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.
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.
From a B2B market view, the new social buyer ecosystem continues to undergo a rapid evolution. The pace in 2011 has noticeably quickened. While the social customer ecosystem in the B2C market space is still legions ahead of B2B, it behooves B2B executives to not fall prey to the false sense that the comparative differences means they have to pay little attention. A new social buyer ecosystem is developing with implications on our conventional thinking about how B2B buyers in particular may actually go about researching and buying.
New Buyer Perspectives Evolving
As a primer to talking about the ecosystem, it is important to first visit how buyers are changing against what we think is actually going on. We know from such sources as Basesone’s Buyersphere Report what B2B buyers are doing respective to the use of social media and the Internet as they ultimately make purchase decisions. My focus has been on using qualitative research to understand how buyers are developing social oriented ecosystems and how does this map to conventional thinking in B2B marketing and Sales. There have been some surprising revelations. I would like to break this down for you in several categories and let the actual voice of buyers speak:
Buyer’s Journey: “I’m not sure what that means. I know I don’t go on a so called journey when looking for solutions.”
Buying Stages: “One of the biggest changes for me has been that I no longer think of a step-by-step approach. In fact, I can’t even recall when I last did that. It really is an ongoing almost never ending process of staying on top of the challenges you have and knowing what’s out there."
Content Marketing: “The term, content marketing, I am seeing here and there. Not sure I get it. What I do know is that the sources of information is abundant but can be overwhelming. You have to pick and choose.”
Sales: “Look, I’ve been around a while. Here’s the thing that’s changed. On high ticket items you still need a sales rep to help pull it together but the difference is you expect them to know a heck of lot more than in the past. If they don’t, then it is tough because we can’t spend too much time on bringing them up to speed.”
Social Media/Internet: “The game changer has been that with the Internet and Social Media you can really cull information together about products, solutions, companies, and the likes. Basically it is the first thing we do. As for some of the social networks, like LinkedIn, you can connect with people who can help you out. Without a doubt, I am on the Internet or some social networking site daily.”
The above represents consistent themes heard over several conversations. The qualitative interviews are not as rigorous as I would normally do in a buyer persona research and development effort but nevertheless revealing. This has caused me to reflect more deeply on the changes we are seeing and how a new social buyer ecosystem is forming.
Social Buyer Circles
With Google Plus, circles are suddenly the new rage. In this context they do serve a purpose. Circles are not new. I’m influenced by David Armano who came up with the concept of influence ripples or circles to depict blogger spheres of influence as far back as 2006.
Most recently, Michael Brito offered a great perspective via the use of circles on why content still matters and how the social customer is filtering relevant content.
Here is my view of Social Buyer Circles within a Social Buyer Ecosystem:
Implications for Engaging the Social Buyer
Always On: the Social Buyer is living and breathing the “always on” life via social media, social networks, and the Internet. The implications are that the Social Buyer – from a B2B prism – is active on the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook daily. This includes blurring the lines between personal and business.
Non-Linear Thinking: the Social Buyer appears to not be thinking conventionally with respect to a methodical stage-by-stage buying process or buying stages. Rather, challenges and solutions awareness as well as evaluation are in a constant state of motion and monitoring. This has implications to how we think in the future about sales and content marketing.
Pull Affect on Challenges: the Social Buyer is exhibiting behavior of setting up what I would like to refer to as “Challenge Circles”. Social Buyers have challenges they are constantly addressing and pull various elements of social networks and social information sources into these challenge circles. The implication for B2B marketers and sellers is how to get pulled into one of the social buyer’s challenge circles. From a sales standpoint, I like Tibor Shanto's perspective via his co-authored book with Craig Elias entitled Shift!:Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers and his focus on trigger events. The relevancy here is understanding what triggers one of the challenge circles to activate into motion towards a solution.
