Do you really know me?

Personas: They are customers and individuals with their own motivations.

What’s my biggest problem? What do I need to deal with to make my job easier? Does someone understand what I need to get done? Can you say one thing to me that lets me know you’ll solve my problems? In the B2B world, the obsession with selling to someone based on features, comparisons, and the magic quadrant exercise does not really connect to most buyers you’re trying to sell to. With all the feature details that dominate a company’s internal conversations, it’s sometimes hard to remember that customers drive choices and markets because of their needs — not your feature set.

Discover What Really Matters

A checklist that focuses on customer profiles and core motivations will help you position and shape your core marketing focus from the customer’s perspective. This focus can create a clear brand image that helps a company in understanding and choosing products as well as building a trusted long-term relationship with customers that are identified with your brand.

Here are some key defining structures that will allow you to build the people strategy that includes and defines the characteristics of customers that you know matter to you. This focus will keep your company’s value and brand strategy in front of the right audience.

Define Your People Strategy

1. What problems do your customers need to solve?

It’s essential that you know what matters to them and that you can deliver solutions that make you a part of their world. It could be home and security like Nest, or Salesforce solving specific problems for sales and marketing. Know their issues and needs.

2. What can you offer that will solve their problems?

Remember, people’s strategies are about their lives, what they do, and how their world works for them. From consumer-facing to B2B brands, real people have lives, and defining this allows you to know where to show up for them.

3. Where do your customers live, in what world?

Demographics and geography tell you a lot about the focus of customers, their culture, and how to connect to them. Social media may not be in the mix for structural engineers but architects love Instagram because it’s visual. Keeping this in mind as you define your brand strategy can give you insights into what’s relevant to them.

4. Who are your decision-makers and how would you describe them?

When you begin to understand the culture of your key decision-makers it’s about knowing their generational connections, what their values are and how you can build trust with them. Whether a Baby Boomer or GenX generation, you need to find out what matters to them the most.

5. What motivates your customers?

Sometimes it’s simple, but values that connect them to what matters let you know who they are for your brand and your products.

6. Why would the customers care about you as a brand?

Think hard about this, argue about it. You need to be real from the customer’s perspective. The value you can bring is very important to define. This keeps you connected with customers over time.

7. What’s your mission and how does this relate to customers’ needs?

Many companies define their mission without really thinking through what matters to customers. Lofty ideals and visions are meaningless if people don’t care, don’t see these visions as relevant to them.

8. If your brand is remembered for one thing by customers, what would that be?

This is often the hardest but really most important question to ask. Companies are constantly trying to figure this out with exit surveys and mapping customer buying preferences. It’s really essential to know this and revisit this question to stay present to what matters for the most important brand element — the people who buy from you.