Communication: Who We Are Talking To
Innovation & New Business Planning - TUHH Institute of Innovation Marketing & Institute of Entrepreneurship, Hamburg · part of my Technology Management MBA · study notes for revision.
The module treats communication as a plan, not as a talent. A plan is made of a small number of blocks, and the blocks are simply questions: who are we talking to, why are we talking to them, where do we reach them, and how do we phrase it. Running underneath all four is a fifth strand, the measures and KPIs that say whether any of it worked.
This chapter is the who, and it comes first for a reason that is almost mechanical. I cannot state a sensible objective until I know whose behaviour I want to change, I cannot pick a channel until I know where that person already spends attention, and I cannot write a message until I know what that person values and how much they already understand. Every one of those decisions is a function of the recipient.
The slides put one thing before the framework, and it explains why so many technical founders never build a plan at all. The problem is usually not skill. It is attitude.
1 · The attitude problem, and what communication is for
Section titled “1 · The attitude problem, and what communication is for”The deck opens with a list of beliefs that are common among engineers and technical founders in high-tech and industrial markets. Put simply: the value is obvious so it needs no explaining; what convinces me will convince everyone; technical language is a mark of quality and anyone who cannot follow it is not worth the effort; the subject is difficult, so the audience should see all the complexity in order to appreciate how sophisticated the solution is; leaving details out would make the account incomplete; communication work is a distraction from the real work; unpolished communication is more authentic and understatement is tasteful; and deliberately improving communication is manipulation, close to fraud, and therefore unethical.
The last one is the most interesting, because it confuses clarity with deception. Making a true claim easy to grasp is not fraud, it is the minimum courtesy owed to a busy reader.
The goal of the whole effort then differs by market type, even though the instruments are the same in both: advertising, sales and public relations, feeding leads.
| Market | Main goal of communication | What follows from it |
|---|---|---|
| B2C | Sales generation | Typical players are retailers, brand owners of fast moving consumer goods and digital businesses; the path from awareness to purchase is short |
| B2B | Lead generation | Communication hands over to a sales process rather than closing the deal, because several people are involved in the purchase |
2 · The four building blocks of a communication plan
Section titled “2 · The four building blocks of a communication plan”This is the spine of the module: four blocks, four question words, and a measurement layer cutting across all of them.
| Block | Question | What it forces you to answer |
|---|---|---|
| Recipient | Who? | Who is my main audience? What are the recipients’ preferences regarding product and service attributes, channels, media and information? What are their expectations and prior knowledge? There is rarely one group, so the slide draws target group 1 through target group n |
| Objectives | Why? | What is the communication objective? Where in the customer journey are these recipients? What do we expect them to do? What are the KPIs, and how do we measure them to judge success? |
| Channels / Media | Where? | Which channels best achieve those objectives in those target groups? Which combinations or integrations of channels have to be designed? |
| Message / Story | How? | What are the key messages that achieve the objectives in those groups? What is the hook? How do we shape the story per group and communicate value? |
The blocks are not independent, so a real plan is closer to a grid than a list. Every recipient group needs its own combination of the other three, which the slide draws as four stacked layers:
| Layer | The slide’s own examples |
|---|---|
| Recipient | Target group 1, target group 2, … target group n |
| Phase / objective | Awareness, information, repurchase |
| Channel | E-mail, LinkedIn, trade show |
| Measurement | KPI 1, KPI 2, … KPI m |
Read downward and you get one campaign: one group, in one journey phase, on one channel, judged by one KPI. Read across and you see why the plan needs structure, because each extra recipient group multiplies the whole thing again.
3 · Describing a recipient: who they are, and what they want
Section titled “3 · Describing a recipient: who they are, and what they want”The characteristics of the recipients drive the design of the campaign, so the deck gives two separate question sets. The first is descriptive, the second behavioural, and the second is the one people skip.
