I have been thinking about this question for some time. I have been thinking that there is something wrong with all the titles I see that begin with Reach and Engage for numerous articles and blog posts. To me at least, it seems that in the social age the terms Reach and Engage cancel each other out. One can make an educated argument that reach belongs in the push column of marketing. Whereby engage can be placed in the pull column.
Therein lays, perhaps, the problem with this expression of reach and engage. Organizations and marketers have been wired for decades in reach and push strategies. The structure of businesses has remained surprisingly constant despite significant transformative changes occurring during the past two decades. There is a built-in inertia and interwoven into corporate DNA is the push mentality. It has always been about pushing, reaching, and “going to” a segment or a market. In several recent articles, I have discussed this notion of buyer behaviors that reject reach and push and how organizations today must become listening organizations that foster engagement.
Brian Solis published an article entitled The End of Social Media 1.0. While the focus is on social media and consumers, some points apply to buyer behavior and this question. Brian notes that organizations today must learn to listen with social media and consumers want to be heard. He further states that social media must become an extension of active listening and engagement. Currently social media is in the grips of marketing which has always been, along with sales, the beholders of reach and push. Brian makes a case for social media belonging to an active listening social enterprise. We are dealing with a century of organizations that are built on the silos that support the reach, push, and got-to pillars. Redesigning organizations to become a social enterprise is definitely going to be no small feat.
A funny thing happened on the way to the social media forum. It is no longer about tweets, likes, and constancy of social media which is resulting in social media fatigue. We may be seeing the beginnings of the next evolution in the social age - the evolution becoming about buyer behavior orienting towards wanting to be heard and wanting intelligent engagement. If so, this has some serious ramifications for organizations and their relationships with buyers. It flips the enterprise upside down, flattens it, and forces the enterprise to listen. The competitive advantage may very well come from those organizations willing to stomach such a transformation earlier than most.
Companies today will need to examine what is meant by reach and engage and whether it fits new buyer behaviors that want listen and engage. Do their efforts in content marketing and sales, for example, mirror conventional reach and push through the different channels of social networks? Are their efforts just about maintaining a presence? Is their presence merely an extension of reach and push – or – are they truly listening and engaging? It looks like organizations today are faced with some profound questions. To answer such questions, organizations and their leaders will need to undergo the deepest self-examination they’ve had to do in quite some time.
During a series of articles entitled The Future of Buyer Personas is Social, I referenced several times that the social age will cause a rethinking of buyer persona research and development. One new important principle is the need to change from a static perspective of buyer personas to an ongoing refreshment of buyer personas. The constant evolution of buyer behavior is the primary driver behind this principle. A realization is settling in that created buyer personas derived from anthropological inspired and ethnographic research can have a short shelf life and must be part of ongoing buyer behavior research efforts.
The actual archetypical buyer personas that are created serve as an interface and a narrative to social, cultural, and behavioral research of buyers within organizations as well as in individual environments. The design of buyer persona research becomes critical given this important premise. Organizations today will need to shift their view of personas in order to adopt. Over the years, persona research in general was seen as a one-time initiative to establish a foundational understanding of customers – both users and buyers. I strongly advocate that this perspective needs changing. What is needed is to establish a research foundation for the ongoing qualitative insight into buyer behaviors that impact business relationships, ecosystems, and purchase decisions. Why is this important – especially now?
Ecosystem
I recently wrote an article describing a new Social Buyer Ecosystem. The key though is to understand that this ecosystem will undergo constant reinvention. New participant will enter and old participants will exit. Keeping informed on the malleable shapes of your buyer’s ecosystem will mean the difference between being a part of it and somehow finding yourself excluded.
Technology
It is a safe bet that all of us will be adapting to some new form of technology yet unseen – most likely in the very near future. The introduction of new technology – be it social or otherwise – is having a higher degree of impact on buyers today than ever before. Technology changes patterns, norms, relationships, and behaviors. The introduction of new technology should serve as a trigger event for refreshing your buyer behavior research and archetypical buyer personas that serve as the interface and narrative.
Social
It is no secret that the social age is shaping new behaviors. New behaviors are radically changing the inter-relationships between organizations and buyers as well as intra-relationships between internal stakeholders and buyers. I have written often lately about the desire for more socially-oriented relationships on the part of buyers. In addition, how the social experience that accompanies buying is now becoming a new form of Social Buyer Engagement Index. Staying abreast of new social behaviors, norms, expectations, and patterns are becoming a critical component of the organization and buyer relationship.
