances will dictate how much streamlining is possible, and you should only streamline if you can maintain a high level of relevance. But, if you can lower your content requirements by even 20% or so, that will make feeding the content beast easier.

Match Your Content to the Type of Demand You Need to Create

I've written frequently here about why it's important to develop marketing content resources for specific buyer personas and specific stages of the buying process. This kind of targeted content produces better marketing results because it enables you to increase what I call personal relevance and situational relevance.

There's also another factor you need to consider when developing marketing content. To make your content more effective, you must understand the type of demand you need to create. The demand type concept was developed by SiriusDecisions a few years ago, and it's basically designed to describe where your market is in the typical evolutionary cycle.

SiriusDecisions has identified three demand type categories.

New Concept
A new concept is a truly disruptive product or service. It usually solves a problem that most potential buyers don't know they have, or it may address a condition or set of circumstances that most potential buyers perceive to be an inevitable fact of business life, for which no solution exists.

New Paradigm
A new paradigm is a product or service that will solve a known problem or fill a known need in a new and novel way that differs significantly for other existing solutions.

Established Market
An established market represents a product or service that is accepted by the majority of prospect organizations as necessary and best-of-breed. With an established market product or service, most prospective buyers will understand the nature and ramifications of their need, and they will have a general understanding of what solutions are available.

Obviously, these different market environments require different approaches to content marketing. With a new concept, both marketing and sales must be highly evangelistic. Your first job is to show potential buyers that a given set of conditions constitutes a problem and that an effective solution to the problem exists. Therefore, your marketing content needs to contain a significant thought leadership component that is designed to create awareness of the problem and instill confidence that the problem can be solved.

With a new paradigm product or service, most potential buyers are aware of the problem they need to solve, and they may have already implemented one of the conventional solutions. Therefore, your marketing content must demonstrate why and how the new solution you offer is significantly better than the more conventional solutions. In this situation, your primary competition is the existing solution paradigm rather than other solution providers.

When your product or service competes in an established market, the key to success is differentiating your solution from those offered by your competitors. Since your solution is probably similar in general functionality to those of your competitors, your marketing content needs to emphasize other sources of differentiation, such as a lower total cost of ownership, easier and/or faster implementation, or more responsive customer support.

When you're using these demand types to guide your marketing efforts, it's important to remember that the type of demand you need to create will change as your market evolves. Therefore, to keep your marketing content effective and compelling, it needs to evolve in step with your market.

Passing the Baton Without Missing a Step- Sales Enablement, Part 3

 

This is the third of three posts that are discussing the role that marketing plays in helping the sales team sell - what is usually called sales enablement. In the first post, I discussed what sales enablement is and why it is an important issue for most B2B companies. The second post discussed one of marketing's primary sales enablement responsibilities - providing the content resources that will help sales reps advance sales opportunities.

In this post, I'll explain why effective sales enablement also requires marketers to provide information that will enable sales reps to continue prospect relationships without a loss of momentum. In essence, marketing and sales need to work together like the runners in a relay race. Here's what I mean.

As I wrote in my last post, business buyers don't distinguish between marketing and sales activities. From the buyer's perspective, there is one problem-solving process that may result in a purchase. We now know that most buyers are performing research on their own before they are willing to meet with a salesperson. So by the time a potential buyer meets with your sales rep, the buyer will probably have visited your website and accessed several of the content resources you offer.

These self-educated buyers have little patience for "starting over" with a salesperson. They expect their sales rep to come into the initial meeting with a basic working knowledge of their business and industry. Just as important, today's buyers also expect their sales rep to know what has already transpired in the relationship. They want the sales rep to step in and provide new insights that build on what has already occurred and help advance the decision-making process.

To make the transition from marketing to sales without losing forward momentum, marketers must do more than simply provide contact information when they pass a lead to sales. An effective lead hand-off should include significantly more information, such as the buyer persona assigned to the lead, a description of the content plan for the relevant buyer persona, and a list of the content resources developed for that buyer persona.