- B2C, demographic: gender, age and similar basics
- B2C, socioeconomic: income, profession, education level
- B2C, psychographic: beliefs, lifestyles, values, attitude to risk, interests
- B2C, social: number of contacts, centrality in the community
- B2C, knowledge about the product or service
- B2B: company size by employees or revenues; application industry, for example by NAICS code; geographical location by country and region; financial situation; level of internationalisation; duration of the business relationship
- Benefits desired and requirements: price, cost savings, service quality, reliability, durability, accuracy
- Application or usage situation: how important the purchase is, how frequently they use it
- Sensitivity to the marketing mix: price sensitivity, reaction to communication activities, preference for specific communication channels
- Purchasing behaviour: buying volume and frequency, loyalty and tendency to switch supplier, openness to innovations, distribution channels already used
None of this is collected for its own sake. The slide points these characteristics at four downstream outputs: the objectives and measures, the sales channels, the communication channels, and the messages and story. That is the concrete proof that the recipient block has to be settled first.
4 · Preferences, usage behaviour, and where personas fit
Section titled “4 · Preferences, usage behaviour, and where personas fit”The deck states one thing explicitly and repeats it on two consecutive slides, which is a strong hint that it matters: recipients can be characterised in terms of their preferences and their usage behaviour of different channels and media, and this should be added to your personas.
Three instructions sit inside that sentence. A recipient description is incomplete if it only says who someone is; it must also say which channels and media they prefer and how they actually use them. Preference and usage are not the same thing, since someone may claim to prefer email while reading everything on a phone during a commute. And the place to record it is the persona that already exists from the customer research, not a separate document, so that the later channel decision is read off a fact rather than guessed. A persona is a research artefact, not a character sketch: every line on it should trace back to something observed.
5 · The recipients are not only customers
Section titled “5 · The recipients are not only customers”The full landscape of communication recipients includes a wide ring of stakeholders who never buy anything and can still decide whether the venture survives.
A later version of the same diagram extends it twice. It adds service and content providers, using a two-sided platform as the example, where the supply side is a recipient just as much as the demand side. And it draws a second buying centre at the customer’s customer, so the same internal role structure repeats one step further down the chain.
Two mini-cases carry the point, and both are ten-minute exercises with the same two instructions: compile a list of customers and stakeholders, then decide which key message or messages should be targeted at each of them.
| Mini-case | What it is | The arguments on the table |
|---|---|---|
| A | A resorbable implant that supports the healing and correction of bones and is absorbed by the body | In favour: avoids a second surgery, shorter recovery time, promotes bone growth. Against: the technology is unproven and at present somewhat less reliable |
| B | An electric retractable fin stabiliser that reduces the motion of luxury yachts longer than 50 metres | The distinguishing feature is an electric rather than hydraulic power unit |
The exercise works because the same handful of facts lands completely differently on each recipient. In case A the surgeon, the hospital purchasing department, the insurer and the patient weigh those five points in different orders; in case B the shipyard, the naval architect, the captain and the owner care about different consequences of one design choice.
6 · Value chain marketing: talking past your direct customer
Section titled “6 · Value chain marketing: talking past your direct customer”If I sell a component, my direct customer is a manufacturer or distributor, not the person who eventually uses the finished product.
| Strategy | Marketing activity is aimed at | What happens then |
|---|---|---|
| Push | The direct customer, the OEM or distributor | The product is pushed one link at a time, and everything depends on the intermediary agreeing to carry and promote it |
| Pull | The user or final customer, jumping over the intermediary | Demand travels backwards up the chain, so the intermediary has to stock it. This demand pull is exactly what value chain marketing sets out to create, by targeting the customers of the customers |
The packaging industry is the worked illustration. The chain runs raw materials, packaging producers, OEM, distributors, retail, consumers, and because each stage has its own goals it puts different demands on the very same packaging: is it recyclable, what does it cost, how does it handle, does it preserve the product, does it open and dispense well, and how does it look. One packaging film, six different conversations. The deck then names the standard tool for making value visible at the far end of the chain: ingredient branding, where a strong brand for the component travels with the finished product and speaks directly to the end customer.