Information Sources Go Social: the Social Buyer is beginning to migrate from a purely search behavior to that of social media stored recall. What this means is that social buyers are using social information sources to recall when a “challenge circle” needs to be addressed with a solution. Storing recall through YouTube, Product Review Sites, Q&A such as Focus and Quora, and blogs they subscribe to.
Internal Collaboration Rules: the Social Buyer is engaging and collaborating through internal and private social networks. New platforms such as Jive are influencing the way organizations work and migrate towards being a social business. IBM is way out in front on this. This is making stakeholder buy-in and validation happen more rapidly. It is also establishing precedents for more open sharing of solutions which impacts how budgets are created for expenditures and allocating resources.
Validation Goes Social: the Social Buyer has rapid ability to validate solutions and potential purchase decisions socially through peer networks, social networks, internal networks, review sites, analysts, almost instant feedback on forums, online assessments, and the likes. The implication for B2B companies is that their online presence must extend beyond just their web site and few social networking accounts – it must be extended by influence sources. This is also radically changing the concept of public relations in the social age.
Become a Circle of Influence: the Social Buyer, as I have previously written about, is also interested in their professional growth and becoming a circle of influence themselves. Through blogging, tweeting, discussion groups, and etc. social buyers are actively seeking to be a “sphere of influence” as David Armano describes. This is new phenomenon in B2B market spaces whereby engaging with a recognized social influencer takes on new meaning.
Connected Influence: the Social Buyer is more connected, interpersonally as well as socially, than we could ever have imagined. We are finding that many interact with connections through social networks and other forms such as email or telephone. With many never having met their peer in person or arranging to meet peers at conference. The impact of peer influence on the social buyer is immense. The implication is obvious for B2B marketers and sellers – how do you make peer influencers brand advocates?
Surrounding the social buyer circles are interaction points with the top representing the buyer’s perspective and the bottom representing what the seller must provision. I offered a more detailed view of this when describing the importance of organizations to focus on buyer experience interactions.
While circles may be the rage, it is for good reason. They clearly are helping in gaining social intelligence about the social buyer. The driving forces of being always-on, instant accessibility to sources, overwhelming information overload, social networking management, and increase forces of internal collaboration are influencing buyers to have these circular adaptations. Changing forever conventional perceptions of how buyers in the social age work, collaborate, meet challenges, find solutions, engage with sellers, and ultimately make purchases.
This is the third part of a series of reflective articles on the future of buyer personas. In part 1 of this reflection on the future of buyer personas, I focused on some of the misconceptions about buyer personas and in part 2, I offered perspectives on why changes were needed to be relevant to the social age. In part 3, we turn to the topic of what types of changes are needed.
As I alluded to in part 1, somehow buyer personas went wayward in being correctly defined. Where did it go wayward? Primarily, like most definitions in business, the term was adopted as well as co-opted to put a new label on practices that have been around for a few decades in marketing and sales. Many a good sales professionals as well as marketing professionals I knew back in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s adopted the valued practices of understanding the buying process, profiling their customers/buyers, discovering buyer constraints, understanding the buyer’s decision criteria, and adopting KSF (Key success Factors) factoring in marketing and sales planning. Consultative and solutions selling programs were developed to incorporate sales techniques designed to enable sales in particular to learn how to ask relevant questions aimed at uncovering answers to the above. Buyer personas over the last five years in particular have been layered over these existing practices – as if we were putting a new cover on an old book. My hope in part 3 is that by noting what needs to change, it will also dispel the new cover on an old book misunderstanding. At the same time, offer perspectives on the future of buyer personas in the social age.
