B2B Marketing Personas in Action: What Would Morton Do?
In B2B marketing, creating a buyer persona is key to understanding your audience. Really using that persona can help your B2B company realize its full potential and speak to the needs and goals of your prospects. Going beyond general demographics to fully identify with the persona as an individual will allow you to personalize your message, focus on a niche and match goals.
Consider age, title, publications read, key concerns, degree of influence, web habits, association memberships, salary, etc. Personalize your personas by giving them names and a quote each one might say. You might even give them each a face using headshots from stock photography.
In action, you could be working on a high-level presentation that your CEO or sales director might deliver to top-tier prospects to close a deal.
As an example, consider Morton, the Motel Owner persona, created specifically to personify the B2B commercial building materials target market segment. In brainstorming sessions, his name should pop up often.
"Does this matter to Mort?"
"I think too much technical detail will bore Mort."
"Mort cares about the comfort of his guests, so let's highlight the product's thermal performance properties."
"A key pain point for Mort is addressing the concerns of his investors. Let's make him look good by focusing on ROI."
"Mort would respond to that because he's concerned about saving on utilities."
Bringing up a fictitious character might seem a little silly as first, but it can quickly evolve into a serious effort to actualize the persona and develop a message targeted specifically toward it. Concentrating on Morton (or your particular segmented B2B marketing persona) and what he might do or feel can help produce communications that truly address the needs of prospects which will increase the opportunity for engagment and more closed sales.
How have you used personas in your content marketing plans?
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Martine Hunter is the creative director of inbound marketing with the Atlanta advertising agency, MLT Creative, which specializes in B2B marketing. She holds the Inbound Marketing professional certification and serves the Atlanta chapter of the Business Marketing Association as a member of the board of directors.
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