Business-to-business buyer personas
This post is adapted from the Using audience personas to improve digital user experience strategy guide, on why traditional audience segments miss the mark and how psychographic personas can lead to success today.
B2B buyer personas are complex because B2B purchasing decisions aren’t made by one person in a vacuum. Many stakeholders are involved, each with different motivators and goals themselves, all nested within the unique culture and politics of their company and industry. Psychographic segmentation of individuals is not going to encapsulate all the factors that result in a B2B purchase. Perhaps for this reason, according to Thomson Reuters, 85% of B2B organizations are not doing qualitative research to understand personas.
To get an accurate sense of true B2B psychographics, it may be helpful to have two sets of profiles—one for the company types, and one for the individuals themselves. The buyer personas will be defined by characteristics like what they’re trying to accomplish in their organization, their most-frequented marketing channels, their role responsibilities and challenges, and how they see the product or service helping them achieve their goals. The company personas will be enterprise-level assessments of the organizational objectives, KPIs, culture, structure, or attitudes towards vendors and the products in question.
Putting the two sets of profiles into a matrix reveals how the two dimensions interact to motivate buyers. B2B sellers are then free to choose which personas have the highest ROI for them and craft sales messaging accordingly.
| Company persona 1Many stakeholders, consensus-based, political, hierarchical | Company persona 2Nimble, KPI-focused, competitive, goals | Company persona 3Slow-moving, not as tech-savvy, traditional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual persona 1Creative, full of brand and marketing ideas | Probably high in hierarchy and tasked with big-picture concerns like brand direction. | Classic startup entrepreneur type with big vision and high standards. | Idealist trying to push the company forward but gets frustrated by limitations, and lack of internal support. |
| Individual persona 2Technical, trusts facts and data | Saddled with complex enterprise tech, but trying to keep pace with new trends. | Looking to grow team capabilities and find ways to scale efficiently. | May be reluctant to change and needs education to adapt to new tech trends. |
| Individual persona 3Goal-oriented, accomplishment focused | Politically savvy and very hands-on with projects that may have high visibility. | Focused on numeric success to maintain benchmarks and prove success. | Realistic about what is and isn’t feasible for their org, but looking for small wins. |
Buyer personas can lead to:
Data: HubSpot, Thomson Reuters.