In the world of B2B management, there are numerous head scratching efforts going on as we peer ahead into 2012 and beyond. Primarily, it has to do with how to get from here to there. One of the issues faced by B2B companies with the high degree of uncertainty, global economic turbulence, and a rapidly changing buyer driven and social world is figuring out where the from here to there actually leads to. Recent buyer and management interviews tell me a lot of head scratching continues to go on. Plenty of internal angst and debate is taking place on how to get from here to there, what is needed, what should be done, and what a lot of people think. The what to do aspects of internal planning usually center on strategy and tactical questions such as:
How do we grow revenues? What can we do to generate more leads? How do we expand business with existing customers? What type of content will drive more traffic to our web site? Should we get more active with social media? Do we need to improve our product quality and offering? Should we boost marketing and sales budgets? Do we need to hire more people? What should our pricing strategy be going forward? What new technologies do we need to adopt?
As you can see, the list of questions for B2B organizations can be endless. And plenty of them have to do with what should we do – probably more so than how to get from here to there. What is striking however is that there is a tendency to dive into the angst over and debated questions without truly having clarity on where from here to there actually should end up. As they say in the venture capital world: sometimes there is no there - there. So in this riddle of thinking, to figure out how to get from here to there, you first have to figure out where the there actually is.
What is the one thing you can do to figure out where the there is and how to get from here to there?
You have guessed it by now, I am sure, if you have read my articles before:
Attaining deep qualitative B2B buyer insights.
Investing in deep qualitative B2B buyer insights means talking to your customers – and yes that sometimes means with the help of a third party. Let’s face it – in certain situations buyers are more revealing to a third party when the perceived wall of sales agenda comes down and the expertise level to conduct qualitative research is not in-house. However the point is this: to be informed on where the there is actually means your company needs to be talking with existing customers and prospective buyers deeply outside of a marketing and selling context.
Revealing buyer insights can tell you plenty about where your existing customers and buyers are headed. Deep buyer insights give you a clue on where the planning of how to get from here to there is suppose to end up. Giving you answers to the above mentioned type questions as well as what you should be doing to align with your buyers.
Collecting deep qualitative B2B buyer insights – before you get in over your head in angst and debate – can alleviate much of the headache that comes with strategy and tactical planning. Imagine a meeting with less I think we should debating going on and more discussion on how we need to help existing customers and prospective buyers get from here to there. Helping your customers and buyers to get from here to there helps you figure out how you and your company will get from here to there. The definition of where that is, if you are aligned with your buyers, should be a two sided coin. Helping buyers achieve their emblem of success on their side of the coin ensures that you will have an emblem of success on your side of the coin.
The one thing you can do is acquire deep qualitative buyer insights. The type of insights that inform you on the map you need to put in place that shows you, your teams, and your company how to get from here to there. Now – can you imagine getting anywhere in the world without a map?
Asking good questions was seared into my mental consciousness by several mentors early in my career. This notion was further influenced by prodigious reading of Peter Drucker. The premise being that good questions help you to focus and to get to the heart of what matters most. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years: it is hard to do and it takes practice! As I think about the future for B2B Marketers, these questions ring the loudest:
Who Are Our Customers?
We are undergoing the most significant changes in buyer behaviors in several decades as well as seeing the rise of connected social buyers, albeit younger, who behave much differently than traditional buyers. As simple as the question sounds, it is still the hardest question for businesses to answer. With existing buyers, new buyers, and expanding markets constantly in transition - getting insight into answering this question will need to be on top of the list.
Where Did Our Customers Go?
If we randomly picked a ten page year-end report, it would be a good bet that somewhere on page eight or nine in the third paragraph there is mention of it. You know what I am talking about. The one about, in management speak of course, losing existing customers or prospective buyers dropping out of the pipeline. If you don’t have solid answers on where they’ve gone – and why – then it is a safe bet you might see increases in next year’s ten page report.
How Do We Create A Better Buying Experience?
With distinctive differences between products and services narrowing substantially, experience-centered marketing and relationships will be the coveted playing field to win on. When was the last time your organization reviewed processes, systems, departments, and the likes to determine whether they added value to the buying experience? Were processes or systems put in place, now in hindsight, to address an anomaly that occurs in less than 3% of all situations? Meaning, the remaining 97% of existing customers and prospective buyers have to go through hurdles that in the end may cause them to say: forget it!
What Is The Best Way To Interact Directly With Customers?
