Do you fully understand your B2B buyer personas? If not, you could be missing out on some serious opportunities in your marketing campaigns. After all, 71% of companies who exceed revenue and lead goals have documented personas. Understanding your B2B buyer personas is a vital part of any effective marketing plan.
With the world of marketing becoming more reliant on data, relevancy, and personalization, there is no question whether you should sit down and create personas for your business.
Having a persona allows you to plan and execute your marketing campaigns with some very valuable insights in your toolbox that can help you:
Establishing your B2B buyer persona is the piece of the marketing puzzle that allows you to narrow down who you need to market to and how you can tailor your messaging and strategy to the needs of those people. The last thing you need is to be marketing to someone who will never buy from you and has zero interest in your product or service.
In order to understand your B2B buyer persona, you need to conduct some extensive research. Getting to know your persona is all about being open-minded and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes. Throw away any bias thoughts, personal preferences, and assumptions about the industry that you might have and then ask yourself:
Couple these kinds of questions with research on how your B2B buyer personas behave online and what their demographic might look like. Start by utilizing your current CRM system to see if you notice any kind of trends in your customer database. Maybe the majority are located in a specific area or have interacted with your business in similar ways. You can also use tools like Google Trends and Facebook Insights to get valuable analytics and data on what your personas are actively searching for and what they might look like demographically.
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Buyers are naturally drawn to businesses that they know and trust. To build that trust, you must show a comprehensive understanding and concern for your B2B buyer persona. Keep in mind that at the end of the day, these are people, people who are very complex, educated, and typically have a long sales cycle. This means that your research should be based on a long-term, well thought out strategy.
Related Reading: How to Master B2B Website Strategy and Drive Growth
It’s very common for businesses to have multiple personas, so don’t restrict yourself to just one. In fact, try to create as many as you can without going overboard. Distinguish your individual personas by things like their pain points, change drivers, and job status.
A great tool to use to create your B2B Buyer personas is Hubspot’s make my persona tool. This tool implements all the best practices of creating personas and gives you tips and tricks along the way. This tool includes metrics like your persona’s preferred communication method, tools they need to do their job, seniority level, and more.
Your buyer persona is the bedrock of your marketing strategy. It dictates which channels you will utilize, what kind of strategy you will create, how much you will spend — the list goes on and on! Learn how to speak your B2B buyer persona’s language and speak it fluently. Speaking their language makes your persona comfortable; it builds credibility and helps your company build that trust with them that will help lead you to success. The more you know about your B2B buyer persona, their industry, and their organization, the better equipped you are to market to them in an effective and personable manner.
New to buyer personas and incorporating them into your marketing or sales strategy? We can help. Chat with one of our experts today.