In B2C marketing it seems like you can’t turn around without falling into a persona workshop. Hours and hours are spent on constructing detailed personalities for customer segments with names, hobbies and life ambitions.
But B2B is a different field, so can personas have any value in the B2B sphere?
Since many B2C companies or divisions offer goods and services to an extremely fragmented audience, personas are an effective way to bring some focus to the largest groups they’re targeting.
But over in the B2B world, segmentation takes a different form, splitting audiences according to the broader factors around job roles and industry. This isn’t an absolute that applies in every instance; individual job specifications and the challenges of organisations within an industry will vary to some extent. However, this approach is a simple and easily applied route to kick off thinking about the requirements of different groups.
As a result, planning a campaign from a job role and industry position perspective can provide an effective framework for formulating marketing messaging quickly. At the core of this approach is establishing the pain points and challenges that the typical job-role holder faces within their specific remit, as well as the more wide-ranging challenges the organisation is up against. These organisational challenges are often closely linked to what’s currently going on in the relevant industry, combined with some that are specific to the organisation’s ambitions and standing.
In some cases, it will make sense to group job roles. For example, there will be broad issues that apply to the whole C-suite, or challenges that will have an impact across the IT, legal and compliance teams.
Also, it’s always valuable to look at segmentations used in previous campaigns to get a feel for what worked well and what wasn’t as successful. Talking to those in customer-facing roles can provide useful insight into how organisations in the sector are currently structuring their functions, so you can be sure your campaign is reflecting the most up-to-date segmentations.
A robust and accurate segmentation framework sets your campaign up to unlock a wide range of benefits, including:
At asabell, we frequently use segmentation tailored to each client’s market as the foundation of campaign planning. We’ve developed significant expertise in using this approach to deliver swift and accurate targeted messaging and add extra value through our experience of transferring segmentation learning from one sector to another.
