Buyer Personas Research That Positions
You for B2B Content Marketing Success
Dig deep into the five rings of buyer insight to enrich your marketing with actionable, in-depth insight.
What many marketers think of as buyer personas are just rough character sketches based on internal discussion, or conjecture.
It’s no wonder that when marketers use those personas to drive a content marketing strategy, things don’t work out as planned.
A quality buyer persona isn’t a psychographic or a profile, it’s a deep exploration your customer’s buying process, from the decision to seek a solution, to engaging with the various offerings, evaluation, and purchase decision.
I conduct my studies through the
Buyer Persona Institute
93% of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals segment their database by buyer persona.
Using buyer personas makes websites 2-5 times more effective and easier to use by the target audience.
- Hubspot
A Proven System for Buyer Persona Development
I'm a researcher at the Buyer Persona Institute. The system that Adele Revella has developed for building actionable buyer personas is the gold-standard for persona development.
What distinguishes the Buyer Persona institutes model from other strategies?
Let’s start with the 5 Rings of Buyer Persona Development.
Priority Initiatives
What compelled your prospect into action. Why did they decide to begin to allocate their budget in a way that put your company on their radar?
Success Factors
Go beyond just benefits, you’re need to talk about the things that your buyer found most interesting and narrow your messaging to what matters.
Perceived Barriers
What concerns are preventing your buyers from feeling they can’t achieve their goals? Why would buyers choose another company?
Decision Criteria
Which attributes of the product or solution did your buyer focus on when they were doing their research? What made them choose your over the competition?
Buyers Journey
Which resources do your buyers trust as they weigh their options? Don’t just focus on the sales process, but dig into the resources that helped them make their decision.
How to Plan a Buyer Persona Study
You don’t need lots of buyer personas to effectively market your products or services. For a typical unsegmented study, you should plan on conducting on average around 10 interviews to develop a quality buyer persona. If you’re segmented your study, then you’re going to need 6 – 8 interviews for each segment.
When should you segment a buyer persona study?
Can you afford to implement a marketing strategy that targets multiple personas?
Do you have stakeholders who are responsible for different markets?
Do you not know how many personas you need? You may discover you need more through the interview process
Who to Include in Your Buyer Persona Study?
Before you start building buyer personas, you should make sure that the right people will be available for the interview process. To build quality personas, you’re going to want the right mix of interviewees.
Existing Customers
These folks are likely to accept an interview because they’re happily working with you already. But you don’t want just people who are enthusiastic customers, so choose people who you think considered other solutions carefully.
Prospects Who Didn't Chose Your Company
Maybe the most important group of interviews, this group can give you excellent insights into where your solutions fell short and why prospects end up choosing the competition, giving you a deep view of your entire addressable market.
Prospects Who Stopped Considering You
Typically the lowest value of your interview cohort, this group is made up of prospects who downloaded your white papers and then went quiet. While you won’t reliably get valuable insights from this group, it’s still useful to have some in your study.
Actionable Marketing Insights and Intelligence
Content marketing takes time, expertise, and sustained effort to make an impact. To help you achieve that consistency, most businesses rely on an external partner, like BIOS Marketing & Communications.