3 Ways to Connect More Effectively with Today’s Younger B2B Buyers

There’s a new generation of marketers taking center stage in the B2B world. They are younger and more confident when it comes to data quality, AI, and using multiple channels to reach their targets. These Gen Z and millennial marketers, born between 1981 and 2012, have met their match because today, their peers of the same age now make up 71% of business buyers, according to Forrester. 

So how can marketers – whether they are of the Gen Z or Boomer generation -- adapt to today’s increasingly younger B2B buyers and give them the frictionless experiences they want, both online and off?

Here are three approaches our team takes to win younger buyers’ attention and trust:

1. Know Your Audience: A new study by Ascend 2 reports that an “important positive of younger marketers is their ability to read buyer signals -- either because they have better data, are more focused on buyers, or both.” Staying ahead of these shifts in buyer behavior can give you a competitive advantage if you adapt your marketing strategies to the observed behaviors, the study notes.

 

To better understand target audiences in order to engage them more effectively, marketers need to gather ongoing data insights. You can do this by monitoring your social channels for high-value feedback, conducting surveys and interviews with prospects and customers, and leveraging data and analytics tools. Our team also uses intent data to identify prospects who are ready to buy the types of solutions our clients offer, including data that shows what’s driving their interest.  Our intent data approach uncovers 14 billion fresh B2B digital signals weekly to ensure the latest insights are given to clients. When you have a better pulse on what your target audience wants, it shows in your marketing – and you will be more likely to earn their trust and their business.

 

2. Keep Your Data Fresh: As digital natives, younger marketers recognize that data quality is important but they know what they need to do to keep data standards high so that they can deliver seamless digital experiences. To build a strong data foundation, our advice is to set data quality standards for your marketing team and hold everyone accountable to them. Ongoing cleansing is essential, whether it’s your first-party data or the third-party data you acquire for customer acquisition campaigns. Prioritizing fresh, current data about customers and prospects is a must. Without it, your ability to orchestrate engagement across channels and reach the right prospects, at the right time with the right messages will fall short.

 

Every marketer should know that customer and prospect business contact data decays 2-3% monthly. That’s why, as a performance marketing agency, one of the services we offer to our clients is database cleansing. Our approach includes:

• Cleansing to remove or correct inaccurate contacts
• Continuously maintaining and verifying data accuracy through automation
• Using real-time processes to identify and replace invalid contacts
• Ensuring a 95% validity rate for email contacts

One of our most important value-adds on top of data cleansing is audience building—drilling down by firmographics, such as manager, director, and professional level and above titles—to further fuel precise targeting and improved personalization to reduce disconnects with your customers and prospects.

3. Get a 360-Degree View of Your Prospects: As the overlap between our personal and professional lives increases, especially where younger “always connected” buyers are concerned, B2B marketers need to be able to engage prospects at work and home. At OMI,  we use a B2B2C or "universal person" data linkage strategy to uncover a more complete personal and professional view of prospects, which enables higher conversion rates. 

 

Linking B2B attributes, such as email, firmographics and job title, to B2C attributes, such as the prospect's LinkedIn profile and residential address, lets us target and engage prospects more effectively -- across both B2B and B2C channels. The channel points we cover include direct mail, email, social, and programmatic -- where available. As an example of B2B2C linkage, a marketer can send direct mail to a B2B contact’s home address while also engaging with them on their business email around the same offer, to reinforce the message.

 

Another benefit to B2B2C linkage is that it allows for media activation via the B2B email and an alternate email address – again, offering marketers the opportunity to reach and engage with prospects on both business and personal channels.

Go here for more insight into our B2B2C linkage services and check out how a leading e-commerce platform provider used them successfully.

Reach out to our team today to level up your strategy for reaching younger buyers.