Built environment businesses and member organisations that recognise the value of treating their customers as individuals will be the ones that achieve a lasting advantage – but only if they get the approach right and are fully committed to it.
Over 42% of UK B2B marketers identified “personalisation” as one of their top priorities last year, according to The Chartered Institute of Marketing. Because the penny’s finally dropped that it’s not a “business” who receives their communications. It’s a person.
‘Business to Business’ [B2B] has become ‘Person to Person’ [P2P], as marketers capitalise on the fact that only by understanding the person – or “Persona” – that you’re targeting can your marketing hit the mark, and not the bin.
So if you answer yes to any of these, our Persona Builder programme will help to move your marketing into a new era of personalisation that drives growth.
- You have a one size fits all approach – you’re doing lots of activity but it’s the same tactic to all?
- You have a CRM system, but its segmentation is limited to demographics or transactional details only?
- You have the same value proposition for all your customers and haven’t defined what makes each customer group different?
How persona based marketing works
BrightTalk research has shown that using a customer persona when creating a B2B email campaign can double the open rate and increase click-through by 5x. That’s because, at the heart of P2P marketing, is the creation of a deep and real understanding of who the offer is being targeted to. It’s that old issue of knowing your audience.
Developing an effective persona has been described as being “like putting yourself in the shoes of your highest-rated potential customers.” You essentially create a mental place-holder for real people in real situations.
Personas help companies visualize and understand the ideal customer they’re attempting to attract and allows them to relate to them in an authentic and engaging way. Only by having a deep understanding of a target audience can effective and lasting customer acquisition and retention be achieved.
Getting personal
P2P-focussed companies aren’t just customer-centric, they’re people-focused. They don’t look solely to serve the functional needs of businesses, they build meaningful relationships to understand and connect better with the real people they serve. And in doing so, they stay ahead as the wants and needs of those people change.
Creating valuable and authentic connections with customers has never been more important, and should be at the top of any built environment marketer’s strategy. CMDi can help your business get there faster, and with more certainty of achieving the right outcome.
CMDi’s Persona Builder programme is already being used by leading organisations in the sector – contact us to find out more on 01483 546 900 or email connect@cmdi.co.uk
Dianne Lucas
Managing Director