In more conventional terms, marketing has often thought of the "buyer" within a one dimensional framework. Especially in B2B marketplaces where marketing and sales tends tend to think of the buyer as someone who sales "meets" with and sells to. The definition between an offline customer and an online customer has also become fairly blurred in B2B markets yet many marketing departments tend to be concrete in categorizing customers in one of two segments.
When you contrast this with consumer markets, where consumers generally are more clearer about whether they are "click" or "motor" type customers, you see we have a dilemma in identifying buyer personas. Unlike consumers who tend to lean more strongly one way or the other, the B2B buyer tends to now converge channels into an integrated buying cycle and process. And, I bet confusing the heck out of many marketing departments.
An example of this is the "buyer" of delivery services such as FedEx or UPS. The buying process, even in just one day, could involve multiple contacts online and with a FedEx or UPS representative. Sourcing online and in conversations with a person, a "buyer" is making a decision about services that fits his or her needs at that time. On top of that, he or she may also be in conversations with third party channels who handle freight for FedEx or UPS. Thus, in one day, a buyer could be interacting with three different channels in the buying cycle.
What does this now mean to the practice of identifying buyer personas. It certainly means that the notion of just answering "who are our buyers" today is not sufficient. Marketing Communications and Product Marketing must delve deeper into getting answers to:
A. How does the buyer engage in the buying process?
B. Why did the buyer make the decision to use our product or a competitor's product?
My partner Angela Quail and I have seen a rise in the advocacy of buyer personas over the past year. This advocacy has called for identifying "who" your buyer personas are. Which we could not be more ecstatic about! On the surface, crafting a buyer persona may not look much different than doing that of a consumer persona. Believe me, there is a significant difference. There is also an unclear spectrum about the quality of personas that are being developed today. Angela addresses this eloquently in her recent post, Beyond Fake Personas, on her Persona Creation blog. In essence, the degree of qualitative and ethnographic research affects the overall quality and usefulness of buyer personas.
Given that buyers today are integrating and converging channels into their buying processes, what do Marketing Communications and Product Marketing do? They must answer the two questions mentioned in this manner:
A. Investments need to be made into identifying the buying processes of buyers. What you may find is that segmentation along "channels" is no longer going to work. Especially if your marketing department is organized by channels. A scenario mapping of how the buyer flows through the buying cycle process needs to be derived. This is so that all channel departments can see how a buyer engages and at which point in the buying cycle.
B. To get at "why" a customer makes certain buying decisions, there is no room for guessing! This will take the artful skill of engaging in qualitative conversations with buyers. Whereas the "how" can be determined with ethnographic skills, the "why" is going to take some anthropological skills to understand the culture of organizations and how it affects buying decisions. If it sounds tricky - well - it is! Identifying the mental models by which buyers make decisions is a hard practice. It is truly analogous to the anthropologist who digs a few shovels deeper and uncovers a chest filled with gold chalices. The gold chalices in this case are the revealing insights that can lead to a market changing competitive advantage or innovation breakthrough.
The summation is that channel convergence means that the creation of buyer personas today cannot stop just at answering the "who" and having a profile of the buyer. Answering the "how" and "why" to complete the buyer persona research and development is critical to gaining the maximum advantage of buyer persona insight.
Angela and I will be launching a series of workshops and seminars this year to help companies learn about how to implement buyer persona creation and get at the who, how, and why of buyer persona research and development. The first of these will be a Buyer Persona Creation Workshop in July in San Francisco. There, we will cover not only how to create a buyer persona but how to do scenario mapping and how to identify the mental models of buyers that affect decision-making.
One thing we are advocating is that every B2B organizations needs in-house buyer persona research and development expertise if it is to stay competitive. So, we hope to see you at one of our future workshops or seminars!
