Audience and Buyer Personas: An Indispensable Asset in Your Marketing Toolkit
by Rebecca MacLeod, B2Launch CEO & Founder
Your company is great. You have amazing services and products, and you can’t wait to tell the world about it all! You’ve done your market research, you’ve identified your target market, your products are defined (though maybe not yet on market) and now it’s time to start telling people about it.
At this point, you’re probably thinking about how to package your product or service. You may create some descriptions of your offering, then begin thinking about how you’ll get all this terrific information out to the world.
Or, perhaps you’re still raising funds, so you are packaging everything into a tidy bundle to tell potential investors and customers why your product/service is so great. Look, you have the data to prove it!
This is all good stuff. These are critical foundational efforts to success. But the one thing missing at this point is having a deep understanding of your audience. I don’t mean titles, and I don’t mean target market. What I mean is: who are the people you want to talk to? What do they care about, and what makes them tick?
Rising Above the Information Barrage Through Empathy
It seems logical, right? As consumers ourselves, we know that the brands we resonate best with are the ones who understand us. The longterm relationships we have with brands goes beyond simple utility and into the realm of intuition.
In B2B marketing, creating this feeling of empathy and understanding is even more important. Buyers of complex, big ticket offerings are parsing through a lot of information. The nature of many of these solutions also means that sales cycle are often long.
B2B audiences are bombarded with information not only via channels they seek out intentionally, but also through invasive and off-target outreach. How many emails do you get each day with someone offering to solve your biggest business woes in a very generic fashion? Do these emails incite you to action beyond ignoring, unsubscribing or moving them to Junk? The answer is likely a resounding “no!”
So, how do we do it differently? Organizations and solutions that stand out and make a positive, lasting impression are the ones that go beyond meeting a perceived need. In order to be a relevant contender for mindshare, we must develop a sympathetic understanding of our audiences. Only then can we create a marketing platform and programs that will move the needle in the right direction for your organization’s long-term success.
Stand Out Today, Resonate for the Long-term
In working with numerous organizations over the last decade, we have found that robust audience and buyer personas have been a universal missing piece. Some companies think they’ve identified their personas, but when we look at a deeper level, there’s usually not much there beyond a brief description for the sales team to use to categorize a prospect.
The personas B2Launch works with companies to develop become a critical tool for all future marketing and business development programs. They are real-life profiles of the individuals you want to reach based on what you know about these people. They become the benchmark that all information you produce can be graded against. If what you’re creating and putting out in the world – be it website copy, product/service collateral, social media campaigns, blog content and even PR – doesn’t resonate with those audiences, it’s simply not going to be as impactful.
We have been struck time and time again by how robust personas can have a transformational impact on marketing efforts. Messaging and positioning begin to flow freely and gaining internal alignment with executive teams for critical marketing decisions start to happen with ease. From here, we also have all the information we need to know exactly how to reach your audiences from the moment they land on the Home page of your website, to the moment the business development team is able to have a conversation with them.
This is because we understand your audiences now on a deep level. And, if you’ve done it right, every stakeholder within the company who has insight into these people will have provided input, meaning that future interactions will also have impact.
Making the Human Connection
On the other side of every transaction your company makes are other human beings. In launching and marketing a company or product, it’s so easy to get excited about your offering and to forget the people on the other side of that deal. At a base level, each of us are human beings, not just customers or investors.
So, who are the people you want to know about your company? Once you have really good personas, it becomes easy to begin having a conversation with your audiences, whether they are investors, potential customers, future employees, regulatory bodies, or partners.
Developing Your Unique Audience and Buyer Personas
Audience personas should be created at the earliest stage possible, and the great news is...it’s never too late! Over the years, we have worked with organizations of all types to uncover their personas and have honed the process with each effort. We've learned a lot from the teams we've collaborated with and have seen that the need is universal, whether you're a pre-revenue entity, an established business, or a non-profit – and, personas are necessary whether your organization is B2B or B2C focused.
If you’re ready to really understand your audiences and transform your marketing efforts, B2Launch is here to help. Let’s get launching!
Interested in more B2B marketing best practices?
Check out this related blog: 5 Critical Marketing Efforts for Sustained Business Growth & Success.
Ready to take your marketing to the next level?
B2Launch delivers! Our experienced and talented team is here to create marketing magic for your organization. From audience discovery, messaging, and visual brand through logistics, design, copywriting, and on-going marketing support, we’ve got you covered.
This article is an update to an earlier version written and published by Rebecca MacLeod in 2017.
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