From Audience Insights to Actionable Content: A B2B Marketer's Toolkit

Hey, hi everyone. Welcome to your show, E-Coffee with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay. And today we have Sara, who is the Digital Marketing Director at Waypoint Marketing Communications with us. Hey, Sara, how is it going?

Hi, it’s going well. How are you?

All good. Can’t really complain. So before we move any forward, let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Why don’t you talk us through your journey? How are you as a kid growing up and then getting into the digital marketing space? How did that trigger? Also a bit about your agency, what do you guys do, what do you guys specialize in at Waypoint Marketing, and then we take it forward from there.

Yeah, sure. If we’re going to go all the way back to my childhood, which is a very long way, maybe. I grew up in a family of engineers. I grew up wanting to constantly know how things worked, how to improve processes. Analytics, we were always focused and driven just because our family, I think most of my family are engineers. I grew up naturally in the B2B sector, but I was always inspired by the creative components behind business. In middle school and high school, I would play around with the idea of building websites or doing graphic design. But in terms of creative inspiration, that really wasn’t a field that I wanted to go into. I pursued in business school a marketing degree because I could bring it all together. I’ve pursued careers in B2B marketing because I got the best of both worlds. I got to learn and experience how products and solutions are made and the expertise behind them. But then I could also pull in some of my creative skillset. Then just knowing that technology is playing a huge factor in marketing now, I knew that my career was going to lead me into digital marketing at some point.

That’s what’s brought me here now to Waypoint, where we have almost a full-service solution based on digital marketing services. I think from SEO to pay-per-click, social media, content development, website work, we do a little bit of all of that, and I get to play a factor in all of it. But also I get to understand more about our clients’ products and solutions and how they work and how we can market that to their audiences.

Absolutely. In today’s competitive B2B landscape, understanding your target audience is crucial, right? There is so much of competition in every niche. What are some of the effective methods for gathering deep audience insights that go beyond basic demographics?

Yes. Like you said, Understanding your audience is absolutely critical. I am a firm believer that if you don’t understand your audience, you’re never really going to market your products and solutions. You’re going to do it, but you’re You’re probably not going to get the goals and the conversions that you’re really wanting to get out of it or that you could potentially get out of it. When a customer comes to us, we ask those questions. Do you understand your target audience? And that goes beyond just assumptions. We’re wanting the data. Have you dove into having a deep understanding of it? Have you looked at different analytical tools? Are you looking to see what’s happening in the industry? What are your competitors doing and what are they saying? Are they engaging with audiences? What are your customers saying? Are you listening to what’s going on social media platforms, on websites? What’s your sales staff doing? What’s the feedback that you’re getting from your sales team when they’re engaging out in the marketplace? There’s all sorts of different areas that you can pull that from. And from that, it’s going to support all of your marketing decisions moving forward.

Absolutely. According to you, what is the role of a customer journey mapping and understanding audience needs and preferences? There are so many touch points now in the overall customer life cycle to actually make that sale happen or that decision making happen. So how important is it?

I think really understanding your buyer’s journey with your business or in your industry is going to set your strategy moving forward. So you want to know how long is a typical life cycle? Who are the different players that play a factor in the decision-making process. We work with B2B companies, and typically, there’s more than one decision maker. So you have to know, you have to talk to them at first, who did they report to, are there colleagues of theirs that they make joint decisions with, then is there a purchasing department that you have to get involved? So you have to lay out start to finish and then what that process looks like. Then also, what’s the follow-up process? When the cycle is done, how do you continue to reengage and move that person into customer retention? And what’s that customer retention process look like? You have to map all of that out because when it comes down to marketing strategy development and content development, you need to know what you’re going to serve up to your audience and when.

Absolutely. And how can businesses translate audience insights into actionable content strategies that resonate with their target market.

Yeah. Once you have a good, solid understanding of what your audience is and how they think and how they buy and where they shop and where they spend their time, then you can look into, Okay, I have to build a persona now and pretend like this is a fake person, and I need to know how old are they, how do they think? Like I said, where do they buy, where do they spend their time? So that when you go into mapping out and aligning the persona with the buying map or the customer journey, and you can look at that and say, Okay, what content do we need for each phase of the journey? And where are we going to put it so that’s in front of our customer? And what are the resources available? How are we going to do that? Like I said, once you have the persona and the audience figured out, and you then align it with the journey map. That’s where the magic happens, and you can start to see a big picture how you’re going to build your content.

