Case Study: AgriFutures Australia
How B2B International supported AgriFutures Australia to better understand and build personas of the stakeholders they serve in the Australian rural industries.
The Challenge
AgriFutures Australia is an Australian Government Statutory Authority at the heart of the Australian rural industries. AgriFutures Australia’s vision is to the grow the long-term prosperity of Australian rural industries by focusing on research and development (R&D) for 13 levied industries ensuring growth, sustainability and resilience through innovation, learning and leadership, as well as for new and emerging industries. AgriFutures Australia is also responsible for investing in R&D that addresses national rural issues.
The organization recognizes the importance of leveraging primary research to ensure that their efforts meet the needs of their target markets. AgriFutures Australia partnered with B2B International to better understand and profile the stakeholders that they serve. A great emphasis was placed on understanding the types of information their stakeholders consume, so that AgriFutures Australia could create more engaging content and allocate it’s marketing budget and resources more efficiently.
The Solution
B2B International began by helping AgriFutures Australia consolidate internal knowledge and perceptions of their stakeholder base. Hundreds of telephone interviews and online surveys were conducted across the organization’s 4 key stakeholder audience types. The program was designed to have three overarching objectives:
- Better understand the needs and challenges their stakeholders face
- Better address the stakeholder’s information & content needs
- To use this information to create an engaging and efficient marcomms plan
A key challenge faced was that all the stakeholder groups were uniquely different, yet the study needed to identify commonalities in the information and the content they consumed.
This was solved by splitting the questionnaire into two. The first part was structured around the stakeholders needs and was unique to the stakeholder group. The second part was based on content consumption habits and was consistently asked to all the stakeholder groups.
The Insight
The value of splitting the questionnaire into two was that it allowed for personas & segments to be created at the audience level based on needs, challenges, and motivations (input personas) and at the overall level based on content consumption habits (output personas).
The input personas were segments and personas unique to the stakeholder group, meaning internal departments could use this insight to ensure that products and services can be tailored to their audience. The output personas were segments that could be used to plan, prioritize, and distribute information and content effectively to all stakeholder groups.
Testimonial
“Understanding our audience, their likes and dislikes, where they get their information from, and how/what content they are interested in is fundamental to AgriFutures Australia being able to shape and demonstrate the value we deliver for our stakeholders.
Driving deeper, more meaningful engagement builds connections and trust and allows us to be influential in driving and challenging our industries to invest in innovation and research activities that will support the growth and overall success of Australian agriculture.
Working with B2B International was a true partnership. The B2B International team immersed themselves into our world.
They were very strategic in their approach, challenging our thinking while remaining engaging and dependable. The end results not only transformed the way in which we will communicate with our stakeholders but also helped to inform our new strategic 5-year plan and many other significant projects.”