Buyer Persona Blog

A new year, a new decade, a new chance to help buyers find answers to their problems

Judging by the current interest in buyer personas, 2010 could be the decade when companies realize the competitive advantage that belongs to those companies that have the deepest insight into their target buyers.

Armed with a well-researched buyer persona, the newly competitive company would know that a technical buyer isn’t impressed when the company’s website or marketing materials simply state that a solution is “interoperable” or “scalable.” These marketers would have detailed knowledge about how the technical buyer has been struggling with specific scalability or integration challenges. Imagine the value of the marketing copy this team could create – connecting the buyer’s needs to the unexplored merits of the company’s approach.

Similarly, our competitive company would know that an economic buyer isn’t impressed by copy that simply announces that a solution will increase revenues or reduce expenses. This marketer has deep insight into what this type of buyer has been doing to manage the bottom line, including how the economic buyer persona perceives the alternatives. So the marketer can now communicate that another approach is available, beginning a relationship that continues when the sales people, who have been well-trained to understand how the economic buyer thinks about these issues, make the first sales call.

This will require real work on buyer personas, of course – not the fluffy stuff that is permeating the blogosphere. Maybe its helpful for some B2C companies to know their buyer’s hair color or hobbies, but for my vision to become reality for B2B companies, marketing needs buyer personas that provide deep insight into

• which problems the target buyers perceive as their highest priority
• the way each type of buyer is currently managing these problems
• why the problems persist in spite of current efforts
• how this type of buyer will respond to the company’s approach or solution

Most buyer personas fall far short of this level – what I call “grokking” – to the detriment of every subsequent step in the marketing process.

If buyer personas aren’t thoroughly developed, marketing activities are inevitably guided by the expectations of product-focused stakeholders. Buyer pain points are reverse-engineered from the capabilities of the solution. Marketing is frequently charged with the task of educating the buyers about the company’s version of their problem. 

B2B buyers obviously don’t derive any value from this form of marketing and there is no chance that it can create any competitive advantage for the vendors. Early in the buying process buyers are looking for written content, increasingly sought online, as a next step after a peer referral, or to help a mid-level manager produce a report requested by a senior executive. These buyers are looking for evidence of a close match between their view of the problem and the vendor’s solution, not lengthy explanations of the vendor’s view of “the problems in the industry today.”

With all of the emphasis on buyer personas, I’m looking forward to a year, maybe a decade, with increasingly powerful examples of content that simply and directly demonstrates the company’s ability to answer buyer problems. I’m looking forward to a new definition of competitive advantage where marketing plays a leadership role.

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.

Buyer personas get personal

Working on a buyer persona for a chief information officer last week, my client listed the predictable pain points on the flip chart -- shrinking budgets, conflicting priorities, legacy solutions that are difficult to integrate but costly to replace.

These aren't the real issues for Sam, I said. He’s been living with these problems for years – why would he be motivated to talk to you now? We explored the more personal side of this issue for Sam – could his job or career be compromised by sticking with the status quo? Which aspects of this decision look riskiest to Sam? What, exactly, is at stake if he makes a decision to go with your solution and it doesn’t work out?

I kept asking for deeper insight into Sam’s resistance to their solution. Sam knows about products such as yours, I said, so this isn’t about the obvious problems. Let’s talk about his attitudes and what it would it take to change those perceptions.

After a bit of discussion, my client said, “I get it! Buyer personas are about ‘stake-in-the-heart’ marketing.” A bit violent, I thought, but the people in the room suddenly understood that capturing the same old “pain-points” in their buyer persona renders it meaningless.

I’ve never seen a more interesting example of stake-in-the-heart marketing than this year’s U.S. presidential campaign. I confess that as a marketer I am predisposed to see the election through the lens of effective campaign strategy, but think about it. Can you see that the proposed answers to the country’s problems (health care, the economy, terrorism) are the candidate’s “feature-benefits,” crafted into messages that target different persona pain points? Do the differences in their plans fully account for your decision? Are their solutions new enough to explain the record numbers of people voting in the primaries? Or could it be that these candidates have managed to communicate on an entirely different level, and to audiences who are seeking something more?

With rare exceptions, the technology solutions I hear about each week are a lot like politicians – the differences between competing features and benefits aren’t enough to drive most people to take action. Plus buyers know that technology (and political) solutions are more difficult to implement than anyone wants to admit. Marketing needs to get personal if we want to convince buyers that our solutions can be trusted get the job done, come what may.

Demo on the first date, anyone?

