We are living in a world that is fraught with uncertainty. The degree of uncertainty for businesses today probably is at the highest level in decades. Resulting in a chaotic world for sellers and buyers looking to make sense of what the future may hold.
This high degree of uncertainty and chaotic environment is showing up in many forms for both buyers and sellers. Whether it is sellers suffering from significant skill gaps as recently pointed out in surveys completed by DemandGen Report and Sirius Decisions or buyers in recent compiled reports indicating lack of knowledge and information that helps them to make purchasing decisions – uncertainty and chaos reigns at the moment. This perfect storm of uncertainty and chaos making the ability of marketer’s to communicate with buyers extremely challenging and causing sales organizations to struggle in being relevant to the buying process. So how does an organization get a hold of itself in such times?
Adaptation Begets Patterns
Organizations and buyers are highly adptable albeit some adapt quicker while others lag. Oftentimes, those who do lag are left off the train with some just barely grabbing a hold of the last caboose that is pulling way. When adaptation in industries and markets occur, patterns begin to emerge as we have seen during the past three years - such as in how buyers search for information. A key to being relevant to buyers is an organization’s willingness to invest in staying abreast of patterns and then adjusting. This is much easier said than done. Buyer behavior patterns can be tricky indeed for it can be like shifting sand on a beach that on the surface looks flat but the moment a disturbance occurs - a crater is revealed. Caught unaware of the underlying shifts in buyer as well as market behaviors, an organization can find itself falling into a crater that could be difficult to climb out of.
Once patterns can be discovered, bringing order to chaos and uncertainty lays in understanding buyer priorities and goals. An essential point and the reason buyer behavior research is a primer for this understanding is that buyers themselves are dealing with a high degree of uncertainty and chaos. They are having their own degree of difficulty in clearly being able to express priorities and goals in precise ways. Given that premise, then organizations must develop a means for identifying patterns as well as being able to interpret patterns into an actionable understanding of buyer priorities and goals.
The path to gaining a deep understanding of buyer priorities and goals is through buyer behavior research and analysis. The high degree of uncertainty and chaos in today’s marketplaces makes a presumed understanding one that can be filled with many craters. Craters that can be littered with failed product launches, content marketing efforts, demand generation initiatives, and a smoldering fire of bad reputation.
Is it time for organizations to take a hard look at their efforts in understanding emerging buyer behavior patterns and how they reveal why and how buyers are making purchasing decisions today? I know my answer – what is yours?
Over the course of the past two years, we’ve seen a marked shift in buyer behavior and buying choices. So much so that the degree of uncertainty of why and how both individual buyers and organizational buyers make buying decisions has also markedly increased. There is a direct correlation occurring whereby as buyers continue to increase their share of self-directing the buying decision without any direct interactions from sellers, the degree of uncertainty grows. While quantitatively as well as statistically we have a sense of what buyers are doing, as survey reports by Baseone and DemandGen indicate, we still lack in-depth qualitative awareness on why and how certain buying choices are made.
This is awakening a renewed reality among business today that understanding shifts in buying behavior is becoming paramount to planning marketing and selling strategies that will succeed. Buyer behavior understanding began to surface more prominently in the mid-1970’s but remained on the fringes of planning and strategies as product-centricity was entrenched in much of business as we knew it through the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. During the past three decades we have seen a growth in customer and buyer-centric thinking however buyer behavior analysis remained somewhat a small component of marketing and sales thinking as well as planning. Fast forward to the last five years and the explosive convergence of the Internet and the Social Age; we are seeing recognition that buyer behavior understanding is moving towards being the centerpiece linchpin of planning and strategy. Companies today are attempting to make themselves relevant to buyers who are radically evolving their buying behaviors and have more buying choices than they ever dreamed of in just a few short years. The relevancy mystery can only be solved by understanding buyer behaviors and the shifts in buying choices that are occurring.
We are witnessing another awakening as a result of new and rapidly evolving buyer behaviors; organizations today needing to approach marketing and selling interactions as more science and less art. These monumental awakenings call for a new approach and concept I call Buyerology. Buyerology is a means to introduce more science into understanding, both quantitatively and qualitatively, buyer behaviors and buying choices. The convergence of the Internet and the Social Age requires new approaches to tools that are used to reach in-depth understanding as well as to monitor rapid shifts in buyer behaviors. Buyerology must offer approaches and tools that help to translate buyer behavior understanding and insights into meaningful strategies that accomplish the relevancy that remains elusive for many companies today.