An effective lead hand-off will also be accompanied by an activity history detailing the prior contacts between the lead and the selling company. The activity history should include the following kinds of information:

• Outbound marketing offers sent to the lead
• Outbound marketing offers the lead has responded to
• Website pages viewed by the lead
• Content resources accessed by the lead
• Summaries of any person-to-person communications between the lead and representatives of the selling company
• The prospect's lead score

Delivering this information isn't as overwhelming as it might first appear. Marketing should have developed a content plan and content resources for each buyer persona for each stage of the buying process. So, this information should already be available. Your marketing automation software should be able to capture most of the lead's activity history and transfer that information to your CRM system when the lead is passed from marketing to sales.

Don't misunderstand me. This type of lead hand-off does require additional work, but it will also provide significant benefits to the sales team and the company.

• It reduces the amount of time that sales reps must spend on lead research.
• It eliminates the need for sales reps to guess about what content resources to use.
• It reduces the need for sales reps to create or customize content.
• It improves the ability of sales reps to continue prospect relationships without losing momentum.
• It helps improve sales pipeline velocity.

The changing dynamics of B2B demand generation require a coordinated effort by marketing and sales. That's why sales enablement remains one of marketing's most important responsibilities.

Read Part 1 of the sales enablement series here.

Read Part 2 of the sales enablement series here.

Identifying the Questions Your Prospects Need to Answer

At the most basic level, successful B2B marketing and sales depend largely on having solid answers to four questions:

• Why do companies and businesspeople buy products or services like those we provide?
• How do our products or services create value for our customers?
• What differentiates our products or services from those offered by our competitors?
• How do our prospects make buying decisions?

Of these four issues, many B2B marketers and salespeople have the least understanding of how prospects actually make buying decisions. In the 2013 Sales Perforance Optimization survey by CSO Insights, only 9.6% of respondents said that their ability to understand their customer's buying process exceeded espectations.

Over the years, marketing and sales professionals have developed several models to describe the B2B buying process. Some still use the Awareness-Consideration-Evaluation-Purchase model that's been around for decades. The SiriusDecisions model depicted below is another widely-used representation of the B2B buying process.

Models can help us understand the buying process, but all buying process models have two important limitations. First, they inevitably make the decision-making process more linear and less complicated that it actually is. And second, buying process models don't contain all of the information you need to design effective demand generation programs or develop relevant and compelling marketing content.

Because of these limitations, I use a different approach when I work with clients on demand generation/content marketing programs. What we do is identify the questions that prospects will need to answer to feel comfortable making a buying decision. These questions are developed for each relevant buyer persona, and they are also formulated with a specific product or service in mind. These critical questions are part of what Ardath Albee called a "buyer synopis" in her great book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale.

To illustrate how this works, the table below shows some of the types of questions that would likely be included in any buying process for a complex product or service. For this example, I've collapsed the six-step SiriusDecisions buying process model into three broad buying process phases - Discovery, Consideration, and Decision. The questions in this table are general, and when you develop buying process questions, you'll want to include several that relate specifically to your product or service.



Developing an extensive list of buying stage questions helps you understand how your prospects think whey they're evaluating a prospective purchase. Just as important, it helps you design effective demand generation programs by enabling you to pinpoint the issues your marketing content resources need to address to move prospects through the buying process.

Three Questions Your Content Marketing Plan Must Answer

It's now abundantly clear that content marketing is a core marketing tactic for many companies. Research by the Content Marketing Institute suggests that nine out of ten B2B companies are using content marketing in some form.

Developing a content marketing program is a significant undertaking for any company. Not only does it require the creation of new content resources and the implementation of new marketing tactics, it also involves a fundamental shift in the philosophical approach to marketing.

When I'm talking with clients about implementing a content marketing program, one question that always comes up early in the conversation is: "How do I get started?" I always answer this question by saying that the first step is to develop a content marketing strategy and plan for the business. That answer usually leads to a second question:  "What should be included in a content strategy/plan?"

