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Buyer Profiles versus Buyer Personas

Buyer profiles, buyer personas, is there a difference?

The answer is both "no" and "yes".

Buyer personas are typically described as profiles of the buyer. Yet, they warrant new terminology because they go way beyond the simplistic buyer profiles of yesteryear.

Traditionally, marketers used buyer profiles to help them segment their target markets. These buyer profiles tended to be simplistic in nature. For business to business buyers, the profile might include industry, role (via title), business size,and business location. For consumers, the profile might include gender, age, location, and income.

These buyer profiles reflected what marketers could actually target with the marketing databases and advertising of the times. Why build better profiles when the technology didn't exist to really use it?

Well, the technology exists today. Marketers have a significantly enhanced toolbox complete with information about intent - keyword search and adwords as well as the ability to track all sorts of behaviors with marketing automation tools.

It is difficult to realize the full potential of these tools without a much richer buyer profile to drive them. This is where buyer personas come in.

Buyer personas are profiles for real people, not simply categories of people. They detail the characteristics that come into play when an individual seeks to buy a product. Buyer personas can include the traditional components:

• Demographics - age, gender, marital status, income, location, etc.
• Bizographics - industry, business size, seniority, function, role, risk, culture, etc.

Of greater value are the buyer personas' personal characteristics:

• Psychographics - personality, values, attitudes, interests, lifestyles, etc.
• Motivation - needs, goals, pains,ideals, challenges, etc.
• Relationships - peers, subordinates, superiors, etc.
• Modalities - behaviors, buying needs, buying process, risk tendencies, decision-making, etc.

Marketers who create buyer personas, aren't throwing darts into the great unknown anymore. They actually understand their buyer. They know not only where to find them (basically all we got from the old buyer profiles), but how to reach and engage them. They know how to persuade them to buy.

As you can see from the depth of the profile, buyer personas aren't trivial to create. You actually have to research your buyers. You have to talk with and listen to your buyers. You have to draw from the variety of individuals in your organization that have first hand experience with your buyers. Then, you have to analyze all of this information to make sense of it.

The result is pure gold for you and your organization. Every buyer persona insight is actionable. Use the insight to improve your product design, build a more effective marketing approach, create a stronger relationship, and expedite your sales process.

Once you know your buyer, all of your marketing and sales efforts can be designed to optimize the buying process.

Want to increase your conversion rate, use buyer concerns to attract your buyer.
Want to decrease your sales cycle, anticipate your buyer's needs.
Want to close the sale, craft the persuasive offer.

Buyer personas give you the insight you need to achieve each of these objectives.

Improve your personal effectiveness as a marketer. Dig in and use the institutional knowledge to start crafting buyer personas. Watch it reap rewards across the organization. Knowledge is power. Buyer personas change the marketing game.

Replacing Trials with Other Marketing Mechanisms

In my last post I discussed how you can determine whether your product is a good candidate for a trial.

Today we will focus on other marketing mechanisms that you can use instead of trials. I should point out that many of these mechanisms are simply good marketing practice. Even if you have decided to offer a product trial, you can also use these mechanisms and shorten the sales cycle.

There are 2 reasons why buyers turn to free trials:

1. To help answer questions they may have
2. To help them evaluate the ownership experience

Keeping these in mind, the following 7 marketing mechanisms can help address each of these objectives.

1. Know your buyer's questions and answer them in your content

Marketers should be answering common buyer questions in the content they create.

Start by collecting a comprehensive list of the questions buyers have. This may seem daunting. If you look at the prospect's buying process methodically, you will find it much easier to identify those questions. (Understanding the Buying Process eBook may be able to help you here.)

Then for every piece of content you plan, clearly identify its purpose and which questions it will answer. This goes for web pages (one description per web page) as well as for white papers, brochures, etc.

2. Simulate the user experience with a flash or video piece

A well done flash or video piece can be just as effective as a trial in creating the user experience. To do so, the piece must tell a story. Many of us (me included) are guilty of calling a promotional piece a "demo" when it really isn't demonstrating a product. Many flash "demos" are simply illustrations of the key features of a product.

However, a review of a product's features is very different from a user experience of the product. A user experience is about the contextual use of one or more product features with the goal of completing some task. In other words, there is a story behind it. Find out what are the most compelling stories and build your flash demo around them.

3. Tell stories to illustrate the user experience

Flash and video are ways of telling stories. They shouldn't be the only ones you use. Write compelling stories for your content. Those stories should tell how a customer was able to use your product for a specific purpose.