External
We are living in times unlike any other in recent history. The degree of uncertainty that exists in the economics of business is having a transformative impact on how businesses today foresee and plan for the future. The global roller coaster ride of economic woes has undoubtedly caused shifts in buying behaviors and processes. It is my guess that this high degree of uncertainty will be something we and businesses will need to learn to live with for quite some time. It becomes an essential reason for organizations today to establish an ongoing practice of monitoring buyer behaviors and patterns as well as refreshing their archetypical buyer personas.
Strategic
Remember when the five year strategic plan was in vogue? Strategic planning today has gone from five years to a short five months nowadays. To grow and to survive, organizations today must constantly reassess as well as refresh their strategic plans. Standing pat or in rigid adherence to a plan for too long may actually be harmful to an organization’s existence. The foundational purpose of personas – be they user, consumer, or buyer personas – is to inform strategy related to product innovation and marketing innovation. I also make the case that research conducted from a true anthropological inspired and ethnographic foundation will help senior leaders to make important assessment regarding future business models and organizational structure towards becoming a social business. One of the most unfortunate reasons why buyer personas are not playing a significant role in the board room as they should be is because the term has gone viral inaccurately. The term is widely misunderstood as a profile building tool as opposed to a method for researching buyer behaviors and serving as an interface and narrative to inform strategy.
Pull
Wired into the DNA of organizations for the past century has been the constant notion of pushing products outwards and conducting voluminous push messaging. The social age is creating a transformative shift that I suspect many companies are finding tough to adapt to. Organizations today are finding the learning curve to be quite steep in becoming efficient at social listening and creating pull. This steep learning curve essentially requires constant listening of buyer behaviors and how buyers are choosing channels from which they want to be heard.
These are six important reasons why buyer personas require regular and ongoing refreshing. It starts with the accurate understanding of the role of archetype buyer personas as an interface and narrative to ongoing buyer behavioral research. Organizations who have this essential footing will find themselves more nimble and quick to respond to behavioral changes in buying experiences and decisions. Nimbleness that will be a required core competency due to that old adage – change is constant.
The sudden news of Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) decision to exit and essentially give up on the Smartphone and Tablet markets has some analysts and market watchers reeling. This amounts to an outright ceding to Apple and their success with the iPhone and the iPad. The read I get into the corporate announcement by HP’s CEO Leo Apotheker is one of a strategic move to focus on challenging IBM with head-to-head similar business models. It sounds plausible given his background with SAP. But there is more to this story.
The real question is why consumers or business buyers will not buy into not only HP’s Touchpad but all the other Apple iPad imitators including Blackberry’s Playbook and the Android Tablets? After all, some of the Apple iPad challengers have features that work well, offer more technology than Apple iPad, and synch up well with email. Like HP, Samsung, Toshiba, RIM, and others have made significant investments into the Tablet device but are combined a very small fraction of the market share. So what gives?
What Apple understood well is the buying behavior of their audience. Apple took time with their Apple iPhone to gain an understanding of how consumers and business buyers behaved when considering a Smartphone and exactly who were their buyers. Let’s think back just a little. Before the Apple iPhone, Smartphones were essentially targeted towards the business buyer and the enterprise. Hence, RIM’s Blackberry devices became the dominant corporate device. When Apple iPhone came out, there was a significant shift in buying behavior. The iPhone made the Smartphone a mainstream device that transcended both consumer buying behavior and business buying behavior. It became the everyday device that cross the boundaries of personal and business use. The growth of the Android Smartphones is directly attributable to this shift in buyer acceptance and the fact that Apple may have stayed a little too long in its’ exclusive arrangement with AT&T. Having a few years of understanding this buyer behavior phenomenon, Apple designed the iPad to fit into the mainstream and know what satisfied their ultimate buyers. What are Apple’s competitors missing and getting myopic about?
Technology
Most of Apple’s competitors jump on the shortcomings in technology. The lack of Adobe Flash is repeatedly the most notable shortcoming loudly announced in promotional channels. What their competitors fail to see is that buyers simply don’t care. The only types of buyers who care are the techie power users who are features and spec obsessed. Mainstream Apple iPad buyers wanted a device that is easy to use, a fun experience, and something that became a part of their everyday life.
