Audience Targeting Marketing Seminar: Global Customer Acquisition with LinkedIn

LeadsGeek, a sub-brand of Digit Spark, is Taiwan’s first overseas business opportunity management solution for B2B export companies. Leveraging data tools and purchasing management principles, it provides one-on-one cross-border expansion consulting services to clients. Given the phenomenal growth and unstoppable momentum of global companies using digital cross-border customer acquisition, today, Ashley, Business Director of LeadsGeek, will provide a starting guide for B2B companies embarking on digital cross-border growth in their overseas endeavors.

B2B companies need to engage in digital cross-border trade to reap the rewards.

Ashley first gave a brief analysis of the trend: According to the 2021 Key Cross-Border Report for Taiwan Enterprises by Google and Ipsos, Taiwan’s total exports surged by 24% in 2021 compared to the previous year, thanks to the country’s strong manufacturing export capabilities. According to the Ministry of Finance report, Taiwan’s total exports reached US$40.72 billion in December 2021 alone.

So where did this seemingly sweet pie go? Why are some businesses still complaining about shrinking revenue? Salesforce, a leading CRM platform in the US, analyzed global cross-border e-commerce and found that 65% of business buyers make purchasing decisions through digital channels . Furthermore, the global B2B cross-border e-commerce transaction volume in 2021 reached approximately $10 trillion, five times that of B2C. Combining these two points, we can clearly see that for B2B companies, “digitalization and cross-border marketing” are crucial customer acquisition strategies.

Precision Marketing Behind the Screen Part 1: Targeting Your Communication Partner

Before starting the lecture, Ashley asked the participants to answer two questions: “Who am I?” and “What do I hope to gain from today’s lecture?” These seemingly simple questions are actually an implicit way of using oneself as the subject to practice building a “persona” : Who is this person? What are their motivations? What results do they want to achieve? In B2B marketing, it’s not about getting as many people as possible to see your brand; the key is to get the right people to see it. And the “right people” require companies to invest effort in cultivating them.

Developing the right people is known in marketing as ” audience targeting .” Matching customers is not just the responsibility of the sales department, but a “fishpond” that the marketing department and the entire company need to work together to build: having sufficient and high-quality product supply capacity (a healthy fishpond environment), introducing a group of potential customers with purchasing potential (attracting suitable fish species into the pond for continuous nurturing); and then letting the sales department fish from this high-value fishpond (matching customers) is the most efficient way to accurately obtain corporate orders.

When a company has a stable product supply capability, LeadsGeek can help by “attracting the right fish into the pond,” which is essentially audience targeting management. This begins by defining the B2B personas of the company’s target audience.

• Who are my consumers? In a company, the people who decide to spend money include: the boss, CTO, chief of general affairs, shareholders, etc.
• What problem do these people want to solve?
• What information do these people usually access? From which channels do they receive it? What are their internet habits?
• What issues do these people particularly stop to pay attention to?
• What is the required quality of information these people receive?
• There’s more, and we’ll keep updating it based on the company’s marketing strategy…

These numerous Personas represent the product’s “target audience.” By understanding their behavior, thoughts, and pain points, we can develop corresponding marketing plans and exposure channels to carefully select the right “fish” to enter the pond and become potential customers. Continued interaction with this audience allows us to further target individuals and implement more advanced membership retention strategies . (For more information on these topics, you can consult Ashley and other professional advisors through LeadsGeek!)

Precision Marketing Behind the Screen Part 2: Customized Exposure – Endorsing Your Professionalism to Different Audiences

Regarding the common practices of businesses in setting up official websites/communities, participating in exhibitions, and designing DM/EDM, Ashley emphasizes two points:

1. Different guests will definitely want to see different things.

A company that uses the same information exposure, advertising content, and marketing plan to target different audiences will inevitably not achieve good results. More sophisticated marketing may even design personalized advertising methods for the same product to different target groups such as “customer bosses”, “distributors”, and “customer employees/product users”, so as to thoroughly cater to their preferences and attract people to use the product.

2. Make good use of LinkedIn to drive commercial traffic to B2B communities.

Community building is different for B2B and B2C! Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which facilitate everyday social interaction, are suitable for connecting with general consumers (i.e., B2C). But for B2B companies building communities, the key is:

1. Allow customers to see the company’s latest news and brand image through organic traffic.

2. When conducting brand placement, extended reading, and other traffic-driving activities, it can direct traffic to the enterprise’s effective target audience.

To achieve these two points, savvy professionals use LinkedIn as their social media platform , boasting a staggering 706 million users globally. Crucially, these users are professionals from various industries, and their purpose on LinkedIn isn’t networking, but rather “business matching .” In other words, these users are among the target audiences that B2B companies seek to attract. For B2B companies looking to expand across borders, a professional LinkedIn Page acts as a gateway in this ocean of over 700 million users , enabling them to effectively share information, conduct online exhibitions, and deliver email marketing campaigns, ensuring their message reaches B2B clients and buyers.

Regarding audience targeting and enterprise digital marketing, Ashley also shared many detailed application channels, success stories, and methods for building enterprise LinkedIn Pages in the course content. In addition to occasional online lectures, LeadsGeek provides one-on-one consulting services at any time. The path to overseas customer acquisition for SMEs is not easy. LeadsGeek and the Digit Spark Group’s philosophy is to transform the challenges of the digital age into stepping stones for enterprise customer growth, accompanying businesses in Taiwan and around the world to achieve a brilliant future together.

Digit Spark, part of the Zhenhao Internet Media Group, integrates its six sub-brands offering data application services to provide enterprises with comprehensive and precise optimization services across five key areas: “Industry Customer Targeting,” “Performance Optimization Strategies,” “Digital Tool Integration,” “Online Voice Cultivation,” and “Brand Value Promotion.” It drives brand success through data technology.