Your customers are changing in 2016: 2 surprisingly simple ways to keep up with them
It is inevitable, and absolutely certain, that our customers are changing. We all are in a maelstrom of information, technology developments, demographic shifts, economic volatility, and geo-political uncertainty to name a few. We change every second of every day. It’s a fair guess that customers and prospects do, too. What you need to know is how are your customers changing and what that could mean for your relationship. As in any relationship, if you are not proactive, you have no chance of influencing the relationship and you will discover that only once it’s over!
The Voice of Customer Research: The Heart of Buyer Personas
The Heart of Marketing's newest podcast, How to Gather Voice of Customer Insights That Transform Your Business, features an interview with B2P's Scott Hornstein on how voice of customer insights put the “person” in persona. Per John Olson, host of The Heart of Marketing, What’s the difference between a customer profile and a persona? It is the difference between data and insights. Data will tell you a customer bought. The persona will tell you why. Voice of customer research captures the preferences, expectations and aversions of your customers. It digs deeper into customer feedback to ask, “What do you mean by that?” That’s what puts the ‘person’ into your persona.
A Smart 4-Step Formula to Identify B2B Prospect Opportunities
Not all B2B prospects are created equal. Some are ready to buy now, some later, some not at all—yet marketing tends to invest the same in each one, which is inefficient at best. I’d like to suggest a simple four-step formula that will bring an early identification of B2B prospect opportunities and allow us to gauge our marketing investment in a prospect per potential return. The formula is based on the concept of “propensity to buy” or the likelihood that a given prospect will purchase. Understanding and measuring this concept enables us to focus on real opportunities.
Latest Survey Learning: 6 Marks of Business-Building Buyer Personas
If you’re old enough to remember when Al Gore invented the internet, it’s been interesting to watch the world of technology marketing become the world of marketing technology… But be careful what you wish for. We have taller and taller technology stacks that promise more ways of reaching more prospects than ever before, but our research with B2B marketing directors shows that many are feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of toys they now have.
The core reason b2b prospecting underperforms
The overwhelming majority of people working on any given b2b marketing campaign have never seen, met or spoken to a customer, and certainly not a prospect. They work from reports and results. They are separated, a gap to a chasm, from the often-conflicted humanity of the people that make the decisions. This separates your campaign from its potential. We are not fishing on the shores of Lake Abundant – it’s harder than ever to differentiate ourselves, to find, nurture and motivate the prospect as the world become increasing atomized.
Free Personas: Worth Every Penny
The most valuable part of any research is the insight. That nugget of truth that expands your understanding and guides strategy and messaging. Digging for insights isn’t easy—you have to go beyond the surface and get some dirt under your nails. And gasp! you may even have to talk with people outside your organization to widen your own (narrow?) perspective and blow up those assumptions you’ve been operating from for way too long.
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (Even If They’re Sales And Marketing)
The river between sales and marketing runs cold and deep. We can see each other’s camp on the opposite bank, just out of range. That we all work for the same corporation is often the irritant, yet I have seen how much success is generated when there is cooperation. Let me tell you how. “Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost concedes in his poem Mending Wall. He’s not entirely happy with the concept, but the sucker works, and it will work here. Building a strong fence will define the playing field (formerly, battlefield).