As the city of Eindhoven’s official marketing organization, Eindhoven365’s purpose is to engage with its target audiences and promote Eindhoven to them using a variety of communication channels and touchpoints – digital and non-digital.

In the past, insights in decision making behavior of key target audiences were rather limited. The information at hand included:

1. Information derived from (online) data such as web statistics
2. Third-party research studies
3. Personal experience gathered from years of meeting and working with those in the target groups.

At the end of 2015, Eindhoven365 decided it needed more solid and extensive information about the decision-making behavior of its three key target groups. The organization wanted to maximize its ability to reach – and influence – the so-called ‘City Explorers’ to visit Eindhoven, ‘Bright Talent’ to study and work in the city, and ‘Tech Starters’ to establish and scale innovative businesses here.

Create insightful and actionable ‘buyer personas’ for City Explorer, Tech Starter and Bright Talent profiles, including a map of their customer journey. These profiles should first and foremost shed new light on how to successfully market to these people and, secondly, reassure Eindhoven365 in its current beliefs and understanding of them. Include clear advice on how to improve current marketing efforts in terms of content creation and promotion, campaigns and tracking of results.

Tech to Market’s study was based on a rigorous and multi-faceted research approach that is closely aligned with the “5 Rings of Insights” method. The research, analysis and documentation process generally takes 16-20 weeks, and includes dozens of in-depth interviews with target audience representatives. The goal was to answer three key questions for the client:

1. How are options evaluated?

   What triggers and drives the audience? What do they hope for, what are potential barriers, what are their key decision criteria?

2. Where is the biggest potential win?
   

   Which of the acquired insights will deliver the biggest competitive advantage to us if tapped into?

3. How best to leverage insights strategically, tactically and operationally?
   

   Where to prioritize marketing investment? How best to engage audiences and what to include in messaging and content? What media channels to target?

The results, which were thoroughly documented in a wide range of print and digital deliverables, were finalized and presented towards the end of 2016. Eindhoven365 was pleased to see their general assumptions about the target audiences largely confirmed.

But most valuable to them were the numerous specific insights that made it possible to reach and persuade them even more effectively.

Tech to Market is now supporting Eindhoven365 in connecting and activating the insights in a variety of ways, including setting up an inbound marketing program, formatting content, search marketing and the implementation of marketing automation software.

In the meantime, the results of all three studies are being increasingly shared and discussed with other city stakeholders, such as city government, Eindhoven Technical University and Brainport Development. The insights gained into the target audiences resonate with many of these stakeholders.

Mark de Greeff reviewing the partnership:

We gave ourselves a year to research our target groups, and wanted a professional to help. With Tech to Market, we very quickly had feeling they understood what we were looking for. It also has to do with the people. Marketing is a people business, but it’s also a real skill. Just being ‘nice’ is not enough – you also need to be sharp, critical, professional and ambitious.

They first did the Bright Talent research as a pilot, and it was quite useful. But we realized results would be even more valuable if we collaborated more closely in the process, and could discuss and tweak the direction if necessary. So, from the second customer journey, we had Tech-to-Market working at our office one day a week.

Now we have Jorg in-house three days a week as part of the team, working to expand and elaborate on the findings, to create context and channels for using them. It’s not really a customer-provider relationship, but more business partners in research. It’s taught us that, today, the field of marketing is so multi-faceted no one can master all areas of expertise. So, we ‘ve made a deliberate choice for a blended workforce, and work with agencies that have the expertise we need.

This kind of strategic collaboration can also ultimately help you work faster and accelerate. Many organizations might reject the idea of investing in such in-depth research. They think it’s going to cost so much time and money! But if it later enables you to act with less hesitation and more speed and efficiency, you earn it back in spades.

At Tech to Market, we’re proud to provide MarCom support to corporate leaders and scale-ups in Tech B2B. Check out other case studies or learn more about our approach in creating buyer personas and buyer journeys.