According to Google’s Changing Face of B2B Marketing, many B2B marketers operate under the myth that B2B marketing should only target the highest-level executives. In reality, the decision-making ecosystem has dramatically changed. 81% of non-C suite workers now have a say in purchase decisions. “B2B marketers need to understand that it’s not just about targeting a specific buyer, online. The B2B decision making process is a journey that involves not just one audience, but many. Company influencers and end users actually weigh in on the purchase decision,” says Todd Ebert, MultiView’s Chief Marketing Officer. This ebook shows B2B marketers how to navigate today’s changing world of digital marketing by understanding online audiences and applying a variety of audience targeting techniques.

1. Audience Targeting Techniques
FOR B2B MARKETERS
Audience targeting is an essential feature
in any B2B digital marketer's tool kit. They
need the ability to locate audiences and
serve targeted communications no matter
where they roam, or when.
multiview.com
972-402-7070
solutions@multiview.com

2. Table of
CONTENTS
What is audience targeting?
Getting Started: THREE Big Questions
DETERMINE THE TARGET AUDIENCE
B2B vs B2C Buyer PROFILEs
Build a Target AUDIENCE Worksheet
Match end goals to target techniques
TARGETING TECHNIQUES
SUMMARY
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3. What is
AUDIENCE
TARGETING?

4. What is
AUDIENCE
TARGETING?
As it pertains to digital marketing, audience targeting
is the use of big data applied to identifying unique
users online and serving targeted messages to create
awareness, drive behavior or change a perception.
How it works:
Audience targeting works by mining qualitative and
quantitative data on users then serving targeted
messaging to a highly select audience. Through
displaying messages tailored to this particular
audience, marketers can gradually influence them
over time into becoming customers. Behaviors B2B
marketers encourage with online messaging include:
capturing attention, visiting a site, downloading
collateral, watching a webinar, engaging social media,
viewing videos and completing a "Contact us" form.
Drive a behavior/ change a perception
Segmenting Users Online
Serving Targeted messaging
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5. Getting Started
Three BIg
Questions

6. Getting Started:
THREE Big
Questions
It is important to determine the answers to these
three questions before beginning any audience
targeting efforts.
Business Objectives
What are the business objectives?
First and foremost, before beginning any
audience targeting initiative, B2B marketers must
ask themselves what their business objectives
are. It is important to match all marketing efforts
back to the business objectives to ensure that
they are aligned with the entire organization.
Business objectives are not necessarily marketing
objectives. Business objectives are overall goals
for an institution. Marketing objectives are more
tactical executions for achieving those goals.
Marketing objectives and tactics can change,
but still be aligned to the business objectives.
However, when the business objectives change,
marketing and all other organizational functions
generally must re-align to support the overall
business objective.
An organization can use a variety of marketing
objectives to achieve an overall business
objective. Different audience targeting tactics
can be used to achieve marketing objectives.
Oftentimes, marketers use all of the audience
targeting tactics at varying times over the life of
a digital marketing campaign to meet a
marketing objective.
Example business objectives include:
• Grow sales by X% in 1 year
• Improve customer retention
• Launch a new business segment
Example marketing objectives:
• Increase site traffic
• Rebrand the organization
• Grow awareness in a new market segment
EXAMPLES
Business
Objectives
Marketing
Objective
Tactic
A
Email
Trade Association
Sponsorship
Display Ads
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7. ?
?
End Goal
What is the marketer seeking to accomplish?
Target Audience
What specific audience is being targeted?
By setting the business objective first, B2B
marketers can determine the appropriate end
goal and create parameters for determining
their target audience.
Examples:
Grow sales
If the business objective is to grow sales by x%, the
marketing objective may be to increase the amount
of online "Contact us" form completions amongst
repeat site visitors. Therefore, broadly speaking,
“repeat site visitation” would be a criteria used to
determine an audience for targeting.
Launch a new business segment
What if the business objective is to launch a new
office on the west coast? The marketing objective
may be to announce the new location to all website
visitors based in select states. Therefore, users who
have IP addresses from businesses in the
appropriate states would be served digital ads
announcing the new office, online.
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8. Determine the
Target
AUDIENCES