Distribution
Because the iPad was creating a new market, Apple understood that new buyers would exhibit some excited yet hesitant behavior. Apple’s retail presence allowed buyers to get informed about the iPad, touch it, experience it, and talk to knowledgeable Apple dedicated folks. Contrast this with the other Tablets. It is either Best Buy or Office Depot. Or, you can go to a Verizon or AT&T retail location. As anyone has ever experienced at these distribution points, you have to rely on luck to get someone to help walk you through a new device with a knowledgeable sense of mainstream usage. Most often you get people dedicated to showing their prowess for in-depth knowledge of features and spec – or worse – you get sales people who simply don’t care.
Buying Experience
Associated with distribution is the overall buying experience. The buying experience through Apple’s retail distribution is designed to make people feel at ease learning, exploring, touching, and talking for as long as they want about an Apple product. You get a representative dedicated to finding out how you might use an iPad and showing you how to fit it into your everyday life. I talked with a health and beauty salon owner recently who visited her nearest Apple retail location and discovered that she could get rid of her cash registers and use an app on an iPad 2 designed specifically for her type of business. She was so excited she ordered two. Best Buy, Verizon, and others simply cannot duplicate the experience one can get in an Apple retail location.
Marketing
The marketing that launched and continues for the Apple iPad 2 is a clear example of knowing your audience and ultimate buyers. You get the sensation when you watch an Apple iPad 2 advertisement on TV of – I’d like to do that! They focus is on the experience that can be created as well as how this experience enhances the buyer’s own daily lives. Competitor advertisements seem to miss the mark on knowing who their buyers are – or – they focus exclusively on the techie spec buyer. Emphasizing futuristic speed, HD resolution, Flash, and oftentimes technological features that most people just don’t comprehend nor do they want to comprehend.
Applications
The only point to make here is this: Apple is so far ahead in available apps that there is something for everyone. All others are simply playing catch up. What Apple discovered with the iPhone and is enhancing with the iPad 2 is that the purchase of the device is only the beginning. The buying experience is duplicated and reinvented each time Apple iPad 2 owners discover a new app that enhance their life.
What is the lesson in this latest market shakeup? For all businesses, failure to understand not only who your buyers are but also what drives their buying behavior could have you doomed from the start. A lesson HP has no doubt harshly learned and is cutting their losses. Apple iPad 2 competitors seem to have missed behaviors that transcend consumer and business buying. Instead they have focused myopically on technology and a small fraction of a buyer audience that cares. You see, that is the problem the challengers are facing – mainstream buyers simply don’t care – unless it is an Apple iPad 2.
In my recent article, The Ascent of the Social Buyer, I made mention that social buyers today were exhibiting an internalized Social Engagement Index. The mention of a Social Engagement Index is not new. The people at Alterian have talked about a Social Engagement Index (SEI) as well as a Social Sentiment Engagement Index (SSEI). Recently, Brent Leary and John Hernandez offered a perspective for The Social Customer in a report called The Social Customer Engagement Index 2011. The report focused primarily on how companies are leveraging social tools and technologies to reach and engage customers in customer service interactions. It also pays note to how satisfied customers are with these interactions.
My mention of a Social Buyer Engagement Index is coming from a different direction. In my anthropological inspired studies, the interest has been on the value buyers today are placing on the ability of companies to provide social engagement capabilities. It is asking the question: are buyers today evaluating a company’s social engagement capabilities as part of the overall buying experience as well as social experience? Although in an embryo stage with further research warranted, I think we are beginning to see the emergence of this new expectation. There are three areas that buyers today may be looking at as they evaluate a company’s social engagement capability:
Service: Socially adept buyers today may be placing a premium on the instantaneous service capabilities that social networking and technology tools offer. Does not having social engagement capabilities in service – whereby a socially adept buyer sees only conventional email and toll-free numbers – affect a buyer’s receptivity to this company?
Knowledge: Social buyers today are knowledge seekers. One of the profound shifts in the social age is how buyers today can avail themselves of knowledge that may have been hard to come by in the past. As the social age evolves and advances, so does the social buyer’s savvy discrimination for real knowledge versus content in general. There has been much attention paid to content marketing and content strategy recently as a form of new media marketing. Social buyers today are becoming savvier at distinguishing between push marketing messaging and real knowledge.
