I received several emails in response to my last post ‘Do Psychographics work in B2B Marketing & Sales?’ about developing psychographic profiles for market segments or companies to complement existing demographic data.
Given that psychographics classify prospective buyers by psychological attitudes such as aspirations, interests, attitudes, opinions, etc., how does this apply to companies when you’re in B2B marketing and sales? IMO, companies do project a psychographic image or behavior pattern that goes beyond normal demographics – take IBM as an example signaling moving to a services-oriented business earlier this decade, followed by on-demand computing services mid-decade and the current focus on sustainability. For suppliers selling to IBM, those are powerful signals of what and how to position their solutions to IBM relative to how the company views itself in the market.
One email came from an ex-colleague and business acquaintance Charlie Allieri who is co-founder of iLantern, a provider of Sales Knowledge Management services. iLantern provides a service that monitors events associated with targeted companies to produce information alerts that signal activities that can influence sales opportunities at those companies. These events include executive staff changes, executive quotes, mergers, acquisitions, product announcements, alliances, awards, sales deals, business expansion, and many others.
Charlie’s point, within the company psychographic discussion, is that if marketing and sales were to analyze this event information more strategically, they could build a very insightful psychographic profile of their major customer and prospect companies. iLantern services primarily provide salespeople with really valuable and actionable current information and insights in their accounts, Charlie makes a good point that this information can also provide more strategic insights for marketing. Applying the information from a number of companies in a particular vertical industry or market segment can glean additional industry insights that are not reflected in any demographic data.
Another really interesting part of the iLantern service for marketing is that you can automatically associate specific marketing materials and messaging with designated events for sales to take action. So, if a particular event occurs at a company in a target market segment, the service can alert the salesperson to invite the relevant person to a webinar, or send them a white paper, or mention a specific solution, or any scenario you wish to define. The salesperson gets the alert with a predefined script and email with the designated material(s) to contact the person in question at that company.
Company psychographics can give you a competitive edge in today’s tough market by identifying company events that signal a potential opportunity or to stop wasting time and resources on companies sending the wrong type of signals.
What do you think about this type of approach for developing and using company psychographics? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com
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I am fortunate to have worked in a number of roles in marketing and other areas of businesses. I have done, run and led marketing. I have worked in other functions that are impacted by marketing.
I'm a keen observer on how marketing is positioned and perceived within companies and what is expected in return for the marketing budget. The Internet, Web and technology innovations continue to change and
expand marketing approaches and possibilities. Hopefully this blog will in some small way contribute to making marketing more effective for all areas.
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