In the fast-paced world of content marketing, it’s crucial to have a solid foundation in place before embarking on creating content. Creating buyer personas is a critical step for that!
Without the underlying foundational work, marketing efforts can miss the mark and fail to resonate with the intended audience. One essential aspect of this groundwork is the creation of accurate and detailed creation of buyer personas.
I’ll present a 5-step process to help you create bullet-proof personas for those involved in standard deals, leveraging the power of technology and AI tools for persona profiling and company profiling.
Step 0 – Creation of Buyer Personas
Pick a tool or template for creating personas. Since I’m biased toward cost effect products, there are plenty of great free options. Grab a free one from HubSpot here or from SemRush here. The top 10 tools from Content Harmony are here!
Alright, we have the template to start plugging our findings into.
For me, I’m interacting with small to mid-market (11 – 50ish employees) marketing and sales leaders across the US that make B2B sales. That is how specific I’m going to get for now.
My starting personas are here pretty poorly, but its a start – HubSpot
I have mapped the following roles
- CEO
- CMO
- VP/Head of Sales (dir/manager)
- VP/Head of Marketing (dir/man)
- Sales Ops
Templates setup. Now we’ve scratched the surface level. I want to take this a bit deeper.
Let’s do step 1…
Step 1 – Research and Data Collection
To begin the persona creation process, gather relevant data through market research and customer insights. Utilize AI-powered tools like social listening platforms, online surveys, and customer analytics to gather data on demographics, behaviors, pain points, and goals. This data will form the basis for creating accurate and targeted personas.
I actually like the old-school method of interviewing if you have clients already interviewing them. If not – get referrals into someone or do custom outreach via titles on LinkedIn.
With this data collection, we can now take our templates further. Core challenges, breaking our own assumptions, taking the persona template a step further. I now break these into a further document found here. – Steal and enhance! Let me know your feedback.
Looking good. Now moving to step 2…
Step 2: Identify Patterns and Segmentations
Leverage AI tools to analyze the collected data and identify patterns and segmentations within your target audience. Machine learning algorithms can quickly process large datasets and reveal valuable insights about customer preferences, buying behaviors, and common characteristics. These insights will help you create meaningful segments within your target audience.
Let’s use ChatGPT with the following prompts to enhance further.
Now I dive into specifics from the responses & dig deeper and deeper.
Excellent. I have some good data and ideas on commonalities of my buying personas. Step 3…
Step 3: Company Profiling for B2B Campaigns
In B2B marketing, understanding the characteristics and needs of target companies is equally important.
Leverage AI-powered tools like Crunchbase, Owler, or InsideView to gather comprehensive company data. Look for information such as industry, company size, revenue, technology usage, and key decision-makers. These insights will form the foundation of your company profiles.
Consider Ideal Target Customer (ITC, ICP, etc). Industry, size, financial health, growth, etc. Go deep!
For me, I’m looking for B2B companies with 10 – 50 employee sizes and ≤ Series B on the surface. If I want to get really niche, I would look at websites and look at the count of open roles, when they last secured funding (are they scaling up?), technology adoption, and specific B2B industry.
Step 4: Validation and Refinement
Once you have created the initial personas, it’s crucial to validate them against real-world data and feedback. Use A/B testing, customer interviews, and ongoing data collection to refine and validate your personas. AI tools like sentiment analysis, natural language processing (NLP), and customer behavior tracking can help gather real-time feedback and fine-tune your personas accordingly.
Refine, iterate, adapt, and evolve. The world does not stand still, and neither should you!
We’re all a work in progress. I hope this helped! This strategic approach allows you to deliver personalized and relevant messages, positioning your offerings as the ideal solution for their specific requirements. With a deep understanding of your target companies, you can maximize your marketing efforts and drive successful customer acquisition and business growth.
Ready to grow? Contact me today!