Understanding and evolving with your customers: A conversation in positioning

In the dynamic realm of fintech, the ability to understand and evolve with your customers key to healthy, sustained success. As technology and customer expectations shift, staying in tune is not just beneficial – it’s imperative. The way consumer insights are gathered and applied plays a crucial role in shaping how products and services are designed and marketed, something that the marketing team at Airbase knows well. In the most recent episode of our podcast, Marketer’s Alchemy, host Kathryn Turnoff chats with Airbase’s vice president, exploring ways their team leverages consumer insights to stay ahead of the curve and continually adapt in a rapidly advancing market.

About the guest: Michael Freeman from Airbase

Michael Freeman, VP of Marketing at Airbase, pulls from his multi-faced background to generate true value for B2B companies. He cites three core mindsets that have driven him to this point in his career: Understanding how things work, understanding people and how they make decisions, and a strong belief that if you’re going to do something, do it well.

With a commitment to pushing the boundaries of what their platform can achieve, Airbase provides a comprehensive procure-to-pay software that manages non-payroll spend for companies with 200 to 5,000 employees. Their tool oversees the entire spending process from initial request, approvals and payments to post-payment analysis. The software helps organizations control and optimize their spending, negotiate better deals, eliminate unnecessary expenses, all while integrating with their clients’ existing systems. 

Customer insights: Plotting a path towards success

What’s the single most valuable activity a company can undertake? If you ask Michael Freeman, he’ll tell you it’s spending time to understand customers' needs. “No one is ever worse off because they spent more time with their customers, trying to better understand them and their market,” Freeman shared in the podcast. Fully knowing your target audience takes decision making from assumptions to real, actionable insights. This approach ensures alignment with customers' desires, which is critical for building lasting relationships and driving business success.

The power of listening

One of the most effective ways to understand customers is simply by listening to them. To facilitate this within his company, Freeman leverages the software Gong, a tool used to record sales calls. This access to direct conversations allows him to hear firsthand from existing customers, prospects, and stakeholders at various stages in their journey. This direct feedback is invaluable, as it allows the marketing team to shift from guessing what customers want to knowing precisely what they need. For example, this listening tool has led to Airbase adjusting offerings based on customer feedback, which in turn led to significant improvements in customer satisfaction and product effectiveness.

Addressing different customer segments

One of the challenges Airbase faced in its growth path was understanding the differences in the needs and decision-making processes of their audience, specifically small versus large customers. According to Freeman, smaller organizations are often able to adopt comprehensive solutions more quickly, while larger organizations require nuanced approaches due to their complex structures and existing vendor relationships. For marketing messages to be successful, they must speak to the specific needs or pain points of the intended audience.

Speaking to persona groups

Each persona has its own distinct needs and problems to solve, but for messaging to be successful, it’s important to consider the emotional point of view these personas are coming from. Freeman illustrates this by describing the nuances between two of Airbase’s personas – those who sit in profit centers, and those in cost centers.

“[Those in] profit centers, they tend to be risk takers,” said Freeman. “They want to be the big winner and be able to brag about it, so they want to hear about benefits... For folks that sit in a cost center, it’s more about avoiding pain... They feel pain in a very negative way, and we want to help them avoid that pain.”

Understanding the viewpoint each persona is coming from has a major influence on the messages Freeman’s team deploys. Take accountants, for example – he explains that they are more likely to see their working world through that “pain” lens, so messages created for this group emphasize the reduction of manual tasks and the ease of closing books efficiently. For procurement officers on the other hand, their messaging highlights how Airbase’s solutions can enhance strategic supplier management, improve product quality and ultimately drive better business outcomes.

By focusing on the challenges their customers face and how a procure-to-pay solution like theirs could alleviate some of those pain points, Freeman’s team is able to distribute messaging with a more compelling and emotionally resonant narrative.

For more insights like this, subscribe to Marketer’s Alchemy on your favorite podcast platform (including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Audible), or watch these discussions unfold on YouTube – and don’t forget to like and subscribe!