Customers need to be
at the heart of everything

 

Your customers provide multiple value-adds to your business – they are your partners, advisors, biggest fans and harshest critics. Despite the old adage ‘the customer is king’ still ringing true today, why do so many businesses neglect to better understand their target audience?

Conducting market research should be an annual exercise your marketing team carries out, but being driven by research and market oriented should be a continuous discussion and effort within your organisation. In this blog, we will look at how you can effectively harness market research and buyer personas to better connect and communicate with your customer base.

The pendulum of buyer personas

Buyer behaviours never stop evolving, so our personas shouldn’t either. Marketing isn’t just one touchpoint – sales informs marketing, marketing informs the business, customer-facing employees offer insight… it’s an ongoing discussion at all times. Even when you get the ball over the line, customers’ relationship with marketing doesn’t end.

Building strong and loyal relationships with customers is essential for sustainable success, and understanding your customers through research allows you to nurture these relationships by understanding your customers’ changing priorities and preferences during different stages of the buyer journey.

For example, what kind of marketing messages evoke emotion and capture the attention of your buyers? Are they intrigued by straight-talking, statistics-driven emails? Or do they want to experience your brand through creative content like eBooks and blogs before engaging with you? If you don’t know the answer, the next section is perfect for you.

DiSC profiling: Helping you dig deeper

One addition you can include in your buyer personas is DiSC profiling, a profiling tool that enables you to categorise your audience based on four main personality types:

• D personalities: Confident and driven by bottom-line results.
• I personalities: Open and focused on building relationships and persuading others.
• S personalities: Dependable, co-operative and honest.
• C personalities: Interested in quality, accuracy and expertise.

This assessment helps you understand what motivates and captivates your audience, and why they are driven to do what they do. You’ll know definitively whether you buyer is a problem-solver, a creative, a strategist or something else. For this reason, DiSC profiling is an effective springboard for personalised communications and ABM campaigns, as it enables you to tailor content to each persona.

Success in every sales situation

The sales process doesn’t always run smoothly, and neither do marketing campaigns. No two buyers are the same, and the way they react to and interact with your business will differ too. But one thing will remain consistent no matter what: customers need to feel understood and valued to provide loyalty and advocacy to your brand.

Performing customer research and developing buyer personas equips your sales team with the tools they need to effectively communicate with buyers. This isn’t just relevant when things go right – it’s also crucial for conflict resolution, which can be a natural by-product of business relationships. From contract negotiations to disgruntled customers and everything in between, the sales team can better connect with your customers on a human level if they understand what makes the people they’re talking to tick.

 

 

For more insight on the latest trends in sales enablement, take a look at our new infographic.

 

 

 

 

At ReallyB2B, we are the go-to B2B marketing experts. By blending emotional understanding and extensive expertise, we’ve not only supported and empowered global brands to accelerate their business growth, but we’ve also retained their partnerships thanks to our award-winning capabilities in strategy & research, content & creative, and data & delivery.