Do you know that potential businesses are more likely to buy from you when you personalize your product/service to address their needs?
Your marketing and sales campaign should be focused on attracting prospects and keeping them there.
But how can you do this?
As a business marketing to other businesses, how can you win the attention of a decision maker when they are receiving sales presentation daily, being marketed to online and more?
We call these decision makers / potential clients personas and you need to build a picture of them before you start marketing to them.
Developing a B2B buyer persona helps you stand out from other businesses, increasing lead generation and therefore conversion rates.
It is the best way to ensure that you understand the audience you are marketing to and how you should sell to them.
What is a B2B Buyer Persona?
First let’s define a buyer persona.
A buyer persona, sometimes called avatar, is a semi fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
A B2B buyer persona focuses on the key buyer or main decision maker of your product or service.
This could be the CEO, procurement manager, sales manager, etc
How To Create A B2B Buyer Persona
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Identify Your Best Clients
The easiest place to start creating a buyer persona is from your customer database.
Think about your best clients.
The ones that were easiest to sell to. The ones that have become return clients. The ones that pay your fees with little to no hassle.
What do they have in common?
What problem are you solving for them?
By answering these questions, you start to build up your B2B buyer persona.
If you do not have existing clients, ask yourself, what industries and organizations are a good fit for the products or services I offer?
Pro Tip
Once you have a good idea of who your potential buyers might be, you can start researching them online.
LinkedIn provides an in depth look at various companies and industries. It has also proved to be a great success to connect with decision makers from across the world.
By looking at their profiles, you can learn more about them, their motivations, challenges and day to day problems.
2. Identify Key Information
To better understand your ideal clients, you will need to think about their lifestyle, motivations, challenges and goals
Some of the key Information we look at are;
- Demographics: What is their age, location, and company/industry?
- Career: How long have they been working in the industry, what is their buying power, and what needs to happen in order to make buying decisions?
- Lifestyle: What are their major work responsibilities and activities?
- Media: Where do they go for trusted sources of information and networking: conferences, forums, and/or business social media?
- Motivations/Objectives/Goals: What drives their buying decisions, and what business goals do they have?
- Brands: What brands or products do they use already at their company? What do they like/dislike about those products?
- Pain Points/Frustrations/Challenges: What problems do they have that they need help solving? What challenges do they have trying to meet their business goals/objectives?
- Objections: What are frustrations they’ve had with related products or services (or with yours)?
3. Identity Pain Points and Challenges
Why do your customers pay for your products and services?
What makes them come back to you even though you prices might be higher than your competitors.
Identify why they patronize you and use that to optimize your sales.
It is also important to note your customer’s challenges.
What are the obstacles stopping them from reaching their goals?
We saw this with one of our clients, Travel Trybes.
They saw that most businesses did not have time to organize travel arrangements for their staff for work or vacation so they set out to be the travel departments of organizations in Nigeria.
Here is a sales pitch we designed for them to that effect.
4. Decision Criteria
What factors do your customers consider before purchasing from you?
This means identifying the solutions you can provide and delivering it in a way that best speaks to your customers.
Do previous clients usually have an issue with your prices?
Can you provide a payment plan that will be suitable for your clients?
You will need to think through things that might stop them from buying from your brand even though you might be a perfect fit for their business.
In this digital age where customers, whether in B2C or B2B, are constantly bombarded with content and advertisements, businesses need to find a way to stand out from the crowd.
By using buyer personas, your marketing team can craft messages and content that will capture your audience’s attention and convert them into buyers.
As your potential customers get further down the buying funnel, you can continue to use personas to plan content that will target them, from websites and sales pitches to promoting social media pages and gated content.
Buyer personas allow you to use your deep knowledge of buyers to focus your marketing on sharing how your product or service adds value to their specific business objectives.
This article is to help you understand a B2B buyer persona and to have a great understanding of this article, you should try to create a B2B buyer persona yourself.
To find out more about how Sarge Clan can help you improve your visibility and help you stand out from the crowd, visit our website.
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