If we totaled all of the articles written in 2011 in the B2B world, it would make you think that there is nothing happening after this so called 70% window where buyers don’t want sales interaction. Well, ignore at your own peril. What has happened is that it has raised the stakes on the remaining 30-40% where direct interaction from sales is still needed. In service what is the best means for direct interaction? In sales, what resources should be dedicated to field sales versus inside sales? What in the world is social selling and what do we do about it?
How Do We Best Equip Our Employees For The New Way Of Business?
If you haven’t noticed, buyers are a changing. Meaning your organization cannot stand pat without changing also. Buyers are expecting their suppliers and vendors to change with them. If there is a growing perceived gap between how much they’ve changed and how much you haven’t – could mean they will go elsewhere. It is time to look at the talent needed and the equipping technologies needed to have employees ready to do business in a new way.
How Do we Best Assimilate Social Media Into Our Business – The Right Way?
Enriching experiences with social media is here to stay. The cabling has been laid out and becoming hardwired into the mainstream conscious of every business. If you resisted, it is time to take a fresh look and ease up on the tight grip you’ve had on social media expenditures. Granted, the hype was spectacular and some companies bet their whole marketing budget on social media. Those who did will probably rethink that idea and be much the wiser going forward.
What Exactly Is Doing Content Marketing The Right Way?
Many B2B companies are grappling with the ideas behind content marketing and content strategy. It all sounds good – give existing customers and prospective buyers’ great content and that should result in gains in customer loyalty and buyer conversions. How to make that happen is where the grappling is taking place. When does too much content do more harm than good? When does too little content hurt conversions? What exactly is good content versus bad content?
As you see, the questions could never end. The important take away is to be sure to ask them. Ignoring them and sweeping them under the rug will only make the rug a little bumpy. And one day, buyers will simply pull the rug out from underneath you.
New buyer behaviors means B2B organizations have to rethink many of their existing ways of engaging B2b buyers today. This is certainly problematic when rethinking often entails looking at such building blocks as strategy, tactics, systems, and infrastructure. Let’s take a look at new buyer behaviors and how they are affecting B2B Marketers (note – when using the term B2B Marketers, I am referencing both marketing and sales):
Buyers Expanding Their Decision-Making Networks
The advent of social technologies is allowing B2B buyers today to expand not only their social network but their collaborating network. While we have been conditioned over decades to focus on a single target buyer, or as I have written about often, a target buyer persona, we are beginning to see that this will no longer be adequate for B2B Marketers. The expansion of these buyer ecosystems and networks is changing who is included in new buyer decision models. Buyers are less and less representing themselves or behaving as individual buyers but more and more as a buyer network. B2B Marketers will need to get grounded in figuring out what buyer ecosystems and buyer networks exist for their respective industries.
Buyers Are Seeking Intelligence, Not Content
I’ve covered this recently in several articles. In qualitative efforts I’ve been involved with recently that included conducting buyer interviews, I can tell you that the overwhelming amount of content that buyers are dealing with is an issue. Buyers are essentially being forced to be more selective and to “junk” perceived non-relevant content. I use the word perceive here because it is very much like Malcom Gladwell’s theory of Blink. They are making the perception of non-relevance in a blink of an eye. B2B Marketers then must focus on standing out and offering intelligence that buyers seek and not mere push messaging content.
Buyers Want Humanized Buyer Experiences
Let’s face it, many B2B buying experiences still feel, look, and are acted out in very transactional ways. Buyers today are basically saying: why should I settle for less! I still stand solidly behind Paul Greenburg’s mantra that “buyers want to be a subject of an experience, and not an object of a sale.” B2B Marketers will need to focus on how to make humanized buyer experiences happen. The margin of difference between products and services is narrow so the playing field of experience is gaining in prominence.
Risks Continues to Play Big Role in Buyer Decisions
Risk aversion and risk avoidance continue to affect B2B buying decisions. The uncertainty created by a tumultuous global economy and uncertainty about the future means B2B buyers give extra attention to driving down costs and putting more pressure on reducing price whenever they can. The affects of buyer perceived risks is enormous. It is resulting in more problem solving research, longer sales cycles, and the expansion of buyer networks in decision-making as mentioned above. B2B Marketers then must not only determine what these perceived risks are, but address them early on in buying cycles and buyer decision models.
Buyers Adopting New Self-Enabling Technologies
If we think back ten to fifteen years ago, it was very common to think that mid-level managers to senior executives probably would privately break down and cry if the administrative assistant called in sick. Fast forward today, new technologies have caused a major mind shift. B2B buyers from mid-level managers to senior executives are efficient at using newer technologies to be self-enabling. Meaning they want more self-enabling technologies and services from B2B Marketers. With 60% to 70% of purchase decisions being made before there is direct sales involvement, this is the new frontier in B2B Marketing and Sales. B2B Marketers then will need a mind shift themselves. In the past three years, we’ve seen a considerable increase in marketing technology investing with some producing measurable success while some are questionable at best. The shift needs to be towards investing in buyer enabling technologies. Meaning B2B Marketers will have to think more about how they can create self-enabling buying experiences that buyers customize on their own. Experiences that don’t necessarily follow what we think are normal buying processes or stages.