A complete content marketing plan will address numerous issues and contain significant detail, but at the most basic level, a content plan must answer three fundamental questions:

• What issues or topics will the content resources address, and how will the resources be made relevant for potential buyers?
• What digital and/or physical formats will be used for marketing content resources?
• When and how will content resources be published, distributed, or otherwise brought to the market, and how will they be promoted?

Like the proverbial three-legged stool, the answers to these three questions define the core elements of your content marketing strategy and plan. What makes these three questions particularly critical is that they apply both to the overall content marketing plan and to individual content resources. In other words, every time you contemplate the creation of a new content resource, you need to determine what issues it will address and how it will be tailored for a specific target audience, what format will be used for the resource, and how the resource will be published, distributed, and promoted.

Of these three questions, the first is by far the most important. One of the biggest content marketing mistakes that I see companies make is allowing format, rather than message, to drive the content development process. Marketers sometimes say, "We need a white paper [or an eBook or a Webinar]," rather than, "We need a content resource that communicates message X to audience Y." If you want to create an effective content marketing program, think messaging first, and then format and distribution.

I've published several posts here that discuss how to make content messaging more effective. In case you missed those posts, here are the links:

• Content Marketing Basics for 2013 - Compelling Value Propositions
• Content Marketing Basics for 2013 - Buyer Personas
• Content Marketing Basics for 2013 - The Content Audit
• Why Provocative Content Works Best for Acquiring Leads
• What It Takes to Make Marketing Content More Compelling

Content Marketing Basics for 2013 - The Content Audit

Starting a content marketing program from scratch can feel like an overwhelming task. Content marketing differs from traditional marketing in several fundamental ways, and it will require you to develop and field a very different portfolio of marketing assets.

In this series of posts, I'm describing three preliminary steps that will make the content development process more manageable. The first step is to identify your core customer value propositions because they define the central messages that your content resources need to communicate. The second step is to develop buyer personas because they provide the information you need to make your content resources relevant to your potential buyers.

The third preliminary step is to audit your existing inventory of content resources. A thorough content audit serves two important functions. First, it enables you to create a complete and accurate record of your existing content resources. In my experience, most marketers don't have a complete picture of what content resources they already have. Second, a content audit can be used to identify where gaps exist in your content portfolio, which helps you determine where to focus your content development efforts.

There are three basic steps involved in performing a comprehensive content audit. The first is to document basic information about each of your content assets. The second step is to associate or "map" each content resource to one or more of your identified buyer personas. In the final step, you map each content resource to one or more buying process stages on a per buyer persona basis.

To collect and organize this information, I use three spreadsheets, and I've provided example versions below.

Basic Resource Information

The spreadsheet below shows the basic information that I collect about each content asset. Most of the information required for this spreadsheet is self-explanatory, but I've included an "Instructions" row in the example.

 

Buyer Persona Map

The spreadsheet below is the tool I use to associate specific content resources with buyer personas. When mapping resources to buyer personas, the basic question you ask is whether a resource contains content that will appeal to a given buyer persona. Does the resource focus on the specific problems and challenges facing the buyer persona? Is the resource targeted for the persona's job function and industry.

 



You should be able to associate most content resources with at least one buyer persona, but there may be some resources that are so generic that it's just not reasonable to link them to any buyer persona. If you complete your buyer persona map and have any buyer personas with no (or very few) assigned resources, you obviously have a significant gap in your content portfolio.

Buying Stage Map

The final step in the content audit process is to associate your content resources with specific stages of the buying process. When mapping content resources to buying stages, the basic test is whether the resource contains answers for the major questions that a potential buyer will have at that stage of the buying process. The spreadsheet below is the tool I use to perform this step.

In this step, I find it easier to create a separate spreadsheet for each buyer persona. For illustration purposes, I've used a buying process that contains three stages - Discovery, Consideration, and Decision. To create a buying stage map, first select a buyer persona, then go to your buyer persona map and identify all of the content resources that you have assigned to that persona. List these resources in your buying stage map and link each resource to one or more buying stages. Repeat this process until you have a buying stage map for each of your buyer personas. If you don't have content resources for each buying stage for each buyer persona, then you've identified gaps in your content portfolio.

