Yesterday we looked at the key challenges that you face in the B2B space because of the various hierarchies involved as well as the inertia because of the various stake holders and the dynamics / politics between them.

When you target the consumer market, in a lot of situations your prospective customer may be invisible (as Dean Jackson would put it). In the case of B2B customers at the industry, company and even to a certain extent on the person level, you may be able to identify the people but you may find it difficult to reach them to verify if they are actually the right people for your offering.

In case of the consumer market, if you have given an incentive or a cookie (again as Dean Jackson calls it) to make her identify herself, in case of the B2B market, a lot of times I have seen that the people just take the white paper or any other cookie just to gain knowledge whether its part of their job profile or not.

So while the B2B buyer is partially visible, getting her to qualify herself is a lot tougher in my opinion. That’s why identifying the Single Target Market makes the work a little easier.

But identifying the Single Target Market is a massive amount of work. It may require a lot of iterations to get to the exact definition with the right set of constraints defined including going down to the set of people you intend to target, their roles, hierarchies and the challenges at each level of the hierarchy. Here the concept of the Ideal customer profile goes down to the individual role. That’s critical.

Till next time then….happy identifying

Carpe Diem!!!