Investing In The Two Sides of Buyer Insight 2.0
Enriching insights on existing customers and prospective buyers is rising to the top of the agenda for C-Suites in B2B organizations. The above mentioned buyer behaviors and their impact on B2B Marketers mean that making assumptions about existing customers and potential buyers is risky business. While investments in BIG data surged in the past two years, investing in BIG insights will gain more attention as B2B Marketers continue to struggle making sense out of data and analytics. In 2012, B2B Marketers will begin to incorporate the two sides of buyer research and analysis into Buyer Insight 2.0 – data and context. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two and B2B Marketers will discover in 2012 that to understand buyer decision-making behaviors - data or analytics cannot exist without context and that context cannot exist without data or analytics.
Without question, there is a lot to think about in 2012. One thing B2B Marketers can think about consistently is that new buyer behaviors will affect them and it will not be the other way around. Those days are long gone indeed.
This is the fourth article looking at buyer trends that will influence marketing and sales in the near and foreseeable future. The first three covered experience creation, BIG insights, and demand fulfillment. This article looks at how buyers are developing more complex networks of interactions as well as decision-making and how organizations must adapt their view of buying.
Buyer Trend: Developing More Complex Networks That Collaborate On Decisions
As many B2B organizations know, when dealing with complex selling situations, identifying the influences on buying processes and the purchase decision is often the most difficult challenge faced by marketing and sales teams. This is doubly so as we enter a new world order of business models altered significantly by the convergence of the Internet and the Social Age. The traditional views of how business is conducted and the buyer-seller relationship operating in a vacuum are running out of steam.
A key trend that is altering the landscape of conventional buyer-seller models is buyers are developing complex networks that engage in collaboration whereby decisions are not made in isolation. The buyer network acts as a collective form of collaboration with each node of the network directly influencing purchase decisions. In addition, the buyer network is expanding. External collaborators such as partners, suppliers, communities, and valued customers are participating in the buyer network with direct influence on decisions. This emerging development makes each “node” not only an influencer but an activate participant in the purchase decision. While there still may be an ultimate buyer, the buyer is guiding each node of the buyer network in collaborating on meeting financial, technical, strategic, and productivity goals.
My work in originating buyer persona development led me to collaborate with three Fortune 100 companies on developing a Buyer Persona Ecosystem™ view of buyers. This is now evolving into what I call a Buyer Persona Network™ view. Understanding an ecosystem is the foundation for understanding how a buyer network is formed and how it behaves. One element we’ve come to learn is that a singular view of a buyer today is woefully inadequate in complex B2B marketplaces. Let me echo a recent interview with a head of sales for a large IT service provider:
“We had an opportunity with an existing customer where we knew they had about an $18m spend annually on our type of services. For the past two years we’ve been only getting about $2m of that spend. What we learned recently is that one of their key partners considered our services to be inferior. We had no idea and it really put us behind the eight ball.”
What Must CEO’s, CMO’s, and CSO’s do?
The implications that results from the emergence of buyer networks are no doubt enormous. They will shake the very foundation of our existing thinking on how buying gets conducted and how decisions are made. Today’s C-Suite will need to adjust their own views of existing customers and prospective buyers. The power of “group think” really does begin with the kool-aid organizations drink. If you are drinking a single view of a buyer and the mantra of pushing harder, then the organization will eventually pass out from this toxic mix. The modern C-Suite must enable an organization’s fundamental understanding of emerging buyer networks and adapting operations such as marketing and sales to account for this emergence. A place to start is to improve the organization’s insight as well as intelligence in two distinct areas:
Identifying relevant buyer networks for their existing customers and prospective buyers
Identifying how different scenarios impacts a buyer network and how the weighted degree of influence changes
For CMO’s and CSO’s in particular, working together on developing the mix of conversation and interaction that meets the goals of the buyer networks relevant to their industry is crucial to longevity. Buyer networks will continue to expand and grow. Not having a deep understanding of the tools used by relevant buyer networks, how buyer networks interacts, and the desired outcomes of buyer networks will in essence cause their own efforts of pushing harder to hit a brick wall. Long held perceptions about buyers and the role of influencers will begin to fade away as buyer networks and collective collaboration on buying and purchase decisions emerge.