My own shift in thinking about buyer behavior began with a series of articles on Social Buyerology. The articles tapped into the recognition and movement towards more science and less art in the spheres of marketing and sales as well as in overall social strategy. Reflecting back on ten years since originating buyer persona development, much of the analysis performed via buyer persona development was in essence about buyer behavior. Recently, I have written about how buyer persona development must indeed undergo its own transformation at this juncture in modern business history.
This article marks a turning point for me personally and professionally. I have been thinking about something – in fact a lot - Tom Peters use to bellow loudly in many of his presentations years ago – that if you’ve been doing the same thing or staying with the same company for ten years or more you’ve become institutionalized. In similar ways, buyer personas as an idea has become institutionalized in various circles; defined rightly and wrongly, and indeed no longer can suffice on its own. Adapting to the new social world and taking a leap of faith, I will be devoting the next twelve weeks to elaborating on the new science of understanding buyer behaviors I call Buyerology. I will be sharing new approaches and tools that address the many challenges faced by organizations in marketing, sales, social business, and content strategy planning.
My hope over the next twelve weeks is to accomplish two things. First, to avoid becoming institutionalized as Tom Peters ingrained in me many years ago. Whether he meant mentally or physically, I am not sure but it has felt like a few times, like many of us, I was losing my mind while I attempted to understand the many changes occurring! The second is to make a contribution towards advancing buyer behavior understanding through the social science of Buyerology.
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.
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
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
In my article, Social Buyerology: Understanding Buyers in the Social Age, I offered perspectives on the need for a new discipline in B2B Sales and Marketing related to understanding new buyer behaviors and interactions in the social age. This is a follow up article that looks at the methods for helping B2B to research and gain valuable insights about the social buyer. Coincidently, my thoughts come at a time when the LinkedIn IPO and valuation has sent a ripple effect in the B2B business community. Undoubtedly bringing a heightened awareness to understanding the social buyer today. Whether the LinkedIn IPO impact is short lived or creates yet unforeseen outcomes, buyers have been impacted and will continue to be so by the advent of social technologies and social connection. Gaining insights into the social buyer will become an increasing imperative for B2B businesses in the global marketplaces of the Social Age.
Understanding the social buyer involves utilizing social research methods to gain deep insights into how buyer dynamics associated with networking, affiliations, influence, and decision-making are being impacted by the influx of social technologies and multiple channels. Multi-disciplinary approaches yielding new understandings will inform B2B organizations on adapting to as well as aligning with the evolving networked behaviors of social buyers. Such approaches guiding B2B businesses to develop business models and strategies that social buyers welcome. This welcoming very much opposed to what is fast becoming a worrisome fire hose of non-insight based content and 140 characters messaging inundating social buyers. This fire hose trend indicates that there has been an overemphasis on the technology versus a balanced view that looks at the social behaviors of buyers that are changing.
Social Buyerography: Multiple Qualitative Approaches
What we do know today is that traditional methods of structured customer, buyer, and market research that are quantitative based cannot address the social and cultural changes taking place in our business society. This includes the severely hindering structured methods typically associated with focus groups and surveys. It is not to say that quantitative structured approaches are worse but to say that qualitative approaches are specifically needed to understand behavioral and interaction changes in situational settings. Such situational as well as social settings involve group participation, networking, and decision-making. A social research strategy for understanding buyers can be described as well as housed under the term Social Buyerography. There are several qualitative approaches, both traditional as well as new, that can be considered when deploying Social Buyerography:
Field Buyer Research: there is no substitute for going out to the field to talk with buyers directly and using qualitative data gathering methods to understand buyer behaviors and interactions. Much of this is centered on unstructured qualitative interviewing as well as observations.
Ethnographic Immersion: when the situation calls for an in-depth “day in the life” perspective, immersion into the business culture of potential buyers can provide a very enriching picture of insights that is unmatched.
Contextual Buyer Interviews: this qualitative approach is used to help understand specific situational and behavioral contexts in which buyers are engaged in group and individual decision-making.
Grounded Theory Interviews: this can be used when there is a need to test and validate hypotheses on specific “grounded” observations or data. For example, a hypothesis can be formed on why an organization is experiencing year-over-year declining revenues. This type of qualitative interviewing method, while still unstructured, can be used to validate theoretical reasons that may come from observations and customer data.
As we look to the future of understanding the social buyer persona, new forms of social research methods are forming. These include webnography, digital ethnography, virtual ethnography, and others related directly to social media and social networking. The commonality amongst these and other evolving methods is that they are based on the foundation of qualitative research. These new methods augmenting sound core qualitative approaches and methods.
