Steps To Build Modern B2BMarketing Personas

A classic tool, the marketing persona is overdue for

a modern overhaul. If you’re a product marketing

expert and wondering how to manage personas,

here are the tips:

1. Use persona maps to formalize tribal knowledge.

If you don’t know what your sales, marketing, and

product managers think they know, you can’t test

those insights against market reality. Map your

personas and find out what customer-facing

employees learn from prospects and customers

daily. Persona maps are an especially good way

to confirmwho sales really sells to.

2. Get real with personas.

Beware of the echo chamber. If you target

personas on gut instinct or tribal input only, be

ready for a roller coaster ride. Marketing will be at

the mercy of the most vocal voices in your

company. You’ll find yourself guessing at why you

win or lose deals. So, go out and conduct persona

interviews at a minimum. Better still, conduct

actual primary market research. If you’re investing

big bucks in product development or marketing

programs to reach your buyers, it’s well worth the

cost.

3. Humanize personas.

The very word “persona” sounds like awkward

marketing jargon. So you have to make this real for

your colleagues. How? Conduct persona interviews.

Record these sessions with their permission. Then

use quotes, the recordings, and summaries to offer

critical insight to your sales teams and other

stakeholders. This is what makes your data and

insights real. Your marketing will be better when

you have both qualitative and quantitative

insights.

4. Don’t let persona creation stall strategy.

Some marketers pause planning and execution to

conduct complex persona mapping. We applaud

the due diligence, but don’t hit pause while you

profile buyers. Persona research should make your

current efforts smarter. Plan ahead for best results

in designing go to market plans based on persona

insights. If you reach planning season without

fresh persona insights, you can still quickly map

what the tribe thinks as a stop-gap effort.

5. Go digital with personas.

Everyone has ways to learn about new trends and

needs. These most certainly include digital

“watering holes.” Your B2B content, online

marketing, and digital tactics must reach buyers

across relevant digital channels as well as

traditional channels. Most B2B marketers get this.

The trick is to truly understand and explore how

digital marketing and sales enablement are

completely intertwined.

6. Make personas pragmatic.

The only goal of mapping personas is to drive real

work. Your persona maps should include real titles

of professionals–by role and rank. This helps

demand gen teams target specific people. After all,

we market to people. Also, you should audit your

CRM and Marketing Automation databases for

the “hit rate” of the persona titles you mapped.

How many of your target titles are already

customers and prospects? If you can’t see them in

your databases, you’re not reaching the buyers

you want.

7. Create full funnel content plans for personas.

You can’t create meaningful content marketing

plans without knowing your buyers. In my book,

that’s the #1 reason why content marketing fails.

Once you map exactly who you’re targeting, audit

what content you have for these buyers. Be a very

tough grader for this work. Does your content

really talk to executives? How do you know? Once

you have a content heat map for these buyers, you

can create and fill the “gap map” of content for

your marketing and sales funnel.

8. Engage in execution of persona targeting.

Armed with your persona map, research, content

plans, and targeting lists — you’re off to the races.

But wait, there’s more! Do you know what’s really

working on your frontlines? Do your campaigns

drive high quality leads in your target buyer pool?

Is your sales team meeting with target buyers?

Stay close to the execution so that you support,

coach, and learn from your tribe as they execute.

9. Measure success of personamarketing.

As with everything in sales and marketing,

measure your success. How many more target

buyers bought your product? Are targeted buyers

converting better or faster throughout your

marketing and sales funnel? Set a baseline and

measure it.

10. Evolve personas actively.

Persona development can’t be an academic

exercise. Effective marketing teams use data, input

from the tribe, and experience to keep up with

buyers. If your marketing isn’t reaching them, it’s

time to update your insights or targeting. If your

marketing works, what’s next? How can you

optimize the customer experience? In short, your

work is never done. So, settle in for the marathon

and have fun mastering deeper insights into your

buyers.