Buyer Personas are a key component of B2B marketing campaigns, as you know by now, but in order to implement a strategy that delivers, you need to pay close attention in the preliminary stages.
Researching information, analyzing data and building accurate profiles of potential customers is crucial if you want to increase brand awareness, expand your lead database and ultimately grow your business.
Buyer Personas can't be bought and can't be generated with a simple click, but are the result of meticulous work that will be the basis of everything you do next.
The first thing to do when you want to identify a Buyer Persona is to rely solely on tangible data. Relying on hunches not supported by accurate research results could be what undermines your entire B2B communication strategy.
These profiles need to be created on the basis of online data analysis done through specific tools, market research, interviews with target audiences and those who know the customers well. Identifying your Ideal Target will help you communicate efficiently with them, but most importantly, it will help you to connect with them.
Nowadays (thanks to technology!) it is relatively easy to build an excellent B2B buyer persona. You just need to ask yourself the following questions.
1. What is my ideal customer's job title?
In reality, we do not really care about the exact job title (Unless you have a very small market but that is another issue), what we need to know here, is the seniority level, are they a manager, are they the decision-maker, do they manage the budget? By understanding that, you will also be able to learn more about their:
- Education level
- Professional background
- Skills
- Abilities
- Team structure This means you will successfully manage to communicate with them in their languages. And by that mean I do not mean in English, French, German or Italian, I mean with their own words. 2. What does a day in their life looks like?
Here we don't want to know what they have for breakfast, if they take a shower in the morning or evening... We need more useful information like:
Which social media do they use?
Where do they get their news?
Are they a member of any groups on social media or professional association?
Are they rushing all day to get the job done?
Are they understaffed?
Do they spend their days in meetings?
What kind of content do they consume?
3. What are their demographics and firmographics?
We need to know a little about their demographics to understand a bit more what they are interested in and also how to talk to them.
How old are your customers?
What kind of education do they have?
However, using demographics is a great starting point for creating a B2B buyer persona, but you should not spend too much time on them, because they generally have little or nothing to do if a company is, for example, selling complex B2B products or solutions.
We also need information about their business as it turns out to be crucial!
What industry are they in?
What is the company size? Company location?
What is the department goal?
4. What pain points and challenges do your customers have?
So that is a basic information that you must have. To help someone solve a problem you first need to talk about it and these are the questions you should be asking:
Do they have a tight budget?
Do they have enough resources?
Is time very precious?
Are they a leader in their industry?
Why would they search for a solution?
What can I do for them?
How frustrated are they?
5. What's the benefit of buying your product?
Once you know what their problem is, you need to make sure your product or service will be a concrete help for them otherwise your strategy will not work. Will your product ensure an increase in quality or efficiency?
Will you make customers’ life easier?
Can you quantify the return they will make with your product?
Can you tell how much you are going to save them per year?
6. What common barriers to purchase, can you see?
What is the decision process when they buy your products? The more complex and expensive your product is, the more complex the process will be. So, to have the full clear picture, you need to consider few things like: How many decision-makers?
Who has the final say? Who pays for it? What does the senior management team think? 7. What are the decision criteria?
By knowing that, you will be able to understand how your buyer persona interacts with products and services and what drives them to purchase. With all this info acquired, you will for sure manage to position your offer in an appealing way, sending the right message at the right time! 8. Where are your ideal customers active online?
The online world is the most generous source of data for creating the Buyer Personas needed in a successful B2B marketing strategy. By answering to that question, you will able to understand not only where your ideal buyer persona is present but how it engages with people and content, hence how its buyer journey can start.
Once answered all these questions and created an eligible buyer persona, you will be able to target your audience better. Better targeting of your audience also means that you will be able to adapt your content to their liking, and their interests. Ultimately, identifying the buyer persona also means that you will be able to generate more qualified leads. And, in today's business world, having more qualified leads means more chance to drive prospects into your sales funnel and more revenue for your company.
Buyer personas remind us that we are first and foremost marketing to people like ourselves, thus gaining a 'holistic' view of our customers. If you still struggle to build your perfect buyer persona, do not hesitate to contact us, we can arrange a 30 minutes’ chat about it!
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