Take Your B2B Business to the Next Level with Industry-Based Marketing

In a nutshell, industry-based marketing is a marketing strategy that involves segmenting and targeting potential consumers according to their sector or vertical. Although this may appear to be a basic notion, you'd be surprised how many B2B companies we've dealt with have been using a "one size fits all" strategy for years.

Their marketing became considerably more effective once we started segmenting their strategy based on the requirements and preferences of their main verticals. To be honest, effective industry-based marketing takes a lot of time and effort. It's difficult enough to develop a single cross-channel marketing plan. When you multiply that by a dozen target verticals, it's easy to see why so few companies bother to develop an industry-specific marketing plan. The benefits, however, are well worth the effort if you are prepared to put in the necessary effort.

The plain truth is that your B2B customers are picky. You're probably asking them to invest anywhere from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars in your company. If they're going to invest that much money, they want to know that you've taken the time to learn about their company and their demands.

Identifying Your Target Industry

To be successful in industry-based marketing, you must first understand the difficulties and difficulties that your consumers face in their sector. There will be some overlap in pain issues and demands throughout industries because you're still offering the same products, software, or services. However, you will never be able to connect successfully with your consumers if you don't grasp their objectives, values, and issues.

Changing Your Marketing Plan

It's difficult to cross different sectors with competing goals when you just have one marketing strategy and message. However, after you've figured out what your distinct verticals' objectives are, you can utilize that information to build vertically-specific marketing and target each industry independently. The good news is that the more you learn about your consumers the easier it will be to segment your audience.

Specific marketing channels work better for certain sectors. You may build a customized targeting and messaging plan for that sector if you understand your target market and how to reach them. You'll need to figure out how to apply your core strategy across your various marketing channels, once you've come to know your consumers and developed your core strategy.

The bottom line is that this should be rather simple. It's just a matter of figuring out how to get in front of your target audience now that you know who they are and what they care about.

Identifying Your Industry Targets

Examine your present client or customer list and consider the following questions:

• Who are our most valuable clients?
• Why do we enjoy collaborating with them?
• Which industries do they work in?
• Which industry do we like to work in?
• What are the most lucrative and revenue-generating companies for us?
• Which industry would we target if we could only market to one type of company?
• What industry would we pursue instead if that was not an option?

These questions should assist you in determining which sectors you should focus on. Occasionally, the sectors that have been formerly lucrative for your company have become less so. When you take a step back and look at the statistics, you may not understand where your sweet spot is.