Buyer Persona Blog

Bloggers miss the point of buyer personas

The most important component of buyer personas is missing from much of the discussion I'm seeing in whitepapers and blogs. Personas can't make a credible impact on sales and marketing strategies if their description is limited to information about demographics and pain points.

The most important insight about a buyer persona is the answer to this question -- what prevents this type of buyer from choosing us? We need to interview real people to capture information about the attitudes and beliefs that cause this buyer to walk away from the product, service or solution we hope to market to them.

Buyer persona interviews don't end when we hear an answer like "its too expensive" or "too hard to use" or "missing "X" capability". These are the answers that sales people are likely to pass along about why they lose deals, but personas need to go much deeper into what real people have to say about these issues.

If a feature is causing lost deals, I want to interview the types of buyers who are reporting this problem. If I can convince them that I'm not in sales and not trying to resurrect a lost sale, these interviews give me great information about what the buyer could do better if they had the missing capability. Those of you in product management may think I'm trying to impact the next release, but I'm only using this opportunity to get the buyers talking about the details of their problems and how they determined that we couldn't address them. I may find a different way to position the product to solve the problem, or may use the interview to gain deeper insights into the importance of the problems we can address with current capabilities.

If the buyers tell me the product is too complex I ask them to talk to me about how they assessed its ease of use. I want to learn about the buying process and what sales input or tools they relied upon to make that determination.

If they tell me it's too expensive, I ask about the outcomes they would expect to achieve with a product like this. I'm trying to get the buyer talking about the results they value most so that I can assess the tools we've built to communicate the impact we'll make.

The information gained through these interviews will not all be great news -- there may be some types of buyer personas we simply can't win over given the status of the product. But this is exactly what I need to know to improve the ROI on my marketing budget and my ability to train sales people to target the most receptive buyers.

I suspect the problem with much of the discussion on the blogosphere is that personas are a popular topic for web designers and others that focus on the early stages of the buying and awareness process. Perhaps the simple information they describe is enough for marketers who only focus on the top of the funnel. But this focus is dangerous in business-to-business marketing.  While many people believe that marketing is all about lead generation, even highly qualified leads won't result in revenue until the sales people have the training and tools to overcome the resistance they're going to face later in the sales process.

Marketers complain that sales people don't follow-up on their leads, even those that are highly qualified. But who can blame sales people who have various ways to make quota for choosing to sell products where they can anticipate the buyer's reaction at each step in the sales process. Marketing needs to step up its game, using buyer personas to deliver the training and tools that drive sales funnel conversions.

Two surveys nearly miss key buyer insight

I just saw the results of yet another market survey that almost failed to ask what turned out to be the single most important question. Several people within the vendor's company, each with decades of experience in the target market, reviewed the survey questions. One of the reviewers had recently worked in the buyer's role. Each reviewer had been involved with the design of the product and knew every detail about the technology and the problems it could resolve.

So why was the most critical question not included in the original version of the survey? it related to a capability that was relatively unimportant to the internal stakeholders.

I have been worrying about this product launch. While the users were overwhelmingly positive about the pilot, we'd conducted phone interviews with several economic buyers and each had reported high levels of satisfaction with business-as-usual. It appeared we would have to either delay the launch or risk positioning against a problem that no one wanted to pay to resolve.

Then a relatively serendipitous review by an external industry expert produced a new question and market feedback that surprised everyone. This is only the second survey I've seen this year and in both cases the companies only barely added the most important question. They were about to launch a product without the key insight that would guide them to feature the capability buyers valued above all others.

I'm always concerned that we are overly dependent on industry experts whose internal role inevitably erodes their objectivity. Now I'm worried that easy web surveys may be the default step for market research. Surveys are great at confirming that the insights gained from a few buyer experts are pervasive. But because they can only provide answers to the questions their designers value, they can also be dangerous.

One of my client's industry experts sat in on just three of the interviews we conducted with the target buyers.  He was absolutely stunned by what he heard. Had those interviews not occurred, or had he opted out of those meetings to do something "more important" than listening to the buyers, the company's targeting and messaging strategy for this launch would have failed.