The Future
In the future, the relationship between selling organizations and buyer networks will begin to look and relate differently than the buyer-seller relationship of the past. The buyer of the future will have a different set of skills to go along with a new mindset of collaboration. The connected buyer of the future will help to guide this new form of collaboration in ways that will no doubt change rapidly as new technologies are introduced. Engaging with such new technologies that enable collaboration amongst organizations and reshaping our thinking on existing models of business relationships.
One way for organizations to stay on top of this emerging trend is to earn a very special privilege. That privilege being to earn the right to be a participating member, or node, of relevant buyer networks. Whether it is as a supplier, partner, or even a customer themselves – there is much to learn in this new form of collective and connected collaboration. Are you ready to start learning?
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 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
Buyer Persona Development and the qualitative research methodology applied to creating buyer personas have proven to be an effective means for B2B organizations to reach a deeper understanding of their buyers. They have helped companies to gain insights into market opportunities, find out why challenges exists, depict buying processes, and how to map critical sales and marketing strategies to the goals of buyers. For CEO’s and their staff of senior sales and marketing executives, they have proven to be the communications platform to help their employees become buyer-focused.
Buyer persona development methodology is at its core a research methodology. I have seen a plethora of articles and services that portray buyer personas as something completely different. Mainly, buyer personas are presented as a means of templated profile building. And, unfortunately companies can get quite self-referential about building these profiles because they believe their sales and marketing people already know just about everything there is to know about buyers – even when sales are declining and the market share pie is getting smaller.
As a former senior executive in sales and marketing, I evaluated as well as implemented several of the sales and customer profiling systems that exist where you are plotting buyers neatly into personality quadrants, demographic as well as psychographic categories, using blue sheets, and multiple other types of systems. As buyer personas makes their way into the dialogue of B2B marketing, content marketing, lead generation, and lead nurturing, this seems to be what is happening: buyer personas are being seen as another means for profiling buyers. I am not sure this is a good thing for both buyer persona development and for sales or marketing in general. Here's why: they can lead to a false sense of knowledge of the buyer and creating tactical efforts that will see little fruit. I would advocate calling this type of profiling more appropriately buyer descriptions.
Since my early days in persona development back in the late 90’s, quality persona development has always been about the research. Initially, research was conducted on users to help inform product and/or service design. The focus was on understanding user goals and how to design products or services that helped users to achieve their goals. The story and narratives of users were told through personas. This tenet has not changed one iota. Buyer persona development is a qualitative research and contextual inquiry methodology to help inform sales and marketing strategy. The qualitative research serves as a means for understanding buyer goals. The story and narrative, depicted through buyer personas, informing on how and why buyers buy as well as providing a window of insights into how to help them accomplish their goals. The insights derived an outcome of employing qualitative research methods, rooted in the principles of qualitative contextual inquiry, that allows for reflection and interpretation. An important principle regarding buyer persona development is that one size does not fit all. Each segment and each industry may require different mixing of contextual inquiry and qualitative research methods to attain the deep buyer insights that make a competitive difference.
The myth that exists is that by pouring over internal customer data, talking to a few sales reps, and even a customer or two you can build a buyer persona profile. That can be true just to a small degree. True only if your intent is to put a face on a profile and have a buyer description. And yes, they can be of help when there is nothing else around. I suspect though that many a CEO and CMO who paid top dollar for buyer persona profiles, or more accurately buyer descriptions being called buyer personas, are left scratching their head on the value of these. I don’t blame them because they offer little or no insight value into what is staring at them in the face: how am I going to grow revenues and increase customer acquisition?
To make buyer persona development an integral component of formulating a buyer strategy, organizations can best be served by righting the train onto the right track. That track being the one that takes the company on its own journey of understanding buyers and learning valuable insights about their goals and multiple challenges. Grabbing the ideal window seat and having a panoramic view of their buyer’s world afforded by skilled contextual inquiry, ethonographic, and anthropological means. Without this type of perspective and the requisite journey of qualitative research, it will be like riding on a train at night - you will be lacking deep insight into the how and why of their buying behaviors. You will pull up to the depot platform and see passengers ready to board. You will be able to gather a good sense of the crowd. How many women or men? What seems to be their age range? What tickets did they buy? However, you will know little of how they got there, why they are there, where they may be going, what they plan to do once they get there, and the surrounding environment they came from.
As we continue to experience the evolution of the social age, one thing we can be sure about is the march of progression will pick up its’ steady beat. The evolution or as some may call it – the revolution – will continue to happen and most likely at an increasing rate. The new social buyer is an outcome of this evolution and it has forever changed the dynamics of the seller and buyer relationship.