Self-Direction: In attempt to avoid the now cliché expression and perhaps to elaborate on the “buyers are in control” adage, social buyers are oriented towards self-directed means of interactions. When evaluating the overall buying experience, social buyers may be looking at what we may refer to as the avenues of self-direction that a company may offer. Are there several avenues by which a social buyer can choose to engage and interact with an organization’s sales and service capabilities?
These are three of what are sure to be more factors associated with how buyers are internalizing their own form of a Social Engagement Index. This emerging trend ups the ante’ for companies today to begin looking seriously at their social engagement capabilities. Without doing so, they may become oblivious to a new expectation buyers are considering in their overall buying as well as social experience.
While we've seen the rise of the social consumer in the past two years reshape the concept of social currency, we are witnessing the ascent of the social buyer embracing social commerce. The B2B buyer continues to ascend and advance in the use of social technologies, networks, and commerce that are radically changing the notion of business as usual. We are seeing the birth of a new era in B2B commerce that is more social, more connected, and more humanized.
The B2B buyer, for decades, has engaged in primarily offline buying activities. With the advent of the Internet, we began to see the first shifts in online buyer behaviors influencing how plans and decisions were made in a B2B context. As the constant motion of the social age evolves, offline and online buying activities are blending into a myriad of new buying behaviors that are yet to be defined clearly. Like a lens, we are still trying to focus the picture on seeing clearing today as well as into the future how these new social buying behaviors will change B2B commerce as we know it.
A New Social Engagement Index
One of the more interesting developments in the ascent of the social buyer has been the new expectations of social engagement. In recent ethnographic studies I've conducted, where I am talking with B2B purchasers and decision-makers, I am witnessing conversationally the new threshold of what we may call a company’s Social Engagement Index. What I mean is an index of how a company is perceived in its’ efforts to utilize social technologies, networks, and etc. to advance its’ relationship with their buyers. The important discovery here is that how a company is perceived to be engaging socially is beginning to influence the willingness to enter into a B2B relationship.
This insight brings back into focus the topic I recently wrote about – turning b2b buying into a social experience. It is becoming more evident that not only do B2B buyers – as social buyers – desire more humanized social experiences; they are beginning to manifest it into an expectation. This has profound implications for B2B businesses to think about remapping strategically how they align their efforts to engage with social buyers. A tough assignment when the picture is yet not as clear as desired on knowing exactly how to do this. B2B companies do know however that they must learn for the risk of being caught flat footed is too great.
Social Experience Becoming More Meaningful
One thing we can count on is that B2B social experiences are taking on meaningful contexts in terms of how buyers select who they choose to engage with for advancing their own causes – whether they be for finding solutions to challenges or how it helps them in the advancement of their careers. I especially note here how social buyers have introduced the more humanized element of a social connection that plays into how they perceive doing business with a certain company. The social buyer taking into account how a business will help them, within a social world, to advance their careers and how they think others will perceive the decisions they make.
Social Experiences Counting as Social Capital
This is an interesting development because it blends into a concept long held in consumer psychology and sociology. That is consumer purchases are made within a realm of how it helps identify who we are as well as the statement it may make to others about who we are. We may be beginning to see how this type of social psychology is becoming more prominent a factor in the B2B buying world and for the social buyer. Who the social buyer chooses to engage with and the statement their decisions make becoming a reflection of their identity as well as social capital for advancing.
Who is the Social Buyer Persona?
Answering this question definitively is going to take some time and you can count on it shifting constantly. What we do know is that a few things are beginning to come into a fuzzy picture – and I use fuzzy because we are only in the infancy of the social age – that help us to get a better idea of who the social buyer persona is:
Social buyers are exhibiting new behaviors resulting from the new remix of offline and online buying activities
Social buyers are beginning to internalize a Social Engagement Index calculator as they investigate businesses and relationships
Social buyers are desiring more humanized social experiences
Social buyer’s identity and affinity are factors in whom they choose to enter business relationships with
There is most definitely much more to learn. The ascent of the social buyer is real and it is being reflected in how social experiences and social commerce is having an influence on buying behaviors and purchase decisions. As mentioned before, the efforts of B2B companies will need to focus on how they remap their business models, functions, and social engagement capabilities to become the social business that B2B buyers are expecting.
This is the fifth and final part of a series of reflective articles on the future of buyer personas in the social age. Leading up to this final part, part 1 through 4, I covered some of the misconceptions, impact of the social age, what changes were needed, and the establishing of a new role and framework. In this final reflection, I offer 6 essentials to embedding buyer personas into your organization.