It is often difficult for a company to adjust its strategy to conform to the market's view. Inevitably a lot of stakeholder passion was poured into the original vision. Sometimes a market will evolve to value the developer's perspective (in this case I suspect that's highly likely). In the short term these companies should be comforted by the cash buyers will spend to solve their high priority problems.

Read this before starting a persona project

I'm seeing a lot of blog and email traffic that is motivating this post -- two earnest requests directed to people who are just beginning to develop buyer personas or put them to work.

Request #1 - Outsource buyer persona creation only when necessary, and then ensure that the company has a permanent spokesperson who will keep the persona's story alive. 

The goal for buyer personas is to make them so real and persuasive that the company will be willing to take direction from them. This won't be easy and it isn't going to happen all at once. The company is accustomed to making decisions based on its own ideas or input from prospects and current customers. The buyer persona spokesperson will need to keep reminding the company to think about the buyers, the people who choose to do business with competitors or to get along without any of the company’s products and services.

Many companies have invested in “voice of the customer” initiatives, resulting in written reports and little in the way of insights that anyone remembers or references. I'm concerned that buyer personas could end up in the same trap -- yet another short-term fad that misses the point in just about every respect.

If limited bandwidth or investigative skills make it necessary to assign persona development to a contractor, so be it. Just make sure that the third-party engagement includes an effective handoff to someone who will persist in being a spokesperson for the buyer.

Request #2 -- Personas should tell their story to the website designers and content people, not the real buyers who find the website. 

Many companies develop buyer personas in support of a website initiative, which frequently results in only a fraction of the insight or commitment that's needed to deal with my number 1 request.  To make matters worse, some of the people involved in these sites have come to expect that a "persona-based website" reveals the buyer persona's story.

Buyers don't visit a website to find out who they are, and if a real buyer finds just one thing wrong with your description of them, that's all they'll remember.

Buyer personas are useful for website designers and content creators precisely because they keep everyone focused on how various types of buyers evaluate the company's solutions. The typical website serves up generic benefits statements or content that is neatly consistent with the company's templates. A persona-based website provides easily accessible answers to the buyers' real questions.

To stay grounded about buyer personas remember that their purpose is to tell a story to internal audiences about how a particular type of buyer views the decision to buy the company's product, service or idea. The story must be real, even though the persona is not. Persona developers need to continuously interact with buyers to keep the story real, reiterating the buyers' perspective whenever an internal decision loses its focus.

Trigger Your Own World Wide Rave

My friend David Meerman Scott has done it again -- he's written another book that is perfectly aligned with the needs of his buyer persona. The new book is "World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories."

You probably know about "The New Rules of Marketing and PR," the book that David wrote two years ago. But you may not know that David's success as an acclaimed author and speaker all started with a short ebook that he made available through his blog. Over a hundred thousand people downloaded that ebook in a few short months -- the beginnings of a World Wide Rave that caught the attention of a big publisher.  That connection resulted in the print book that is now published in 22 languages.

Because David wrote content that connected with the needs of his buyers and made it freely available, they told each other about it. He didn't have to pay anyone to market the book. In fact, David's customers pay him to spread his ideas through keynotes that continuously grow his own World Wide Rave.

Best of all, David's success has made him a magnet for a continuous stream of new content and stories that resonate with his target buyers. David doesn't have to go out of his way to study his buyers or create content they want to share with each other, his immersion in the issues that resonate with his buyers ensures constant access to new material and ideas.

If you want to learn how to create content for social media sites and blogs that gets buyers raving about what they heard, check out his video.  David knows this stuff -- he lives it.

Survey reveals reasons buyers say no

I'm currently analyzing the results of an unusually effective web survey. The survey provides surprising insights into the reasons why people don't want to buy my client's solution online, or why they don't see any value in it whatsoever, irrespective of the sales channel.

With bad news so readily available at the moment, it might seem odd that anyone would go looking for more of it. But even in good times, I find very few companies that actively seek out information about the reasons that buyers say "no." This is unfortunate, as the potential for a buyer to drop out as the sales cycle progresses is one of the leading causes of poor marketing ROI.