9. Determine the
TARGET
AUDIENCEs
First and foremost, who is the audience?
In B2B marketing, the audience does not simply
consist of the decision maker. Different types of
individuals often guide the decision maker and
weigh in on the purchase.
For instance, an influencer from another
department could provide feedback on the
product or service that the decision maker
considers before he or she makes a purchase.
Additionally, the end user could be asked for their
opinion or familiarity with the product/services
before the decision maker purchases.
Any conversation on audience targeting is
pointless without first understanding that the
buyer is not singular, but in fact plural. The B2B
buyer is actually a decision making unit of several
people. Take the time to understand the
relationships between decision makers, influencer's
and users within the context of a B2B company.
One size doesn’t fit all.
The targeting techniques utilized depend on the
size and behaviors of the audiences the B2B
marketer is seeking to reach, their end goals and
the stage of the buying journey.
Different industries and companies have different
decision makers, influencer's, leaders, knowledge
experts and end users. Targeting techniques must
vary accordingly.
Additionally, target audiences have varying levels
of awareness of your products and services. How
familiar are they with your company or a
particular product or service you offer? What is
their readiness to buy? The pre-existing
relationship between your company and the
target audience is important. Targeting techniques
must adapt to buyer readiness.
Within B2B marketing, there are a variety of individuals that impact company decisions. You are not necessarily just
targeting the decision maker. You are targeting a group of people that influence them.
People that buy from your competitors
Influencers, leaders and knowledge experts
The end-users of the product/service
People that buy from you

10. B2B vs B2C
BUYER
PROFILES

11. B2B vs B2C
BUYER
PROFILES
Buyer profiles are crucial to audience targeting.
However, B2B digital marketers have traditionally
had a difficult time targeting their specific
audiences due to the lack of B2B data available.
For years only B2C marketers have had the luxury of
utilizing big data insights to target their audiences,
online. Today, things are different. B2B marketers
have an arsenal of tools for gathering eye-opening
audience targeting information. However, there are
still important differences to note in how B2B
marketers operate.
Andrew Kretzschmer,
MultiView’s Head of Data Analytics
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B2B marketers must gather particulars
of their target’s work-related life,
rather than just looking at their activity
as a whole — making their approach to
data collection and targeting much more
nuanced. For instance, marketers must pay
special attention to work-related keyword
searches, current job functions and
firmographics.
Business marketers are challenged
with finding creative ways to gather,
update and maintain prospect data as
work-related roles and company information
frequently changes. They must be highly
resourceful in developing processes for
gathering data that is not readily available.
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12. A comparison between a B2B and B2C buyer profile.
“Stephanie" is both a VP of Marketing and soccer mom, however these elements of her identity carry
different importance to B2C and B2B marketers. Details of Stephanie's personal life are highly relevant
from a B2C point of view given demographic, consumption and lifestyle insights are commonly used to
target her for consumer marketing, i.e. food/beverage, automotive, entertainment. While her lifestyle
may be interesting, Stephanie's industry, company, title and other firmographic details are much more
important for targeting her behavior as a B2B buyer, online.
Name: Stephanie
Industry: Transportation
Company: Widget Manufacturing, Inc
Title: VP of Marketing
Education: MBA in Marketing
Company Revenue: $10M / year
Company Size: 400 employees
Marketing Budget: $450,000
Region(s): Midwest, West
HQ: Dallas, Texas
Age: 32
Name: Stephanie
HHI: $100,000
Education: MBA
Marital status: Married
Dining preferences: Casual family
dining, Non-GMO preferred
Political Orientation: Independent
Lifestyle: Soccer Mom
Hobbies: Travel, Yoga
Children: Y, Age 5
City: Dallas, TX
Age: 32
B2B Buyer Profile B2C Buyer Profile
B2B vs B2C
BUYER
PROFILES
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13. Build a target
AUDIENCE
WORKSHEET

14. Build a target
AUDIENCE
WORKSHEET
STEP 1:
All marketing is tied back to the audience. Gather
the information you need before beginning any
online targeting. In order to visualize your target
audiences, start by completing the worksheet,
below. Remember, audience targeting is not just
about the decision maker, but targeting all the
parties that influence their purchases as well.
Complete the exercise as many times as necessary
to identify all relevant audiences.
Title:
Education:
Level of brand familiarity:
Prior purchases:
Publications frequented:
Keywords searched:
Sites visited:
Industry:
Company revenue:
Employee Size:
Region(s):
Budget:
DEMOGRAPHIC FIRMOGRAPHIC ONLINE BEHAVIOR
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15. Website Analytics - What can be gleaned
about current site visitors from web analytics?
What are referring sites for your web page? This
can help you determine publications/journals
frequented as well as keywords and phrases
your audiences use.
LinkedIn - Go through the client roster and
start building a list of attributes that your
audiences generally have in common. Populate
with information readily available online, such
as buyer titles and educational levels.
Turn to your CRM system - What information
are you logging in your day-to-day customer
transactions and online forms? Are you
gathering any intel from online forms? If not,
consider gathering information for marketing
purposes.
How can you gain more information about current/prospective buyers?
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Keyword research is crucial:
Let’s say you are a Marketing Director at a baseball equipment company that sells to field managers at
parks and recreation departments, schools and colleges. You have just launched a new line of rubber field
plates and want to create awareness with prospective buyers. Through independent research you uncover
that your buyer rarely searches for “rubber softball field plates,” but they do look for athletic field covers,
infield rakes and field tarps on a regular basis. Given these industry-related terms are more commonly
used by field managers in general, they are more useful for increasing brand awareness amongst your
specific buyers. This information can then be added to the list of keywords searched by your target
audience to inform online targeting strategies.
STEP 2:
It’s time to think like your audience profiles. What words or phrases would your specific
audience use on a regular basis? What words might they use to describe you or your
competitor's solutions? Take these terms and add them to the online behavior section of
the prior chart.
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16. Match end goals to
TARGETING
TECHNIQUES