From Art to Science
Buyer persona development is more science than art. Now in the social age, the science of buyer personas must be emphasized even more so than ever. Why is this? Buyer persona – and now Social Buyer Persona Development is about understanding behaviors, ecosystems, culture, and goals. Goals have been at the heart of personas in general since their origins. It takes science to uncover changes in behaviors and to understand goals in ways that customers and buyers have difficulty articulating. The science of goal interpretation from the unarticulated reveals the deepest insights about buyer behaviors as well as taps into underlying resources leading to innovation. The science of goal orientation leads to discovering the often hidden and unarticulated roots of “why” people buy. The social sciences of ethnography and anthropology are becoming more prominent in the business world and are essential foundations for true social buyer persona development. Recently, I offered a perspective on a new field called Social Buyerology to foster this sharpened focus. This change is needed because we are in a period of history that is undergoing the most significant change in buyer behaviors since the end of the Second World War. Creating a new cover for existing practices is art. Rewriting the story inside is science.
From Push to Pull
I’m a big fan of John Hagel, author of the book The Power of Pull. His macro views on how business models are shifting from push to pull is important to buyer personas because they change the context by which buyer personas are researched and created. Traditional management and business models have been built on pushing outward through the organization to buyers and inducing them to buy. John Hagel’s makes a 21st Century argument that organizations must develop a spirit of collaboration between co-workers and customers (buyers) that pulls them towards improving both worlds via the organizations. No easy task for much of today’s management structure still is focus on pushing products and services out to customers. The social age however is radically allowing this concept to happen. Understanding how the social buyer persona behaves in a pull economic model is integral to organizations learning how to collaborate with their buyers versus engaging in the art of persuasive seduction.
From Messaging to Listening
Related to from push to pull, much of the intended efforts in building buyer personas – whether executed correctly or not – has been about how to message to buyers. The messaging of course aimed at persuasion in a marketing and sales context. Social buyers today are responding to social organizations that are becoming more adept at listening. The future of buyer personas in the social age is to adapt to the science of listening and identifying the constantly shifting patterns of changes in buyer behaviors. Let the words of a buyer captured in a qualitative interview speak to this: “Look, I get all kinds of stuff from (company name removed – sorry!) and its all the same – they are just pushing (product name removed – sorry!) on me. They can disguise it all they want with white papers and all but it still comes down to pushing a product on me. That’s not listening in my book.” Social buyer persona development must change to be more about informing on listening competency than messaging competency.
From Profiling to Narrative
Not to beat a dead horse, but buyer personas must continue to move from a misunderstood practice of profiling to a practice of understanding the narrative of the social buyer. The narrative is part science and part art. You cannot tell the narrative of the social buyer artfully without the prerequisite of the uncovering attained by science. Narratives have long been an interpretative component of the social sciences as a way of presenting as well as recasting research findings. Narratives and scenario design have been building blocks of personas since their origins and can play an essential role in helping to understanding the changing buyer behaviors brought on by the advent of the social age.
From Marketing/Sales Push to Social Experience Design
Another person I’m a big fan of is Paul Greenberg (plus he’s a big Yankees fan like me), a leading expert on Social CRM and author of CRM at the Speed of Light. Paul’s mantra of - “Buyers don’t want to be an object of a sale but rather the subject of an experience.” – says it best for me. For B2B organizations, this is a tough transition for buried deep into the DNA of their own corporate cultures is the emphasis on pushing outwardly product and sales messaging thus they have little guidance on how to turn B2B buying into a social experience. Both user and buyer persona development is a design thinking process. When implemented correctly, buyer personas have been used to inform the design of buyer strategies and interactions. In the social age, social buyer persona development plays an important role in informing organizations on how to design social buying experiences that’s predicated on listening and engagement as opposed to messaging and push.
