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Segmentation Tips for B2B Marketers
Segmentation is a bedrock principle for effective marketing. Yet, B2B marketers often don’t invest in it. It may seem too expensive, too complicated, or too “consumer-ey”. Segmentation can be all of these things, but it doesn’t have to be. B2B marketers can build an effective baseline segmentation using internal data and straightforward analytics.
Read MoreMap Your Competitive Differentiation: What Can You Own?
Differentiating your product or brand boils down to two simple questions. 1) What are your customer’s needs and buying criteria? And 2) which of these can your product/brand own? This post outlines a three-step process for mapping dimensions that will differentiate your brand and solution. The outcome provides a conceptual framework of your relative competitive differentiation.
Read MoreHas Your Customer Journey Changed Course?
The customer journey always evolves. The change can be a slow and steady evolution. Or, the journey can shift dramatically based on sudden changes in market conditions. When the new normal settles in, one thing is guaranteed: The buying journey will be different than it was in January 2020. Do you know what changes will unfold in your customers’ journey?
Read MoreDo your personas need a recession update?
Personas are a mainstay in the toolbox for today’s B2B marketer. Personas should reflect who your customer is. And who they are in the second half of 2020 is not who they were in 2019.
Read MoreSix Dimensions for Assessing a Market Opportunity
Profiling the market on these six dimensions will provide a more complete picture of the market and help you avoid overestimating a market size or its appetite for a new solution. The data sources available for this type of assessment include internal knowledge and expertise, secondary research, analyst firms, and primary research.
Read MoreHow much of the buying process is completed before B2B buyers talk to vendors?
Recent work in a variety of B2B sectors leads us to question the premise that much of the customer journey is completed before prospects reach out to vendors. Our research indicates three product dimensions influence when B2B buyers engage with vendors in the buying process: Product differentiation, business criticality, and complexity.
Read MoreBlueprint for cost-effective competitive intelligence
A cost-effective approach is to gather individual pieces of data from a disparate range of publicly available sources, connect the dots, and build an overall profile of the competitor. You can find information about competitors in financial databases, directories, social media, industry associations, competitor websites, job postings, press releases, publicly available contracts, trade journals, analyst reports, and online reviews. Thoughtful analysis of these sources produces competitive insight that, while not perfect, is typically enough to guide decisions about which competitors to pay attention to, and which to ignore.
Read MoreHow to write an RFP for your next market research project
When organizations use custom market research services for the first-time or only sporadically, a common question is how to structure the RFP. RFPs can be the proverbial double-edged sword. Done well, the market research RFP is a valuable tool for both the client and their prospective market research partners. Done poorly, it becomes a barrier to effective discussion, and can result in proposals that meet the RFP specs but don’t actually solve the business need.
Read MoreIs NPS a useful indicator of a target acquisition’s value?
A recent Wall Street Journal article called attention to the “cultlike” following that NPS has garnered among CEOs in recent years. Their analysis found that in earnings calls by S&P 500 companies, “NPS” or “net promoter” were cited 150 times by 50 different companies. The article goes on to question whether companies have put too much emphasis on the one number system that is Net Promoter.
Read MoreInsights & Strategies for the Next Downturn
Economists have sounded the alarm about an impending slow down for almost a year. The corona virus may be the event that makes those predictions a reality. What can B2B marketing teams do to help their companies survive and thrive in challenging times such as these?
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