17. “If you don’t know where
you’re going, any road will get
you there.” – Lewis Carroll
# Impressions
# New/unique site visitors
Bounce rate
% Return visitors
# brand searches
# direct site visits
Click-through-rate (CTR)
Time spent on page
Lift in SEM CTR
Form fills
Video views
Downloads
Calls
Match end goals to
TARGETING
TECHNIQUES
Set (realistic) end goals
What are you trying to achieve with your
audience targeting campaign? Without a clearly
defined end goal, you cannot set a path to
success.
Set realistic expectations for your online
audience targeting initiatives. This chart shows a
basic outline of the different goals marketers can
achieve using audience targeting initiatives.
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18. Match end goals to
TARGETING
TECHNIQUES
After developing buyer profiles and setting goals,
set a compelling plan of action for audience
targeting initiatives. Different targeting techniques
affect varying segments of the marketing funnel.
Keep in mind that ultimately, the targeting
techniques utilized depend on business objectives,
the end goals of the marketing campaign and the
audience itself. A marketer could use just one, or
many audience targeting initiatives during the life
of a campaign depending on the results they are
trying to achieve. The upcoming section of
targeting techniques matched to the marketing
funnel serves as a guide for understanding
application, not a list of rules. B2B marketers might
not always create campaigns that proceed in a
specific order of “upper to lower funnel.”
For instance, what if the audience is already highly
familiar with the brand as well as its
products/services? A marketer might decide to just
focus on “lower funnel” audience targeting
techniques. What if the goal is to just increase
brand awareness? Then, an "upper funnel"
technique in itself will suffice.
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19. UPPER
MIDDLE
LOWER
Audience Behavior Audience Targeting Benefits
• Express interest in
product/service
• Boost awareness with
qualified audience via
increasing new, unique
and return site visitors
• Conduct keyword search, spend
significant time on site, engage
content/ads.
• Increase brand searches, SEM lift,
direct site visits, time spent on site and
content engagement.
• Complete contact us forms or download
lower-funnel site content, i.e. pricing sheets,
product testimonials, case studies
• Increase lower-funnel site content engagement
• Increase renewals/repeat business with renewal
oriented targeted messaging
FUNNEL
FUNNEL
FUNNEL
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Targeting
TECHNIQUES
When used appropriately, audience targeting can
support B2B marketing in the following ways:
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20. UPPER FUNNEL
Users inserted in the upper funnel of your
marketing campaign are not showing interest in a
company’s products or services at this particular
moment, however, they have a potential to
develop interest in the future. The users might be
in an industry or hold a position related to the
audience demographic being targeted. Upper
funnel campaigns generally focus on building
brand awareness.
Have you ever heard anyone say that they are
driving a “persona targeting campaign?”
Persona targeting campaigns focus on identifying
a target audience online through analyzing
relevant site web traffic, CRM data and custom
data segments. They are best utilized for growing
brand awareness through increasing overall site
traffic to a page or website.
Sucess is measured through creating a website
traffic goal and closely monitoring it. Over the
course of a digital marketing campaign, a data
analyst, webmaster, or digital marketer would
measure the campaign activity against this
benchmark to assess whether it is reaching the
goal. Generally, with persona targeting campaigns,
the more traffic the better.
PERSONA TARGETING
Targeting
TECHNIQUES
TRAFFIC SOURCES
Where are site visitors coming from?
Understanding site traffic sources can help
marketers better understand audiences and
the direct results of persona targeting
campaigns.
Direct visitors – Users directly locate the site
via typing the URL in their browser.
Search visitors – Users locate the site through
querying Google, Bing, or another search
engine.
Referral visitors – A link in a blog or directory
listing led the user to the site.
Here are some common metrics attributed
to persona targeting:
New/unique visitors – What percentage of
the audience consists of brand new visitors?
How many have visited this week, month,
quarter, etc.?
Return visitors – What percentage of the site
users actually return to the website?
Bounce Rate – This statistic measures the rate
at which new visitors come to your site and
then immediately click away. The lower the
bounce rate, the more engaging the content.
CAMPAIGN METRICS
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21. MIDDLE FUNNEL
Users in the middle of the funnel have recently
displayed a general interest in products and services
through performing buying behaviors like searching
certain keywords or reading content with specific
terms and phrases. The definition of "buying
behavior" and the measure of its timeliness varies
by company and industry. B2B examples include
searching for information that indicates interest in a
firm's products or services, reading/downloading
related content or searching competitor's products.
Hydraulic hoses
(middle funnel)
Hydraulic hose fitting manufacturer
(lower funnel)
Targeting
TECHNIQUES
? How do marketers determine “buying behavior”?
Get an introduction to behavioral targeting.
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BEHAVIORAL TARGETING
Search Retargeting
Users that have entered specific keywords and
phrases in search engines — whether a general
Google query or a niche industry site — are
targeted with ads focused on making the user
aware of the attributes of a company’s specific
products and services.
These users are then served ads on multiple
publications and sites throughout the internet.
Search retargeting can also be used as a lower
funnel technique. Generally, the more specific the
user’s search terms, the more immediate their
interest in purchasing.