From Content Presentation to Social Interaction
The idea of using content to create CTA’s (Call-to-Action) is not necessarily a new idea. It has been part of marketing efforts for years. The term “content marketing” is gaining a foothold due to the explosion of new media channels resulting from the Internet and the Social Age. Among the positive aspects afforded to organizations, there have been consequences. Let’s have the voice of a buyer articulate: “It’s like a fire hose at times. There is so much information coming my way that it is getting hard to manage and stay on top of. I wish there was a way to turn the faucet handle down.” To me this is content presentation just flooding media channels. Social buyer persona development can help inform not only the design of content but also how to design for embedding interaction into content strategy. Buyer persona development must change from a contextual intent of content presentation and messaging to providing deep insight into the design of social interaction behaviors buyers seek. Content marketing in the form of content presentation exacerbates information overload. Embedding social interaction into content is like a sorting belt to buyers. As content floods them along the electronic media conveyor belt, those with social interaction embedded get automatically sorted to a more streamline conveyor belt.
As we look to the future of buyer personas, it is becoming more and more evident to me that the next evolution is in adapting to the social age. It is apt to note that the social sciences of ethnography and anthropology must become more foundational to buyer personas due to the order of magnitude shift we are seeing in social behaviors, interactions, and goals related to the social age.
There is irony in the narrative of my reflection. Personas, both user and buyer, started out with an emphasis on ethnographic research before the term buyer personas was co-opted to describe marketing and sales buyer profiling. The social age is returning buyer personas to the realm of a practice that more closely aligns with the social sciences as well as with the conceptual origins of personas in general.
In part 1 of this reflection on the future of buyer personas, I focused on how it is important to leave some of the major misconceptions about buyer personas behind in order to peer into the future. In part 2, I would like to offer perspectives on why the practice and process of buyer personas, as we’ve known them for the past decade, must undergo significant change to be relevant in the social age.
Without a doubt, we are seeing the most dramatic change in buyer behaviors since post World War II. In my opinion, the seller to buyer world has literally been flipped upside down in unimaginable ways brought on first by the advent of the Internet and now by emerging social trends. In a recent article, The Influence of the Social Buyer on Business, I alluded to areas that are undergoing transformation as well as new relational aspects emerging. These being areas related to new social buyer ecosystems, social business models, and new social buying cycles. The areas mentioned are also having a transformational affect on the practice of buyer persona research and creation. Let us look at several factors that give insight into why changes are needed:
Frame of Reference Must Change
Our reference point for decades has been sellers in the mode of finding – or shall we say hunting – buyers. Organizations implemented simple to complex strategies designed to find buyers and persuade them to hear what they have to say about their products, services, and solutions being offered. Much of marketing and sales still operates the same way today from this frame of reference. Training programs still continue to be focused on finding, probing, presenting, and the likes all aimed at persuading a buyer to hear what a company has to say. Simply stated, the defined role of marketing and sales for the past century has been to be the deliverer of information and to persuade. In today’s social age, this is no longer true. Marketers and sellers can expect social buyers to know if not more than they do, then plenty about products, services, and solutions well before they even get the chance to engage. This is of importance to the process of buyer persona research and development because it means organizations must be in a social listening mode to take in the insights about social buyers. The insights gained may not match up well with an outbound or inside-out frame of reference. The frame of reference succinctly must go from how to get buyers to hear to how to listen to buyers.
The Connected Buyer
Social buyers today are highly connected to peers, influencers, informational sources, suppliers, and academia. Creating new forms of social buyer ecosystems that are also malleable – meaning they are likely to undergo ongoing movement and changes constantly. This has profound implications for buyer persona research. We can no longer have a concrete buyer-centric view whereby we look at the singular buyer. Social buyer persona research will need to adapt to a discrete social buyer ecosystem perspective to truly understand how social buyers are connected and creating new social ecosystems literally on the fly.
No Longer a Snapshot – More Like a Movie
Prior to as well as since personas were originated, the aim was to capture a static snapshot of the user or buyer at a particular point in time. As buyer personas evolved, a prevailing notion was that buyer personas came with a “best if used by” date. At first, it was recommended that new buyer personas be created every 5 years. This timeline continued to shorten. I say it is just about gone altogether now. Let’s face it – a lot happens - even in six months. Buyer persona development will need to adapt to helping organizations have an ongoing dynamic view of social buyers as opposed to a static snapshot of a buyer. This is creating implications on how social buyer personas are researched as well as developed and will call for new methodologies.
