Person-Based Marketing: The Complete B2B Guide

Person-based marketing is transforming how modern B2B companies operate  especially for those with long, complex sales cycles. If you’re responsible for growth and revenue, you know that the real challenge isn’t more traffic. It’s reaching the right people inside the right accounts, at the right time.

This is where person-based marketing (also called individual-based marketing) becomes a game-changer. It lets you target real, identifiable decision-makers (CFOs, CTOs, procurement heads, engineering leads) rather than blasting anonymous audiences. You reach those who truly matter for every deal.

What Is Person-Based Marketing?

Person-based marketing is a modern B2B strategy that uses verified identity data like business emails, CRM profiles, logged-in behavior, purchase history to target specific people across channels. Through person-based marketing  brands can deliver more relevant messaging. This also enables person-based advertising and individual-based advertising across digital channels.

What Is Person-Based Advertising?

Person-based advertising, also known as individual-based advertising, serves as the paid activation layer of person-based marketing. It uses first-party data like website interactions, App usage data, purchasing history, CRM records, survey and feedback, email, and social engagement to deliver hyper-targeted ads directly to specific people at specific accounts.

Because you’re targeting named decision-makers, you:

• Minimize wasted impressions

• Increase engagement

• Strengthen brand recall among high-value prospects

It’s especially powerful for engineering-heavy or mission-critical B2B industries where each impression must count.

Person-Based Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing focuses on broad segments of people. Person-based marketing, on the other hand, zeroes in on:

• Known individuals at specific target accounts

• Messaging tailored to their role, needs, and stage in the buying journey

At the core is:

• Person-based marketing → reaching groups of identified people within an account

• Individual-based marketing → delivering personalized messaging to a single high-value decision-maker

For B2B teams, this creates a major advantage. You’re not just reaching “manufacturing companies”; you’re reaching the 5–12 real humans who make decisions.

If you want a broader strategic view that includes how to set up your ICP and account list.

Check out our guide on What is Account-Based Marketing?

Who is Person-Based Marketing for?

Person-based marketing is built for B2B companies with long sales cycles, complex deals, and multiple stakeholders. It’s ideal if your growth depends on reaching specific decision-makers inside high-value accounts, not just generating clicks.

Maybe your sales team is trying to influence leads, procurement managers, and commercial directors, but traditional targeting only reaches a fraction of them. Or perhaps your marketing team is stretched thin, juggling events, content, social, and internal requests, with little time left for strategic paid campaigns.

It’s for teams who:

• Struggle to reach hard-to-access target audiences

• Lack ICP clarity, data research skills, or advanced performance marketing expertise

• Have overloaded marketing teams that can’t fully support sales

• Need fast, high-quality, done-for-you ad creation

• Want to guide sales through the entire buyer journey

• Have limited capacity for strategic paid media work

If you're ready to align sales and marketing, person-based marketing makes every interaction count.

How Person-Based Marketing and Person-Based Advertising Work Together

Person-based marketing and person-based advertising are two sides of the same growth engine. Person-based marketing builds the foundation of unified identity data, CRM profiles, behavioral insights, and a clear map of decision-makers inside each account. Leading CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365  provide reliable ways to manage contact data, engagement tracking, and account intelligence. Sid’s Precision Connect leverages these systems to unify your data and create precise profiles of every decision-maker, giving you the foundation for person-based advertising.

How Person-Based Marketing Works in Practice

Person-based marketing (or individual-based marketing) shifts your focus from broad audiences to real people inside your dream accounts. Instead of thinking in terms of “target companies,” you identify the actual individuals involved in the buying journey, and build familiarity and trust with them long before any outreach begins.

Here’s how it works in real life:

1. Start with true sales + marketing alignment

Sales and marketing agree on exactly which individuals to target, share the same narrative, and use the same data sources. This transforms marketing into a warm-up engine that makes prospects more receptive when sales eventually reaches out.

2. Define your ICP and find the right people

Go beyond job titles. Analyze past wins, customer reviews, and sales call notes to understand real motivations and objections. Then map the full buying committee, decision-makers, influencers, blockers, and internal champions.

3. Build a clean, enriched data foundation

Use your CRM as the source of truth and enrich it with tools like LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, or internal data. This ensures you know who you’re talking to, what their company cares about, and what challenges or tech they use.

4. Warm them up with valuable content and ads

Before any outreach, consistently show up with helpful insights through ads and social content. No selling, just value. Over time, prospects start recognizing your brand and the people behind it.

5. Use engagement signals to time your outreach

Monitor who engages with your ads, content, or website, then sync that data back into your CRM. This helps you identify warm individuals who are open to a conversation.

6. Begin soft, personalized outreach

Once prospects are warmed up, reach out via LinkedIn or email with thoughtful, personalized messages, not a pitch. Continue nurturing with content and ads in parallel.

7. Measure, refine, and scale

Track what actually drives meetings and revenue. Use these insights to refine your ICP, messaging, and channels, then scale what works.

This summary comes from our in-depth playbook. Make sure to learn more about Person-Based Marketing here: The Playbook for Individual-Based Marketing

How can Hey Sid support your Person-Based Marketing Strategy?

Once you know who to reach and what message they need, HeySid activates person-based advertising by delivering hyper-targeted ads directly to those individuals across LinkedIn, Google, programmatic networks, or organic posts on LinkedIn by Sid’s Authority Builder solution to ensure consistency and relevance across channels.

Marketing provides identity and message intelligence. Advertising provides the precision and reach, all powered by Sid.

Together, Hey Sid allows revenue teams to influence buying committees consistently over long sales cycles, avoid irrelevant traffic, and accelerate deals. 

Without Hey Sid’s person-based marketing, advertising becomes guesswork. Without Hey Sid’s person-based advertising, marketing insights never reach the right people. Combined, Hey Sid creates a unified, efficient growth system that reliably delivers measurable B2B impact.

Boost Your B2B Results Today

At Hey Sid, we have built a platform that automates and simplifies every step of the individual-based marketing process, from data enrichment to outreach and reporting. 

Book a free demo with Sid today and see how you can launch personalized, high-impact campaigns without the operational hassle.