Do you understand the real needs of your customers?
Are you familiar with your customers' purchasing preferences?
Do you know who the ultimate decision maker is for your company?
In order to deeply explore the "awareness of customer portraits of foreign trade enterprises", Tengdao's professional service team invested a month to conduct detailed research on more than 1,000 foreign trade enterprises. In the process, we gradually became aware of a common and critical problem: many small and medium-sized enterprises have a vague and in-depth understanding of the target customers for which their products are intended.
1. Common problems of small and medium-sized TO B enterprises
Among the more than 1,000 TO B companies surveyed, most of the small and medium-sized enterprises have such a problem: they often lack an accurate understanding of key information such as the age level, consumption preferences, and demand characteristics of their target customers.
This lack of information makes it difficult to continuously optimize and adjust the product line according to the actual needs of customers. To make matters worse, some companies try to meet the diverse needs of all potential customers in the product development process, which not only leads to the loss of the product's unique selling point, but also gradually disperses the originally accurate customer base.
In the current market environment of rising customer acquisition costs, this approach has undoubtedly pushed enterprises into a development impasse. Therefore, in order to deeply understand the target customer, quickly locate and attract the customer group at low cost, it has become a top priority to build an accurate customer portrait.
2. What is the customer portrait of B-end products?
Customer portrait is a series of labels about customers that are collected by enterprises through active or passive means to collect the traces left by customers on the Internet. These tags typically include static data such as the customer's gender, occupation, education, job attributes, income, and dynamic data such as browsing history, search behavior, etc. Based on this data, businesses can derive a rough customer profile.
If the product is mainly for B-end customers, then some data content of the enterprise needs to be added to the statistics, such as the industry characteristics, industry category, business situation, development stage, personal attributes of the decision-maker, and the problems that the enterprise wants to solve.
Note: Buyer group portrait analysis table provided by Tengdao
Fourth, what problems can customer portraits solve for enterprises?
The production of customer portraits needs to be based on market research and data analysis, and a three-dimensional customer model is built by collecting multi-dimensional data such as basic information, behavioral habits, and purchase motivation of target customers. This not only helps companies define their product positioning, but also guides their marketing strategies and ensures that resources are invested more accurately and effectively.
01 In-depth insight into customer needs
In the lead generation process, it is essential to have an in-depth understanding and analysis of the customer. The process is not limited to the first online contact or sending marketing emails, but also about finding common ground or creating common ground with your target customers. It is advisable to choose a way to communicate with your customers in a way that takes into account their preferred interaction and communication style and meets their expectations and needs as much as possible.
02 Accurately identify customer needs
After clarifying the needs of customers, salespeople can formulate more customized marketing strategies based on these needs and pain points, and provide targeted solutions for each customer pain point. For example, building a high-quality list of potential customers quickly can set you apart from the competition because they're more targeted, more likely to resonate with similar potential customers, and make your message more likely to be noticed.
Here we quote the remarks of the foreign trade manager of a furniture export company in Shenzhen to support the evidence:
Take the sale of outdoor furniture in Las Vegas, USA, as an example, when a customer sends an inquiry to buy outdoor furniture, there is very little information. However, because we have customer profiles of customers in this region, we understand that they have different requirements for products than customers in other regions, such as special treatment of materials and long warranty periods, because of the desertified climate and high salt content of rain in Las Vegas.
Therefore, when replying to the customer, the customer will be clearly informed of the reason for recommending the following styles: the material of these styles has been specially treated, thickened, anti-corrosion, and dust-proof, so that the warranty can be guaranteed.
If a competitor is still asking about the customer's needs or recommending a random product, you have already met the customer's needs, or although the customer's needs are different, at least you will know very well that you understand the customer's market, are professional, and are trying to provide solutions.
It is not difficult to see that customer profiling can help companies better understand their target customer groups and provide strong support for the development of marketing strategies and promotional activities. At the same time, enterprises can optimize products according to customer portraits to meet the needs of target customers and improve product competitiveness and market share.