Absolutely. You have been into the space for quite some time now, Zara. You have spoken with a lot of businesses, right? What are the biggest content marketing mistakes B2B businesses make and how you feel that they can be avoided?

We see a lot of people just writing content or building content for the sake of building content.

They’re not looking- And now thanks to AI.

Yeah. They’re just putting stuff out there because they’re trying to be proactive. They’re doing it because maybe that’s how it was done in the past or they just don’t know any better. Typically, what we see is people not aligning their marketing and their content with the overall business goals. Even though I say, Map out your customer journey and build your target audience and then build your content, You still have to think business goals, too. You have to look at the bigger picture and say, Okay, we have to build content that resonates with different areas in our map and with our audience, but are we going to help reach those business in those goals, too? Then they’re looking and neglecting the SEO and the distribution part of it, too. Most audiences are spending their time online, and if they’re just writing for the sake of writing without search taking a factor in it, then they’re missing an opportunity. They’re not considering what their audience is looking for online and searching for. The last thing is just ignoring the metrics and adjustments. Once content is out there on the inter-wind, they’re not taking a look and saying, Okay, is it performing?

Is it resonating? Is it building a community? Is it engaging? Is it moving people through our sales pipeline? Are we meeting our goals? And if not, how can we adjust it? They just leave it out there and then find that other project to work on.

Absolutely. Since we’re talking about content, what is your take on AI, ChatGPT, and the tools which help you create content?

I was one of those people when at first AI started to be a buzzword. I was like, I don’t want to rely on it. It’s probably going to go away because it’s just not building a relationship or it’s not smart enough. But AI is going to be here to stay, right?

100%, yeah.

100%, it’s going to be here to stay. Now that everybody has a better understanding of how AI works. It’s a platform that we really need to learn how to engage and use, but doing so carefully. You don’t want it to take over your content development. You want to be able to think for yourself because at the end of the day, you’re the only person that truly knows your target audiences, you’re building relationships with them, your sales team is engaging in person. You need to write content that problem solves for your audience. That’s not something that AI can always do. You still need to think for yourself, but then allow AI to come in and support you, whether it’s through some keyword research or some content development or strategy planning or data analytics, that thing, but not to make it your fallback.

Absolutely Absolutely. And then content, there’s so many formats available now, blogs, videos, infographics, et cetera. How do you decide which one is the best for your target audience?

The way that we typically talk to our clients about it, and I’ve always been a believer, is that your website is a great place to be your hub. And that’s where you can keep all of your resources first. Once you take and look at, Okay, what’s our budget, what’s our skills, and everything, you can see, okay, what should we put on our website? We like to look at blogs first, but not everybody has a blog content writer at their wheelhouse. But that’s where we like to start. And so we’ll take a look and say, Okay, let’s build a very valuable and engaging blog first. Then off of that, what else can we do? It might be video from it that’s related to it. We might We make a few social media posts out of it. We can create a case study that goes along with it to support it. Then from that blog, you can piece it out and say, Okay, where does it align with our customers’ buying journey? Where can we put this? What social media platforms can we put this on to make sure that it reaches our audiences? Where can we use this case study that we created for this blog to support our sales processes? Like I said, the website is your number one hub for all marketing materials, and then you can spoke out from there.

Absolutely. Great, Sara. Thank you so much for the insights. But before we let you go, I’d like to play a quick rapid fire with you. I hope you’re game for it.

Oh, let’s give it a shot.

All right, your last Google search.

Oh, Let me see my last. I always have so many Google searches going. I want to say it was for digital web solutions and quickly followed by solo stoves.

All right, now you know what we do. All right, moving on. Your last vacation.

Charleston, South Carolina.

Okay, lovely. What did you do with your first fee check, Sara? First paycheck of your life?

First paycheck of my life? I was in high school, so I probably went shopping.

Okay, all right. Where do you find Sara on Fridays after office or after work?

I have two young kids, so Fridays after work, after I’ve picked them up, we typically do a school football game or some family activity.

All right, lovely. Good. I will not really go further. Sorry, you have been a spot. Thank you so much for taking out time to do this with us. Finally, for our audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

They can find me either through my email, Sara@waypointmc.com, or they can connect with me on my LinkedIn page or through our website, Waypoint Marketing Communications. They can search for us.

Lovely then. Thank you so much, Sara, once again. This has been a great chat. Cheers.

Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.