Another idea, capture your customers' stories in their own words in podcasts.

Rather than delivering dry, self-serving case studies and testimonials, focus on the background stories. They are actually more important. These stories lend credibility to your testimonials.

4. Enable hands-on access for a critical feature

Rather than create a trial for the entire product, isolate a critical feature and enable hands-on experience with it. Of course, the ability to do this is very dependent upon the configuration of your product. However, often the reason why buyers try a product is to get one or two key questions answered. If you know what those key questions are, you may be able to satisfy the buyer with a limited test that is configured to answer a specific question.

5. Prepare a live demonstration

Help the buyer understand how to work with your product with a live demonstration. Prepare for the demo by working with the buyer to understand their critical scenarios. Walk through those scenarios in the demo. Be flexible to extend those scenarios to answer any questions they have during the demo. You retain control, while the buyer evaluates the experience.

6. Offer a money back guarantee

Help reduce the buyer's anxiety with the purchase decision. Buy offering a money back guarantee, the buyer has an exit path if the product doesn't deliver to their expectations. There is a subtle change that happens when a buyer makes the decision to purchase. They tend to have more at stake. This may help see them through the more challenging aspects of the product.

7. Allow for a product pilot

Product pilots are very different from product trials. Product pilots are specific, pre-purchase tests of functionality. To be successful they require significant hand-holding by the vendor and appropriate dedication of time and resources by the buyer. Because of the investment required by both sides, an agreement is usually drawn up prior to the pilot engagement that stipulates buyer action based on validation in the pilot.

Chances are that you will need to employ more than one of these techniques to support the buyer in their buying process. To help you prioritize, learn more about your buyer. Audience interviews are my mechanism of choice when gathering buyer intelligence.

Do you have other marketing mechanisms that have worked for you? I invite you to tell us about them.

The Best Buyer Intelligence - Audience Interviews

So, you want to gather intelligence about your buyer. You are considering doing a survey to your customers.

Surveys give you lots of graphable data.

Surveys are easy and with the plethora of tools available today, they are cheap to do.

You get what you pay for.

The truth is, surveys give you very limited intelligence about your audience. Even with the best designed survey, the value of the intelligence you do get is quite low.

Audience interviews offer you a superior alternative to surveys. Here's why. With audience interviews you can:

1. Obtain more detailed responses
2. Discover surprises
3. Explore motivations
4. Understand relationships
5. Develop trust
6. Create authenticity

Every time I show a client the richness of the intelligence I can gather in audience interviews, they choose to move forward with buyer interviews rather than surveys.

So, why don't more businesses regularly use buyer/audience interviews as part of their intelligence gathering regimen?

Myths About Audience Interviews

1. It is difficult to get buyers to talk with you.

On the contrary, many buyers welcome the opportunity to talk with you (not a telemarketer) about their experiences.

2. You can't build nice graphs from the results.

A well-designed set of interview questions can produce quantifiable data.

3. Smaller sample sizes mean results are not statistically valid.

With proper audience selection, trends become quickly apparent and are often representative of statistical results.

If you really want to know what is going on with your buyers, don't do a survey.

Interview them.

The actionable information you obtain from the interviews can transform your marketing efforts.

The 8 Key Components of Effective Product Messaging

Over the past 2 months, we have delved into the different components of effective product messaging. This blog entry is going to help put all of the components together into a product messaging checklist that should help guide you in your work.

A similar checklist appears in my eBook Killer Messaging - 9 Mistakes that Kill your Marketing Messages

Your Checklist for Effective Product Messaging

1. Know your audience - buyer personas are a valuable tool for getting those important audience details into a usable form


2. Identify What is it? - define the category for your product so your audience can remember it


3. Identify Who is it for? - tell your audience who is expected to use your product


4. Describe What does it do - describe what problems your product solves, then the product's features


5. Support Benefits with Features - benefits are the reason one buys, features are the proof points


6. Verbalize Why should I care? - understanding your audience's intellectual and emotional motivations are key


7. Demonstrate How is it different - value propositions help you find your product's compelling differentiation


8. Write the right copy - use plain, correct language and easily readable format to clearly communicate your messages

Good marketing messagers are NOT a dime a dozen. It always pays off to take the time to do your homework, build your skills, and continually believe that you can improve.

Good luck. Let me know how you do.

Product Messaging Techniques - Why should I care?

Over the past month, I have been blogging about the basic elements necessary in product messaging. A lot of what I have discussed is pretty cut and dried. In this post, I am going to talk about the technique that separates average product messages from the ones that truly connect with the buyer.

