How to Build Effective B2B Buyer Personas

Any B2B enterprise starts with your knowledge about your prospective customers. You have to know what their needs are and how to serve them. Over time, however, your initial assumptions can fall out of date.

If you “lose touch” with decision-makers and their preferences, it becomes harder to align your products, services, and customer care to those who buy your products. That’s where buyer personas are essential.

A buyer persona is a fictionalized representation of one type of buyer your business serves. For example, if you are a software as a service (SaaS) firm that provides human resources software, “Hiring Director Hank” could be a persona.

The fictional character, Hank, stands in for all the real people out there who may be interested in what you have to offer. We turn this character into a complete buyer persona by answering the key questions about our buyers.

With all these answers in one place, it’s much easier to “reality check” new ideas. Likewise, if a campaign underperforms, you can review it against your buyer persona to discover why.

What Information Does a Buyer Persona Include?

  • A good buyer persona starts with one essential question:

“What is the buyer’s biggest problem or pain point?”
This is the beginning because you must be confident your solution truly solves the problem before you can go on. From there, a combination of demographics, behaviors, and firmographics guides the process.

Demographics

  • “What is the buyer’s age range?”
  • “What is the buyer’s educational background?”
  • “What state or region does the buyer live in?”
  • “What gender is the typical buyer?”
  • “What hobbies or interests does the buyer have?”

Firmographics

  • “What industry is the buyer’s company in?”
  • “What size is the buyer’s company?”
  • “What is the buyer’s job title?”
  • “Who else is involved in the buying process?”
  • “How is the buyer’s performance evaluated?”

Behaviors

  • “What platforms or publications does the buyer trust for industry news?”
  • “What brands in our industry is the buyer aware of?”
  • “Has the typical buyer accessed our website before?”
  • “What is the buyer’s biggest concern in the purchasing process?”
  • “What is the buyer’s typical timeline for implementation?”

Don’t forget to update this information regularly based on recent customer interactions and feedback to keep it up-to-date and accurate. You can gather the market intelligence you need as part of your industrial marketing strategy with AIMG.