Time to Jettison the Sales Funnel and Buying Stage Views – Might as Well Throw Out the Buyer Journey Too
There has much debate as well as thoughtful new ideas about the sales funnel or the sales pipeline view marketing and sales has been wedded to what seems like forever. If you have been around in marketing or sales even just a few years, you know that what you learned in college still looks the same. The buyer has stages leading to a purchase decision. Wherever you are now, these stages have been altered slightly, given new names, or diagrammed differently. But, the view is still the same – like gospel - by golly there are four, five, or six stages that buyers religiously go through. There has also been much discussion about the buyer’s journey – including from me – on how we have to map to the buyer’s journey as they go through these buying stages and how we track via the sales funnel. My view has changed on this the more I see qualitatively how a new social buyer is emerging. Closely associated with the view of the connected social buyer, I am seeing the social buyer self-creating socially oriented cycles and circles that are meaningful to them in their pursuit to achieve goals. I will offer more insight soon in a separate article on the emergence of Social Buyer Circles. This is an important development that will alter significantly social buyer persona research and development.
The above represents just few of several reasons why the future of buyer persona research and development is social. The social age is causing many businesses to rethink and reinvent themselves in the wake of the emerging social buyer. Buyer persona research and development is no exception.
Next: The Future of Buyer Personas is Social – Part 3
About a dozen years ago, I became involved with personas through fate by meeting Alan Cooper, at the time he just finished his landmark book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, and becoming enamored with personas as a process to build more user friendly products. I learned and watched in awe from the wonderful collective group of pioneers from those early heady days in using personas at Cooper Design – people like Kim Goodwin, Robert Riemann, David Fore, Wayne Greenwood, and Dave Cronin. Along with Alan Cooper, these folks are the real forerunners of personas back in the late ‘90’s. This group included Carol Christie who was instrumental in landing some of the first batch of design projects back then that involved the use of personas.
As an individual with a background in marketing and sales, I began to think of how this could be a process to help make informed decisions not just about users but also buyers. A little known fact is that it was Alan Cooper who first coined the phrase buyer personas in his book to differentiate from user personas as well as to highlight that products should be designed for users and not buyers. While spending time at Cooper Design, the phrase stuck around my head like a gnat that just wouldn’t go away. After first adjusting the process to adapt to the rising presence of the Dot.com boom; next came the turbulent fall from the Dot.com bust. Cooper barely survived the bust - and I am glad it did. I wound up on a path afterward searching for a way to make buyer personas a reality.
Flash forward to the present day nine years later, I believe that buyer personas in general and as a marketing and sales process is at a critical juncture needing significant change. I am seeing this need firsthand as well as reflecting back on these nine years of what worked then but may not work in the future. Just as personas needed to change from a process aimed squarely at software design to incorporate the Web, buyer personas as a process must now undergo reinvention to be applicable to the Social Age. The future of buyer persona research and its processes are social as the social buyer becomes a prominent as well as permanent fixture in the new social age.
What Buyer Personas Never Were and Should Not Be In The Future
Buyer personas has suffered from the malady of being characterized incorrectly more often than not. The starting point for organizations to understand how buyer personas in the future will be social is first addressing myths and misconceptions. Let's look at a few:
Buyer personas are not a buyer profile, a demographic profile, a psychographic profile, a market segment profile, a sales profile, a market research profile, a customer survey profile, or a focus group profile. The latest trendy term of content marketing has even resulted in buyer personas being characterized as content profiles. The point is that buyer personas are not profiles. Personas in general were never intended as such.
Another misconception is that buyer personas are role personas. This myth has resulted in many organizations building buyer personas that mirror the roles they typically market and sell to. They amount to glorified buyer profiles that do not possess revealing insights that shape marketing or sales strategy. Oftentimes, buyer personas, when researched correctly, can be role agnostic.
