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Why do so many marketers skip the all-important step of developing buyer personas?
A good number of B2B marketers pursue a very hazily defined target (e.g., "CIOs at mid-size organizations"), and as a result, aren't able to connect deeply with their prospects. Is it because they don't understand how to develop buyer personas? Can't find the time? Don't feel it's worth the effort? More importantly, what does it take to persuade them that it's a worthy investment?
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6 Answers
Hi Stephanie,
This is an excellent question. As you know our firm has specialized in buyer personas for more than eight years and have continued to evolve the buyer persona development methodology we originated during this time as well. Here are few points on what we've learned working with clients over the past few years:
1. On the surface, buyer personas appear simple yet they are derived from an incredibly in-depth process and methodology so some organizations undervalue.
2. To date, they have required a commitment to resources - to do them right - that Fortune 100 type firms can afford. We are working on solving this dilemma.
3. Buyer personas, when misunderstood, often times get relegated to a small corner of the organization and never make it out. For example, they are often confused with customer profiling so do not have staying power outside of market research or a small marketing and sales group.
4. Like any major initiative, they require senior level sponsorship. Our most successful buyer persona development efforts had the upper most senior level sponsorship and involvement from the start.
5. Buyer personas continue to be a relatively "new" concept for many. Especially in the "how-to" realm. Again, we are working on solving this dilemma in 2011.
6. One significant hurdle we've faced is what I call the profiling vs. informing conundrum. If they are viewed as profiling only, it is very difficult to get senior sponsorship. If they are seen as an informing means for customer and buyer strategy, they receive the necessary support. So in part, it is an education issue.
7. And the last point is the most critical. That is, organizations underestimate the need for in-depth qualitative research and interviews to truly make buyer personas the valuable strategy practice they are meant to be.
I think in 2011 we will see more awareness of buyer personas and the pendulum swing from a profiling exercise to a strategy focus. Thanks for a great question!
Tony Zambito
Goal Centric
Buyer Persona Playbooks
I have been affiliated with several companies that did persona development. It went from using pricey ethnography to artifact collections to videos to get grounded in who their customer is, and it proved quite valuable, especially to inform branding, creative, and messaging activities. It is surprising that more marketers don't spend the cycles to develop and maintain these.
That said, it is also critical to map personas to marketing tactics properly. Even though we may have a really crisp picture of our customer personas, it is hard to run cost effective campaigns if the target has been defined too narrowly. To be efficient and effective, many marketers I encounter knowlingly strike a happy medium to achieve a reaonable cost per impression or contact, and then use nurturing and now usable marketing automation to categorize and move buyers along.
Net net...the personas are valuable and underutilized!
Stephanie, I think the shortest and best answer is simply, they don't know how. I don't mean that in a disparaging way at all. It's just that the importance of them in B2B is just now reaching a tipping point. Most marketers are still experimenting and learning how to do it right.
Here's an article I wrote to serve as a primer. By no means is it all encompassing, but it does provide the basis for getting started.
http://www.b2bbloggers.com/blog/how-to-create-buyer-personas/
I think it is because they are looking for the magic bullet, Stephanie.
Why do people take diet pills rather than hit the gym?
Why do so few take golf lessons?
It's the laziness in so many people that cause them to miss this critical step.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.com
There's a very insightful article that was published in COLLOQUY about the perils of relying too heavily on personas. Here's a link: http://colloquy.com/article_view.asp?uid=7027
You may need to subscribe in order to view the article but it is free.
For some reason people seem to prefer "to doing" vs. spending time planning. I think it has to do something about feeling busy - which "to doing" helps you to feel.
The problem come into play when the "to doing" isn't getting the results someone wants and "usually" as a last effort they start looking at planning who their best clients are.
Maria
www.CoachMaria.com
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