Messaging – Answering the Questions of a prospect

B2B, education, education, Marketing, messaging, problem solving, Questions, segmentation, single target market

In yesterday’s post I spoke about the pain (fear of) and pleasure (gain of) and how you can use it to get your message to stick with a prospect.

I have written multiple times earlier on the idea of a Single Target Market and how you can niche a segment further based on usage. This comes in useful when you want to build your messaging.

As an example you niched your B2B market by industry, then you further niched it by revenue. Now if you niche it further based on whether you are targeting prospects who intend to buy your kind of product or service for the first time or are you targeting prospects for whom this is a replacement. Another could be a backup to the main product for insurance purposes.

Once you have chosen the usage, you can now get into the shoes of the prospect and think what could go on in their mind. If its a first time buyer – you could help that company with messaging entered around evaluating your kind of offering from an unbiased angle. On the other hand if its a replacement market that you are targeting, then you could talk of how the technology has changed and how by replacing the old technology they could get more benefits.

Based on the usage criteria, the team of people to whom you will send the message, will also change. For the replacement market in the industry, you may need to talk to the operations or maintenance folks, while if its for the first time usage you may need to talk to the project folks. Each of these folks has a different “view of life” and hence the problems that you address and the education that you have to do is different.

You need to know your end game and then work backwards such that you have a delighted customer. Its only when you delight a customer can you hope to get referrals and move further to dominate that market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing Stamina and the Single Target Market

B2B, budget, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

Marketing stamina is all about being able to last out in a market, while you take time to get in and dominate.

The single target market is a starting point within a market niche which you aim to pick up and dominate till you aim for the next one.

P&G or Unilever both have products which wash clothes. But they have an independent brand Tide / Rin ( P&G / Unilever ) which washes clothes white and Ariel / Surf ( P&G / Unilever) which removes stains from your coloured clothes.

Such large companies with massive marketing muscle, still go after one market at a time and generally create different brands to ensure a clear differentiation.

But the clearer objective is to concentrate all their energies to target one segment / one niche / single target market. By concentrating all your energies to focus on just that one market, you don’t divert your energies in trying to be everything to everyone. What that ends up doing is giving you more freedom rather than constraint to think creatively about various ways to meet the customer.

Since you only have to focus on one set of prospective clients, you then find the most convenient and cost effective ways to reach out to them and find the best messages which resonate with them, resulting in quicker market penetration. This means your funds which you budget as part of your market stamina can last longer and you have a much higher chance of success.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Lead generation in B2B – 4

B2B, budget, campaign, lead generation, Marketing, niche, segmentation, single target market

While we are on using social media for testing the campaigns, for the last 2 posts, one more thing you need to keep in mind is geography.

Different social media platforms and other PPC search engine platforms like Google have different pricing mechanisms for local, national and international markets. If you will start your testing from a broad geography, then you could end up paying a much larger amount for doing your testing.

One major challenge with social media is that costs can go out of control very fast. This is where starting with a Single Target Market helps. You can choose a very small segment of the market and then niche it further to ensure that you can do changes quickly and then roll out on a national or international scale.

With PPC advertising on social media the second challenge for B2B marketers is to get official emails. As I have mentioned in my posts in this series, earlier, until you have the emails, of people, you don’t own the information. But when people, raise their hand or subscribe to whatever lead magnet you have chosen, they generally end up giving you their personal emails.

So while you have got the information about the person and you can start sending information to her, you won’t know her company details and her designation.

That’s where you will need to figure out a way for her to give you information. This will make it a multi step process. While there are a lot of coaches who talk about social media advertising, very few talk about B2B related successes because of this challenge.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Lead generation in B2B – 2

B2B, campaign, education, ideal customer, lead generation, Marketing, media, segmentation, single target market

While events were very expensive, and emails are free, companies would still be willing to spend the money on events, if getting the right audience was assured. Reason being, you get to interact with the prospects on a one-to-one basis. Due to which you can qualify better and you maybe able to close deals faster.

One medium which comes closest to doing a more targeted prospecting, I have found these days, is LinkedIn. Since you can choose the industry, the demographics etc. It can help you reach your ideal customer profile faster. In addition because it allows you to create different segments you can do testing quite fast to identify the best single target market to address.

I haven’t worked on Facebook for doing B2B prospecting, though I am told of a lot of B2B vendors are targeting their clients via Facebook.

With any social media platform, there’s one challenge that I warn my team or customers. You don’t own the information of the prospect. Which means anytime the social media changes its policies or algorithms, you can suffer.

When you have a visiting card of a person or an email id, until the person leaves that organization, you can communicate with her whenever you need to. You are not at the mercy of a third party. This is not completely true with social media, until the prospect share the information with you.

Therefore whenever you’re using a social media to generate leads, always find a way for the prospects to share their email via opt-ins. Once they raise their hand and allow you to share information with them, you get a chance to build a relationship.

Once you have the emails and physical addresses, you can continuously keep sharing valuable information with them and educate them about various things that you can help them with.

Marketing based on education helps build trust as well.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!