1. Know Your Customer

Steve Jobs was among those who leveraged his emotional intelligence best. He is legendary for his ability to read his audience based on his deep understanding of people.

Verbal and written communication represent just a single facet of effective communication. The nuances of body language, vocal inflections, tones, behaviors, and underlying value systems and beliefs convey far more than what meets the eye.

Not surprisingly, many business professionals still opt for face-to-face meetings to capture the nonverbal cues that individuals unconsciously express. An in person meeting, would lead to sharing of a wealth of information – from hobbies, their interest in a specific sport, family details, dietary habits, or even their political inclinations.

Of course this approach thrived in the times of face to face meeting before the advent of  virtual interactions.

So how do you connect in a virtual world? Where do you start when you have nothing beyond a name and an email id to begin with? How do you establish a rapport when you have so little to work on?

2. Defining your segment

A starting point is identifying commonalities in your target market. This lays the foundation for crafting your ideal customer profile. Extrapolating this, you create a market segment where you will find your ICPs. The segmentation is defined by geographic, demographic, and behavioral data.

Geography based segmentation depends on the bandwidth of an enterprise. Smaller businesses may be able to serve only locally, others nationally and some globally. Identifying the area is purely led by the business capability. Of course, product relevance also matters. You can’t be trying to sell ski pants in hot deserts!

Demographics is especially critical in retail or B2C businesses. For instance, retirement community membership is only relevant to a certain age group, maternity products are only for pregnant women, and baby care products are most relevant to adults with infants.

Behavioral signals are important cues too. Planning to sell sports gear? Find your market in club memberships, online sporting communities, fitness centers and gyms, sports leagues, fitness centers etc.

3. B2B segmentation

When it comes to B2B enterprises, firmographics also comes into the picture. Since you are selling products relevant to businesses, your customer is an organization. You need to know your prospect based on the industry, size, location, scale of operations , i.e. firmographic data, to be able to accurately identify your audience segment.

A key commonality to geographic, demographic, behavioral and firmographic inputs is that these are all quantitative, collective  data. In market segmentation, you understand or know the common features or characteristics of a certain target market.. A larger market is divided into smaller groups or segments based on shared characteristics such as demographics, psychographics, behaviors, or preferences. While segmentation helps you target specific groups with tailored marketing strategies, it might not delve into the individual nuances and unique traits of each member within those segments.

4. Nuanced approach in B2B lead gen

In B2B marketing and sales, the target audience is smaller and more eclectic. Your approach needs to be nuanced and highly focused. MQLs are sieved, filtered and distilled to optimize engagement rates.

You need to have insights into the individual unique features.

Among the best and most recommended approaches in B2B lead generation strategies is account based management(ABM). The success of ABM however, relies on how well you know your audience. Although B2B purchase decisions are a collective exercise, yet the best approach is to engage with a single point of contact in the organization and gain this individual’s buy-in.

5. Layering in psychographics

This is where psychographics comes in. Psychographic data is collated from publicly available information with additional first party data – which includes surveys, forms, and questionnaires.

You get insights into individual likes, dislikes, attitudes, beliefs, value systems, lifestyles and other characteristics unique to the individual through information voluntarily provided by the customer. This proves invaluable while understanding customer needs, drivers and motivations.

After all, it is only when you know your customer well that you can help them with the right solution. The better you know your customer, the more useful, relevant and valuable you are to them. And in connecting with the customer at an emotional level you successfully establish a rapport, engage effectively and establish a long lasting mutually beneficial relationship.

Ready to transform your approach? Write to me to know more about psychographics or how to generate high quality MQL. Learn more about SalesNitro, our proprietary engine that identifies personality traits of key profiles within your ICP, to help you connect better and build a robust pipeline.

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