It might be a tough pill to swallow for many B2B brands, but you might not know your audience as well as you think.
We all nod along when someone says understanding audience actions and behaviors is fundamental. Yet a surprising number of businesses simply don't invest the time and energy needed to truly go deep when it comes to audience personas.
To stay ahead of the pack, businesses need to uncover genuinely valuable insights and create fully-realised B2B buyer personas that really resonate. Let’s explore how.
You know the drill: in B2B marketing, persona profiles are essential. These fictional representations of your ideal customers are meant to guide your efforts, and the concept itself is sound. But many teams fall short because the execution often lacks real impact.
Simply put, most marketing personas just don't go deep enough. They might scratch the surface, providing demographic data, job titles, and a few generic challenges. And while this information isn't wrong, it's also not very useful.
The likelihood is, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The presentation that talks about ‘Dan’, the decision-maker, aged 45 and the head of operations, who wants a ‘reliable solution’...
To be blunt, this kind of B2B buyer persona offers little practical value. To stand out, you must grasp the emotional drivers, underlying motivations and hidden anxieties of your audience. This is the crucial human element that truly influences decisions. It's what you need to get to the bottom of to ensure your B2B marketing activity genuinely connects with the right people.
And don’t worry, I get it. It’s so easy to get caught up completing the day-to-day to-do list and feel like you’re on a merry-go-round of never-ending tactics. But taking a moment to step back and make sure you’ve got your audience essentials down to a fine art will pay off immensely in the long run.
How, then, do you move beyond surface-level personas to credible ones that capture an audience's pain points and the emotions tied to them? The answer lies in relentlessly asking 'why.'
In today’s B2B landscape, data isn’t enough. Every business will have the tools that can crunch numbers and spot trends. What will set your brand apart - and allow you to build those truly impactful personas - is the ability to dig deeper and uncover the ‘why’. You need to prod those audience profiles harder than ever to get to the true insights.
For example, a business might look at their data and see this:
Our CRM platform shows that 70% of marketing qualified leads never convert to sales qualified leads.
While this statistic is useful, it’s not a real insight. It tells you what is happening, not why. To get genuine insight, brands need to push further. Why aren’t they converting? What’s the reason behind this drop-off?
To unearth this, businesses might need to undertake some qualitative research or have direct conversations with lost leads. Afterwards, they then might discover:
Leads aren’t converting because our automated nurturing sequences are just too generic. They don’t address specific pain points, making leads feel like ‘just another number’ instead of a valued potential client.
This is a real, incredibly valuable insight, which can directly inform a B2B marketing strategy, improve lead nurturing and - most importantly - conversion rates.
Let’s take some other examples.
What the data says “Our blog analytics show that articles over 1,500 words have the biggest bounce rate.”
What the genuine insight reveals “Our audience is bouncing from longer blogs because they lack the time for more in-depth research. They want concise, actionable takeaways that they can implement immediately – even when the topic is complex.”
What the data says “Our annual survey shows customer support is rated 4 out of 5.”
What the genuine insight reveals “Customer satisfaction is generally high, but what’s stopping them scoring support 5 out of 5 is that responses, while polite, offer stock answers that often don’t solve nuanced problems.”
What the data says “Only 30% of those who registered actually attended our live event.”
What the genuine insight reveals “While the topic is clearly of interest, many failed to make it because of busy schedules. A webinar they could watch at their own convenience would be more suitable.”
The same thinking applies to creating persona profiles. In a world drowning in data, the brands that consistently ask ‘why’ will be the ones that audiences sit up and take notice of.
From workshops with key internal stakeholders to social listening, there are many avenues to explore for building your persona insights - but I'd argue nothing beats talking to your customers directly.
Here's who you should be interviewing to uncover the most valuable insights:
Recently onboarded, their memory of your buying cycle will still be fresh in their minds. They can clearly articulate why they chose you and what truly stood out during the customer journey. This is golden for refining your client acquisition strategies.
Don't shy away from those who didn't convert, or who have recently moved on from using your products or services. They'll be refreshingly frank about where your brand fell short or why they went elsewhere. Their feedback is crucial for plugging gaps in your sales funnel and bolstering client retention.
Think about your absolute ideal customers, even if they're not yet clients. If you can get access, talk to them. Understanding their biggest barriers, core frustrations and what truly delights them can then dramatically shape your long-term strategy.
When conducting these interviews, always ask open-ended questions, listen out for the unexpected and find the emotion at the heart of what they’re saying. And above all, keep asking, ‘why?’
The truth is, surface-level personas are holding your B2B marketing strategy back. To truly succeed, you need personality-packed, insightful ones that can genuinely propel your efforts forward.
Pod specialises in unearthing the customer insights that drive real growth. If you need help digging that bit deeper into the people behind your persona profiles, let’s chat.