B2B Buyer Basics

In the world of B2B marketing can get very complicated, very fast.

That’s because there are so many different people involved, both in your company, but also at your target prospects. Knowing who to target and how to engage them can help you simplify your marketing and actually become more efficient and more effective with less effort.

Here are three things you can do to help achieve this.

Know your buying team

By definition, B2B businesses are selling to other businesses, unlike B2C, where businesses focus on selling to individual consumers.

Typically this group of people at your prospect organizations have to agree to buy what you have to offer them. So there is a very important team dynamic that you have to understand to be successful.

Take the time to map out that dynamic. Understand who influences the decision, what their role is and everything you can about the team dynamic.

Single out the decision maker

But this is where things can go awry. B2B marketing teams are tempted to gear up to create multiple demand generation paths and sales outreach programs to pursue all of the players equally. You need to focus, rather than spread yourself out across those half a dozen different players.

Use the 80/20 Rule and find the one person on that team with the most influence that’s going to drive this decision. It’s not always 80% influence, but one person typically has outsized influence on the decision. Focus your marketing on that single person.

You can always expand later; this way you can you can get going fast and do it well.

Also, remember that your primary target might be outside of the company. One client focused on a partner as being the key influencer to get in the door at a group of customers that didn’t know them. Having the trust from the partner was more important that any other individual to move the opportunities forward.

Keep it simple; you can grow from there.

Tell one story

You need one story for all of your buying team.

You’re starting with a message that helps you target your primary decision maker.

But if you create a single overriding story first – that tells your value in a broad way – you can then tell versions of that story to each of the people on the decision team.

That’s important because you can’t be in control of who gets which information. And while your message for a CFO might be different than your message for a president or an operations leader, you want them all to be in sync. To rhyme. You want them to have the same message just said in a different way.

This will make a huge difference. Rather than confusing messages that cancel each other out, you will have reinforcing messages that build a story within your target environment.

So resist the temptation to go big. Start small, deliver marketing programs that work for your decision maker, and then grow from there.