Like many of you reading this, my company decided to go fully remote in March 2020, thinking it was a temporary safety precaution – not a work and office culture shifting moment. While we’ve come a long way on the road back to normalcy and AnalyticsIQ’s offices are open, our employees were given the choice, and most have chosen to continue working remotely a full 18-months later.
Our company has continued to grow, and employee life-balance has improved, so why change anything? I know we are not the only company that has taken this approach beyond 2020. In fact, our data shows that 42% of the US working population is likely to continue remote working in some capacity and nearly 21% of those professionals working from home are decision makers at their organizations.
With this drastic change in work norms, the lines between our professional lives and personals lives have nearly been erased, so how then can brands, marketers, data science, and media teams adapt?
Evolution of Targeting Remote Audiences
I don’t know about you, but as the time spent working from home extended past the point we may have expected at the start, my behaviors, preferences, and expectations as both a consumer and professional also evolved quickly along the way. I’m no longer going into the office as much, so I am not around to answer my office phone or work on my desktop. Instead, I am checking both personal and work emails on my cell phone more frequently, and I often enjoy using a tablet at home for both personal and work-related needs.
The point?
Working from home has broadened viable marketing channels for B2B companies in that they are no longer restricted to traditional B2B channels like cold calling or email. I bet many B2B prospecting teams have been running into more voicemails in the past year and a half than ever before due to the influx of remote work, so why not cut through traditional means of communication and target your prospects via channels thought to be more consumer-centric like mobile, direct mail, or even CTV?
Marketers and brands are always striving to ‘meet their audience where they are’. For B2B brands, right now, their audience is at home, so their marketing communications must adapt to meet the needs and expectations that come with that new normal.
B2B2C Personalization
I think those of us that experience – or even execute – both B2C and B2B marketing can recognize that the B2C marketing experience is typically more creative, personalized, and just plain fun. But with the right data, B2B no longer stands for ‘boring-to-boring’.
B2C levels of personalization are achievable for their B2B counterparts, and with the heightened collision between our personal and professional lives, resonating on a human level with B2B prospects is becoming a requirement.
As remote workers, we have access to all our favorite things in life – our family, our pets, our hobbies. So, if you want to get the attention of a key B2B decision maker, you must communicate with them as the human beings they are at home rather than just another role at another account.
You should contact your prospects on the channels they want to be contacted – it’s ok if that isn’t their office phone. You should serve your prospects the content they want to consume even if that is a short video or infographic rather than a product sheet. Your messaging should consider personal characteristics that go beyond their office life but also relate to their personal life – if you knew your target audience were likely to enjoy podcasts frequently, you might consider running ads on popular podcast platforms.
Modern Marketing Requires Modern Data
With consumer-level insight into the individuals making decisions for companies – not just information on the businesses they work for – B2B marketers can achieve the levels of personalization that are needed to resonate with consumers and professionals working from home. Thanks to innovations in business and employee data creation that rely on strong B2B2C profile linkages, marketers are able to see the complete picture of an individual both as a professional and a consumer.
After all, businesses don’t make decision, people do.