I’ve been asked to talk about a narrow but controversial topic – whether products should be demonstrated at tradeshows. Some of my colleagues say that this is a bad idea, but I “never say never” when it comes to any marketing tactic. Instead, I evaluate the buying process for the products the company is marketing, outlining steps in a sensitive vendor/buyer dance that is a lot like the intricacies of dating. The best steps will differ greatly depending on the characteristics of the partners in the dance.

Think about it -- potential buyers engage in a series of interactions with vendors, with each positive date increasing the probability that the buyer will be willing to pursue the next phase of the relationship. Vendors are most vulnerable in the earliest phases, when the buyer hasn't invested a lot yet and can easily stop taking our calls. The buyer is constantly trying to learn more, moving ever closer to the decision that we could be their perfect partner. He doesn’t want to make the wrong choice, after all. This will be a long-term commitment and a bad marriage will be very difficult (and expensive) to dissolve. 

So where does the trade show fit in the dating process? The companies who are asking this question are wondering what to do with buyers who are out on their first date (Yes, I know, there are other dates going on at the show, but we’ll take that up another time.). It’s best to think of the trade show as a bar or speed-dating event, with fewer and fewer potential buyers allocating just a short time to each of several potential partners. No one is going to get married during the show, but prospective buyers will be narrowing down the field. Make the wrong move and we may never see them again. Present ourselves as the perfect potential fit, however, and this could be the start of something beautiful!

So I put myself in the shoes of the buyer (I do this with personas) and take a look at the demo through his eyes. Then I compare it to every other opportunity I might have to impress him. If the persona will be won over when he sees some aspect of my product (I’m thinking of the iPhone and some of my early adopter-friends, for instance), I’ll create a short demo that is optimized for his concerns. I can’t do this unless I’ve really grokked the buyer persona and can accurately predict the aspects of the product that will generate a positive experience. I keep the demo very short and have already outlined my plans for a second date. I’ve actually seen a few companies that can close deals at trade shows (amazing!) but I almost always have to go slow. Good relationships take time.

When more than one type of buyer persona will be attending the show, I plan for multiple demos, each precisely targeted to communicate something that will be highly valuable and quickly communicated. This is not the time or the place to tell my whole story – that is way too much information for the first date. 

Right-brained or left-brained marketing

I grew up thinking I’d be a fashion designer. My foray into the computer industry was accidental and (I thought) temporary. There’s a long story here, but the short version is that I came to appreciate the brilliant people and fascinating products in this industry. Tech marketing seemed like the perfect solution – keep my great paying job, work with interesting people, and if I went into marketing, I could spend my time being really creative.

These thoughts were triggered when one of my readers forwarded a paper published by Laura Ramos, Forrester Research’s analyst for B2B Marketing. The paper, entitled “Segmentation vs Personas, Where Should B2B Marketers Start?” reports that B2B marketers are way behind their B2C peers in developing effective messaging and marketing strategies, and that the source of our problem is that we don’t use both sides of our brain. I’m sure that Jonathan Asbell sent me the paper because Laura points to segmentation and personas as the answer. Thanks, Jonathan.

The Forrester report describes the typical B2B approach to segmentation, with marketers following the sales people's lead and utilizing industry, geography, or company size to identify target markets. B2C marketers start with this thinking but delve much deeper, seeking to understand and segment markets based on subjective differences in how customers approach decision making. In Laura’s report, she recommends personas as a way to capture and communicate these deeper insights.

Laura published her report in June 2006, but I haven’t seen much change. We’re still using the same left-brained thinking to develop marketing strategies, despite the fact that our markets are maturing. We’re not at B2C commodity stage yet, but we’re well beyond the time when we could successfully market and differentiate products based on the just-released features.

Since you’re reading my blog you may already agree with me, and are wondering what you can do to get your management to listen. I’m happy to recommend Laura’s report for those in your company who might be influenced by a Forrester analyst. Here’s one of my favorite parts of her report:

“Because segmentation defines who to target and personas describe what to say to them, B2B marketers should use both hard numbers and soft emotions to expand their customer understanding. They should delve deeper into prospect requirements and needs in exchange for handing out information like white papers or detailed product specs.”

Well said, Laura. We need to resist thinking like our left-brained companies. We need to abandon our personal preferences for right-brained, creative activities. It’s time for technology marketers to engage in some balanced brain utilization.

Blogging for buyer persona input

Kudos to Tim Buntel at Adobe for a series of blog posts about the buyer personas he needs to influence. After attending the Effective Product Marketing seminar, he developed a persona for a developer he named Chris and posted a description of the guy on his blog, Not Too Fluffy (love the Teddy Bear, Tim). The first of dozens of comments said that the post was "creepy" in its accuracy. More people chimed in with comments to confirm and build on Tim's original thesis. Tim's added a couple of new posts in the last few days to keep the conversation going and gain more input. This is a great example of leveraging the blogosphere to develop persona insights and engage buyers in a favorite pastime -- talking about themselves.

