It’s no secret that personalization is key to modern marketing success in the consumer sphere. Nowadays, 81% of consumers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience, hence why countless companies incorporate things like personal email headings and tailored campaigns. Until now, though, you might not have considered that personalization applied to your B2B outlets. After all, you’re selling to a company, not an individual. With that being the case, wouldn’t personalization be a waste of time?
Not necessarily. In fact, the importance of B2B personalization is gaining traction fast, and companies are scrambling to keep up. After all, while you’re not selling to an individual, you are reliant on one person’s interest to invest. Furthermore, while B2B personalization might target companies rather than people, your ability to show your value is still key to sealing a deal.
In many ways, achieving that goal begins at the marketing stage. In this article, we’ll consider the best ways to incorporate B2B personalization into marketing that sells.
# 1 – Know Your Customer
Knowing your customer is the first step to personalized marketing in all areas. However, with B2B marketing, you need to know about more than just your target audience in its broadest sense. After all, you’re not targeting one age group or demographic – you’re targeting businesses built of varied personalities.
In B2B personalization, knowing your customers requires you to delve a little deeper. Namely, you can benefit from considering customer segments, which will largely include different types of businesses, and different intentions (e.g. sales vs. process improvements). By considering these variables, you’ll have a far better idea of which services will most appeal to each client segment, and where to place your personalized marketing as a result.
# 2 – Work Out Where Personalization Will Have the Most Impact
You’ll also want to think about where in your project you implement different types of personalization. Research shows that, while personalization that targets specific needs like company niche is most effective during the discovery stages of B2B sales, organization-specific personalizations such as custom pricing or business plans are more effective closer to a sale.
Instead of simply applying blanket personalizations, B2B companies therefore need to apply a more granular marketing approach. Working with an experienced marketing agency can be effective here, as they’ll understand when and how to implement the most effective layers of personalization. Equally, using your own research and data can help to reveal the most effective techniques.
# 3 – Interact With Your Sales Team
It’s also important that you don’t apply personalization in a silo. After all, your ability to judge whether personalized marketing actually leads to sales relies on your ability to speak with other departments.
When first considering B2B personalization, marketing and sales departments should work particularly closely to understand the sale’s potential of this technique. These collaborations will increase your access to relevant data, and will help to save money on ineffective personalization techniques in place of carefully thought, personalized campaigns that actually convert.
Personalization isn’t just for consumers. Use these tips to integrate it into more successful B2B campaigns.
