Enterprise Software Marketing, Part 1: Developing Your B2B Marketing Target Audience
This is part 1 of a 5-part series all about enterprise software marketing. This part is about defining your message and audience. Part 2 covers content creation, and then part 3 explains how to promote that content. Lastly, part 4 reviews how to track, measure, and optimize, which is rounded out by part 5, covering ongoing lead nurture.
To develop the most impactful messaging, you need to do a deep dive into both precisely who your audience is and what is important to them. The messaging you create for these B2B marketing target audiences is critical. This is for the person who uses your product on a daily basis, which will likely be different from that of the IT person who helps with setup and maintenance. Yet, for enterprise software marketing, both of those audiences (and others) may have a role to play in the purchasing decision.
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Types of B2B Marketing Target Audiences
When you’re selling to a whole team of people, one of the most important ways to keep your marketing relevant to each audience is to consider their role in the purchasing process. In the enterprise software sales process, you can usually divide these purchasing roles into a few main segments.
To effectively market enterprise software, you need to make sure you not only have content that targets each stage of the marketing funnel but content written explicitly for each of your B2B marketing audiences.
Users
To no one’s surprise, users are the people who will actually use your product (and they will probably do so, pretty regularly). They’ll care most about usability and how well it helps them do their job. In addition, they’ll want to see how the interface looks and how features work in the sales process.
Buyers
Buyers are in charge of the purchasing decision. This may be the main business unit that will be using the product, in which case their priority will be how well the product helps them meet departmental goals. In some cases, it may be the IT department tasked with making a decision, who will be most interested in the technical side of how your product works. And in others, it could be executives who have the final say.
Influencers
Influencers include anyone else in the company whose opinion is considered or who initiates the process. This could be an executive who cares most about cost and return on investment (ROI), a department head that monitors the reporting and cares about that aspect of the product, or a junior employee tasked with coming up with a shortlist for evaluation.
Create Tailored Messaging
From there, you can start to cherry-pick which of your potential messages will resonate with each B2B marketing target audience. Every audience for your product will have a unique set of priorities. Think about which product benefits are most valuable to each and create messaging that speaks to what they care about.
- For users, you may want to play up how much easier it makes their job.
- For buyers, that may mean emphasizing the cost-benefit analysis of your product.
- For influencers, that may be comparing your product to others.
Once you’ve done this prep work, it’s time to start developing content!
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Or, if you’re looking for a partner with a proven strategy who can help you get all this done…
Rich founded glassCanopy in 2001.