Today we will focus on persuading the buyer why they should care about your product.

In just about every purchase (even business purchases), emotion plays an important role in the final decision. The answer to the question "why should the buyer care" is about creating that emotional connection with the buyer.

To do this, the marketer must understand 3 things:

1. Benefits the product offers

We always talk about those benefits from the customer's perspective.
2. Value the product offers

Not all benefits are of equal merit. Values assign worth to each benefit.
3. Buyer motivations

This is the total buyer context that drives their need and interest in your product.

Now, benefits and value aren't just pulled out of thin air. They are developed using a disciplined approach. In this approach, we seek to understand how the product delivers quantifiable benefit experiences for the buyer. That approach is built into something called the customer value proposition. (If you are new to value propositions or just want a quick refresher, read my new eBook The Customer Value Proposition.)

The third component - buyer motivations - is developed in your buyer persona.

What we want to do in our messaging is to convince the buyer both logically and emotionally that many of their voiced and unvoiced motivations will be addressed by purchasing and using our product. We need to observe, consider, and integrate like great sales reps. Because buyer motivations are so key, let's spend some time exploring what makes a buyer motivation.

Motivations come in a number of forms.

• Needs - something the buyer feels is necessary to improve a situation


• Pains - underlying issue that causes the buyer discomfort


• Challenges - realities that stretch the buyer without causing pain


• Goals - tactical and strategic milestones the buyer wants to achieve


• Ideals - moral, career, personal characteristics buyer wants to attain

Buyers will look for products that satisfy their existing needs and eliminate their current pains. Sales reps often talk about this as "identifying the buyer's pain points". The higher the degree of pain, the more motivated the buyer will be to find a solution to it. It is fairly easy to get a buyer to talk about their needs and their pains.

Challenges, goals, and ideals tend to be unspoken motivations. Take the IT Manager who must decide between an IBM product and a product from a start-up company. The saying goes, "No one was ever fired for choosing IBM." For that new IT manager whose challenge is to impress his boss and whose goal is to become CIO, these motivations will play an important part in the company and product selection. He/she may be willing to take more risk and go with an unproven company with a superior offering.

But for the IT manager who has a family of 4 with a baby on the way, his/her challenges and goals may lean more towards a safer, proven, turn-key solution. He/she can't afford to spend long hours overseeing an incomplete product. A poor product selection could cause him/her to be fired.

You can see the emotional power in each of these different motivations. For this reason, when the marketer crafts the "why care" product messaging, he/she needs to go beyond the easy-to-read surface pains and needs. This isn't just about words, though. The product experience must support these more motivational claims.

In marketing messaging, the most persuasive message is that combination of logical matchmaking and emotional persuasion. Product messages that connect and persuade will carry the buyer much farther along in their buying process with you.

So, take the time to build those buyer personas and develop those value propositions. They provide everything you need to craft the product messaging that convinces the buyer why he/she should care about your product.

Product Messaging Techniques - Who is it for?

In my product messaging entry two techniques ago I talked about the importance of developing personas. A persona encapsulates insight into your audience. If you have more than one audience, you will need more than one persona. If you have created that persona, you know who your product's audience is.

In the previous product messaging technique, I discussed how you identify your product for maximum memorability. The result is a short, categorized sentence or two that answers the question "What is it?"

The next step in your product messaging is to answer the question "Who is it for?" In this step you make it clear who is the intended audience for your product.

I often find product messaging missing this important ingredient. I am not sure whether it is a simple omission or a decided choice. Unfortunately, the result is the same. Whoever reads the product messaging doesn't know who the product is for.

Let's understand why not knowing who the product is for is detrimental to your goals. If you do not specify the audience for your product, your audience cannot include themselves in the group.

Why?

Because they don't know what that group is. If your audience doesn't see themselves in the group, that means they see themselves outside the group. And if they are outside the group, they aren't an interested party. This is probably not the effect that you want.

Let's talk about the "everyone who is interested" audience. To be honest, I wish I didn't have to talk about this topic. However, I have seen it used quite widely in the start-up world. If you are in marketing and hear this phrase, you should be running in the other direction... or gearing up for battle.

There is no such audience as "everyone who is interested". You cannot effectively design a product for "everyone who is interested". You cannot effectively message your product to "everyone who is interested". (Review technique #1).

In my experience, "everyone who is interested" equates to "we don't have a clue". If that is the case, product messaging is the least of your problems.

So, if you have done your persona work, do call out who the intended audience is for your product very early in your product messaging. You can even incorporate it into your "what is it" definition.

