Big Ideas

What is Buyer Persona?

  1. Archetype of a real buyer
    • Allows marketers to craft strategies to market to the buyer
  2. We don’t make up personas – We discover them through an investigative process
  3. Evolves from Actual stories of real buyers
    • In form of one-one interviews
    • Captures the buyers expectations
  4. The best way to get insight into your buyers
    • Spend quality time with them
  5. Hearing and relating to customer stories is the foundation of understanding buyers

5 Rings of Buying Insight

  1. Priority Initiative
    • Most compelling reason why buyers buy your solution
    • While others are content with status Quo
  2. Success Factors
    • Results your buyer persona expects from purchasing a solution like yours
  3. Percieved Barriers
    • What prevents buyers from considering your solution
    • Why did they prefer your competition
  4. Buyers Journey
    • Behind the scenes story about the work buyers do to evaluate options and settle on a solution
  5. Decision Criteria
    • Specific attributes of your product that your buyer evaluates as they consider other alternatives

Problem with market research

“The trouble with market research is that people don’t think how they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.” – Ogilvy

  1. Disconnect between what people
    • Feel
    • Think
    • Say
    • Do

Hence We must focus on the real stories  that customers relay to us

Conduct Probing Interviews

  1. Go slowly to capture the whole story
  2. There is no script
  3. Buyers will impart the most valuable insight while talking about their own experience,
  4. Remember, never ask direct questions about you, your website, your campaigns, or your solutions.
    • Make the conversation about the buyer’s experience and you’ll be rewarded with more information than you could ever obtain through direct questions.

Mine your interviews for buying insights

3 steps

  1. Mark up interview transcript
    • Highlight portions where they address any of the 5 Rings of Insight
  2. Organize the story based on buying insights
  3. Write a headline for each key insight

Interview Links

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