B2B Buyer Personas How to Create Them for Every Budget

Introduction

A B2B buyer persona is a construct that represents your perfect customer, developed by observations from market analysis and data collected from your existing client base. It is the way you want your actual customers to be, and a starting point for identifying them in real life. The ideal customer can be attained, but with sufficient strategizing and research-driven approaches to customize the sales pitch accordingly, and convert such individuals over time.

The buyer persona conversation revolves around the motivations behind your ideal customer, the utility your product or service will provide to them, and how they prioritize buying new items. Ultimately, it is up to you to pull together all the information you have gathered, and decide on the client profile that should be targeted.

Where to Start When Creating Strong Buyer Personas

It can be overwhelming to decide on the best possible channels to collect and examine data in a way that is beneficial for creating buyer personas. In the early stages of brainstorming B2B buyer personas, it’s important to keep in mind that one brand’s solution may not work for the next. This may require you and your team to revisit options and have a trial run of certain features, before determining the successful combination.

Here is a look at some of the top ways to construct solid buyer personas irrespective of your company or industry.

• Examine all the Existing Data Closely. A great place to start is the contacts information you have saved over the course of your business. In case you don’t have the technical know-how to execute basic analysis, there’s always the option to hire an external vendor to support you and share key insights from the data set. In short, you look at the data to track down major trends displayed by customers over time. For instance, you may find that women aged between 25-35 years are purchasing more of a skincare product versus those aged 40 and above. There might be overlaps in the customer base, including their gender, industry and professional backgrounds.
• Get Feedback from Different Teams. To gain a deeper understanding of the kind of buyer persona that works for your brand, it’s important to have one on one discussions with multiple departments in the organisation like marketing, accounting, HR, and others. Each of them play a part in enhancing the customer experience, and they are well-placed to share observations on frequent clients. In particular, take more time to hear from your sales and marketing team as they have first-hand interactions with all customers and potential ones.
• Interview the Loyal Clients. Find out the details of the first ten or fifteen of your longest and best clients, then spend some time interviewing them to find out their likes and dislikes about your product, what you can improve, and what made them decide to buy your product. This type of data is vital to have a comprehensive take on what the ideal customer is for every budget.
• Take the Data Collection Methods to the Next Level. The techniques you use to collect data can make or break your conception of a B2B buyer persona. It’s important to invest time and energy into appropriate mediums for data collection, for both prospects and existing clients. With digital technology, collecting data is extremely convenient, but the type of questions you ask in the web form will make a real difference in the value it brings. Form fields you can include are, what platforms they frequent most for their shopping needs, or if they work in a certain industry. 

When you have all the data you require, you will have to monitor common patterns that emerge in findings and pull together the main buyer personas.

 

Utilizing Buyer Personas to Optimize Marketing Efforts

Are there ever times when aren’t sure what to do with content? Do you have a strategy in place to assess whether outreach is working or not? There are many organizations that face similar challenges with finding clarity regarding audience engagement and content strategy. Building and tracking the best buyer personas can make a noticeable difference in the overall structure of your sales and marketing plan. 

Use effective buyer personas in the following ways:

• Connect the Language. It’s not enough to simply share content among your audiences. You need to assess the tone and style of the branding, and keep it consistent in a way that prospects can understand. Whether it is for social media networks, online articles or other offline mediums.
• Break Up the Campaigns. Email marketing works wonders for marketing efforts and scales up engagement. A great way to maximize on audience segments is by tailoring emailers based on the personas you have researched, and the appropriate emailing lists. You can provide offers and discount deals for specific personas so there’s more sales.
• Consider the Timing. Your market research must be able to determine the best possible time for your organisation to approach prospective customers or repeat customers, with customized emailers, coupon deals and other marketing communication materials. Delve into the daily routines of your target audience, and track special occasions such as holidays, vacations, and breaks.
• Find Channels that are Favourites. Every company knows where their buyer personas like to hang out most. Analyse the collected data to figure out which social media platform they prefer, i.e. is it Facebook or LinkedIn? Do they log into social media at all or spend more time listening to the radio? The key is to learn where customers go to get information can be extremely beneficial. If you can pinpoint the channel, you will be able to see what kind of information people like to see best. In addition, you would be able to plan which medium to utilize for aggressive marketing, whether it is billboards, or paid advertising on social media.

• Nurture Solid Networks. The B2B world is driven by co-branding and well-planned partnerships that expand opportunities to market the product among wider audiences. A strategic way to do this is choosing partnerships that will truly work to your advantage and give you a competitive edge.

Strategic Marketing Needs a Buyer Persona Template

There are often buyer persona templates available online, that you can take as a first cut to creating more tailored profiles for your specific brand. Explore the type of fields the template includes, and alter it on the basis of a keyword search for future content marketing approaches. It is essential to have a keen understanding of who your perfect customer is, and the type of decisions they will take to choose your product.

Innovative technology has revolutionized ways in which customers search for and consume information, by offering myriad opportunities to share the product directly with buyers today. As competition becomes fiercer, buyer personas can lead the way for providing timely and effective content to interested clients, and make a significant impact. Buyer persona templates allow sales professionals and marketing experts to clearly comprehend the kind of customers to watch out for, and track their priorities more intuitively.