If you haven't done your persona work, in Monopoly game speak: go back to "Go" and do not collect $200.

The Anatomy of a Persona

In my last post I introduced the persona mechanism as the encapsulation of meaningful knowledge about an audience. Personas can be used in a variety of situations: for product design (user persona), for marketing creative development (buyer persona), and for product messaging (buyer persona, influencer persona).

The purpose of a persona is to identify those meaningful traits that distinguish one audience from another. Here are the components I use when developing personas:

1. Demographics

Demographic characteristics include: gender, age, marital status, income level, location and education.

2. Psychographics

Psychographics characteristics include: personality, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles.

3. Bizographics

Bizographic characteristics include: industry, seniority, functional area, role, responsibilities, knowledge and risk.

4. Motivation

Motivational characteristics include: needs, goals, pains, ideals and challenges.

5. Relationships

Relationship types include: individual, directed, collaborative, competitive, contentious, subordinate, superior and consensus.

6. Behavioral Type

Behavioral types include: methodical, spontaneous, humanistic and competitive.

It is important when creating personas to select those traits that are shared and meaningful. By shared, we mean those traits that are common amongst all members of your audience. Meaningful traits are those that have relevance to the connection we want to establish with our audience.

Remember, our goal in creating personas is to better understand our audience. For this reason, we need to dig beyond surface-level traits to those traits which drive behaviors in our audience.

For instance, if you were creating a persona for a high level executive, one important characteristic is that he/she is very busy. Underlying that busyness are other traits: their expertise is in high demand, they attend too many meetings, they need to be in control, they desire a better work-life balance, ...

Imagine what directions and approaches each of these attributes might suggest in your messaging. Knowing that executives are busy isn't enough to create compelling messages. Understanding underlying motivations and behaviors are the real jewels in your personas.

Product Messaging Techniques - Know your Audience

The fundamental principle behind good product messaging is having a very good understanding of the audience you are talking to. I find that when I have trouble messaging a product it is because I don't really understand the audience well enough.

Here are the top 4 reasons why you need to have a good understanding of your audience before you start working on your product messaging.

1. There is no such thing as a generic audience.



Therefore, there should be no such thing as generic messaging. By generic messaging I mean messaging that is equally applicable for all audiences. Generic messaging just can't connect effectively with the people you are trying to reach and convince.

2. Each audience has its own language.



To connect with your audience you need to speak their language. This means that you need not to speak your own company's language. This isn't easy. We are steeped in our own company's jargon and way of speaking. It is difficult to change languages. Good messaging incorporates the words and phrases your audience uses which creates a basis for common understanding.

3. Each audience has its own motivations.



Different audiences have different motivations. If your messaging isn't addressing those audience motivations that stimulate action, your messaging isn't doing its job. Good messaging shows how your product meets your audience's most pressing needs.

4. Each audience has its own set of critical information needs.



There may be messaging overlap among different audiences. However, if your messaging isn't meeting the essential information needs of the audience, you won't persuade the audience to move forwards in their buying process.

The next thing you need to consider is the role played by the audience you wish to speak to. Different roles require completely distinct messaging approaches and needs.

• Buyers

The buyer is the one who controls the buying process and ultimately makes the decision.

• Influencers

The influencer is someone who helps guide the product decision in a particular direction. Influencer's goals can often be at odds with the buyer's.

• Users

The user may or may not be involved in the decision-making process. Their need may initiate a product search by the buyer. Their adoption of the product may affect future purchases.

I like to use personas (buyer, influencer, user) as the mechanism for encapsulating audience knowledge. They help me focus on the audience attributes that are most important for my messaging. Personas enable me to put an individual face on my audience. They make it so much easier to devise those messages that will compel the audience to act.

Marketing Effectively to Introverts and to Extroverts

In the last blog entry, we introduced the proclivities for interaction by introverts and extroverts.

The problem is that our marketing tactics don't take into consideration this reality. One half of our target audience is likely to seek a personal response. The other half will avoid it.

Below I present five principles that will help marketers and sales persons more effectively respond to the buyer's level of introversion/extroversion.

1. One response path is not sufficient. You must design different response paths for introverts and for extroverts.

If all of your activities lead to personal interaction (think some type of follow-up sales call), you will turn off your introverts while attracting your extroverts. If all of your activities never lead to personal interaction, you will frustrate your extroverts as well as the introverts who need to connect with you.