Closely associated with the myth that buyer personas are role persona descriptors is that they describe what a buyer does as opposed to what goals buyers have difficulty articulating. Thus, you see buyer personas built that amount to not only a role description but also accompanied by a litany of tasks performed, responsibilities, and background information. In many ways, like a job description.
The source for building buyer personas oftentimes leads to the above misconceptions. If buyer personas are based on internal sales and marketing customer data only they will offer little value. This holds true for surveying methods associated with traditional market research, customer surveys, and focus group methods. Some companies have made valiant attempts to do requisite qualitative field interviews with customers however utilized internal personnel not trained or skilled in ethnographic or anthropological techniques to conduct them adequately. These interviews becoming more relevant to Voice of the Customer oriented programs.
In order to peer into the future, it is important to leave behind the misconceptions about buyer personas. Only then will social buyer personas be able to play an integral part of the transformation taking place in the social age.
Next: The Future of Buyer Personas is Social - Part 2
In the B2B world, the emergence of the Social Buyer is causing organizations to search for better ways to reach its’ base of buyers. What we do know is that B2B buyers are demanding more social experiences in their buying processes. To date, it appears that many of the efforts to reach buyers remain tactical in nature. Companies are looking to social media and other means such as content marketing to fit into their existing structure and business operations. This approach, if wedded to existing structures, may in fact be impeding the evolution of B2B organizations to not only adapt to changes in buyer behaviors but also align their organizations to the emerging Social Buyer.
What we continue to witness is how compartmentalized efforts are being aligned with existing departments. Certain tactical initiatives related to social networking, content strategy, demand generation, and more continue to have a very provincial nature to them and the debate related to proverbial “who owns this” continues to be avoided. Business leaders, especially those in B2B, must take heed to what is happening in the under layers of their business industry and what influence the Social Buyer is having in their marketplace. Here are just three that are not visible until they are unearthed through discovery:
Ecosystems Are Shifting
Dependencies and interdependencies are ever so rapidly changing for the social buyer. Ecosystems relied on, perhaps for decades, are shifting with some members of the ecosystem being left behind and new members cropping up and fitting into the new social ecosystem. Social technology and platforms are changing the way companies co-evolve and co-exist. B2B business leaders will need to stop seeing themselves as just suppliers or distributors. In the emerging social ecosystems of today, businesses will need to become integral members with their role in the social ecosystem being redefined by the social buyers they interact with. A key understanding is that not only are B2B buyers becoming more social but the very ecosystem they live within is becoming more social.
The emergence of social technologies and social buyers means new business models are rising and old ones are being discarded at a fast pace. If not careful, B2B leaders can be caught in some sort of a slumber when it comes to reexamining their business models while new competitive forces arise with far more attractive business models to the social buyer. One only has to look at the newspaper and print media industries to understand that digital media is drastically affecting business models in these industries. Both changes in reader technologies and reader behaviors are altering previous business models significantly. How businesses price and execute business models, whether they be fixed pricing or variable pricing based, are being drastically affected by changes in social buying behaviors, social technologies, and social ecosystems.
Social Buyer Cycle
There has been plenty of reference to the buyer’s journey, including from myself, over the past couple of years. The more we witness the emergence of the social buyer as well as social ecosystems, the more inappropriate the use of the term “journey” becomes. The buyer’s journey as a description implies that there is a defined end destination, stages, and a period of time. This is no longer true in the social business world. Many processes made “social”, including buying, are beginning to take on a perpetual cyclical nature whereby where one starts and one ends is a blurred vision. The "buyer’s journey" continues to be viewed through the lenses of existing structures and systems. This presumes that social buyers continue to advance through neatly defined stages. That view may not be a truism anymore in the social business world. Learning about the various Social Buyer Cycles that are in perpetual motion, whether it be related to purchase, service, co-development, and the like, will become an increasingly important mandate for B2B business leaders.
