Decoding the Language of Your Customers

A Guide to Effective Communication in B2B Markets

Consumer-driven tactics are pushed to every marketing team — and for good reason. This advice tends to be targeted toward business-to-consumer businesses. However, business-to-business (B2B) companies can also benefit greatly from shifting the marketing focus from product to client. Learn how to level up your B2B marketing by paying attention to the nuanced language of your target audience.

Understanding the Voice of the B2B Customer

One of the worst mistakes in B2B marketing is neglecting the user experience. It’s tempting to focus all of your efforts on promoting the benefits of your product. However, understanding the voice of the customer (VoC) is what bridges gaps and fosters loyalty. You need to look beyond product sales and dig deep into how your B2B clients communicate as well as how they feel about their experiences with your products and company. This offers many benefits, including:

• The identification of client needs;
• An edge over competitors;
• Increased client loyalty;
• Increased engagement;
• Awareness of signals.

If you know what to look for in interactions with B2B clients, whether that’s in-person or online, you can tailor your marketing messaging to benefit them. Clients will appreciate your attention to detail and feel more invested in your brand.

Ask for Feedback

The best way to unlock meaningful dialogues and build trust is to ask your clients for feedback. This also gives clients a powerful sense of autonomy, showing them that you value their opinions. Some effective feedback methods include surveys, focus groups, live chats, net promoter scores, and client interviews.

In addition, look at the discourse on social platforms, review sites, and forums to get indirect feedback. Client interactions can also inform your feedback process. Take note of certain cues and patterns and track the results. This can give your team a data-driven look at how specific client interactions play out and affect sales. You can also take this information and apply it to interactions — in client meetings, online, and for marketing materials.

Meet Clients Where They Are

Insight into B2B client communication is powerful, but only if the whole team understands how to apply this knowledge to real-life scenarios. Once feedback data is analyzed, you can offer actionable points to your B2B team. Integrate what you’ve learned about how your clients communicate into regular team meetings and continued training.

This largely involves being able to speak your clients’ language. Instead of defaulting to jargon and buzzwords, figure out exactly how your customers would talk about the type of product you offer. Pay attention to what words they use and what aspects they ask for clarification on in sales meetings. If you want more solid data, you can also conduct keyword research and see how your target audience searches for products like yours on Google and other search engines. Integrate these terms into your marketing to meet clients where they are.

Stay Adaptable

While finding your clients’ language and integrating it into your marketing sounds straightforward, you’re likely to hit some bumps in the road. Every market ebbs and flows, and the language around your industry inevitably will change. This means that researching your target audience’s communication styles and preferences isn’t a one-and-done task.

Set a schedule for your marketing team to persistently update new terms. You will need a keen awareness of updated context, culture, and intent. Employees will also come and go, as well as require regular education to keep up with market growth and changes. You can use employee incentive programs to motivate staff new and old to continue their training and research into customer language. Instead of rewarding employees for simply finishing training, emphasize quality over quantity. For example, highlight specific team members who successfully decode client cues in training. This shows the value of training and motivates other employees to follow suit.

Drive Sales and Business Growth

When you’re tracking the results of client interactions, pay attention to how these results are fluctuating with newfound knowledge of client-focused language. Marketing affects business growth in tangible ways. Outline your key performance indicators (KPIs) like sales-qualified leads, engagement, and conversions. Comparing these to the same KPIs before changing your marketing messaging to match consumer language will let you know if you’re on the right track.

Moving Forward With Empathy

Above all, you should instill a desire in your team to have compassion for your B2B clients. Especially in bigger industries, product or software sales to another business can feel cold and transactional. Figuring out the language of your customers breaks down these barriers and ensures that your clients don’t feel like just another number.

Implement empathetic messaging into your B2B marketing dependent on what’s going on in the lives of your target audience. Learn to navigate unspoken expectations. Having an understanding of the language of your customers will equip your team with the tools to facilitate more meaningful, productive interactions. This personalization and emphasis on mutually beneficial exchanges will propel your B2B company into a more successful, resilient future.

By Indiana Lee, BOSS contributor