Creating Buyer Personas that Drive Content Strategy - Ardath Albee - Hard Corps Marketing Show #102

Is your company creating content based on what they like? Who are you creating your content for? Do you know your buyers? Are you basing your buyer personas on data alone?

An Author, Speaker, and the CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist of Marketing Interactions, Ardath Albee, challenges marketers to put in the hard work of creating buyer personas. Do you not have the resources for multiple personas? Then start with one. Listen to this episode and find out how just the one makes a difference.

 

Takeaways:

• A persona cannot be based on the goals of a whole company. When you are selling to a company, you are selling to the people at that company. How does a company’s goals impact the individual’s goals and perspective that you are selling to?
• If you do not know where your buyers are spending their time, how do you know where to place your marketing?
• You need to put in the hard work. How do you become more relevant to your customers without having conversations with them?
• If you do not have the resources to create five personas, then do not create five. Start with one, or two, or three. A big difference can be made with just one.
• Sales could be asking marketing for more leads, but they may really mean more leads of higher quality.
• Challenger sell - When the seller brings insights to the buyer they did not have before, to challenge their status quo.
• Sense making - When the seller simplifies all the information the buyer has been given. The seller helps make sense of all the different facts for the buyer helping to ease the buyer’s frustrations and mitigate the risk they are weighing.
• Marketers make the mistake of equating titles to personas. It really comes down to the individual’s roles and responsibilities. 
• Personas can change over time based on perspective and trend shifts. You have to stay in tune with your customers as technology and industries change.
• How can you create a content strategy when you do not know what your buyers care about?
• Persona - a fictional characterization of a person in your target segment. The persona is based on the commonalities that you find of that particular segment. For example, is the buyer willing to take risks or have they been around a long time and want to leave behind a legacy?
• Find out your buyer’s objectives, what they are responsible for, their obstacles, and what questions they ask during the buying process?
• When starting buyer persona interviews, start with your point of contact at that company and then interview the other people that were involved in the buying process.
• “If you write content that is not true to that persona, it won’t engage them.” - Ardath Albee
• Take risks, if there is something you want to do, go do it. You do not know how much time you have.

 

Links:

• Marketing Interactions: https://marketinginteractions.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ardath421
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardathalbee/
• DX Summit: https://www.dxsummit.com/
• Book - eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale: https://www.amazon.com/eMarketing-Strategies-Complex-Ardath-Albee/dp/0071628649/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=books+by+ardath+albee&qid=1568378317&sr=8-2
• Book - Digital Relevance: Developing Marketing Content and Strategies that Drive Results: https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Relevance-Developing-Marketing-Strategies-dp-1137452803/dp/1137452803/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1568378346

 

 

 Busted Myths:

• Personas can be created just from data. - This is NOT the case. Data only tells you the what, not the why. A marketer needs to understand the perspective of the buyer, why they made certain decisions, and what they care about. Data does not tell you all of that.