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Audience understanding in B2B video marketing your data-driven marketer's guide

By Tim Cumming, Head of Creative, Marketing Films.
Last updated: Sep 2024

To build your B2B audience - one you're already familiar with - you probably need to thoroughly answer a number of big but simple questions.

Answer these, and you can build. Answer with behavioural studying online using interactive video, and you'll build quickly.

Defining criteria and niches

Niche Markets Analysis

In traditional marketing, the rule of thumb is to know your audience inside out before you even begin to conceptualize a campaign. However, we believe in a slightly unconventional yet effective strategy. The uniqueness of interactive video lies in its ability to become the vehicle for research itself, allowing a more dynamic understanding of your audience to emerge.

By carefully analyzing interactions, we can trace patterns in real-time. This includes understanding not just the broad segments of your B2B audience but also identifying specific niches with particular interests. This is crucial because, according to recent data, personalized content can increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10-30% (McKinsey). Therefore, beginning with a 'sketchy' understanding allows for flexibility and adaptation as insights roll in, providing opportunities to tailor your messaging to previously undiscovered audience segments.

Registering wants, needs, and opportunities

A business's primary focus should be to address the wants and needs of its audience. Here lies the power of interactive video: as viewers engage, they do so by making choices reflecting their interests, challenges, priorities, and pain points. Each interaction serves as a subtle vote, revealing valuable information about what your audience truly values.

These interactions provide a wealth of knowledge that goes beyond conventional analytics – they can lead to understanding opportunities for new product development or service refinement that aligns with audience desires. As you gather these click-based insights, you are effectively measuring viewer curiosity and engagement at a granular level, leading to a data-driven approach in addressing the evolving demands of your B2B audience.

Groups, forums, and channels

Online Forums Discussion

Determining where your audience congregates and communicates is essential for targeted message distribution. In the B2B world, professional networks like LinkedIn and industry-specific forums remain pivotal. Understanding the digital behavior of your audience segments within these spaces is invaluable. It informs not only what kind of content should be created but also where to distribute it for optimal engagement.

Groups and channels also act as a rich source of ongoing conversation that can fuel your interactive video content. Imagine an interactive video that sparks a debate similar to one happening on industry forums – it would not only resonate deeply but also inspire action and further sharing. The key is to use these platforms as both a broadcasting channel and an interactive hub where your video content provides more engagement than static posts could ever achieve.

Their traits and prejudices

Every audience comes with its set of biases and expectations, and recognizing these is crucial for effective communication. Using the data gathered from interactive video, we build a detailed map not only of what audiences are saying but also of implicit biases that might be influencing their decisions. This approach allows us to navigate potential prejudices and create content that can challenge them constructively.

For instance, within the B2B sphere, there's often a prejudice concerning the time to implement new solutions or a preference for certain vendors due to legacy relationships. Recognizing these traits can help us in crafting interactive videos that provide proof points or comparison data in real-time, assuaging doubts and breaking down resistance to new information.

Your prejudices

Self Reflection in Marketing

Just as we recognize the prejudices within our audience, it's also essential to remain mindful of our own. As marketers, we may hold onto certain assumptions about our audience that may no longer be valid. The immediacy of feedback from interactive video allows us to confront and reassess these biases consistently.

These may include beliefs about the type of content that will resonate or the language that should be used in various industries. The interactive element gives us the ability to test and learn, adjusting the tone, format, and messaging according to genuine audience engagement and bypassing our assumptions for real-world data.

Your audience plan

Compiling the insights from all the previous steps, we stitch together an audience plan that is evidence-based and ready for real-time refinement. This living document holds the key to the iterative processes of content deployment, audience engagement, and continued learning. It serves as the blueprint for an agile and responsive marketing model that evolves alongside your audience.

A solid audience plan, informed by the interactive behavior of viewers, consists not only of demographic or firmographic data but also psychographic and intent data that is often missing from traditional audience mapping. You prevent wastage and increase ROI by directing resources to strategies that the data shows are effective, not just theoretically sound.

Video inspiration

Inspiration for video content comes directly from the audience interaction and data. Here are some creative ideas that build on the insights from the earlier sections:

In conclusion, our approach at Marketing Films isn't just about creating content; it's about crafting a digital ecosystem where every video serves as a bridge between your brand and your audience. By embracing interactivity and real-time insight, your B2B marketing strategy becomes a dynamic dialogue, one where audience understanding and engagement grow in lockstep with your campaigns.

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  • 4C logo
  • Action For Me logo
  • Ada Economics logo
  • Amadeus logo
  • Aquis logo
  • Arkk logo
  • Aurum logo
  • Bishopsgate logo
  • Bloodhound logo
  • Brigade Electronics logo
  • Camden A.I. logo
  • Cawood Scientific logo
  • Charlton House logo
  • Desklodge logo
  • Dunedin logo
  • Finsimco logo
  • Hertz Europe logo
  • Intragen logo
  • Kee Safety logo
  • Kirton Healthcare logo
  • Leading Point Financial Markets logo
  • Lpfa logo
  • Mayor Of London logo
  • Neardesk logo
  • Nvm logo
  • Outstanding logo
  • Paladin logo
  • Peppermint Technology logo
  • Progress Music Academy logo
  • Pure Retirement logo
  • Quantifi logo
  • Qube logo
  • Rockpool logo
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  • Share Radio logo
  • Siemens logo
  • Silverwing For Nvm logo
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