” In small businesses, in a less formalised environment, it is the less challenged personalities, values and prejudices of the directors and owners that really influence the buying processes” Simon Lawrence Joint MD, Information Arts
ver the last two years, B2B is where real innovations in data, insight and thought leadership have been made whilst B2C seems to be proliferating ‘me too’ products and service providers.
In this time a new generation of B2B experts have been helping companies to develop relationship marketing strategies that will continue to deliver consistent, reliable and profitable ROI into the medium and long term.
Many companies do now understand that data holds the key, and that insight will improve effectiveness through greater understanding.
The particular ‘insight’ path prioritised and chosen by various providers is different. Information Arts has chosen to focus on the vast small business and self employed community as we believe this sector continues to offer suppliers a significant and profitable source of new business. The sheer size of the market (arguably around 3.5 million business entities) means that a targeted approach is required and that more than likely some direct media is going to be used.
Ever since trudging around a sales territory, waiting in reception areas to see buyers as a rep in the 1980s, I’ve instinctively believed that businesses have personalities. This personality is sometimes referred to as the ‘culture’ and in large businesses is a result of the board of directors’ values and prejudices formally articulated in processes and governance and the interplay of similar personalities supporting those processes.
In small businesses, in a less formalised environment it’s the less challenged personalities, values and prejudices of directors and owners that influence the buying processes. As there are inevitably less of these people in any small business, this ‘effect’ can be seen in a distilled, raw but useful state.
For this reason, Information Arts created its insight product DNA, linking business and consumer data together and adding depth through appending ‘consumer’ information to the underlying directors and owners data. This allows us to provide some all-important ‘insight’. Companies were able to see a picture of who their small business clients were, not just the size and type of business. DNA allowed us to infer values and make complex selections before a robust segmentation was developed.
The consumer information allowed us to add more selections to analysis, for example; that customers in various business segments read tabloid or broadsheet newspapers, or whether decision makers in certain industry types prefer long or short haul holidays.
This greater understanding has enabled companies to produce marketing collateral that really appeals to their audience. No longer is there the need to send the same creative to a 50 year-old married tabloid-reading male as to a 25 year-old broadsheet-reading single female.
However, this only takes us part of the targeting journey there was still some distance to travel. What we were unable to understand with clarity was what was driving directors or owner managers to behave in certain ways.
We also knew that two businesses could look the same, have similar turnover, and be run by owners who are of similar ages and similar characteristics but make purchase decisions in very different ways. Understanding the drivers behind the different behaviour required primary research.
Initial qualitative research produced three high level typologies given the original and self describing working names of ‘Passionate’, ‘Expert’ and ‘Money Maker’. This work helped to support the initial assumption that different personalities would make purchase decisions for different reasons but required further refinement. This stage also provided clarification of the questions we needed to ask to develop the more granular segmentation.
The Business Life survey to 200,000 small business owners has delivered a cornucopia of data, allowing us to identify eight distinctive typologies. This information provides vast insight and colour to support targeting and proposition development and the underlying data allows us to append a BOSS (Business Owner Segmentation Spotlight) code to every small business record we hold.
Through this we are now able to provide multi-dimensional selection allowing companies to finally see the business type, personality characteristics and personal drivers. Companies can now produce creative which will grab the attention of the intended audience, but with a tailored marketing message to ‘fit’ the personality and values of the business owner decision maker. Furthermore, the insight learnt allows us to understand the best marketing medium to use to communicate these messages.
The granularity and clarity offered by the new segmentation products opens the door for some truly innovative and exciting marketing communications. What we now need is for the creative community to embrace the theory and the practice to get close and work alongside the new information artists and ensure that their work truly leverages the insights revealed.
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