In part 4, I described a new role of Social Buyer Behaviorist and Anthropologist that can reside in a framework of researching buyer behavior through anthropological means. A return to the origins and original meaning of buyer personas that was lost as the term went viral. It is worth reiterating that buyer persona research, since its origins, is meant to be coupled with social science research methods of anthropology and ethnography. Whereby the archetype buyer persona created represents an interface to the research conducted.
There are 6 essential guiding premises that will help to embed true buyer persona research into your organization and to do so where you are not merely creating buyer profiles but are performing the bona fide practice of buyer persona research:
Do The Real Thing
If you are able to build an in-house practice, bring on people who have the requisite background in anthropology and ethnographic research. Several Fortune 100 companies, such as Intel, have moved in this direction in the past decade. These organizations are employing a team of anthropologists and ethnographers to continuously research consumer or buyer behavior. Often times, performing in-house or through the use of an experienced third party schooled in anthropological methods, developing user or buyer personas to help be the interface to their research.
What if you do not have the means or resources to build an in-house practice that conducts the research and creates interfacing personas for the research? Then a third-party option should be explored. The key is to distinguish from those who claim they do buyer personas from real practitioners versed in anthropology and ethnographic research. As the terms personas and buyer personas went viral, there have been many who say they build buyer personas but do no to very little research. This is a clear indicator that they are building consumer or buyer profiles based on a quick gathering of client data. Essentially they are providing another profile building method and incorrectly labeling them as buyer personas. It is important to look at the track record of experience in having conducted anthropological inspired research and being able to translate into buyer personas that inform on business models, buyer strategies, meeting market or competitive challenges, and adaptive strategies. Informing on adaptive strategies is becoming critical as many companies are faced with adapting to new buyer behaviors and new social dynamics as a result of the evolving social age.
Commit To The Right Level Of Time
There is no way around it. Conducting buyer persona research – the real thing as described above and throughout this series of articles – takes a sufficient amount of time. From an in-house perspective, it becomes an ongoing agenda and specific research efforts often taking a minimum of 3 months to gain the insights needed and to translate into the rich interface of a consumer (user) or buyer persona. These efforts will undergo repeated interactions with consumers or buyers. Now, these repeated interactions even more important given the rapid changes occurring in buyer behaviors due to the introduction of new social technology every 2-3 months.
From a third-party perspective, if you are promised that you can have buyer personas in a week or a short few weeks, then you should be concerned. They are most likely talking about profiles and do not have the connection to the right kind of research established. On occasion, hypothetical or what are called provisional buyer personas can be created. However, the mistake often made is that these are then used as the real thing without having been validated through research. They are, after all, “hypothetical” and if you are being held accountable for a budget to market your company’s solutions – would you bet millions of dollars on “hypothetical”?
To gain the deep insights that anthropological and ethnographic based buyer persona research can offer, companies need to allow for sufficient time in months versus a few short weeks. It takes a minimal level of 15-30 ethnographic research interviews and I’m not referring to counting friends and employees or your sales reps. This means on-site participant-observation methods with actual consumers or buyers. Depending on the complexity of markets, products, and services, it can be even more. The social age is introducing new factors and levels of research that will need to augment traditional ethnographic research. It is important to reiterate that companies today seeking third-party help must look towards a long-term partnership potential for social behavioral research will need much repeated refreshing.
Valuable insights can be gained in 2 to 4 months and depending on the complexity from multiple markets and buyer segments, it may even take longer. However, we are turning a chapter here in the social age. The need for ongoing research, as mentioned, is becoming critical for the shelf-life of consumer (user) and buyer personas is shrinking rapidly in the social age.
Cheap Will Not Get it Done
If buyer persona research tied to anthropological buyer behavior research is done in-house, be sure to get the right level of people to support such efforts. You can be sure that some of today’s leading organizations with in-house practices have staff that includes anthropologists with graduate degrees. These are people well versed in the methods of anthropology and ethnography as well as have the interpretive skills to translate findings into communicable as well as informing consumer (user) or buyer personas. Additionally, commit to a budget that supports ongoing research.