7 · Inside the customer organisation: the buying centre
Section titled “7 · Inside the customer organisation: the buying centre”Even one customer company is several recipients. The definition is precise: a buying centre includes all the individuals and groups taking part in the buying decision process, who have interdependent goals and share common risks. Messages and stories have to be adapted to each of them.
InitiatorBuyerUserInfluencerDeciderGatekeeper
- The initiator raises the need, often the earliest moment a supplier can be present at all
- The buyer handles the transaction, the terms and the supplier relationship
- Works with the product day to day, and cares about usability, reliability and disruption rather than payment terms
- May hold no formal authority and still be able to veto in practice
- The influencer shapes the specification and the evaluation criteria, usually technically
- The decider holds the authority to say yes, and is convinced by risk and money rather than by specifications
- Decides which information and which suppliers reach the rest of the group at all
- Can be an assistant, a purchasing rule or a procurement portal; if unaddressed, nobody else sees the message
Behind those roles sit whole departments. The deck lists the functional areas frequently involved in purchase decisions with what each is trying to achieve, which is the practical translation of the roles into people I can actually name in an account:
| Functional area | What it cares about |
|---|---|
| Marketing | Creating competitive advantage through the act of buying, and how a purchased item affects the marketability of the buying company’s own products |
| Production | On-time delivery and reliable input so production schedules are not interrupted, with cost-effective procurement |
| Technical development | Defining specifications and quality levels for new products and services, and evaluating the technical quality of competing supplies |
| Research and development | Proposing how new technologies, such as new components or materials, get integrated into the company’s future products |
| Strategic staff | Long-term, company-level decisions on new businesses, new markets and new product categories |
| Top management | Setting guidelines for all buying decisions, defining the key evaluation criteria in critical ones, and confirming important purchases |
| Buying | Identifying and evaluating suppliers, running buying routines, watching cost effectiveness, and developing buyer-seller relationships |
The deck adds that buying centre members also have their own preferences for information and for interaction with vendors, citing a digitalisation index study on marketing and sales. The persona logic of section 4 therefore applies inside the organisation too: the head of production and the head of purchasing want different content, in different formats, on different channels.
8 · Special recipient group one: the very first adopters
Section titled “8 · Special recipient group one: the very first adopters”Some recipients matter out of proportion to their number. The first group the deck singles out is the earliest adopters, appearing under several names: innovators, lead users, launching customers and pilot customers. On the diffusion curve they sit at the far left of the adopter distribution, and three characteristics explain them, each with a consequence attached.
The concrete example is the first buyers of electric cars, and it shows how specific a recipient definition can get: male, middle-aged in the range of roughly 40 to 50 years, in a three or four person household, living in towns of fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, working full-time, commuting less than 20 km, using the car frequently, showing impulsive buying behaviour, holding a technical or business education, earning between 50,000 and 100,000, and owning a house. Almost every line of that is a targeting instruction for a media buy.
9 · Special recipient group two: opinion leaders and influencers
Section titled “9 · Special recipient group two: opinion leaders and influencers”The second special group speeds up diffusion rather than generating direct sales, and it rests on the classic two-step flow. In step one, mass communication goes out broadly and is picked up by opinion leaders and influentials. In step two, those people pass it on through personal communication and word of mouth to the entire market. That contrast is the difference between mass and narrow targeting in one picture: broadcasting reaches many people weakly, whereas a narrowly defined recipient group can be reached precisely and then carries the message onward personally, which is far more persuasive.
Opinion leaders are identifiable by four traits: a higher contact rate with mass communication, a high level of expertise together with high involvement, a higher degree of social interaction, and a higher socio-economic status. Those are the social variables from section 3, put to work.
Which people in the network should be seeded? A study cited in the slides gives two numbers worth memorising. Seeding to people with high degree centrality, the hubs with many connections, and high betweenness centrality, the bridges between otherwise separate clusters, beat random seeding by about 50 percent and beat seeding to low-degree people at the fringe by about 300 percent. Who you seed matters more than how much you seed. Even so, the deck deliberately presents two competing approaches rather than one winner.