2. Clearly word your call-to-action to appeal to the introvert/extrovert.

For example, for the introvert use something like "read about the topic". For the extrovert use something like "start a conversation with us on the topic". The idea here is to clearly show that you are not going to lead them into a level of interaction they don't want to take at this time.

3. Or better yet, have two ways to respond.

There are different marketing theories on the correct number of calls-to-action in a marketing piece. However, given what we have just noted about introverts and extroverts, it is unlikely that a single call-to-action is going to appeal to both types. The extrovert needs a clear path to a personal connection where he/she can obtain the information. The introvert needs a path that doesn't require human interaction to obtain the information. To be clear, we are not talking about multiple calls-to-action that don't relate to the same information. We are talking about two different responses that lead to delivery of the same information with the type of interaction controlled by the buyer.

4. Honor the buyer's choice of response mechanism.

The worst thing you can do is to initiate a clear response pathway for your introvert/extrovert and then violate it. This breaks any trust you may have created by giving them the choice in the first place. Do not call or email your introvert unsolicited. Instead, give introverts lots of opportunities to initiate a personal discussion with you. They will do so when they are ready. Do not respond to extrovert's request for information by shoveling off documents to read. Ask the extrovert in which form they would prefer to receive the specific information. Unless the information is highly detailed, extroverts will prefer a conversational approach, not a written approach.

5. Don't mistake email for a conversation.

If you are following these guidelines, your sales team probably now has more time on their hands because they aren't calling all of those introverts. This means that they can have real, connecting conversations with those buyers who want them. Avoid having those conversations via email. In the initial stages of a relationship, so much gets lost in translation when email is used. Create the responsive environment the buyer wants by phone or face-to-face. (Unless there are language or other barriers that make these options uncomfortable for the buyer.)

On the web, make it easy for the visitor to respond to you and start a conversation. Use words that invite them to do so. Don't simply hide your phone number on a contact page. Support the conversation invitation by prominently displaying your phone number.

Finally, remember that the buyer is in the driver's seat. No matter how much you would prefer to be there, you aren't. You risk alientating the buyer and negating all of the connective work you have achieved when you force the buyer to respond your way.

Differences in Marketing to Introverts and to Extroverts

In the past few blog entries we have explored how marketers and sales people should approach individuals of different buyer modalities. The buyer modalities provide us with contextual insight into the buyer's goals. Thus by adjusting our tactics, we can respond to them in a way that helps expedite their goals, or in the worst case doesn't hinder them from achieving their goals.

Buried in the buyer modality profiles is the attribute of introversion/extraversion. In today's discussion, I would like to focus on the importance for marketers in recognizing and responding to that attribute.

The introversion/extraversion attribute represents a scale. Individuals may have certain introversion tendencies and other extraversion tendencies. Thus, most people fall somewhere between the two extremes.

On the introversion end, individuals tend to be solitary and internally focused. They choose to interact with a few close friends and family. They find it difficult and uncomfortable to establish relationships with strangers. They are unlikely to initially seek information from people, but prefer sources where they don't have to interact with strangers.

On the extroversion end, individuals tend to be social and interactive. They want and often need to connect with other people. They are energized in conversation. They are happy to engage and even seek out new relationships. They would prefer to gather information from interactions and discussions with others.

The Center for Applications of Psychological Type estimates that in the United States the occurrence of extroverts to introverts is close to 50:50. That puts a large portion of our prospective target audience at risk if we get the interaction response wrong.

This has implications on how we market.

Consider the marketing campaign whose call-to-action is to "download a white paper". Who is more likely to respond to this form of information? Obviously it is the introvert who doesn't have to connect with a person.

Now, consider the typical follow-up telesales call, how well is an interactive interruption likely to go with that introvert? Not well. How about a telesales email? Better as it can be ignored and quickly responded to without creation of a relationship.

There is one caveat to these responses. Let's say that the introverted buyer is in the latter stages of his/her buying cycle and needs information that he/she perceives he/she can only obtain through personal interaction. In this situation, introverts will engage in interpersonal communication. Note here that I did not say relationship. Introverts will only invest in the relationship if they see the value in a longer term connection with the individual or the company.

And what about those extroverts? How likely is the marketer to get their contact information with the white paper download? It depends. If the extrovert sees the white paper as a means to connect with a person, they may responsd. Is registration required? Many buyers expect on-line registration to result in a follow-up telesales call.

But this expected follow-up call may mean that any registration required for that white paper may stop the introvert dead in his/her tracks.

So, now that we have created mixed messages with registration and telesales calls and emails, what is a marketer to do?

My next blog entry will discuss ways to improve campaign results for introverts and extroverts.