Why do you need customer knowledge?
Customer insight is the foundation of any effective sales and marketing strategy, especially in the B2B sector, where decision-making processes are more complex and involve many people. Understanding who your hungary business email list customers are, what their needs, problems and goals are, allows you to create more precise and effective actions that bring measurable benefits.
Benefits of customer knowledge:
Matching the offer
By getting to know your customers in-depth, you can create products and services that precisely meet their needs. You know what features are key to them, what problems they want to solve, and what expectations they have from suppliers. Precisely matching the offer increases the chances of conversion and builds trust in your brand.
Better communication
Customers expect you to understand their needs and speak their language. When you know your audience, you can adjust your tone of communication, marketing content, and the channels you choose to connect with them. This increases the effectiveness of your campaigns and builds a positive customer experience.
More effective segmentation
Knowing the details about different customer groups helps you better segment your contact base. This allows you to deliver personalized offers and content that is more relevant and engaging. Segmentation also helps you manage your marketing budget more effectively by directing funds to the most important target groups.
Increased customer loyalty
Customers who feel understood and well-served are more likely to engage in long-term business. Knowledge about your customers allows you to better respond to their needs, proactively respond to problems, and build relationships based on trust.
Identifying the Most Valuable Customers
Not every customer generates the same value for your company. A thorough analysis of customer behavior and needs helps you identify those who are most profitable and focus your efforts on them. This allows you to build relationships with customers who will bring long-term profits.
How to achieve these goals? Here are 5 basic steps.
1. Ideal Customer Profile
The process of getting to know your customers begins with creating an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This is a detailed description of a company that is likely to use your services or products and is also a valuable customer to you, which is especially important in B2B sales.
To create a profile of your ideal customer, it’s worth answering the following questions:
What industry does my ideal client operate in?
What business challenges does my ideal client have that my products/services can solve?
What are the typical characteristics of a company – size, location, resources?
Answering these questions will help you narrow down your search to companies that best fit your customer profile. This is really the basic element of market segmentation. This will make your marketing efforts more precise and effective.
You can read more about building an ideal customer profile in our article: Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) – what, why, how?
2. Buyer Persona
Once you have your ideal customer profile, it’s time to create a Buyer Persona —a fictional but detailed profile of the customer representative who is actually responsible for making purchasing decisions at companies that fit your ICP. A Buyer Persona includes specific demographics, goals, motivations, challenges, and preferences for this persona. Example: Your Buyer Persona could be “Anna—A 40-year-old Purchasing Manager at a Mid-Size Factory Looking for Time-Saving Solutions to the Manufacturing Process.”
It should be remembered that in the B2B purchasing process, decisions are often not made by one person, but by a purchasing committee – a group of people in the organization who, formally or informally, influence the decision to purchase a product or service by issuing a positive or negative recommendation.
According to research, the average B2B buying committee is 6-8 people. Each committee member may have different priorities and concerns, which further complicates the sales process. That’s why it’s important to identify key decision-makers and tailor your communication to their needs.
To create a precise buyer persona, you need to answer the following questions:
What are the decision-maker’s professional priorities?
What problems does he encounter on a daily basis in his work?
What communication channels do they prefer and where do they look for information?
What might convince her to buy?
Building a buyer persona requires analysis and research, which can be conducted using surveys, customer interviews, or analysis of data collected from various marketing channels. A well-defined buyer persona allows for a better understanding of the customer, which significantly affects the effectiveness of the marketing strategy.
3. Mapping Customer Purchasing Paths
The next step is Customer Journey Mapping, which allows you to better understand the purchasing process and every point of contact between the customer and your company. In the B2B sector, the purchasing path is often very complex – it can include detailed research, long decision-making periods, consultations with technical experts.
To map the purchase journey, it is worth dividing it into three main stages:
Awareness – the customer becomes aware of the need and begins to seek information.
Consideration – the customer evaluates available options and analyzes competitive products.
Decision – the customer makes a purchasing decision and selects a supplier.
Sometimes it is also worth distinguishing the stages that occur after the purchase, such as implementation, which may prove crucial for customer loyalty.
It’s important to understand what information your customer is looking for at each stage, what objections they have, and what might make them decide to buy your product. Effective journey mapping helps you tailor your content and communications to your customer’s needs at each stage. CRM tools like HubSpot can help you map your journey by collecting customer data, which helps you better monitor real-world data about your customers and where they encounter buying barriers.
