Knowing Your Customer: The importance of intelligent segmentation in B2B marketing

More than 25% of B2B marketers admit their organisations aren’t customer centric

A new report published by B2B Marketing and MarketMakers, has established that more than a quarter of B2B marketers admit their organisations are not customer centric.

This lack of centricity is underlined by the fact 43% of respondents admitted their sales teams sometimes interacted with senior decision-makers without having a good understanding of their specific business challenges.

Customer centricity should be acknowledged as an essential and vital part of any commercial strategy. Accurate customer segmentation underlines the need for thorough research as 82% of respondents say greater commercial success comes with leads that have been qualified by human interaction.

Barriers to customer insight were highlighted as resource, marketing and sales alignment, and a lack of high quality data.

“There’s no better way of understanding your customer than by talking to them”

MD Henry Braithwaite, commented upon the report, “Most marketing teams already understand the importance of creating personas, particularly as part of their content strategy, but how many are actually using them? By regularly reaching out and speaking to existing customers and prospects, we gain valuable insight into their working week, the teams they work with, the people they report to and, most importantly, their objectives and challenges.”

“Customer research and subsequent segmentation is a long-term process, not a one-off project. There’s no better way of understanding your customer than by talking to them,” Henry continues.

The project surveyed 142 B2B marketers to explore how they view customer insight and determine where they might be room for improvement.

Tags: B2B Marketing, Research, Telemarketing