Due to the viral misunderstanding about buyer personas, as I previously mentioned sometimes research is misrepresented as meaning to talk to a few customers, a few friends, and interview employees. This should be a red flag for you if promised by third-parties. You will not get the insights that come from the right level of ethnographic research and the information will most likely be used incorrectly – perhaps even damaging if used for a high stakes initiative.
Budgeting to do the real thing and with the right amount of time is usually somewhere between what typical focus groups costs and a large scale national study for example. Meaning an organization should explore conducting buyer persona research – the real thing backed by skilled ethnographic research – with a budget in mind of five figures – sometimes six figures if it involves many multiple markets and the degree of complexity is high. The real question for many organizations given challenges they may be facing as well as faced with transitioning to a social business – can you afford not to do true ethnographic based buyer persona research to uncover real insights and opportunities that will help shape the direction of your organization in the social age?
Triangulate Your Research
A common misperception is that quantitative and qualitative research has a great divide. In fact, they should enjoy a reciprocal relationship. Ethnographic researches accompanied by the interface of buyer persona archetypes can often times inform quantitative research direction that validate opportunities uncovered. Likewise, quantitative research can be triangulated with qualitative and ethnographic efforts with buyer personas providing the interface and the narrative that brings to life both the quantitative and the qualitative research. Focus groups as well as usability studies can play a role in triangulating research by being used to gauge the reaction to prototypes and new concepts that may be born out of the combined quantitative and ethnographic research.
Involve Multi-Disciplinary Groups
As the viral misunderstanding of the term buyer persona proliferated, a common misperception evolved that buyer personas were provincial to marketing. It is not hard to see why. If the perception is that buyer personas are target buyer profiles for targeting marketing and sales messaging, then it is a logical conclusion for marketing and sales has been targeting buyers for eons. Going back to the origins of personas and buyer personas as an ethnographic research effort to inform design and strategy, these meant involving multi-disciplinary groups from design, branding, corporate strategy, marketing, call centers, fulfillment, and service. With the prominence of the social age now an important development for all businesses, a multi-disciplinary approach becomes even more crucial. The new social buyer ecosystem is touching every facet of an organization and those organizations that have deep rooted knowledge of their consumers or buyers will have a leg up on succeeding in the social age.
A very disconcerting and negative outcome of the viral misunderstanding of the term buyer persona has been how it plays out in the minds of senior marketing executives. Many a VP Marketing I’ve spoken to in the last couple of years see buyer personas only as a tool to help marketing craft sales messaging. Thus, the concepts of buyer personas never make it out of marketing if this thinking exists. Anthropological inspired research and persona development should reside within a hub and spoke part of the organization that truly is focused on the customer and the buyer. Such as in customer experience for example where the efforts must take on a multi-disciplinary approach.
Know When To Use Buyer Persona Research
The questions your organizations are attempting to get answers to can serve as a guide to know when you need the real thing – true ethnographic based buyer persona research. I like to refer to these as the “I have no idea” types of questions that keep executives up at night. If you have no idea about consumers or buyers in a new market and how they may respond to your products or services – then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea how products or services are used in new and emerging markets – then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea what the impact of social media has been on the buying behaviors of potential buyers – then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea how to generate demand now that buyers have changed their buying behaviors – then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea whether approving $15 million in new product development will be received well in the markets targeted – then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea what mix of sales and marketing strategy to deploy – then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea why previous buyers are no longer buying - then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea how best to communicate with potential consumers or buyers - then buyer persona research is right for you. If you have no idea why market share dropped by 5% in one year - then buyer persona research is right for you. I think you get the idea!
True anthropological and ethnographic based buyer persona research is meant to get answers to many of the strategic big questions that shape the future direction of organizations. I conclude with saying that the future of buyer personas is social primarily because the social age is presenting executives with many big questions that we’ve yet to have answers for. Returning buyer personas to its origins and original meaning as well as advancing with changes adaptable to the social age will help in answering such big questions.
This is the fourth part of a series of reflective articles on the future of buyer personas. In part 1 through part 3 I focused primarily on misconceptions, what needed to change, and why changes must take place in buyer persona development in the social age. In part 4, I would like to center on the role needed in organizations for buyer persona development to adapt to social business.
When looking at the future role of buyer persona development as well as a specific future role within organizations, one must first visit the origins of the term buyer persona. When a term becomes viral, as the term buyer persona did just a few short years ago, it can lose its’ original meaning as well as association with its origin and the professional foundation under which it originated. The term has been used in many variant ways, especially over the past two years. It has been used inaccurately and without full understanding of what exactly the term represents. By talking about the future role, I hope that simultaneously it will help to clarify the unfortunate misunderstanding that exists most prominently in marketing.