By learning more deeply about new and emerging social ecosystems, social business models, and social buyer cycles, B2B business leaders can be better informed on the future direction of their organization. Without these, leaders will not have the requisite compass to guide them into uncharted territories. Territories that includes creating new social interaction models, new roles as members of a social ecosystem, and advancing social business models that may very well alter the structure and business operations they have been wedded to for decades – in ways they could not have dreamed of just a few short years ago.
This is the fourth and last installment of my initial reflection on Social Buyerology. The first article, Social Buyerology: Understanding Buyers in the Social Age reflected on the need for a new science of examining buyers in the social age. The second, The Research Methods of Social Buyerology, reviewed the types of research methods needed to attain a deep understanding of the new social buyer persona. In the third installment, Social Buyerology: Listening to the Social Buyer, we looked at how Social Buyerology can be designed to listen to revealing insights about the social buyer. In this fourth article, we examine how to turn insights about the social buyer persona into social influence.
A starting point I believe is to take a hard look at what I believe is a fundamental change on the part of social buyers related to the old adage of turning insight into action. In the social age, influence or perhaps more correctly, social influence, has become the centrality of the social buyer’s mindset towards taking steps leading to a buying decision. This, in fact, is creating a tension point between marketers and buyers today. For years and yet still there has been an almost unstoppable inertia on the part of marketing and sales efforts towards affecting an immediate “action” on the part of buyers. For many in the world of B2B Marketing, for example, it is hard to resist the impulse to plan for very action-oriented campaigns. These efforts usually accompanied by PowerPoint presentation ad infinitum extolling how much “action” is going to take place as a result of the latest campaign. Social Buyerology requires a new way of thinking as well as adapting to turning insights into social influence. These insights indicating how to mitigate the tension point created when social buyers are asked to take “action” without experiencing influence.
There are three guideposts for turning insights into social influence gathered through the previously outlined research methods as well as listening principles of Social Buyerology:
Dynamic
In an action-oriented mindset, the design of marketing and sales plans is usually directed towards attempts to create a scenario for the buyer to act upon. Social influence dynamisms require us to look at the opposite of duplicating messages across multiple channels. Insights can reveal how social buyers are accustomed to social interaction by various channels. Savvy marketers today will be asked to look at how to optimize each channel uniquely. In essence, marketers will need to learn new skills and perspectives to interact with social buyer personas in ways unique to each social channel and social interaction scenario. The advent of the social age is in effect closing the coffin lid on the one size fits all marketing tactics of yesteryears.
Organic
Marketing and sales plans have a tendency to be concrete and finite plans. Either they worked or didn’t work. And, when they didn’t work they are shelved. Those they did work sometimes run its course and then are neglected to move onto the next “big” thing. An organization, without knowing it (except by the smart frontline people who oftentimes not listened to), can find itself in a high-stakes game of rolling the dice repeatedly. The dice in this case being the newest, latest, and grand marketing or sales campaign. The social organization of today must look at how each component of its marketing and sales planning allows for organic growth and plants seeds of growth in each other’s landscape. This is where insights become critical to interpretation and understanding how to create integrated efforts that feeds such things as web traffic, leads generated, social branding, viral public relations, and etc. These integrated efforts then spreading the seeds of social influence in many places. This is very much opposed to the conventional islands of plans that are created by various departments who truly act as if there is a deep blue ocean between them.
Connect
We are rapidly moving towards a highly socially connected society. The societal changes in connectivity are bleeding into the business community more prominently than ever before. Insights gathered via the research methods of Social Buyerology must go through an interpretative process of understanding how to help foster connections between peers, organizations, communities, and other circles of social influences. In the coming years, this capability may become the centermost skill and talent level an organization possesses. The ability to create social connectedness will far eclipse marketing and sales abilities as we know it today as a barometer of success and survival.
