B2B Buyer Persona Development
What exactly is buyer persona development?
B2B buyer persona development is the process of gathering insightful information about your potential buyers. It’s much more than personalized marketing based on demographics. When done properly, it’s like getting inside the minds of your buyers and learning why and how they evaluate products like yours and make buying decisions.
The truth is, you will never develop a successful digital marketing strategy without this information.
Understanding the buyer persona can also drive more effective sales conversations because salespeople have a clearer picture of the buyer’s journey, triggers and pain points.
Think you know your buyers? You may be surprised at what you don’t know.
Business owners and experienced sales professionals tend to assume they understand their buyers. Here’s why you really don’t: even when you have established a good rapport and working relationship, there’s a lot your prospects don’t tell you. For example:
- the personal reasons behind business decisions
- who is really driving the decision
- why they are unsure about your product or your company
HELLO Marketing’s lead generation process begins with B2B buyer persona development, designed to get to the truth about what your buyers think, feel, want and need. We then use the valuable gems of insight gained from buyer persona development to guide your digital marketing strategy and content creation.
Buyer insights are the “secret sauce” that enables successful marketing
Does your marketing content (including your website, emails, blogs, and sales materials) address the needs of your prospects as they move through the sales process? Without accurate and specific buyer insights, you have no way of knowing. Effective marketing personalization requires a deep understanding of your buyers. That’s why B2B buyer persona development is essential to digital marketing success. Here’s what it reveals:
- What your buyers care about (so you can provide content that they want to read or watch online).
- What resources they trust (so you can be where they are online).
- What their buying process looks like (so you can overcome obstacles and help them complete the process faster).
- What they want and need to know as they move through the buying process (so you can deliver the right resources at the right time).
To achieve your sales goals, persona-based marketing must serve up targeted content to the right prospects at the right time.
Our B2B buyer persona development process: how we get the truth
There’s no better way to understand what your prospects want and need than to talk with real buyers. That includes both the people you successfully sold to and the ones who went with a competitor. Unfortunately, it’s tough for companies to do this on their own.
At HELLO Marketing, we have developed a highly successful method for persona development that includes getting interviews with your real buyers and learning what your salespeople can’t. We then aggregate the data collected from all interviews and create an accurate picture of your buyer to drive your marketing strategy.
Spoiler alert: Often the B2B buyer persona development process reveals more than one buyer persona, each with distinct insights that must inform your marketing strategy. Personas diverge when your company serves multiple vertical markets, but also because of less obvious factors, such as differing roles within their organization.
Get insider secrets about HELLO Marketing’s unique B2B buyer persona development process: