Defining Your Ideal B2B Customer: Strategies to Improve Conversations and Conversions

Defining your ideal customer is crucial for any sales and marketing campaign. It’s a key consideration when targeting decision-makers, companies, and new markets. When done well, an ideal customer profile can help you create messaging and approaches that resonate with your desired target market, support better conversations that achieve more successful cut-through and, ultimately, make more sales!

Defining your ideal client, where’s the best place to start?

So how do you define your ideal client? The place to start is by defining the companies or organisations that fit your ideal customer profile. Once you’ve done this, you move on to defining the ideal personas of the decision-makers in these ideal businesses.

Before you start, remember to acknowledge that you may have different profiles for an ideal client, representing different tiers of organisation. It’s not realistic to target your entire marketing strategy to Tier 1 organisations with large budgets unless, of course, these are the ONLY clients that you will sell to. In reality, most companies have 3 or 4 tiers of customer, each with its typical characteristics and decision-maker profiles. It’s these lower tier customers that will deliver the volume you need to hit targets and secure future security and growth, as they’ll usually make quicker buying decisions.

It’s also important to remember that customers in all tiers must have a clear set of pain points or needs for your services and that these pain points may well vary from tier to tier; knowing what these are for each tier will increase your traction with each one and ensure you can convert prospects from each tier into profitable long-term customers.

So how do you organise your clients and prospects into tiers?

The most obvious way is by company size, whether that is by employee size or by annual turnover, both of which are often a strong indicator of budgets and spending. However, there are outliers to consider, such as start-ups that have significant recent investment or promising growth trajectories yet still appear “small” in terms of employee numbers. This is another motivating factor to get your messaging right; partnering with businesses like this who are in the early stages of their growth could lead to valuable opportunities in the future.

Identifying company attributes:

Identifying company attributes means looking at the sectors and industries which have the best alignment and the greatest need for your services, based on attributes such as industry, location, their services and the tools and infrastructure they utilise.

For example, depending on the services you offer and your sales approach, geography and location could be a vital consideration if you need to be physically close to your clients in order to serve them well. For example, for businesses such as IT Managed Services, location remains essential because they need to visit on-premise to provide support. Proximity to your offices or your service team might also be vital if you offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response time. Equally, if the process for making a sale requires many on-site visits and facetime to install your product, then local prospects could again be favourable.

Another potential company attribute to consider in defining an ideal client may be the existing infrastructure or tools they use.  A good example of this would be a company that provides an IT solution that requires clients to be using a specific platform or system.

Again, the size of your prospective client matters. A larger company might be more likely to have a dedicated IT department or staff members who manage their systems and infrastructure. In contrast, small businesses may just have one person looking after everything, which could impact their decision-making process and timelines.

Once you have identified your ideal target customer, we can provide expert insight and guidance on how to effectively build relationships and connect with your target audience. Get in touch today by calling 1300 396 888 or sending us an email at enquiries@forrestcontact.com.au.