That CEO, manager, or the content marketer that you're targeting, you may refer to them in sales as the “the decision makers” or the gatekeepers, influencers or blockers and you might view them as that way too - but in the end they’re real people. There is much more than someone just signing a contract, or the end user of your product.
On most B2B sales calls with those people, the first thing you probably try to do is connect with them on a personal level, before jumping right into business. So why isn’t this the case in B2B marketing?
Many B2B marketers struggle to connect with these audiences because they are focused on their titles, or their place in the business.
But if you want to be successful, you have to view them as humans, and not reduce them to their job vocation.
I get so many automated Linkedin messages for Marketing tools, just because I have the title “Content Marketer”, but I read 0 of them because they all sound the same.
B2B marketing teams that break this mold and start to connect with their target audience on a deeper, human level, will be the ones to succeed in 2025. Their ads and Linkedin messages won’t go unanswered like so many do.
This is why, in this blog, we're taking the time to help you learn about these B2B audiences beyond their job titles so that you can connect with them and turn them into customers.
Traditional B2B marketing approaches are for lack of a better word, boring.
They use generic messaging to target broad audiences that share the same job titles in the same industries.
Essentially they lack personalization.
Even ads about B2B marketing being boring, ARE boring.
And it all feels very “one-size fits all”.
Another pitfall of B2B marketing is the focus it places on the product vs the value that product provides to the individual:
When I look at the B2B ad above, I think “great, analytical software for working with media data - what could be more exciting?”
Then there is the typical B2B audience segmentation, meaning and audience is segmented based on their shared job titles and job functions. When really they should be segmented based on their shared pain points, interests, values, buying intent, and behaviors.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what audience intelligence tools aim to do. But more on this later.
What do Hubspot, Squarespace, MailChimp and Canva all have in common? Well not only are they all B2B brands valued in the billions, but they do not use traditional B2B marketing methods. They take a human-centric approach.
It’s why we all recognize their names, even if we don’t use the software ourselves.
Just take a look at some of their campaigns:
They’re not boring, they're inspiring. They don’t focus on the product but the personal motivation for the product.
So how do these brands get it right while others don’t? The key is audience intelligence. Audience intelligence provides this deeper layer and understanding of an individual beyond who they are in an org chart. It gets to the “what is going to inspire this person” layer.
Audience intelligence tools surface real-time data and insights on each audience member to help you get to know them through their passions, interests, behaviors, values, conversations, content consumption habits, personality traits, and social influences - all the real things that influence people to buy.
To demonstrate, let’s ask Google to describe a CEO in the tech industry:
This profile of a CEO is focused on describing their job responsibilities, their level of leadership, traits they should have to be a good CEO etc. but it doesn’t tell me who they are as a person.
Now when we ask the audience intelligence tool “Audiense” to describe a CEO, we’re met with a full report on the shared personality traits and behaviors of CEOs (specifically CEO’s in the tech industry in the US).
Take a look:
Here’s what we’ve learned:
Notice how none of these insights are directly related to their role, but instead related to who they are as a person, outside of their job.
This highlights the importance of not just seeing what a person does professionally, but knowing what drives them personally. This is what good B2B ads are made of.
Let’s explore some typical B2B audiences using Audiense and see what we can learn about them on a deeper level.
These are just a taste of the insights that Audiense can surface and help you to create some of the best B2B personas to work from and be inspired by. So instead of just targeting “CFOs at mid-sized tech firms,” Audiense enables marketers to identify CFOs who are also interested in sustainability for example, and who actively follow certain influencers, and prefer long-form content on LinkedIn.
Here are the areas and ways you can use these audience insights to build ads like Canva, or Mailchimp, who always take a humanized approach to B2B marketing:
For your B2B marketing efforts to be successful, you need to move beyond traditional methods. If you reduce people to their job titles instead of treating them as humans, you’ll never produce ads like top performers Hubspot or Canva do.
Audience intelligence tools like Audiense enable you to uncover personal insights, like what a CEO’s passions, behaviors, and influencers are. This is what drives real connections.
By focusing on personalized content, targeted media buying, and relatable communication, you can create inspiring campaigns that resonate with audiences on a deeper level, transforming decision-makers into engaged customers. And no one will be bored by your B2B ads ever again.
Remember, purchases are driven by human connection, and audience intelligence is key to building that connection.
Forget titles and job descriptions, schedule an Audiense demo and understand your B2B audiences from a human perspective.