Learn what B2B buyers care about, who they must convince, words they use, objections they face, & questions they must answer to make a purchase decision.
Well-Built Buyer Personas Inform Buyer-Driven Experiences
Buyer personas used to inform marketing strategy are only as good as the inputs that build them. Data is a must, but so are conversations with customers like the people a persona represents.
With B2B buyers self-educating the first 70% of their buying process without vendors, you must have the insights you need to gain awareness and build confidence through clarity.
And that comes by applying what you learn from well-built buyer personas so you can provide compelling buyer-driven experiences.
A “Buyer Persona” is simply a construct designed to make customer intelligence actionable.
A well-built persona informs content strategy.
Buyer personas are not simple one-sheet representations of a target segment that complete a checklist item. Rather, they are research-based tools that bring clarity for building effective brand-to-demand content strategy.
Buyer personas help you understand:
- what the buyer cares about
- what a day in their life is like
- their roles and responsibilities
- who they must get on board
- what objections they face
- the words they use to describe the problem
- the questions they must answer to solve it
- the outcome worth paying for
- what they wished they’d known that they didn’t know
- how the problem they’re solving impacts bigger corporate goals
- what types of content resonate
Once you’re clear on what the above factors mean to your buyers, you’ve got the information you need to inform your content strategy. These insights inform your tone, style, topic & format & channel choices. You’ll also see a throughline for how you’ll blend your company’s brand narrative into a storyline that’s relevant and engaging to those your persona represents.
Even better, you’ll know just which emotions to engage to pull your buyer forward, help them gain consensus, and make the case internally during those conversations your sales team isn’t yet invited to.
Buyer MVP (Minimum Viable Persona)
With the advent of AI, it’s tempting to just ask an LLM to build a persona for you. You may prompt it based on what you think you know – like title and ICP parameters…
But how will you know the output the LLM gives you aligns with your real-life, human buyers?
Ensuring human oversight with GenAI is a wise choice. But that also means you need to supply your humans with the information they need to hold the AI to account. That’s where Buyer MVPs come in.
Use MVPs to Validate GenAI Output
Rather than a full-blown buyer persona, marketers adopting GenAI to help streamline workflows by creating personas and content choose to develop an MVP. With this insight, they have an informed way to validate the GenAI output. You’ll also have an abundance of insights to use to prompt the GenAI to flesh out more insights about your buyers and to seed content development prompts.
A Buyer MVP requires less time, effort, and investment to create:
- 5 customer interviews vs. 12 for a full persona
- The timeline is dependent only on how long it takes you to source the interviews
- The price is 1/3 of a full buyer persona
Once you have developed buyer personas, you’re armed with what you need and ready to create a winning brand-to-demand strategy.
Retention & Expansion Personas are Different than Net-New
It’s also important to consider that personas should be developed for customers when planning expansion and retention strategies. These personas are different. The first difference is that your buyer persona solved their original problem when they bought your product and became a customer. Therefore their status quo, priorities, and objectives have shifted. The second is that those working with your company or solution on a day-to-day basis, or even considering whether or not to approve renewal, may not be done by the original buyers.
If you’ve got B2B Buyer Personas but aren’t sure if they’re effective or how to use them, check out my B2B Buyer Persona Assessment service.
Check out investment options and Get in Touch to find out how to get moving with your buyer persona project.
