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This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
When developing a successful B2B sales strategy, it is essential to make sure you’re targeting the right people. Buyer personas provide a blueprint for understanding your target market and converting prospects into customers.
This blog will help you get started with building your well-defined B2B buyer persona. We’ll cover the following topics:
Learn how to build a strong brand experience with our downloadable guide.
A buyer persona is a collection of demographic, firmographic, and psychographic information that helps you define the organizational roles, needs, and goals of your target audience.
Demographic Information is quantitative information about an individual, including age, gender, income, location, and language.
Firmographic Information is quantitative information about a company including industry, size, location, structure, and performance.
Psychographic Information is qualitative information about individuals including personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle
Each type of data offers key insights into your prospect’s purchasing behavior. While some of them — like job title or industry — might seem obvious, combining that information with more qualitative data can help you hone in on the exact type of pitch that will turn a prospect into a client.
To put it simply, buyer personas lead to increased revenue and happier customers. According to data gathered by Cintell, companies that utilize well-defined buyer personas see the following results:
Not only do buyer personas increase revenue, they lead to a better overall customer experience as you can tailor your pitch to their specific needs:
75% of B2B buyers say that the winning vendor’s content has a significant impact on their buying decisions
48% of buyers are likely to choose solution providers who market to their specific needs
84% of buyers say that customer experience is just as important as products and services
Now that you understand the importance of a well-defined buyer persona, let’s look at the research that goes into creating one.
Defining your ideal customer is all about conducting comprehensive market research. This is how you will ensure that your buyer persona is rooted in fact. As we discussed earlier, a well-defined customer profile is comprised of demographic, firmographic, and infographic data. To gather this data, you will need to conduct both quantitative and qualitative research.
Quantitative research consists of hard facts about the individuals and organizations you want to target — including demographic and firmographic information like job titles, location, industries, and company sizes.
When conducting ideal customer research, it’s best to start with data gathered from your organization. Your company’s CRM holds valuable insights that can help you identify patterns in the traits of current customers. You can also leverage social media tools like Meta Business Suite and LinkedIn Page Analytics to see who interacts with your social media content.
Third-party data can help you identify ideal customers on a wider scale. Business intelligence services like Google Trends can show you how buyers search for solutions, while manually browsing LinkedIn can help you uncover leads that match your buyer persona.
Quantitative data, however, is just one component of building your buyer persona. Qualitative data is equally important and can uncover the nuances in your target market.
Qualitative research consists of finding data that cannot be measured in hard numbers. This is how you’ll discover the psychographic information that is essential to a well-defined B2B buyer persona, including values, attitudes, lifestyle, and nuances that can make or break their decision to purchase.
To conduct qualitative research, you’ll need to collect insights directly from your target audience. Interviews and surveys are very valuable, as they allow you to hear directly from clients about what drives their purchasing decisions. And, best of all, you can collect this first-party while adding to both your pipeline and revenue stream. How? Through Sales Development Representatives.
Sales Development Representatives, or SDRs, speak directly to hundreds of people within a company’s sales pipeline each day. Their job is to gather information about prospective clients, identify needs, and demonstrate how your organization can meet those needs. They are the key to building both your buyer persona and your sales pipeline.
EBQ’s outsourced SDRs helped SaaS company Members Private Sale identify decision-makers in the federal credit union industry. Though they determined that this target market was not an ideal fit for their auto loan lead generation solution, they gathered essential data that allowed Members Private Sale to quickly change direction.
Now that you’ve conducted your ideal customer research, it’s time to start building your B2B buyer persona. These tips will help you synthesize the information you’ve gathered into a cohesive and well-defined audience for your SDRs to target.
Some of the most essential information that you’ll need to gather is also the most basic. Start by determining the job title, company industry, and company size of the people and organizations you want to target.
Keep in mind that you may need to use multiple approaches: if your buyer persona is most focused on adding value, it is best to target a VP. Conversely, if you want to highlight technical benefits, director-level personas can be more effective. Different industries will require different strategies as well: for example, you must be tactical about reaching out to decision-makers in construction and agriculture as they might spend limited time in their office.
For more information on tailoring specific buyer personas, read our Ultimate B2B Appointment Setting Guide.
You can learn a lot about your ideal customer by understanding the social media platforms and online resources that they use. LinkedIn is the best place to connect with professionals, and paid media strategies like boosted posts can be highly effective at reaching them in a familiar place. Other resources, like industry publications, are a great way to join the conversation and demonstrate value through a cohesive strategy.
Keyword research is a vital tool to understand how your target market utilizes search engines. Top search engine tools like Semrush and Moz can help you find keywords and phrases that catch your audience’s attention, especially when looking for solutions similar to yours. Then, incorporate those keywords into your sales collateral to present a uniform pitch that will resonate with your target audience.
This is where psychographic profiles come in handy. By understanding the messaging that resonates with your target audience, you can keep them engaged throughout the sales process. Collateral like e-books and worksheets can offer valuable information about your solutions. Then, map your customer journey to duplicate success and learn from shortcomings as you pursue future prospects.
Every organization has a list of goals they want to achieve in both the short and long term. Showing exactly how your solution can help them reach those goals will not only demonstrate an understanding of their needs but will also get them excited about the possibilities of working with your organization.
Another element of psychographic profiles is the ability to understand your prospect’s attitude, tone, and emotions. Forming a more personal connection can make prospective buyers feel at ease during the sales process, as they will feel understood and will show greater trust.
Is your persona in a role with heavy time constraints? Be direct, professional, and focus on demonstrating value. Is your persona preoccupied with organization? Lean into the more organizational features of your product.
The sales process is rarely smooth, so the best B2B buyer personas must consider any obstacles that may prevent a prospect from becoming a customer. Knowing your ideal customer’s pain points is key to demonstrating your value and ultimately winning their business. Personalized marketing efforts that speak to specific industry pain points can help you overcome any bumps along the way.
Sometimes, decision-makers can be hesitant to change. A strong buyer persona recognizes the potential for uncertainty, which prepares your sales team to address their concerns through your messaging. For example, if your persona is questioning whether or not your solution will actually improve operations, it can help to pull up a side-by-side comparison to truly illustrate the benefits.
This summary will provide a deeper understanding of your persona’s day-to-day responsibilities, habits, and behaviors. Not only does it give you key insights on how to tailor your sales message, but it also helps to humanize your persona and see them as less of an abstract concept. Consider aspects like scheduling conflicts, where they are working (at home, in an office, or somewhere else), and meeting frequency to create a follow-up cadence that works.
Sometimes, even the most well-thought-out pitch can fall victim to organizational barriers. Budget constraints, legal questions, and multi-step approval processes can hinder your sales process. Understanding your persona’s organizational process before you set the initial appointment keeps your whole team on the same page and reduces the amount of work needed to close a sale.
Learn how to build a strong brand experience with our downloadable guide.
Today, customers have more options and more information at their fingertips than ever before. Thankfully, so do sales professionals. A well-defined B2B buyer persona leaves no stone unturned to truly learn your target audience inside and out, and it will make for a more successful sales journey.
As the business landscape changes, your buyer persona must adapt. Continuously check in on your personas to ensure they are accurate, and if they need to be updated, these steps will help you get back to closing deals with ease.
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