In this series, I have attempted to lay out the concept of understanding buyers in the social age through Social Buyerology. Given the ongoing rise of the millennial generation into the work force over time, both business organizations and business academia will need to adapt to the meaning as well as transformational changes brought on by the social age. Many of today’s graduates are leaving their universities ill-equipped for the work world they will ultimately find. These graduates are more socially adaptive than the very professors who taught them. In the end, what this incoming generation finds will be a factor of survival for an organization in the long term. The question coming down to: will they find a social organization adapting to the world that surrounds them or will they find an organization continuing to practice archaic business, marketing, and sales operations out of touch with social buyers?
This is the third installment of my reflection on Social Buyerology. The first article, Social Buyerology: Understanding Buyers in the Social Agereflected on the need for a new science of examining buyers in the social age. The second, The Research Methods of Social Buyerology, reviewed the types of research methods needed to attain a deep understanding of the new social buyer persona. In this third installment, we look at how Social Buyerology can be designed to listen to revealing insights about the social buyer.
One of the first premises of Social Buyerology is that it must reside within a social organization. There has to be a degree of openness and courageous leadership to accept that there is a new social buyer persona on the horizon and that an organization must adapt. Even if an organization has not started efforts to address social marketing and social selling, there must be a conscious agreement that the first step will be taken down the path towards becoming a social organization. Only then will insights be listened to and responded to.
Behavioral Listening
In my previous article, The Research Methods of Social Buyerology, I covered the many various qualitative approaches that can used to gain insight into the social buyer. A key aspect of these approaches is revealing behavioral insight. What we are witnessing is a dramatic shift in buying behaviors. At first, behavioral changes were notable among consumers and easy to spot. Now we are seeing an increasing change at a rapid pace for the B2B business buyer which is not so easy to pinpoint as in the consumer world. Social Buyerology becomes a best practice and science for listening to and identifying patterns of behavioral changes so that an organization does not find itself flatfooted in responding to its social buyers.
Social Interaction Listening
In the modern social age, we know that the degree of social interaction has increased immensely. The increased social interactions propelling forward new ways of conducting business and redefining buyer and seller interaction like never before. While it is easy and quick to think of social interaction in terms of technology and platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, savvy B2B social marketing means focusing on how these interactions are changed and what potential exists to create new ways of interacting with social buyers. Social Buyerology incorporates looking at how social buyers today adopt mental models around social interaction. Areas such as peer-to-peer social networking, community memberships, subscribing to blogs, and following on Twitter or Facebook are loaded with differentiating perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, aspirations, goals, and one’s own self-determination. Understanding the meaning of these social interactions to the social buyer is far more advancing than the technologies and platforms themselves.
Social Buyer Persona Listening
The buyer persona development methodology, when I first originated its practice back in 2002, was suited for the time when the degree of change in social interactions and buyer behaviors were either non-existent or changing at a mild pace. The modern social age calls for new methodologies and practices associated with the development and creation of the social buyer persona. The development of social buyer personas today must tell the story of the social buyer in the social age. It must serve as the communications platform for the social organization to help its’ people understand who their social buyer persona is and what insights are revealed by the research methods of Social Buyerology. Unlike the predecessor of conventional buyer persona development, whereby created personas had a shelf life of a few years, the social buyer persona development and creation effort must undergo a constant state of refreshing and modification. This will require a new way of thinking about personas in general and probably represents the biggest shift since personas made their presence felt in the late ‘90’s.
Social Buyerology is in part defined by the process of organizational listening to the behavioral changes, the degrees of social interactions, and the insights revealed about the social buyer persona of today. The B2B social organization of today must look at how to organize and sustain active listening as well as how to achieve sustainable communications about the social buyer personas so that such efforts become interwoven into the very fabric of the their existence.
Next: Social Buyerology: Turning Insights into Action
Image by Ross Mayfield via Flickr
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