When I know why a certain type of buyer is likely to start a deal but not complete it, I can prove to the sales people that there is a pattern to the issues that concern potential buyers, and that marketing has created the ammunition to win deals within targeted segments.

Those of you who know me should be surprised that I'm writing about the merits of a survey. I have always recommended qualitative techniques (mostly interviews) for real insights into buyer behavior. Surveys, by definition, only give me answers to the questions that I know to ask. Interviews allow me to change my questions based on any individual buyer's responses. This flexibility allows me to uncover new aspects of buyer concerns, delving deeper into topics that a particular buyer finds most compelling.

But this survey produced very useful results, primarily because of its unusual focus on the reasons that buyers would say no. So far as I know the company conducted only a single interview before launching the survey, adding only a few questions that were not in the first draft (it looks like that was a great addition though).

The survey was conducted through a website that is well respected among a wide array of the company's potential customers. A drawing with $1,000 in prizes encouraged more than 500 people to respond within just a few weeks.

We are still analyzing the results of this research. But this much is already apparent -- for a relatively small investment of time and budget, this company has identified:

- previously unexplored market segments where buying criteria (the high priority capabilities that buyers use to evaluate a purchase) appear to be well aligned with the company's capabilities.

- market segments that they should avoid altogether -- their offering is unsuitable for these buyers and any investment in marketing to them would result in poor sales conversion rates or dissatisfied customers

- building blocks for messaging and program strategies.

As it turns out a survey was probably the most efficient way for this company to begin the difficult process of choosing new market segments for their solution. Part of it was the site where the survey was offered -- a web-site well-trafficked by a people representing their potential market segments. But the most important component was that they sincerely wanted to hear the negative feedback about their idea.

CIO buyer persona needs new messaging

Just about everyone I know is working feverishly to update their messaging strategies. The abrupt downturn in the economy has caused most prospects to rethink their priorities and "buying criteria"-- the capabilities that a buyer ranks highest during the purchase process. For most of us, this means that any messaging we developed prior to September 2008 needs to be rewritten.

So I thought if might be helpful if I shared some insight into the new priorities of the Chief Information Officer ("CIO"), one of the buyer personas most frequently cited by attendees of the Effective Product Marketing seminar. 

Let's call this CIO persona Sam. Sam is on the executive team for a global, multi-billion dollar company that sells commodity products in a very mature market.

As a result of the economic downturn, Sam's budget for IT investments has been substantially reduced, causing him to re-evaluate every one of his plans for the IT projects he had slated for this year.  

Sam says that he looks for answers to these three questions to conduct that evaluation:

1. What does the technology do to support the company's strategy?
2. What is the business case?
3. How much risk is in the project?

In the past, Sam says that he could justify IT investments that helped the company make money. For example, last year he was able to recommend technology that made the people in his company more productive. But not now.

For the next year at least, Sam says that every IT investment will be evaluated for its ability to create predictable, measurable cost savings. Sam says it is just too hard to measure improvements in productivity and too risky to expect the company to make the changes needed to realize that benefit.

We asked Sam to give us more insight into this statement. He noted that people have grown accustomed to rapid improvements in relatively inexpensive, easy-to-use technology products in their personal lives. While Sam has different concerns with corporate technology, especially in the areas of security, support and compatibility, he faces major resistance if the solution is costly or requires changes in business processes.

Sam says that his priorities are single-threaded right now -- find places to reduce the IT budget -- even if that involves nontraditional ways of delivering IT. As much as Sam wishes that internal stakeholders would ask him for recommendations on what IT can do to make the company more productive, all anyone cares about is the budget.

In this respect at least, it should be easy for us as marketers to personally relate to Sam's pain. Most of us are in reaction mode with companies that have asked us to cut our budgets. If we simply cut out all of the wasted effort that wasn't going to impress Sam (or another buyer persona) anyway, we may be surprised at how easy it is to comply. In fact, this may be our best chance to eliminate the work that we always knew was a waste of time.

Let's not waste a good crisis

There is nothing like a big recession to get management focused on the role of marketing and its relationship to sales.

