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In B2B marketing you need to understand your targetsand give them what they want, when and how they want it. It’s like giving ice cream to a child on a hot day. Answer these questions, and it‘ll be a lot easier.

1. Who are your ideal customers? What makes them ideal? Size? Short sales cycle? Location? Industry? Profitable to serve? Make a list of all the criteria—and look for similarities.

2. Which products do they love? Which of your products or services do they rave about? Where are the similarities and overlaps between different ideal customers?

3. What are the buyer personas? Within your ideal customers, who made the decision and who influenced it? What positions, roles and titles were involved? What age and gender are they? What are they like as people?

4. What, where and how do they use? What social media, industry associations, online media etc do they use? What devices do they use to browse your website or read your emails?

5. What are their buyer journeys? What are their stages between fully unaware of you and totally ecstatic with your product or service? Are they similar for each persona or not?

6. What do they crave? For each persona and stage, what do they desire, what do they fear, and how do you want them to feel about you, your company and product? What types of marketing content will help them feel that way?

7. What do you have now? What collateral do you have now? What can be reused or repurposed for different buyer personas or industries? Have you done an audit recently?

8. What formats do you need? Which formats suit where buyers go and what they consume there? Are there overlaps? What can be reused in different formats? Do you have web pages for all your key products & services?

9. When can you do it? Look at where more ideal customers are found (industries, locations) and look for gaps in your collateral and database. Schedule to backfill your content and database to get rid of gaps.

10. How to pull it all altogether? Build your website into a useful, problem-solving hub, by spreading your content over web pages, landing pages, blog posts and downloads, and over the social media you know buyers use. Use Google Adwords or other PPC campaigns to attract new potential buyers.

Segment your database into industries, personas & niches. Schedule outbound problem-solving email campaigns with enticing, matched content.

Plan campaigns by niche. Automate, monitor, test & tweak them. Keep doing it. It works. ###

10 steps to B2B marketing success

Whatever you’re selling software, hardware, services or any technicaly complex products, if you’re marketing B2B, you need to get inside your buyers’ heads.