We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the very first stepping stone to building a strategic plan around audience-centricity is to develop a solid understanding of your organisation’s target audience through Buyer Insights research, including Ideal Customer Profile and your accounts' buying committees.
B2B deals are big and are the result of an often long and complex buying journey. The dynamics among personas within a buying committee are unique and evolve throughout the buying journey while being impacted by other influencers.
Now more than ever, brands need to adapt to buying committees within their target audience. Not only do you need to signal through your brand that you understand your audience’s needs and pain points, but you also need to clearly present (1) what the consequences of those challenges are and (2) how they can navigate through different solutions to tackle those challenges.
What do we mean by Buyer Insights Research?
If you’re looking for a quick fix, some minor insights and internal cross-functional alignments can help you get started. However, Buyer Insights research isn’t for the faint-hearted – it requires rigour and discipline. That being said, the end result is always worth it. Buyer Insights Research forms the foundation of any robust go-to-market and sales strategy. Unfortunately, acquiring the knowledge and input to become audience-centric is a significant challenge in itself.
At its core, Buyer Insights research involves gathering and analysing data to gain a deeper understanding of the purchasing behaviour of B2B buyers. This encompasses a range of methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative research. It requires conducting desk research as well as collecting feedback from a significant number of customers (and even lost customers and prospects) and internal stakeholders.
The Buying Committee: When selling becomes a Game of “Who’s Who?”
Unlike B2C transactions, where decisions often rest on the shoulder of individual consumers, B2B purchases typically involve complex interplay of multiple stakeholders with varying levels of influence throughout the buying journey. Buyer Insights research sheds light on the composition of the buying committee, revealing key influencers, decision-makers, and gatekeepers, enabling revenue-oriented teams to accompany decision-makers on their journey.
Understanding who is who in the Buying Committee is a vital component of Buyer Insights Research and is crucial to identifying dynamics between personas.
How do revenue-oriented teams benefit from Buyer Insights Research?
To keep this blog post short and concise, we’ll focus on the main two revenue-oriented teams: marketing and sales.
- For sales leaders and team members, Buyer Insights allow the team to educate sales agents of all levels on prospect behaviour. The use of a mapped-out buyer’s journey provides the ability for sales team members to identify touchpoints and develop impactful conversations through relevant and personalised talking points. In the engagement phase, just mapping out the roles that salespeople should target and creating persona-based content is also a big benefit.
- For marketing leaders and team members, the list of benefits goes on. Once decision-making processes and buyer personas are identified, the marketing team can optimise marketing channels and tactics, improve lead generation and nurturing, and use the insights to enhance their ABM (Account-Based-Marketing) strategies.
Uncovering insights is one thing but making them actionable is another. You might have conducted Buyer Insights research in the past but “only” ended up with a pretty document that is now gathering dust in a drawer. The insights are there, but the pathway to leveraging them remains unclear.
If you relate to the above, then keep reading.
You’ve got your Buyer Insights – and then what?
Once armed with Buyer Insights, the “real” work begins. Organisations must translate these insights into actionable strategies that improve results and enhance effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts. These actions could look like:
- Tailored content creation: the understanding of your audience’s pain points and needs allows you to create content that resonates with each segment, addressing their specific concerns and interests.
- Personalised marketing campaigns: the analysis of buyers’ preferences, behaviours and demographics enables you to tailor your messaging and offers to specific segments, increasing engagement and conversion rates.
- Sales enablement: sales representatives can better tailor their approach, address objections effectively, and provide relevant information to guide prospects through the sales funnel.
- Improved targeting and segmentation: Buyer Insights help define and refine target audience segments based on demographic, psychographics and (online) behavioural factors.
- Conversational marketing: brands can engage in more meaningful and relevant conversations with their audience using B2B chatbots.
- Strategic branding: Buyer Insights information can be used to refine brand messaging, positioning, and visual identity to better align with the desires and expectations of your target audience, ultimately strengthening brand equity.
- Product development: information on your buyers’ needs, preferences and pain points is invaluable for informing product development initiatives, ensuring new products or features meet the demands of the market and resonate with your target audience.
- Customer journey optimisation: opportunities are identified to optimise the customer experience. This is done by identifying friction points, improving touch points, and delivering more personalised experiences that drive conversions and foster loyalty.
- Improved media campaigns: understanding the preferences and media consumption patterns of your audience allows you to allocate your media budget more effectively, select the most relevant channel, and craft messages that are more likely to resonate and drive action.
Sales and Marketing Alignment: The Side Effect of Buyer Insights Research
The common refrain goes, “Sales desires more leads from marketing, and marketing seeks more feedback from sales”. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
We’ll start by saying that a B2B strategy shouldn’t mostly rely on a handover of leads from marketing to sales. As mentioned previously, Buyer Insights research serves as a great basis to develop a marketing-to-accounts or ABM strategy that requires both marketing and sales to agree on who their buyers are and how they will approach their audience.
One of the often-overlooked benefits of Buyer Insights research is its ability to foster better alignment between sales and marketing teams. It helps mitigate the risk of misalignment or misunderstanding by painting a clear picture of the buyer's decision-making process. By bridging the gap between the critical functions of marketing and sales, Buyer Insights enables teams to tailor their approach in ways that minimise friction and maximise the likelihood of success.
In conclusion, Buyer Insights research truly is the gift that keeps on giving for B2B organisations. Buyer Insights research empowers your organisation through a better understanding of your target audience and enables a strategy for sustainable growth in an ever-evolving B2B landscape.
Ready to get started with Buyer Insights research? Contact us to learn more.
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