Remember when the Internet bubble burst? With budgets tight and sales shrinking, executive attention quickly turned to sales and marketing ROI. This could have created some positive change, except that most of that attention resulted in reorganizations that created as many problems as they resolved.

Now that we have another crisis and more focus on a problem that has been lurking around for years, I want to suggest a solution that doesn't require a reorganization. Let's take the current organization, whatever it looks like today, and agree that everyone who contributes to the success of the sales and marketing effort needs to function as a team. Like a lot of other teams, this one doesn't need to report to a single executive. The strength of the team lies in clearly defined roles and accountabilities, plus a clear understanding of how each group functions in relationship to the others.

Complexity is a big part of the problem, so let's keep it simple.

There are four parts of the team, although smaller companies may combine roles.

1. Inbound marketing managers need to be entirely focused on understanding market problems -- spending enough time with buyers (not just customers) so that the team knows which concerns a market full of buyers deem urgent enough to spend money to resolve. This group should be directly accountable for the quality of the product business case and roadmap.

2. Outbound marketing managers need to be entirely focused on defining a strategy to generate maximum revenue from existing solutions --understanding how buyers within target segments evaluate and buy this type of product or service. This group should be directly accountable for the quality of the go-to-market plan. (Larger companies may have specialists performing this same function for different industries, or for solutions in addition to products.)

3. Marketing communications needs to be entirely focused on developing the marketing assets (programs, web content and sales tools) that move targeted buyers through the buying process. This group should be directly accountable for the quality of the marketing assets as measured by their impact on the buyer's decision process.

4. Sales needs to be entirely focused on closing individual deals and accountable for the same.

You might think that sales is the only part of the go-to-market team that isn't confused about roles, but you would be mistaken. Many sales people have become dependent on other members of the go-to-market team to help them close deals, combining the sales and marketing functions in a way that looks great in the short term but creates big holes in the efficiency of the go-to-market team.

Marketing budgets and personnel should be accountable for and comprise everything necessary to influence markets full of buyers. Sales budgets and personnel should be accountable for and comprise everything necessary to influence individual deals. 

Eliminate these distinctions and marketing won't have time to figure out how to influence markets full of buyers -- they'll be too busy being sales support people. If Sales needs help to win individual accounts, this role needs to be fulfilled through a sales support organization.

It is easy to see when all of the members of a go-to-market team are functioning in their separate but related roles. The company can launch new products, capture the market share it deserves, enter new segments, capitalize on opportunities from mergers and acquisitions, and get through a market downturn with significantly less stress than its competitors. 

To create a functional go-to-market team, try to get management to define these basic roles and responsibilities for each of four groups, regardless of their job titles or reporting relationships. Then use a clear description of the buyer, documented in a buyer persona profile, to focus the team on the task at hand -- doing something useful for the buyers who can get us out of this mess.

Building buyer personas bit by bit

Here's the gist of an email I just received from Jennifer, a product marketing manager at one of the oldest, largest technology companies in the world.

"I had a call with our team this past week to get started on a user video for one of our products. Except for me, the rest of the team was very product/engineering focused. I was the champion of the non-technical end user."

Prior to the call what I did was flush out a persona profile for the user and send it around to the team for their agreement and/or input. Everyone agreed to the persona.

Because we had already decided on the elements of the persona, we were able to decide what not to include in the user video."

Kudos to Jennifer. With a minimal investment in an "ad hoc" persona, she solved some of the problems that confound every tech industry marketer, namely:

1. She avoided the time and friction that inevitably accompanies a project guided by a team whose only reference point is deep knowledge of the product.

2. Given the circumstances, she created content that has the best possible chance of being relevant to the company's target buyers.

Persona purists may be distressed that I'm recommending such a "research-free" approach to persona development. But think about the alternatives available to Jennifer. If she had tried to delay the project and justify a full-fledged research project, what would have happened? She would have been turned down and the video would have been made anyway.

Note that the key to Jennifer's success is that she asked the group to collaborate and agree on relevant details about the persona before they met to discuss the video. Once the committee members approved the persona, it was a natural outcome for them to rely upon its details for subsequent decisions.

