Client Personas – Cracking the B2B Code

A lot of B2B companies will shy away from marketing their services, especially through digital comms. The fear generally starts with the daunting prospect of creating a strategy.

How can we create a strategy that sells to other companies?

The truth is, you don’t. In B2B, you’re never selling to a faceless company, you’re selling to individuals who work there, you’re piquing the interest of decision makers within those businesses by showing them how your product or service can make their lives better, or make them look better in front of their boss or peers.

The first step in creating your marketing strategy lies in the mindset of your target audience. To create a persona there is a simple yet effective formula you can use.

First of all, separate out the types of company you sell to. There are various ways of doing this, you could divide your clientele by industry if your service offering is broad enough, you could divide them by geography, or you could simply divide them by size or annual revenue.

Once you have decided on a vertical that separates your audience, it’s then a good idea to get all of the information you have on these companies down on paper.

Consider:

• Their annual revenue
• Number of members of staff
• Who their clients are 
• Examples of the companies either on your books or targets

Now that you have thought about the companies you’re looking to target, you can use the following set of questions to analyse the mindset of the members of staff within those companies:

• Examples of job titles
• Day to day activities
• Demographics
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Family life
  • Geography
  • Level of education
• What are their values? Professionally and personally
• Personality traits and the effect they have on the way they do their job, run their business or impact on their decision making

You then need to consider their pain points, what keeps this person up at night? What drives them to do better in their job? What kind of pressure are they receiving and who are they receiving it from?

Now that you have your fully rounded persona, you have the building blocks of a sound and targeted strategy. Create content that makes the lives of your clients easier. For example, if you work in freight forwarding and you have defined a persona, say ‘Susan SME’, you can create content around her needs. 

Consider the specialist knowledge you retain as a company and use it within your comms to give Susan more than just a professional service.

At Halston Marketing we’re huge believers in a steadfast and transparent relationship between sales and marketing and the personas exercise is one that should be carried out by both teams as the combined insight will help to drive a cohesive strategy in both camps.

If you’re interested in how building target personas can help your sales and marketing strategy, contact us today to set up a meeting with your sales team.