The Rise of Person-Based Marketing

In the BtoB world, marketers can increasingly interact with customers and prospects on an individual person by person basis at scale (aka “person-based marketing”). This differs from persona-based marketing or 1 to 1 personalization.

Persona-based marketing focuses on a fictional person who represents a customer type. 1 to 1 personalization collects data over time about a customer and creates a personalized experience through a machine algorithm. Inherently, this approach limits marketers to using measurable, structured data which machines can ingest which reduces a marketer’s ability to understand and interact with the customer as a real human.

Person-based marketing focuses on selling to the actual unique individual based on whom he or she is, does, and likes professionally and personally. Keith Ferrazzi pioneered the concept in his best-selling book, Never Eat Alone. In it, he tells great stories of how he builds and maintains authentic relationships with people based on generosity so that everyone wins. Marketing technology and our increasingly sophisticated ability to ingest unstructured social data scales our ability to do this.

Recent events in the marketing technology space reinforce this --

• Jon Miller, co-founder of Marketo, announced his new company, Engagio, focused on the automation of account-based marketing
• Scott Brinker pivots Ion Interactive to focus on 2-sided interactive platforms allowing marketers to gain a greater understanding of the individual at scale
• LinkedIn Sales and Marketing Solutions continue to evolve to allow person level targeting at scale
• Social tools put a large amount of data about peoples' personal and professionals lives in the public arena and make it increasingly easier to ingest the data
• Google evolves its presentation of search results in a way that increasingly makes SEO less of a customer acquisition tactic and more of a customer loyalty tactic requiring companies to use more focused efforts to build loyalty with individuals

The power of this approach really hit me as I worked on the modernization of the Dun & Bradstreet brand. We looked deep into our 173-year old history and spoke to customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders globally. We found that our purpose 100 years ago is the same as today. We find truth and meaning from data to grow relationships in a human way.