Understanding who your key customers are so that your company can anticipate (or just simply meet) their needs is something that a surprising number of organisations still struggle with.
And yet this understanding clearly is fundamental, both to the organisation’s survival and its future success.
Creating customer profiles is nothing new; the market research industry has been doing it for years, based on social-demographic, geographical or gender information. Unfortunately, a lot of these profiles relied on broad generalisations, mainly because the data wasn’t available to drill down further, and offer a more granular interrogation of attitudes, behaviours etc.
Now, however, the data that helps detail buyer behaviour is widely available and it can be accessed relatively easily, often free of charge.
This information allows businesses to assemble what are essentially semi-fictional representations of their customers – typically known as buyer (or customer) personas.
Personas have a huge value to any organisation. They not only enable businesses to focus investment and marketing resources where they will make greatest impact, they (personas) also allow all parts of the business and its agencies to be aligned behind, and focused on, meeting customer needs. Personas help define the offering, the value exchange, the marketing promotion, and they support customer acquisition and retention.
The Key to Buyer Personas
The key to creating a good buyer persona is to start by identify precisely who you are profiling and why.
This isn’t as simple as some may believe. Stating that, as a B2B brand, you’re interested in targeting “big construction companies” is too vague! If you’re aiming to be a supplier to those businesses, you need to know the specific job holders by title who you need to reach. This allows you to target them personally. You can show that you know what they need to do their job and how you can help. You can demonstrate that you understand what challenges they typically face, potential key influencers in decision-making processes, and how you have tailored your offering to meet their needs.
Constructing Persona Beliefs
To build an accurate buyer persona you need to understand not just the macro-environment in which they operate, but also the micro-environment. Macro- issues relate to things like the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legislative environment they function within (commonly known by the acronym PESTLE).
Micro- issues are closer to home, and include the company, its suppliers, marketing intermediaries, competitors, the public, and its customers. I would personally also include expectations for customer experience and at least a nod to personal motivations, especially when it comes to shaping service and brand promises. Plus, of course, COVID has blurred the lines between family and work and this may have changed both attitudes within your target market and their priorities.
To pull this together, you should spend time gathering the data and while desk research is great, it should be coupled with in-depth insights from people who are close to the target market. For example, commercial teams are a great (readily available) sounding board. Review your CRM for broader insights into your current customer base. Depending on your available resources, you can commission market research, conduct observational surveys, run focus groups, and/or talk to trade associations and magazine editors (if you know them well enough!) about the key issues for their membership and readership.
Google Analytics and Google Ads are other helpful tools for developing personas. As well as providing you with a better understanding what channels visitors are using to find a company, you can also identify issues they want to solve from the search terms they use and the webpages they visit etc. Plus, there is helpful related information about visitors’ geographic locations, demographics and even personal interests.
Example Buyer Persona
An example of a persona profile is below for a SaaS payroll supplier into HR:
Who is the customer? Consider demographic information such as age, gender, salary, location, education and family/marriage status.
What do they do? Consider behaviours as well as careers, hobbies etc. For example: an HR manager for mid-sized (50 to 249 employees) company who spends most of her down-time with her family. Typically active on social media to share family pictures and stay in touch with friends. However oblique this may sound, it might go to the root of establishing an emotional connection with a potential buyer (people still buy people, even in B2B!).
What is their outlook on life and what is important to them? Consider their attitudes. For example:
Primary: supporting her family; juggling their priorities with work is a constant struggle.
Secondary: being successful – she’s an intelligent individual with boardroom aspirations
What challenges does she have to overcome in her work currently? For example, there may be a skills shortage in her sector, and/or she may need to reduce staff turnover, or even manage remote-working staff. How might she tackle this? Internal communications/employee engagement? Monitoring absenteeism etc? Her department may be small and her time may be very stretched.
How you help them achieve their goals? In terms of your offering, this might include staff surveys, offering a platform to facilitate better communications, the ability to export data for management reports etc.
In terms of your delivery, it could be you guarantee to respond quickly to all requests for support (so she doesn’t have to stay late); clearly clarifying the benefit/s and how they will impact on employee engagement; conducting regular reviews to help ensure ROI and of course ensuring the results are shared with key influencers (e.g. senior staff) to galvanise further insights.
Challenges for us to serve? These could be graded into primary and secondary challenges.
Primary: we’re only as good as the quality of our platforms/reporting. Staying ahead of industry developments so we are on the front foot.
Secondary: becoming a trusted and integral part of her team. Ensuring we follow systems and processes required by the company eg. all our work must be backed by SMART objectives.
How you meet those challenges? This might include: routine one-to-ones with her immediate line manager/director (ie. a key influencer); collecting data (KPIs) during the campaign to ensure that progress against objectives can be measured.
Which channels is she active in? Keep in mind the idea of today’s customers’ preference for an omnichannel experience from you, from social media to subscribing to enewsletters for commentaries.
What is her preference for working behaviours? Her persona might stipulate that she isn’t a butterfly and doesn’t rush to be part of the next big thing. She prefers tried and tested channels with a bit of educated experimentation. She likes clear, professional, strategic advice, well-presented. She prefers face to face interaction so (especially with regular reviews) might be expensive to serve.
Does she have the potential to be a net promoter/advocate? Consider her network and how frequently she interacts with others. Does she recognise and recommend good service? Might she provide a LinkedIn recommendation?
Organisations commonly create a number of buyer personas to profile different types of customer, although they will have to prioritise. How you do that depends on your commercial and/or marketing objectives. It could be based on financial value, or it may be more intangible (e.g. reputational). It’s clearly important that they are aligned with your vision, mission, values and purpose, and that they buy into your brand proposition and personality.
Finally, bear in mind that a buyer persona needs to be kept under review. Customers’ needs are very likely to change – think about the pandemic and how quickly businesses have had to pivot their offerings according to needs adjusted to lockdown. The process of developing and maintaining personas should be a dynamic one.
