Market Research – B2B Marketing segmentation and preferences

TITLE: Market Research – B2B Marketing segmentation and preferences BACKGROUND Budget 2018 directed Innovation Canada (IC) to become the single window for businesses for the Government of Canada. For businesses to use the window, they have to know about it. Developing relationships and raising awareness is therefore a critical piece to delivering on this Budget priority.  To achieve this, IC will strategically plan and carry out a broad and sustained marketing and outreach strategy. This requires an underpinning of solid market research, which will provide key information on aspects such as prime locations, media preferences, behaviours, attitudes and more for the business community. Given that this type of information is not readily available, and given our fiscal responsibility to ensure resources put towards marketing will be as effective as possible, IC has identified a need for detailed data analysis and market research. REQUIREMENTS/RESULTS: IC requires the services of a firm that can provide in-depth, segmented, audience analysis of business decision makers and influencers and their media and social media preferences, behaviours, attitudes, locations, demographics and psychographics. The analysis will assist the Innovators Experience Branch, and other similar groups, to understand their audiences. Given that businesses themselves do not consume media or have behavioral/attitudinal characteristics, it will be essential to have data sets developed from a cross-section of persona-driven individual preferences (individuals being those who have a managerial or decision-making capacity at work) and data on business sizes, locations and stage.  The firm must be capable of creating user-friendly reports and sortable data-sets that IC can use in a range of ways to identify its target audiences by location, preferences or other attributes including:

Key demographicsIncluding by gender, where possible

PsychographicsAttitudes and values that drive decision making for these types of Canadians

Behaviours Answering questions like – What do these Canadians do when they are NOT interacting with ISED or with business-related matters? Identifies behaviour patterns – what they are more likely to do in their spare time Activities they are more likely to participate in Purchasing and decision-making habits regarding small/large purchases

Media preferences and habits Preferences for different types of traditional media Proclivity towards out-of-home advertising Level of comfort with direct marketing

Social Media preferences and habits How and to what extent they use different social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Specific sites, channels, SM and content they visit or consume on a regular basis.

This will be cross tabulated with business data, which identifies business locations as well as their profiles, to include such variables as:

Location Business size (number of employees) Revenue (sales)