- Identify the best connected customers and motivate them to talk about the product
- The logic is to focus on a few as a way of reaching the many
- People trust opinion leaders precisely for complex and risky innovations where valid information is lacking
- Suited to high-risk innovations
- Influentials are overwhelmed with information, heavily competed for, and have a reputation to lose
- Better to reach a critical mass of easily influenceable people, who then influence other easy-to-influence people
- Suited to low-risk innovations
Why would anybody recommend anything? The motives come from a three-need model, and each implies a different incentive: inclusion, the need for relationships with others, for attention and respect, and for self-expression; affection, showing care or concern for others by giving helpful information or entertaining them; and control, the need for social power and for influencing others. An incentive that flatters status appeals to control; one that gives the recommender something genuinely useful to pass on appeals to affection.
How much is a recommender worth? Their value depends on the number of referrals given and the conversion rate of those referrals. The slide draws the chain from satisfaction to word of mouth to referrals to new customer acquisition with question marks on the links, because no step is automatic. The link between satisfaction and the number of recommendations is moderated by several factors, in particular whether the category is high or low in involvement and importance, and whether there is a high or low level of competition between the customers themselves, since customers who compete have every reason not to share a good supplier.
Worked example
Section titled “Worked example”A venture selling a retrofit sensor kit that predicts bearing failure in industrial pumps. Three candidate recipient groups, characterised on the dimensions the deck actually uses.
| Dimension | A · Maintenance managers, mid-size food plants | B · Pump OEMs building it in | C · Insurers and inspection bodies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of recipient | Direct customer, B2B | Direct customer and channel, B2B | Stakeholder, never buys the kit |
| B2B firm variables | 200 to 800 employees, food processing, Germany and Austria, stable finances, no prior relationship | Large, international, long design cycles, established supplier relationships | Regulatory and quasi-regulatory bodies, national reach |
| Benefits desired | Avoided downtime, fewer emergency call-outs, reliability | Differentiation of their own pump, low integration cost, durability | Fewer claims, evidence quality, auditability |
| Usage situation | High importance of purchase, continuous use | Designed in once, then shipped for years | Not a user at all, an approver and amplifier |
| Marketing mix sensitivity | Moderate price sensitivity, responds to trade press and trade shows | Low price sensitivity per unit, high sensitivity to technical proof | Price-insensitive, sensitive to evidence and standards |
| Purchasing behaviour | Small volumes, cautious about innovations, long approval loops | Large volumes, very long decision cycle, high switching cost | No purchase, but can endorse or block |
| Buying centre | User is the technician, influencer the reliability engineer, decider the plant manager, gatekeeper procurement | Influencer is technical development, decider top management, gatekeeper the buying department | Not applicable, single expert assessors |
| Channel preference | Trade press, trade shows, peer recommendation | Direct technical sales, joint pilots | Standards committees, published studies |
Which one gets the budget first. Group A is the primary recipient, and the reasoning follows the deck rather than instinct. The innovation is high risk from the buyer’s side, since a false alarm stops a production line, so the seeding rule says buy credibility through respected peers instead of chasing volume among the easily influenced. Group A also contains identifiable first adopters with the three markers from section 8: plants that can fund a pilot, reliability engineers who understand the technology well enough to see its potential, and a real willingness to co-develop, because the pilot solves a problem they already have. Group B is worth more in revenue but has a decision cycle measured in years and a buying centre that will not open for a supplier with no reference installation. Group C is the classic value chain and stakeholder play: an insurer that accepts the sensor data as evidence creates a demand pull no advertisement to Group A could produce, so it stays in the plan as a parallel stakeholder track rather than as the first campaign.
Apply it to your project
Section titled “Apply it to your project”-
List every recipient, not just the buyers. Write out the customer segments, then walk the stakeholder ring: complementors, service and content providers, regulators, the wider public, consultants, suppliers, intermediaries and distributors, indirect customers, and the customers of your customers.