What is becoming more and more evident is the need to understand the social buyer of today. Again reiterating that the emphasis be gaining insight into how B2B buyers today are becoming more “social” than ever before in their behavior. Social technologies impacting the way buyers interact, network, and reach decisions. Social Buyerology and the multiple social research methods that could be enveloped under the term Social Buyerography can go a long way in helping companies to stay relevant with buyers in the social age.
The pendulum has been swinging rapidly during the past two years with respect to understanding buyer behavior and interactions in the social age. What we know for sure is that the dynamics and interactions between businesses and buyers are undergoing their most significant transformation in many years and decades. How groups of buyers as well as individual buyers are interacting with each other and with sellers continue to metamorphosis anew monthly redefining our knowledge of how buyers make decisions today.
We are also witnessing the phenomenon of buyers in B2B marketplaces becoming more social in their interactions. This phenomenon is fueled by the advent of social networking technologies that enable buyers to interact with selling businesses and peer buyers. The degree of interactions amongst buyers, both at a group and individual level, is most likely at the highest levels in the history of B2B selling and buying. This phenomenon is causing turmoil in the rank and file infrastructure of B2B Marketing and B2B Sales. We are seeing the births of new technologies and processes, such as content marketing, inbound marketing, marketing automation, and social media technologies attempting to address the voids created as B2B businesses shift their own buying processes and cycles. The results of these new approaches and technologies are mixed as best to date. Why do some work and others do not remain a puzzle.
Reflecting on the significant changes still evolving has led me to a belief that a new discipline is warranted in the B2B business world. This discipline is called Social Buyerology which is centered on understanding buyers in the social age. It seeks to understand the social influences on buyers as well as understand social networking relationships between individual buyers, social buyer groups, and sellers. B2B buyers today are becoming more social and not just in technology usage but in terms of what the influence of the technology has done to make buyers behave more socially. As if there were a social reservoir that has been untapped for many decades and social technology serving as the key to open the locks of the reservoir.
There are seven social factors embedded in Social Buyerology that lead to an understanding of buyer behaviors and interactions in the social age:
Social Mental Models: this represents the collective insight into attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, ideas, and emotive thoughts that are learned, experienced, and acquired in a social and business context.
Social Goals: buyer behavior, as well as the foundational principle behind buyer persona development, is goal oriented. In the social age, we are beginning to see the rise of social goals related to interacting and networking. Drastically affecting how organizational as well as personal goals are established and fulfilled.
Social Persuasion: proactive approaches are cropping up everywhere in terms of messaging designed to persuade specific buyer groups. Creating an imperative to understand new communication mediums and approaches to have buyers not only engage but adopt certain viewpoints. Obviously, content marketing comes to mind here. Which may go through several iterations as a practice and concept or something new may arise altogether as buyers continue to evolve socially.
Social Experience: this represents understanding the collective experiences a buyer and/or group of buyers has both in the social networking world as well as in the offline world.
Social Influence: this is looking at how new social networking and social group dynamics affect as well as influence individual and collective social buyers. We are just beginning to understand social influence on a generational level and by certain professions.
Social Interaction: how groups of sellers, buyers, stakeholders, and multiple departmental affiliations interact socially as well as through new social technology mediums have direct correlations to decision-making. New decision-making and buying cycle processes are now being based to a high degree on social interactions between multiple parties.
Social Networking: the advent of the social age is affecting and changing how buyers relate to colleagues and peers not only within but outside of their organizations. The spheres of networking has exploded and connections are made daily through channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. We are still on top of an enormous current that is flowing rapidly in terms of understanding how this has changed buyer behavior and interactions.
Buyer behavior today with respect to decision-making is being directly affected by the continuing evolution of the social age. B2B buyers are more social than ever which behooves B2B organizations to understand this impact as well as to adapt their business operations to the new social buyer. While traditional influences remain strong, overtime and as younger generations grow into leadership, social constructs and social models of behavior will become more prevalent. Social Buyerology can be a discipline devoted to understanding the new social buyers for organizations and allow for collaboration with academia.
Without question, while B2B Marketing is focused on developing its new prominence in the early stages of the buying cycle via content strategy and content marketing, B2B Sales is caught flat-footed on how to adapt to changing buyer behaviors. Professionals in B2B Sales must feel like they under assault from the constant dire predictions of outright dissolution in organizations as well as the constant pressure to squeeze more revenue out of the pipeline. This may be especially true in B2B organizations where inbound competencies haven’t been developed and measurements for productivity are based on outbound calls, appointments, and deals.
