Does your buyer persona have what it takes to contribute effectively to content relevance that delivers increased marketing performance?
According to the Benchmark Study on Understanding B2B Buyer Personas released by Cintell, less than 30% of B2B marketers who exceeded their goals said they were very effective at using personas. It’s worth noting that companies that meet or exceed their revenue goals are 2.4X as likely to be effective, or very effective at using personas, than those who miss their goals.
The same study found that B2B marketers who exceed their revenue goals also use their personas for multiple purposes. The top 3 include using personas for messaging, demand generation and sales training.
Another study, B2P’s The Power and Potential of Personas 2016 [PDF], found that marketers reporting their personas as only somewhat effective has risen to 63% from 49% the year before. It’s telling that 86% of personas rated as ineffective were based purely on internal assumptions, without any external research or interviews.
B2B buyer personas are a tool that should inform content marketing strategy, help you to produce engaging content that resonates with a specific audience, and increase momentum in the buying process. If your personas don’t help your company achieve these objectives then there’s work to be done to improve them.
This said, randomly trying to improve the effectiveness of personas wastes time and energy. By answering the questions in each section below, based on a SWOT approach, you’ll be able to pinpoint where to focus your attention. Improving your personas will deliver dividends to the ROI you’ll reap from your investment in developing them.
Determine Your Buyer Persona Effectiveness Score
Strengths indicate that your buyer persona has the basics it needs to inform an effective content marketing strategy across the continuum of the buying process.
Rank the following statements with a score of 1 (not true), 3 (could be better), 5 (well done)
| B2B Buyer Persona Strengths | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Includes a narrative that helps us step into the persona’s issues and situation | |||
| Maps questions, needs and drivers at each stage of the buying process | |||
| Identifies obstacles that could impede buying at each stage of the buying process | |||
| Portrays the persona’s relationships and influence on the buying committee | |||
| Identifies channel and content topic and format preferences | |||
| Subtotal for each column | |||
| Total score | |||
Weaknesses identify areas of improvement to help you capitalize on the Strengths and Opportunities provided by your buyer personas.
Rank the following Weakness statements with a score of 1 (agree), 3 (somewhat agree), 5 (disagree)
| B2B Buyer Persona Weaknesses | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Includes demographic/lifestyle info that is ineffective at informing content design | |||
| Objectives, problems and needs are too high level to point to specific application | |||
| Leans more heavily toward title than role | |||
| Doesn’t address the persona’s status quo or current situation | |||
| Has a number of similarities to other buyer personas you’ve built – not unique | |||
| Subtotal for each column | |||
| Total score | |||
Opportunities are indicative of advanced techniques that can be applied to enhance the strengths of your buyer personas.
Rank the following Opportunity statements with a score of 1 (not doing), 3 (sort of doing), 5 (am doing)
| B2B Buyer Persona Opportunities | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Identifies ways to help the persona resolve conflicts with others to move forward | |||
| Points to tone and style that will improve content resonance | |||
| Helps you shift context with content as persona progresses through buying stages | |||
| Enables you to create consistency of experience in execution across channels | |||
| Informs the development of a content strategy across the entire buying process | |||
| Subtotal for each column | |||
| Total score | |||
Threats are warning signs that indicate actions to take to get the value the construct of buyer personas promises—when they’re developed as an actionable tool.
Rank the following Threat statements with a score of 1 (agree), 3 (somewhat agree), 5 (disagree)
| B2B Buyer Persona Threats | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| We haven’t been successful socializing buyer personas across the organization | |||
| We didn’t use external research or customer interviews to create our personas | |||
| We don’t use buyer personas in our company beyond our marketing team | |||
| We haven’t updated our personas in more than one year | |||
| Different functions have created their own personas independent of ours | |||
| Subtotal for each column | |||
| Total score | |||
A score of 25 for each section indicates that your B2B buyer personas are effectively developed and that you’re using them to best effect. Take a look at any “3” scores in each section. Improving those will bring the fastest impact to how your personas impact your marketing programs. However, addressing any “1” scores will bring the most impact to improve effectiveness. If the total score for your buyer persona across all sections is less than 87, your buyer personas are performing well below their true potential.
Look at the relationships between the things where your buyer personas excel and where they are found lacking. For example, if your personas ranked a 3 for socializing them across the enterprise and a 1 for a lack of external research and customer interviews in the Threats section, doing that work will help you improve the acceptance of personas within other functions. The work will also likely help you to identify potential areas of bias or assumptions that have limited their performance as a useful tool for your team, as well as for others.
Although the B2P study found that 49% of marketers created buyer personas in house, with no expense, the 51% who did invest in buyer persona development spent $18,000 per persona, on average. That’s a lot to spend to not get the full benefit buyer personas can bring. For those who built personas in house, there may be a few things you haven’t thought of that you’ll find helpful by scoring your personas.
Download the Guide to B2B Buyer Persona Effectiveness Scoring to get definitions for all the SWOT elements and a better understanding of how to apply Strengths and Opportunities and take corrective action against Threats and Weaknesses.
In scoring your buyer personas, should you find that you need further insights to the path forward in perfecting them, you may wish to take advantage of my B2B Buyer Persona Assessment service.
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