Awareness. Eyeballs. Market penetration.

What do these terms mean for a B2B marketer? My view: a narrow target set of customers (segment or niche) where we need to increase our profile. For example, financial services CIO prospects for our newest software. Or telco operations executives targeted for an outsourcing service. In these cases, we have to work very hard to get any attention! 

Executive Prospecting.

Since executives are busier than ever, our message must be sharp and clear. "Improve uptime by 2%, end user productivity by 5% and save 15%" is a good start. But our busy financial services CIO sees similar claims all the time. We can do better.

Let's add some color and sharper benefits. "Did you know that XX firm improved uptime of their critical customer service desk, with customer satisfaction scores up to 4.5 from 4.1 (5 point scale)? Their investment of $300K was repaid in 7 months from increased sales." If we know that customer retention and the customer service desk are important to our CIO target, this approach will be much more powerful.

Business Customer Retention and Growth.

For existing customers, we can reach the executives, but how to maximize the impact? The answer: develop their company's specific benefits, then communicate them.  In most cases, this can be done with our day-to-day contacts. However, more than once, I've found a limited perspective blocking the bigger picture. For example, our finance contact may not appreciate (or understand) the operations benefits.

Fortunately, we can make some key assumptions and find ways to test them. Now we have a bottom-line benefits story to use with executives in customer newsletters, report cards, and sales calls.

Plus, we have the compelling benefits to create our story for prospects!