I do not subscribe to the notion that B2B Sales will face extinction much like when the Roman Empire fell and the city of Rome burned. What is true is that B2B Sales must go through a period of reinvention and cannot stand idly by as the world of B2B buyers continues to transform with each passing day. The good news is that B2B Sales can become a critical resource for buyers in a new found way if reinvention means becoming buyer enablers.
Here’s the interesting twist in the changes that are occurring – as buyers become more self-directed - the more B2B organizations will view “buying” in a professional light as opposed to something they do. My thought here is very different than the conventional purchasing department. Self-directed buying that involves research and evaluation as well as stakeholder analysis will become an increasingly important role in B2B organizations. Just like in other professions in embryo stages, a few will begin to lead the pack and bring some sense to the chaos of buying. B2B organizations will begin to assign and delegate buying to “professional buyers” skilled in using Internet and social technologies and who are skilled in the process of executing a self-directed buying cycle.
Buyer Persona Development can be a process and means for B2B Sales to reinvent itself. Understanding the archetypes of buyers and their relevant goals can provide the powerful insights B2B Sales needs to engage with buyers in this new social age. How can B2B Sales begin to reinvent themselves starting today? Here are a few guiding steps:
Commit to Research: this step is like perhaps going to a 12-step program related to an addiction. A B2B organization must first admit and come to the realization that they may know very little about the new social buyer and that the reason they need to reinvent their sales organization is because they are out of touch with their buyers. The first step is to recognize the need to know your buyers in a new and deep way.
Do the Right Research: the right research is based on qualitative research and contextual inquiry. Meaning you must go where your buyers are and gain insight into behavior that no amount of quantitative arm twisting will reveal. And oftentimes this means investing in third party help for a very important reason: not only will buyers be more forthcoming outside of the seller-buyer relationship but qualitative research and contextual inquiry (with knowledge of ethnographic and anthropology practices) takes skillful effort.
Don’t Fall in the Profiling Trap: a misunderstanding I wrote about in my recent article, Use Buyer Personas to Segment by Buying Behavior, is thinking that buyer personas are a profiling of specific titles and/or roles in your target organization. Thinking only in this way will put you no further ahead than you already are in terms of reinvention. Food for thought: if B2B organizations are assigning and delegating “professional” social buyers, how well do you know about them? Who are they? Are they the same as the titles and roles you’ve thought for the last twenty-five years? What do these new buying cycles look like?
Build Insight-Based Buyer Personas - Not Templates: in B2B Sales, insights about buyers are crucial to having a platform for engagement and conversational relevance. Templates of buyer personas are very limiting in keeping the focus where it should be – on key insights and narratives that matter to how buyers go about accomplishing goals.
Design for Sales Readiness: the design of buyer personas should focus on sales readiness in B2B Sales. Today’s B2B Sales Teams must be ready to anticipate and meet buyers where they are in the buying cycle. Buyer Persona Development grounded in the right research can give an insightful window into how today’s “assigned” social buyers are self-directing their buying cycles.
Design for Interaction: designing buyer personas should include a healthy focus on interaction that involves personal engagement - whether it is by a social technology medium, by phone, or in person. This can be done on two levels. One to design for conversation and two to design for customized content assembly.
Inform Sales Structure: buyer persona development can contribute immensely to informing how to organize sales team structurally and in ways that best map to how buyers are self-directing their engagement. The development effort informing on the right mix of inbound and outbound competencies that allow for an engaging as well as a redesigned buyer experience.
Inform Sales Roles and Hiring: the role of B2B Sales is transforming significantly and is at a critical juncture point. It must demonstrate role change to the buyer community in order to restore as well as regain relevancy. This means that B2B must junk their existing hiring criteria for sales they are wedded to. Buyer persona development can inform on the skills, knowledge, education, and attributes needed by sales teams to succeed.
These steps outlined above will contribute towards the reinvention of B2B Sales within B2B organizations. I also predict as B2B Sales adapts and evolves to changing buyer behaviors and reinvent anew, it will gain a prominent role in the eyes of the buyer. The changing buyer is already starting to experience “content overload” and overwhelming information sorting. B2B Sales, in a new role of expertise, can be the enabler and assembler of goal attaining opportunities that B2B buyers and social buyers alike will want as resources.
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