22. TWO TYPES OF CONTEXTUAL TARGETING
Category Contextual Targeting
Contextual campaigns are another middle funnel
technique that can be adapted to lower funnel
users as well. Contextual campaigns basically
consist of targeting users that have viewed
websites related to the problems the advertiser’s
products and services seek to resolve.
For instance, visitors to a baseball field design and
renovation blog could be contextually targeted
with advertisements about batter’s box chalkers or
paint sprayers.
Keyword Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting campaigns can also work
more specifically to identify users that read articles
with a high prevalence of specific keywords and
phrases. As with search retargeting, the more
exclusive the keywords, the more interest in
making an immediate purchase.
For an example, a user that reads a series of
articles containing a high count of words and
phrases pertaining to “baseball field home plates”
might be targeted with advertisements about a
Hollywood style removable home plate company.
Hollywood style removable
home plate company
CAMPAIGN METRICS
Both search and contextual targeting become
more lower funnel techniques based on the
following:
Recency - How recently an ad is served after
an audience reads articles. Generally the
sooner the advertisement is served, the more
lower funnel the application.
Specificity of keywords - Is the audience just
viewing articles generally related to baseball?
Or baseball field architecture, drainage and dirt
specifications? The details make all the
difference in the level of interest. Generally,
targeting campaigns built around words that
indicate more nuanced behavior indicate lower
funnel marketing techniques.
Common site conversion metrics include:
Click-through-rate – What percentage of the
audience actually clicked on the ad?
Length of time spent on page – How long did
the user spend reading page content?
?
For instance, "hydraulic hose" becomes a more
lower funnel search retargeting term when
changed to "hydraulic hose fitting manufacturer."
Tell me more about search retargeting.
? Learn more about contextual retargeting.
Baseball field home plates
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23. CAMPAIGN METRICS
Common site conversion metrics include:
Cost-per-conversion – How much on
average is spent to convert a site visitor?
Lower-funnel content downloads – How
many users downloaded content?
Video views – How many users viewed the
company’s testimonial videos?
Form fills – How many users completed the
company’s online form for more information?
Targeting
TECHNIQUES
LOWER FUNNEL
Individuals and organizations in this stage are
currently demonstrating interest in your specific
company. Users within this segment of the funnel
have already visited the company site and/or
utilized a combination of specific search terms that
identify immediate desire. This audience would
download product specific content from a site,
watch a product/service testimonial video, or
complete a “Contact us” form.
SITE retargeting
Site retargeting techniques focus on keeping the
company top of mind during the decision process
and drive users back to a site to "convert" or
complete a specific action, such as downloading a
pricing sheet, signing up for a free trial, completing
a form, or viewing a case study video. Site
retargeting campaigns generally use strong
call-to-action messaging to encourage conversion.
They deliver ad messaging to the user soon after
they visit the site.
For example, let's say a prospective buyer visits a
site, spends considerable time browsing through
content, but fails to complete a "Contact us" form.
With site retargeting, the prospective buyer receives
display advertising encouraging them to return to
the site and complete a specified action.
? Learn more about site retargeting campaigns.
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24. Summary

25. Summary
Audience targeting utilizes a variety of methods
to identify and communicate with buyers online.
No one methodology is better than the other, as
they all work together across the customer
buying journey to accomplish goals and drive
behavior. Ultimately, a marketer's audience
targeting depends on the end result sought.
Results also depend on how well the marketer
understands their target audience. Determining
the audience, their interests, search keywords,
terms and phrases is essential. By thoroughly
reviewing and applying this guide, marketers can
better understand the various tools and
techniques needed for creating digital campaigns
that drive great results.
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