A content audit won't eliminate the work required to develop the content you need, but it will help you prioritize your content development projects.

Read Part 1 of the content marketing series here.

Read Part 2 of the content marketing series here.

Read Part 3 of the content marketing series here.

Content Marketing Basics for 2013 - Buyer Personas

Relevant content is a fundamental requirement for any effective content marketing effort. Today's business buyers are incredibly busy, and they view their time as their most precious commodity. Just as important, buyers now have easy access to a wealth of information, and they've come to believe that they can find whatever information they need whenever they need it. Under these circumstances, relevant marketing content is essential for creating and maintaining engagement with potential buyers.

To create relevant marketing content, you obviously need to know who your potential buyers are, and you must understand what makes them tick. You need to have a clear picture of the problems and issues they are facing on the job and how they are trying to deal with those problems and challenges.

The best tool for collecting and organizing information about your potential buyers is a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a detailed description of an actual type of buyer who is involved in  decisions to purchase the kinds of products and services you provide. A buyer persona is, therefore, a composite description of a type of buyer, rather than a description of an individual human being. It contains demographic data about the buyer and, more importantly, it describes the buyer's business situation and motivations. Developing a persona for each of your significant buyer types will provide the information you need to create content that will resonate with those buyers.

Before beginning work on your buyer personas, you will need to develop your ideal customer profile. An ICP is a description of the types of organizations that constitute your best prospects. An ideal customer profile includes firmographic information such as industry vertical, company size, and geographic location. Much of this information will be included in the buyer personas, but I've found that it's better to develop the ICP first.

In my last post, I discussed the process for formulating your core customer value propositions. One step in that process is to identify the individuals in the prospect organization who are most affected by the issues or problems that your product or service can address. If you've gone through this process, you'll have a pretty good idea of what individuals (described by job title or job function) are part of the "buying group" for your solution. Identifying the buying group is important because it tells you what buyer personas you need to develop.

A complete B2B buyer persona will contain the following eight components:

• Type of business - The type of business the buyer works for. This will be drawn from your ideal customer profile.
• Job title/function - The buyer's position in the prospect organization.
• Buying role - The role the buyer plays in the purchasing decision process. Common roles include the user buyer and the economic buyer.
• Objectives/responsibilities - The major business objectives and job responsibilities of the buyer.
• Performance measures - The measures used to evaluate the buyer's job performance.
• Strategies - What the buyer does to achieve his/her objectives and fulfill his/her job responsibilities.
• Major issues/concerns - This is the heart of the buyer persona. If you can identify what issues and problems are keeping your potential buyers awake a night, you can create compelling marketing content.
• Personal attributes - These attributes include the age, gender, education level, and compensation level of your buyer. Obviously, ranges will be used for most of these attributes.

Buyer personas simplify the content development process because they define the target audiences and identify the major issues that your content resources need to address.

In my next post, I'll explain how to use a content audit to determine what specific content resources you need to develop.

Read Part 1 of the content marketing series here.

Read Part 2 of the content marketing series here.

Read Part 4 of the content marketing series here.

Finding the Gaps in Your Marketing Content

Do you have all of the content you need to effectively market and sell your products or services? If you're like most companies I work with, there are probably a few "gaps" in your content. It's important to close these gaps as quickly as possible, but first you need to know what specific types of content are missing from your inventory.

To find the gaps in your marketing content, you need to perform a content audit, and the basic process for an audit is shown in the following diagram.

If you'd like to learn more about creating buyer personas, defining buying process stages, and identifying buying stage questions, please take a look at our white paper titled Two Powerful Ways to Make Your Marketing More Relevant. (To get a copy of this white paper, just send me an e-mail at ddodd(at)pointbalance(dot)com.) In this post, I want to focus on mapping existing content assets to buyer personas and buying stages.

The purpose of content mapping is to link each of your content assets (white papers, case studies, etc.) to one or more buyer personas and one or more buying stages. The mapping process is easier if done in two stages.