The Science of Buyer Persona Research
Buyer persona research has been and will always be about understanding buyer behaviors and perceptions. The actual persona itself, the archetype created, is a representation derived from researching buyer behaviors and is meant to be an interpretative tool. The type of research needed to uncover deep behavioral and cultural percepts are those closely associated with participant-observation methods aligned with anthropology and the ethnographic research techniques commonly utilized by this social science.
The primary purpose for researching buyer behavior is to gain revealing insights into how and why buyers buy. I also will note here that the expression, how and why buyers buy, has also gone viral and has lost its original meaning. Getting at how and why buyers buy is an anthropological inspired behavioral and cultural research effort and not a market or sales research question. It has been misinterpreted to focus solely on the sales questions of buying process, buying stages, decision criteria, and the many other terms used commonly in sales related probing methods. Anthropological methods are extremely important because over 50% of buyer behavior indicators related to how and why buyers buy are determined by social and cultural factors. Conventional market research and sales research or probing methods do not provide insight into these all important determinants. It does not provide the deep understanding that paves the way for shaping better as well as innovative strategies leading to improved profitability and market share.
The distinction is crucial for buyer personas couched in market and sales research methods is a capture of reactive actions. It is devoid of meaning related to goals and context. It will give you a chronological stage view perhaps but will not give you meaningful social contexts that can reshape strategies. For example, you can have two senior IT executives working in different corporations and environments. It is fair to say that if you examine their buying processes and decision criteria’s and other sales related variables, you would wind up with very similar buyer profiles. The social and cultural context however for each may be entirely different and this is where organizations need to gain revealing insight in order to shape strategies for specific markets and groups of buyers.
At this writing, I am very concerned about where the emerging concept of content marketing is heading because as I see it, is caught up in the viral spun around buyer personas incorrectly. Recent qualitative research I’ve conducted show early signs that buyers really do not see anything different. I believe the root of this is related to the fact that while the B2B marketing community may be calling what they do differently – as in content marketing – buyers are still seeing the push messaging that result from conventional market research and sales probing techniques. The term buyer persona is being defined incorrectly as a target profile for content as opposed to an informing process that shapes content strategy.
The New Role of Buyer Behavior Research
As we continue to witness the evolving social age, the need for buyer behavior research becomes more important than ever. Social and cultural contexts are increasingly becoming more prominent in viewing how and why buyers buy. The term Social Customer is becoming more prevalent and there are two major components of this term:
Social Buyer: I’ve used this term frequently in association with buyer personas to identify the Social B2B Buyer as a category in the social age. The obvious focus here is on the purchase decision.
Social Consumer: This term is related to B2C and the focus is on consumerism and consumption.
Specifically to the social buyer, newly formed social interactions and social perceptions are playing a major role in preferences towards products, services, solutions, and relationships. The future role of buyer persona development in organizations will need to focus on identifying the deeper social fabric that are forming and how they play into the overall buyer experience. Social Buyer Personas that are derived from anthropological and ethnographic research can help organizations to identify social and cultural identities as well as be used as a communications platform for aligning their organizations to buyer goals.
The future of buyer personas resides in a new role and framework for organizations. That role is one of a Social Buyer Behaviorist and Anthropologist. A role that uses existing and new social science methods combined with that of developing social buyer personas to create an interface for the research. I recently wrote a series on Social Buyerology that attempted to address such a new role and framework. This role and framework is important also for another crucial reason: if buyer personas are developed and created through the prisms of marketing and sales research orientation, they will tend to be self-referential views of target buyers (an inside-out view) as opposed to a means for discovering not so obvious and hidden meanings that make up social and cultural contexts.
We are witnessing a social revolution today and it is literally changing the face of B2B business. Buyer persona development is not excluded from the impact. Buyer persona development must be coupled with the techniques of the social sciences of social and business anthropology to develop a new role and framework for being of value to strategy within organizations. The term and the practice of buyer persona development must once again be firmly rooted in its origins and original meaning. The future of buyer personas is truly social – it is the interpretive tool organizations will need to make sense of the social anthropological inspired research that reveal deep insights about the evolving social buying behaviors of buyers today.
Social Media