Segmenting Your Marketing Content: How To Determine What Will Resonate with Who

If you’re selling a B2B solution, chances are you’re dealing with a complex buying process with several levels of stakeholders involved. No one piece of content is going to appeal to everyone involved. Senior Marketing Manager Christy Weymouth explains how ExactTarget segments its marketing content to speak specifically to each of the company’s personas and their needs.

If real estate is all about location, location, location, then marketing is all about relevance, relevance, relevance. It doesn’t matter how shiny and new your marketing materials are, if they don’t apply directly to your target’s issues or needs, then they’re going to be ignored. Join Christy Weymouth, a Senior Marketing Manager at ExactTarget, on a walk-through with valuable insight into how she and her team segments their marketing content effectively.

ExactTarget’s Approach to B2B Content Segmentation: Addressing 3 Key Content Personas

Weymouth and her team have found that when it comes to marketing outreach, they are typically addressing three distinct levels within a company — and each needs to be approached differently. Those at the corporate level have very different expectations wants than those who are actually ingrained in the day-to-day execution of projects and campaigns.

Corporate Executives: Thought Leadership

“When we’re looking at title, we know that the C-level is more interested in what’s next,” Weymouth explains. “What are the trends, what should they be aware of? So we tend to offer up thought leadership pieces to those individuals.”
The idea here is that executives likely don’t have time and aren’t interested in getting bogged down in details, but it can be beneficial to have your brand and solution positioned positively in their mind. That way, when it comes to sign-off the executive is already primed. There may also even be instances when they drive awareness of your solution down to the decision makers.
Did You Know? Research suggests that excelling as a thought leader can be a key indicator of success at the expansion stage. Find out more about the power of thought leadership and the keys to harnessing it effectively in this report.

The Decision Makers: Business Solutions

For the managers responsible for proposing and implementing new systems and tools, ExactTarget typically offers more solutions-oriented materials. The goal with these marketing pieces is to make it more clear how ExactTarget’s services can help them meet their objectives.
Note: These materials should be closely targeted to highlight the benefits you’ve confirmed to be the most beneficial to this persona, but also to explicitly address their specific concerns, pain points, and potential roadblocks standing in the way of adopting and utilizing your solution.
For more on how to deliver the right content at exactly the right time, see this post on “The 4 C’s of Effective Go-to-Market Strategy.”

The End Users: Tactical Tips

While you may focusing a lot of your selling attention and marketing materials on the decision maker(s) at your prospect companies, it’s important not to forget about the employees who will actually be using your solution day in and day out. With SaaS solutions especially, the ability to successfully drive user adoption and help users quickly realize the value of your solution is a key factor in reducing churn and increasing renewals and upsells. The more you can provide the end users at your customer companies with helpful how-to tips and best practices, the better.
In the case of ExactTarget, Weymouth explains that, “For the people who will actually be doing the mobile campaigns, the email campaigns, the social campaigns…we’re going to be sending them very tactical items that they can get immediate value from in their day-to-day job.”

Looking for a One-Stop Guide to Utilizing Content Marketing Effectively?

By building out a targeted content marketing function, even small marketing teams can create and distribute the content they need to support their company’s go-to-market strategy by generating leads, nurturing them at key points throughout the buying process, and, ultimately, driving sales.
It Takes a Content Factory! covers everything you need to know to transform your marketing with content that works.
Download this free eBook and learn how to:

• Design a strategy to align your content with your buyers.
• Assemble a high-impact content marketing team.
• Produce high-quality content that is optimized to get the greatest return on investment.
• Amplify your content by delivering using a combination of vehicles and programs.
• Maximize your conversions and manage, measure, and continuously improve your content marketing.
• Get started right away by implementing an easy five-day plan to bring your content marketing program to life.

 
Photo by: Francesco Ceccarelli