Get more out of your digital marketing with a clear picture of your ideal customers.
The best way to maximize your digital marketing investment is to properly target the right people at the right stage of their buyer’s journey. Buyer personas B2B sales can help you do just that.
To do it effectively, you must understand who your ideal customers are and what they care about. That’s where buyer personas come in.
Buyer personas are a representation of different types of customers written to convey not only their demographic data but also their concerns and pain points. Painting a vivid picture takes research.
Here are tips for collecting information about your ideal customers:
Talk to customers and prospects. Ask about their challenges and their needs, either in person or on the phone.
Interview your sales team. They know your existing customers better than anyone. Ask them to document all the details they can about each of their clients.
Send out surveys. Email an online survey to your existing customers. Offering a discount or sample product is a good incentive for customers to complete all the questions.
Update any forms on your site. If you have forms on your website, add form fields that capture the most important qualifying information possible.
Conduct traditional market research. Investing in focus groups with your target customers can uncover new insights.
What details should be included in B2B buyer personas?
Start with basic demographic information that identifies your ideal customers, then add insights that help you truly understand them. You should also highlight the unique characteristics of each persona to help your sales team quickly identify which one applies to their prospects. From there, they can adjust their pitch to address the persona’s unique pain points.
Here are the most important details that every B2B buyer persona should have:
- Job title
- Gender
- Age range
- Location
- Interests outside of work
- Education level
- Income level
- Relationship status
- Goals
- Major challenges they face in their job
- What keeps them up at night
- What solution or information they are missing
- What motivates them to make a purchase
- What concerns they have about a potential solution
- What objections they have to making a change
Remember, a buyer persona is a composite of your ideal customer, not a rigid set of criteria that every prospect must meet.
Robust B2B buyer personas will help you make tactical decisions, such as the best messaging to communicate, which images to use, what type of content they will find interesting, what B2B sales strategies to pursue and much more.
Pro tip: Write a messaging framework for each one of your buyer personas that aligns your marketing and sales efforts. Find out how here.
The Marketing Blender is a full-service B2B marketing agency focused on accelerating growth for clients in manufacturing, healthcare, software and professional services.
Interested in FREE advice that will help you propel your sales? Contact us today!