Map Assets to Buyer Personas

The first step is to create a buyer persona map that links your existing content assets to buyer personas. When mapping assets to buyer personas, the basic question you ask is whether an asset contains content that will appeal to a given buyer persona. Does the asset address issues that will be relevant to the buyer persona? Is the asset targeted for the persona's job title and industry? Does the asset focus on the specific problems and challenges facing the buyer persona?

I use a simple spreadsheet to create a buyer persona map. The first column of the buyer persona map contains the title or a brief description of the asset, and the second column is used to identify the asset type (a white paper, a case study, etc.). An additional column is used for each buyer persona. Each content asset is entered on a separate row in the map. The example below shows what the beginning of a buyer persona map would look like. In this example, no content has been mapped to Buyer Persona 4. If you complete your buyer persona map and have any buyer personas with no assigned assets, you obviously have a major gap in your content.

Map Assets to Buying Stages

The second step in the process is to create a buying stage map that links your content assets to specific stages in the buying process. When mapping assets to buying stages, the basic test is whether the asset contains content that answers the major questions that a potential buyer will have at that stage of the buying process.

In this step, you'll need to create a buying stage map for each buyer persona. Once again, I use a simple spreadsheet to create the buying stage maps, and a highly simplified version of a buying stage map is shown below. The first two columns in the buying stage map are the same as those used in the buyer persona map. In the buying stage map, an additional column is used for each stage of the buying process. To create a buying stage map, first select a buyer persona, then go to your buyer persona map and identify all of the assets that you have mapped to your selected persona. List those assets in your buying stage map and link each of those assets to one or more buying stages. Repeat this process until you have a buying stage map for each of your buyer personas.

When you complete this mapping process, you'll have a clear picture of where the gaps in your marketing content are and what kinds of content you need to fill the holes.

More Work is Needed to Maximize the Potential of Content Marketing

Last month, the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs published B2B Content Marketing:  2012 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends. This report is based on an August 2011 survey of almost 1,100 marketers, and it provides a great snapshot of the current state of B2B content marketing. CMI and MarketingProfs performed a similar survey in 2010, so some year-to-year comparisons can be made.

In many ways, this survey confirms what we already knew - that content marketing is now a core component of an effective B2B marketing program. Consider just a few of the major survey findings:

• Nine out of ten B2B marketers are using some form of content marketing.
• The top content marketing tactics (by usage) are articles (79% of respondents), social media other than blogs (74%), blogs (65%), eNewsletters (63%), and case studies (58%).
• Comparing 2011 to 2010, the use of blogs and videos both increased by 27% and the use of white papers grew by 19%.
• Companies are spending about 26% of their marketing budgets on content marketing efforts, and 60% of respondents said they will increase spending on content marketing in 2012.

Overall, the survey results show just how vital content marketing has become for B2B companies. But some of the survey findings also reveal that B2B marketers still have work to do to realize content marketing's full potential.

For example, when survey participants were asked to identify their business goals for content marketing, 68% cited both brand awareness and customer acquisition, and 66% selected lead generation. Only 39% of survey respondents identified lead management and lead nurturing as a primary content marketing goal. In fact, lead management/nurturing was the lowest ranking goal identified by respondents. This result may be due in part to the characteristics of the survey respondents, but I suspect it is primarily due to the fact that many companies have not implemented lead nurturing programs. Therefore, many marketers don't fully appreciate the essential role that content plays in effective lead nurturing.

The CMI/MarketingProfs survey also reveals that more work is needed to make marketing content relevant to potential buyers. When asked about how they segment or tailor their content, 57% of respondents said they use profiles (job titles, personas, etc.) of decision makers, and 51% said they use company characteristics (size, industry, etc.). However, only 39% of respondents said they tailor content for specific stages of the buying process, and 12% of respondents do not tailor their content in any way.

For content to be truly compelling, it must answer the questions that are most important to buyers at a specific point in the decision-making process. And, those questions change as buyers move through the buying process. So, the most compelling content is designed for specific buying stages.

