Did you know chameleons can see 360 degrees around them? This is a skill also expected of today’s marketers.

Creating effective targeted messages requires strategic marketing skills, insightful buyer understanding, expertise in the industry and deep product or solution knowledge. Marketers are expected to be experts at understanding their customers so well they can blend right in as trusted experts. Being that kind of chameleon is no small feat.

In order to create truly impactful messaging, marketers need to consider:

• Strategic Marketing. In order to plan and execute an effective strategy, strategic planning is needed to tackle the research plans and organization required for understanding the complexities of today’s buyer-driven marketplace.
• Meaningful Insights on Buyers. Research based in data analysis and validated with actual feedback is critical to building data-driven Buyer Personas. These provide the insights needed about demographics, goals, motivations, needs and preferences essential to communicating meaningfully with your audience.
• Buying Journeys. Beyond understanding the Buyer Personas, you also must understand how Buyers work together to collaboratively make decisions. Who is involved and when? What do they need to learn? What activities will they participate in to learn and what are their preferences or peeves along the way? Here’s a Guide on doing this research.
• Industry Expertise. Marketers must also be masters of their competitive landscape—understanding industry trends, the offerings in their ecosystem and how their competitors react to the same circumstances.
• Product or Solution Mastery. Knowing your product is as important as knowing your customers. Deep mastery of the offering is essential to being able to communicate its value and benefits.

How to Get Started With Targeted Messages

• Create targeted messaging that specifically addresses individual needs at each stage of the Buying Journey. Make a list of:
• The needs at each stage by Buyer, and determine the impact of your product/solution in meeting these needs. The focus here is on outcomes—the results and impact your solution delivers—not product features and benefits.
• The benefit statements and proof points that correspond to each outcome.
• Targeted messages for each Buyer or group of Buyers reflects your understanding of their needs, desired outcome and the benefits and solution proof points.

With this in place, create a shareable summary of your targeted messages by Buyer to empower your content, demandgen and other marketing teams to execute quickly and effectively on your expertise.