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Describe who each group is. B2C means demographic, socioeconomic, psychographic and social variables plus existing product knowledge. B2B means size, application industry, location, financial situation, internationalisation and length of relationship.
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Describe what each group wants. Benefits and requirements, the usage situation with its importance and frequency, sensitivity to the marketing mix including price and channel preference, and purchasing behaviour including volume, loyalty, openness to innovation and channels already used.
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Add channel and media preference plus usage behaviour to every persona. Record both what they say they prefer and what they demonstrably use, because the two often disagree.
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Map the buying centre of your main B2B customer. Name a job title for the initiator, buyer, user, influencer, decider and gatekeeper, then check which functional areas they sit in and what each of those areas is trying to achieve.
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Decide whether you need a push or a pull. If the person who feels the benefit is not the person who signs the order, plan a value chain marketing track aimed at the indirect customer, and ask whether an ingredient branding style claim can carry your value to the far end.
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Identify your first adopters. Look for resources to acquire and implement, competence to see the potential, and tolerance for rough edges plus willingness to co-develop. Profile them as concretely as the electric car buyer example.
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Choose a seeding strategy from the risk of your innovation, high risk pointing to well connected opinion leaders and low risk to a critical mass of easily influenced adopters, then decide what would actually motivate a recommender using inclusion, affection or control.
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Assign one key message and one KPI per recipient group. Run the ten-minute mini-case discipline on your own venture, then plan explicitly how awareness becomes conversion rather than assuming reach turns into revenue.
Key terms
Section titled “Key terms”| Term | What it means in plain words |
|---|---|
| Communication plan | The structured answer to four questions, recipient, objectives, channels and media, message and story, with measures and KPIs running across all of them |
| Recipient block | The who: the audience, their preferences, expectations and prior knowledge, split into target group 1 through target group n |
| Lead generation | The main goal of communication in B2B, where communication produces a qualified prospect that sales then converts |
| Sales generation | The main goal of communication in B2C, where communication is expected to produce the purchase itself |
| Segmentation variables | The descriptors that say who a recipient is: demographic, socioeconomic, psychographic and social in B2C; size, industry, location, finances, internationalisation and relationship length in B2B |
| Sensitivity to marketing mix | How strongly a recipient reacts to price and to communication activity, including which channels they prefer |
| Persona | The single profile sheet for a recipient group, which must also carry their preferences for and actual usage behaviour of channels and media |
| Stakeholder landscape | The ring of recipients beyond customers: complementors, service and content providers, regulators, the public, consultants, suppliers, intermediaries, indirect customers and customers of customers |
| Value chain marketing | Aiming communication at indirect customers further down the chain in order to create a demand pull back towards you |
| Push versus pull | Push aims marketing at the next link; pull aims it at the final user so demand travels backwards and forces the intermediary to stock you |
| Ingredient branding | Using a strong brand for a component so its value is communicated directly to the end customer of the finished product |
| Buying centre | Everyone taking part in a buying decision, with interdependent goals and shared risks: initiator, buyer, user, influencer, decider and gatekeeper |
| First adopters | Innovators, lead users, launching and pilot customers: resources to buy, competence to see the potential, and appetite to co-develop |
| Seeding strategy | The choice between well connected opinion leaders, for high-risk innovations, and a critical mass of easily influenced adopters, for low-risk ones |
Test yourself
Section titled “Test yourself”- Name the four building blocks of a communication plan with their question words, and say what runs across all four.
- Why must the recipient be decided before the objectives, channels and message? Give the mechanism, not just the assertion.
- What differs between B2C and B2B in the main goal of communication?
- The deck states one thing twice about characterising recipients and tells you where to record it. What is it?
- A start-up sells a corrosion-resistant coating to machine builders, who sell machines to food producers. Sketch the push option and the pull option, and say what value chain marketing is trying to achieve.
- You are launching a technically complex, high-risk medical device. Which seeding approach does the deck point you to, and why? What would change your answer?
Revision summary
Section titled “Revision summary”Next: Objectives & Messages → - what we want to achieve, and what we actually say.