The use of stage-specific content is one defining characteristic of an effective content marketing program. The CMI/MarketingProfs survey asked participants to rate the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts on a scale of 1 to 5. Forty-five percent of those respondents who rated their efforts as "effective" or "very effective" (4 or 5) said they tailor content for specific buying stages. Only 29% of the respondents who rated their efforts as ineffective (1 or 2) said they use stage-specific content.

If you're thinking about beginning a content marketing program, this survey is a great resource for learning about what is working. If you're already using content marketing, this is a great tool for benchmarking your efforts.

How MSP's Can Take Advantage of B2B Marketing Automation - Part 1

The use of marketing automation technologies by B2B companies is growing rapidly, and the growth is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.  Marketing service providers who serve B2B companies need to be aware of this trend because it changes the way B2B companies approach marketing and the kinds of marketing services they will require - and be willing to pay for.  To fully realize the benefits of marketing automation, B2B companies will need to define marketing and sales processes more precisely, and they will need to implement new marketing techniques. Marketing service providers who can help B2B companies make these changes stand to win new clients and boost revenues.


The best way to identify the kinds of marketing services that are likely to see increased demand is to identify the tasks that B2B companies must perform in order to take full advantage of marketing automation systems. There are eight major tasks that are essential to implementing and successfully using marketing automation technologies. Most of these tasks provide the foundation for new marketing techniques that many B2B companies have not previously used. Therefore, many B2B firms – especially small and mid-size companies – will need assistance to perform some or all of these tasks, and that’s what creates the opportunity for savvy marketing service providers. I’ll describe two of these major tasks in this post, and I’ll cover the others in my next few posts.

Creating an Ideal Customer Profile – This task is right out of Marketing 101, and it should be a core component of every company’s marketing process, whether or not marketing automation is involved. An ideal customer profile is simply a description of the kinds of companies that make the best customers and, by extension, the most attractive prospects. The ideal customer is usually described in terms of “firmographics” such as industry classification, company size, and geographic location. The ideal customer profile is used to shape lead generation programs, and it is one major component of the lead scoring system that will be set up as part of the marketing automation implementation.

Obviously, a marketing service provider cannot decide what a client’s ideal customer profile should be. The role of the MSP is to lead the client through a process that is designed to ensure that all the right questions are asked and that all the appropriate factors are considered.

Developing Buyer Personas – Most B2B buying decisions are made (or significantly influenced) by a group of people rather than by one individual. This is true even in relatively small companies. Research firm MarketingSherpa says that in companies having between 100 and 500 employees, the average number of people involved in buying decisions is 6.8. This buying group is usually composed of individuals who have different points of view regarding a proposed purchase. For example, a “user buyer” will usually have different priorities than a “technical buyer” or an “economic buyer.” To market to these buyers effectively, a company must develop marketing content that addresses the specific needs of each type of buyer in the buying group. The basis for developing such content is buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a biographical sketch of a typical buyer. It is more than a job title. Buyer personas are written in narrative form, and they are written as if the archetypical buyer is a real human being. A company needs to create a persona for each type of buyer who significantly influences the purchase decision. Marketing automation systems enable companies to create and execute marketing programs that are customized for each type of buyer, but the starting point for leveraging this functionality is the creation of buyer personas.

To develop a complete buyer persona, marketers must answer several questions about each type of buyer. Here are some examples:

•What are the buyer’s major business objectives and job responsibilities?
•What strategies and tactics does the buyer use to achieve his objectives and fulfill his responsibilities?
•What measures are used to evaluate the buyer’s job performance?
•What issues and problems keep the buyer awake a night?
•How old is the typical buyer? [Age range is OK]
•Is the buyer typically male or female?
•What is the typical buyer’s educational background?
•What sources does the buyer turn to for information?
•How would the buyer describe the issues he or she is facing?

As with the ideal customer profile, an MSP cannot build buyer personas “for” a client, but the MSP can lead the client through the process of developing buyer personas that will drive relevant and effective marketing.

In my next post, I’ll cover two more tasks relating to marketing automation that MSP’s can help B2B marketers perform.