When you’re developing a marketing campaign, what you know about your target audience is critical to understanding the scope of the program. Your goal should be building a marketing campaign that addresses your audience’s needs. If you’re starting from scratch and entering a new market, you’ll spend a lot more time simply identifying the right companies and then drilling down to find who are the correct decision makers (i.e. market profiling). On the flip side, if you’re attacking an existing market that you’ve been developing and lead nurturing over months or even years, the data you have on the individuals will allow you to be much more strategic in your profiling and lead generation activities.
Each type of program has its place in your marketing portfolio and understanding how to apply the right tools to make them effective is key. In a recent article by SiriusDecisions entitled “Are You Marketing to Buildings or People?” they provide a framework for developing value propositions around five common audience dimensions that is excellent.
Applying this framework however takes time and effort to truly understand your target audience and what will appeal to them. In addition, you need to understand your own resources and how to apply them to each type of buyer persona. This includes content on your website, literature, email marketing, webinars and all other externally facing resources. Each item should give you a greater understanding of your buyers interest and help you further align them to a buying persona.