Buyer behavior most certainly will continue to undergo major transformations each time a new technology is introduced that alters the seller and buyer relationship. Most of what we’ve witnessed in the past few years has been related to the impact of social media and networking technologies. Here is a key issue facing organizations today: each time a new social technology is introduced, it ultimately alters the buying behaviors of the new social buyer persona. Adding further to the complexity of this issue is that company’s today are struggling to keep pace and adapt their marketing and selling teams to the rapid pace of modified buyer behavior.
This issue and the surrounding complexities call into question, for organizations today, their readiness for adapting to the new social buyer persona. There are many associated questions. Have organizations today kept pace with the changes in buying behaviors and patterns? Have they provided the right level of training to marketing and sales on how to adapt to the social buyer persona? Have they a clear idea of who exactly is their social buyer persona? Can they articulate and understand the new social buyer persona? Many questions certainly abound on this issue.
There are five areas of understanding that organizations must achieve to improve their readiness for the new social buyer persona:
Understand the Social Buyer Persona: With companies struggling to keep pace with the rapid changes in buyer behavior, most notably affected by evolving social technologies, the first priority is to gain a new and deep understanding of the social buyer persona. Establishing a new social buyer persona footprint is critical to marketing, sales, and service readiness for the social buyer. Gaining insights into as well as arriving at a common view of the social buyer persona will not come from traditional research and insight gathering means. Inside-out based research means will reveal very little about buyer behaviors and buying patterns as well as evolving buyer goals. Adopting outside-in expertise in social context-based qualitative research and insight gathering methods are critical to reaching the deeper understanding of the new social buyer persona.
Understand Evolving Buyer Journeys: For years, we have been educated, trained, lectured, and even scolded perhaps about the linear progression of the buying cycle. News flash for those of you who haven’t awakened from the brainwashing we’ve taken over the years – buyers are self-directing their own buyer journeys today. This has profound meaning for keeping pace with understanding the new social buyer persona on two levels. First, how your target social buyer persona utilizes social technologies may look different perhaps every six months – if not shorter. Second, why they choose to take action as well as buy will change periodically because new variables related to social technologies for their own businesses will alter their decision-making. And here is another factor to consider: a social buyer persona may have multiple scenario-based buyer journeys he or she takes thus understanding these different scenario becomes an imperative.
Understand Marketing Readiness: While content strategy and content marketing have become the new dominant drivers of marketing today, the larger picture of what constitutes marketing strategy in terms of adapting to the new social buyer is on the minds of several CMO’s I’ve talked with recently. Keeping pace with new social technologies and buyer interactions is important to overall marketing strategy. Adaptability must become a new strength for marketing whereas this means a major shift from what we can refer to as the “calendar-based” marketing of yesterday. The marketing strategy you planned to implement six months ago and schedule on the calendar for the existing year could very well be obsolete by the time you get there.
Understand Sales Readiness: The buzz lately in sales readiness has been around the concept of social selling. This is an important concept to establish sales readiness for the new social buyer persona. There are two sides to the same coin when it comes to social selling. What we’ve seen most prominently is the side of training on social media technologies and how to use these for social selling. The other side of the coin though is how to prepare sales for social buyer readiness. Selling organizations today must have a robust deep understanding of the new social buyer persona in order to achieve the level of engagement desired by both the seller and the buyer. This is perhaps more critical than ever when you factor in that the buyer’s “digital body language”, as Steve Woods from Eloqua has written about, continues to evolve and it’s alphabet grows at an exponential rate. Improving sales readiness in listening to the new social buyer language of today can be the difference between staying ahead and falling behind.
Understand Refreshing Readiness: In hospital environments, servers are often refreshed on a regular schedule – whether they’ve experienced problems or not. This happens because server downtime in a hospital environment can result in a life threatening situation. It is critical to the mission of a hospital to never allow this to happen thus servers are constantly refreshed. Similarly, organizations today must adopt such a way of thinking and operating when it comes to understanding the social buyer persona. After first establishing the footprint of a deep understanding of the new social buyer persona through social context-based qualitative efforts, companies must continually “refresh” this understanding in order to achieve the state of social buyer persona readiness. As hospitals deal with the uncertainty of a server failure, organizations must refresh constantly to deal with the uncertainty of changing buyer behaviors related to evolving social technologies.
Buying behaviors, patterns, and goals have and will continue to undergo further evolutions. Without adopting an understanding of readiness in the several areas mentioned, B2B as well as B2C organizations risk falling further behind the pace of change in buying behavioral dynamics. It is worth asking again: how ready is your organization for the new social buyer persona?
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