You'll get no argument from me about the value of in-depth interviews to support buyer persona profiles. But in the absence of time, budget or other resources, isn't it a good idea to identify and align around whatever data exists about the buyer? Aren't ad hoc personas a perfectly reasonable approach when the risk of being wrong is small?

Over time and with a bit of commitment, the validity and details about an ad hoc persona can be continuously improved. Messaging, segmentation and program strategies derived from personas can be monitored for insights that feed back into the persona profile itself.  We may not like it, but stealth mode is frequently the most pragmatic way to approach a strategically critical, non-urgent task.

Marketers need to get proactive

Given this economic crisis, its highly probable that management is worried about sales forecasts and thinking about marketing budget cuts.

There are three ways for marketers to respond.

1. Shorten "the list" -- Eliminate selected marketing activities until spending does not exceed the new budget.

2. Go into "sales support mode" -- Do whatever it takes to help a few reps close a few deals. 

3. Reassess the "marketing strategy"-- Ensure that the company is targeting the market segments that are most likely to invest in its solutions during this economic downturn. Then weigh every marketing investment against its potential to influence sales effectiveness in that segment. Reject any activity that doesn't have a high score and submit a revised plan to management. Finally, show management how you will measure the effectiveness of their investment.

The first two responses appear safe and might buy enough time to survive a short-term reduction in business activity. But if the pundits are right about the severity of the current economic situation, marketers who choose to do what's asked rather than what's needed are putting their jobs and companies at risk.

We can cancel all of the marketing activities we want -- when times get tough internal stakeholders will still question the value of whatever remains. And when a marketer stops to help one sales person close one deal, he's trading the value of a single sale against the work he could be doing to improve the performance of the entire sales force.

Marketers frequently ask me how often they need to revise their insights into their buyers. I always reassure them that buyer's problems don't change that often. While vendors are frequently focused on the potential of their latest new product, their buyer's big concerns haven't changed a bit. In fact, it takes a significant external event to change a buyer's priorities and challenges.

I sometimes mention Enron and the subsequent enactment of Sarbannes-Oxley as an example of an event that impacted priorities for a whole lot of buyers. Fortunes were made by the companies that altered their segmentation, messaging, and program strategies to address these buyers' problems.

It looks like I've got a new and far more potent example of a problem that marketing can resolve. It will be nice when the details of this financial downturn can be retold as a story that happened once upon a time. But we're not there yet. Marketers have a choice to make about how this story impacts their own careers and companies. Those who are proactive internally and grounded in their buyers' realities have the best chance to create a happily-every-after ending.

Technorati Tags: marketing budget,market segmentation,sales support

iPhone messaging misses its target

I often point to Apple when people ask me for examples of companies that do great marketing. But I just learned that Apple's launch of the 3G iPhone into Japan violated my most important rule -- Apple planned the launch without grokking the buyers in that market. 

The results are compelling. While demand for the iPhone exceeds supply in many parts of the world, in Japan, where 50 million cell phones are sold each year, inventory is stacked on shelves and only 200,000 have been sold. 

Apple was smart to skip Japan when it launched its first generation iPhone -- it didn't operate on the 3G wireless networks that had long been the standard there. One wonders, therefore, why Apple expected their target buyers to respond to a campaign that highlighted this capability.

Apparently no one stopped to think that the cell phone buyer persona in Japan is different than in the U.S. It would have been pretty easy to find out that Japanese buyers frequently use their phones to watch digital TV programs.  With a minimum of research, Apple could have anticipated the difficulty of competing in a market where many phones include chips for debit card transactions and train passes. After all, this is a place where trains are a part of daily life, credit cards are rarely accepted, and debit cards are the primary currency.

To compound the difficulty, the iPhone is more expensive than its competitors in Japan. Maybe Apple thought that the online software store would be valuable enough to justify the higher price. If only they had known that their target buyers are reluctant to shop online.

Analysts expect Apple to end this year with less than half of their projected volume for the iPhone in Japan, and I'm looking for a better answer to the question about which companies are great marketers.