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Needs Based Segmentation for B2B Companies

needs based segmentation for b2b companies

It is always tempting to cast a wide net when searching for prospective clients. You have an amazing product, so running a sweeping, generic campaign seems like the best option for reeling in as many clients as possible on the basis that your company has the best to offer within the current marketplace. However, you must remember that organizations are not like salmon: they do not all swim upstream for the same reason. 

So, getting to know your lead a little better will allow you to ascertain the motivations, needs, wants, and strategies of the lead in question. From there you can craft personalized messaging and outreach that enable marketing and sales teams to nurture a high-potential prospect. 

Market segmentation will help you make this happen. 

What is market segmentation for B2B companies?

Market segmentation is a process by which organizations can sort their sales prospects into a variety of groups or categories. The intention of market segmentation is to provide marketing and sales teams with critical insight into a potential client which they may then leverage to better support a conversion at the end of the buying journey. This can also make the process more efficient, and more personal to the client representative.

B2B sales interactions happen between individuals, however the individual acts as a representative of the interests of the larger organization. With this in mind, marketing materials and sales content must be optimized for both the individual and the organizational elements. Additionally, either element should be considered during the segmentation process. Your team should understand both the motivations, use cases and deciding power of the lead contact, as well as that of the company as a whole.

Beyond this, B2B market segmentation becomes increasingly more complex. Let’s talk about it. 

Types of B2B market segmentation

Depending on the scope of your business, you may choose to incorporate any number of factors into your segmentation process. The one fast rule is that there should never be just one aspect off of which you base your distribution. Segmentation should always utilize an intersection of multiple business factors. 

Here are some of the most common elements organizations may use to segment their sales and marketing leads. 

Firmographic market segmentation

Firmographic data is organizational demographic data describing aspects of an organization’s identity and operations. Smaller businesses can choose to segment their lead based on firmographic data alone, as there are a number of critical categories which contribute to the overall concept. 

Firmographic data categories typically include:

  • Number of employees. This also translates to the physical size of a business. This will give you direct insight into the product level a lead might be willing to buy, as well as the level of investment they might make.

    Companies with less than 50 employees will have less to spend on a product and won’t need it scaled for enterprise, whereas an organization with more than 5,000 will have a higher tech budget and a larger scope of use.
  • Yearly/quarterly revenue. Organizational income acts as an insightful indicator as to how much a company may have to spend on your product or service.

    Companies with minimal or no year-over-year growth should not be a priority on your sales list, however a fast-growing company with growth-indicative revenue is likely to want to invest in the acceleration of said growth.
  • Mergers, funding and acquisitions. Similarly, mergers, acquisitions and new funds demonstrate organizational acceleration and show that a company has resources to place on new and useful business solutions.

    Especially in the case of international or global expansion, this will tell you not only whether a firm has supportive financial stats, but also how you might approach them with your product depending on where in the world they are. 

Technographics

Gaining technographic data is critical to establishing buying potential and intent on the part of your prospect. Regardless of any other firmographic insight, it is possible that your prospect has a suboptimal or even nonexistent relationship with contemporary business solutions, indicating a hard or impossible sale. 

An enthusiastic relationship with new tech, on the other hand, provides a promising indication that the company in question prioritizes advancement, and has a high likelihood of conversion following introduction and nurturing. 

Scope of business

For our purposes, the scope of a business includes use of technology, operational practices, day-to-day and year-to-year running, etc. which might indicate a particular use case for your product. 

The idea of market segmentation is to find those prospects with the best conversion potential. And the best indication you will be able to find, regardless of other factors, is whether or not the organization in question has an identifiable need for what your company has to offer. 

State of current contracts

In other words, is the company already using a product like yours? If the answer is yes, this is a crystal-clear indication that they both have a use case for your product, understand this use case, and actively seek solutions to the necessitating problem.

The next step is to look at when and if their current contract may be expiring so you can make a case for your superior solution. 

Finding the decision maker

You need to make sure you’re speaking to the right representatives when laying out your sales and marketing pitches. Understanding a company’s structural hierarchy will help you to find someone who will be able to make the decision to onboard your product. 

Intricately’s sales intelligence for B2B market segmentation

Where do you get all of the information you need to perform accurate and effective lead segmentation? Intricately can help.

Intricately’s sales and marketing intelligence offer unparalleled insight into an organization’s firmographic, technographic, and operational data so you can better understand your prospects and deliver personalized content with a better chance of initiating a conversion. 

Sign up for a demo today to see what else Intricately has to offer you.

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