03 Identify key decision-makers for large enterprises
Let's say you're selling to a large enterprise, and each sale may involve stakeholders from multiple departments. Therefore, before making a sale, you need to identify exactly who will make the final decision to buy your product or service. Otherwise, you could waste a lot of time connecting with business contacts who don't have a buying need or lack decision-making power. Therefore, the target customer persona should be a detailed overview of the typical buyers of the product or service being sold.
Tengdao Foreign Trade SaaS platform provides accurate contact information, allowing you to easily obtain the detailed information of key decision-makers such as procurement and executives, including email, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social accounts, providing strong support for business development.
Source: Tengdao Foreign Trade SaaS platform
04 Define product positioning
Targeted development of products: Based on the information of customer portraits, enterprises can develop and design products in a targeted manner to make them more in line with the needs of target customers and improve the competitiveness of products in the market.
Optimize product positioning: Customer profiling helps companies find market gaps and opportunities, adjust product positioning, better meet customer needs, and achieve differentiated competition.
Fourth, how to develop customer portraits of TO B enterprises
Having said so much about the benefits of customer profiling, how should TO B enterprises develop customer profiling?
First of all, from the perspective of static portraits, we should sort out the preliminary list scope according to the following dimensions:
01 Characteristics of the company itself
This includes key information such as industry attributes, business size, nature, financing status, whether it is listed, location, and financial status.
02 Characteristic portrait of the docking personnel
This involves the gender, age, position, hobbies, social circles, personality traits, etc. of the demand sponsor (e.g., demand department), users, decision-makers (e.g., directors), and other influencers (other relevant departments).
03 The use of products and services by the enterprise
This includes whether the company has adopted the relevant product or service, how satisfied it is, which competitors' products or services it has used, when the contract expires, and how well it is budgeted.
The SaaS platform can automatically track the key background information of the customer, including "purchase volume, supply chain situation, competitors, procurement contact information", etc., and enterprises can preliminarily determine whether the customer belongs to their target customer group.
Source: Tengdao Foreign Trade SaaS platform
Furthermore, for the dynamic portrait of the TO B customer (essentially the analysis and mining of needs).
We should capture the needs of our customers in a timely manner by tracking their dynamics, which is highly dependent on automated marketing systems, and this part will be difficult to implement without system support.
01 The overall perspective of the enterprise
Track your customers' sourcing trends and business expansion in real time, including what they bought from which competitor and whether new business needs emerged. Being able to continuously monitor these dynamics through an automated system saves us time and resources.
02 Touchpoints for business decision-makers and stakeholders
Did they visit our website, attend an event, or follow our social media? By setting up a series of trigger mechanisms, when the points accumulate to a certain level, indicating that the maturity level has been reached, customer resources should be allocated in time for more in-depth follow-up.
Many small and medium-sized enterprises will fill in the basic information and communication information of customers on an Excel sheet, extract the key information and mark it with "labels" to prepare for the next step of conversion.
But if you want to build a deep customer profile, it is not enough to manually collect and analyze information. Not only is the amount of data huge, but it's also updated very quickly.
Therefore, Tengdao foreign trade SaaS platform has become an essential tool for marketing decisions of more and more foreign trade enterprises.
01 Support one-click import of public domain and self-owned data
Realize one-click import of public domain and self-owned data, create an enterprise-exclusive private data asset library, provide more than 100 filter conditions and support personalized customization to meet the needs of refined customer analysis.
02 Customer value stratification
Through hierarchical analysis of customer value, enterprises can better understand the value contribution of different customer groups, so as to develop more targeted marketing strategies.
03 In-depth analysis of customer groups
Provide in-depth customer analysis functions to help enterprises gain insight into customer needs and behavioral characteristics, and provide strong support for product optimization and market expansion.
04 Analysis of new, high-repurchase, and churned customers
By monitoring new and high-frequency repurchases and churning customers in real time, companies can adjust their marketing strategies in a timely manner to improve customer retention.
Finally, I would like to say to foreign trade bosses or foreign trade practitioners
Instead of struggling with customers who don't match
It's better to do a good job of customer portrait analysis