News feeds listen to the market for you

The best way to get to know your buyers costs nothing and takes no effort whatsoever. Establish a news feed (Google offers one, for instance) based on the keywords you think matter to your buyers. Set your preferences to get a daily emal with links to any new web content and blogs published on that subject. If you notice that there is a lot of information you don't want, refine the keywords until you see valuable results.

There is so much free, amazing information on the Web. Here's one example I found today -- a Ziff-Davis study that identifies the highest priority goals for CIOs in each of four areas: strategy, management, security and risk,  and technology. If you sell to senior IT people, this is good stuff --  free reports based on "thousands of interviews over the course of the last year."

Let's say you're marketing knowledge management solutions. Check out the technology report and you'll see that "improving the quality of our data" is one of the top IT priorities for 41% of the companies with revenues less than $100M, and only 25% of the companies with revenues over $1 billion. This doesn't mean that you should ignore the larger companies, but it does give you a way to estimate the size of your addressable market. Read on and you'll see that your ability to "convert raw data into accurate and actionable analysis" is a priority for 56% of respondents, while only 37% of them said that "managers often doubt the accuracy and reliabiity of the information." This is good information when you're choosing messages.

You don't want to make decisions based on any single data point, but spend a few minutes each day reading what's published online, and you'll start to see patterns that result in more effective  go-to-market strategies and optimze your PR, advertising, and marketing investments. No excuses now -- listening to the market is far too easy and important.

What the bleep is a buyer persona

Thank you for asking – this is definitely my favorite topic.

A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents the real audience – an archetype of the target buyer. Marketers can use buyer personas to clarify the goals, concerns, preferences and decision process that are most relevant to their customers. Imagine how effective marketers could be if we would all stop making stuff up and start aligning our messages and programs with the way real people think.

I certainly didn't invent this idea -- I've just seen it at work and am now a huge advocate. Design engineers frequently build user personas as a part of their product development process. The application of personas for marketing is less common, but hardly without precedent. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush successfully campaigned to the soccer mom persona during the 1992, 1996 and 2000 elections. By 2004, the soccer mom had morphed into a security mom persona as school violence and terrorism became big issues. The Presidents' campaign staffs used dozens of  personas like these to focus their messages and win more votes.

I hope that my use of political examples doesn't suggest that you need a huge budget for this to work. I know marketers in companies of every size who are building buyer persona profiles through informal methods that cost next to nothing. They started by seeing every on-line or in-person interaction with a potential buyer as an opportunity to listen and identify patterns. I started this blog so that I could communicate with marketers who are interested in using personas to think more strategically about how to go to market. I'll be talking about examples and practices that anyone can implement. Please contact me if you find something useful that I can include here.

Solution marketing should mean something

I'm looking for support for a new rule that restricts marketers from using the trendy "solution marketing" term until they can demonstrate that they know what problems their buyers want to solve. I don't know how this rule gets implemented, of course, but isn't everyone tired of the idea that a solution is just an internally convenient combination of products and services? How many marketers have used Microsoft Word to perform a "Find and Replace" function, substituting "solution" for "product" and, presto, the company is selling solutions!

Microsoft made my list of companies vying for a place on the short list of solution marketers when I saw this article in Redmond's Online Channel Partner last month. Apparently the company's 2007 go-to-market campaigns will be "inspired by what businesses need to accomplish rather than what Microsoft wants to sell." The article is written in the voice of their partners, those who have had to make up their own messages about why a particular buyer persona would care about the company's enterprise server applications or dynamic ERP solutions. Could it be that a company as big and successful as Microsoft has recognized the folly of messaging that is irrelevant to their buyers and confusing for their partners?

Microsoft's new strategy is to target specific non-IT business roles, such as the project manager or customer service director, delivering fewer campaigns and well-researched talking points by persona. The reaction from the partners who have always had to develop their own tools to communicate with the market? The tone of the article suggests guarded optimism. Me too.

In search of market-driven companies

I just read a great post from Sarah Nielsen at Buzzmetrics about a recent presentation by the Chief Marketing Officer of Virgin Mobile, USA. I didn't hear the presentation, but Sarah recaps it in detail, including facts about the teenage persona the company targeted when it entered the already-crowded U.S. cell phone market a few years ago. But the best part is that this huge, wildly successful company attributes their success to "thinking like the customer". They know their product is a commodity so they don't market the product. They identify their target market's priorities, understand how they relate to new ideas and information, and deliver their relevant message where the kids are.

The size of the market and budget vary dramatically, but every tech company can use this same simple process to dominate a target market or segment.