Sales Susan, Pharmaceutical Phil, Agricultural Arnie, Construction Colin… Did you know that it is easier to generate business leads if you can see real people behind numbers and sales? Obviously, no business can target each and every potential client in their marketing efforts. Nevertheless, it is possible to create a generalized profile of a typical customer – a buyer persona – based on essential basic characteristics, such as demographics, location, interests, budget, etc.
Well-tuned business-to-business lead generation at Belkins provides a steady flow of best-quality leads based on a profound analysis of the clients’ buyer persona, which increases conversions.
Why Do Buyer Personas Increase Lead Generation?
In today’s world, where the air is thick with ads, and everything is highly personalized and fragmentized, it is impossible to come up with a marketing campaign catering to a wide circle of people. It is like tossing a hook with no bait into a deep blue ocean, hoping to catch plenty of fish. Such an approach isn’t working anymore.
On the other hand, it is possible to run an engaging campaign attracting a flood of leads. But will a sales lead be quickly converted into a deal and sale? It is up to marketing and sales to work together and use high-precision tools.
Using some shady tricks like purchasing email lists does not work either. Typically, email addresses people buy are of poor quality; response rates are low. Don’t use such tricks if you want to protect your email deliverability and reputation.
The best way to generate leads quickly and efficiently is to always approach the task at hand with knowledge and a carefully crafted strategy. Creating a buyer persona is a key element of an effective marketing strategy.
If you know the type of clients your product appeals to, their pains, their major characteristics, goals, and values, you will be able to streamline your marketing efforts and generate qualified leads. Client types, generalized and described in detail, are buyer personas that facilitate tailoring and adjusting of marketing efforts for marketing teams.
Is Creating a Buyer Persona Really Necessary?
Yes. The process and motivation for creating a buyer persona are akin to screenwriters working out a detailed protagonist’s background. They may not refer specifically to the scenes of school bullying or a first love failure in the draft, but the information about those events will fuel the character’s development.
Similarly, if new businesses want more fresh and high-quality leads, they are strongly advised to learn from their clients more. Businesses need to know their model customers because that knowledge will guide all marketing messages, from product development to conveying their brand voice via the communication channels they use. If your product fits more than a narrow niche, you might need to build several buyer personas.
To make a buyer persona’s description come alive, marketing teams often give it names, behavioral traits, hobbies, and other details. The more granular your buyer persona is, the better. Some marketers go so far as to bring buyer personas in the office as cardboard cutouts.
As a result, your marketing campaign will target highly-qualified leads. Your potential customers will feel heard. They will see your marketing efforts addressing their specific pains and concerns. Ultimately, well-developed buyer personas will bring your business a shorter sales funnel and a threefold increase in closed deals.
Will Buyer Personas Generate B2B Leads?
The concept of buyer personas may sound more fitting for B2C sales where the knowledge of end-users helps target specifically those people. But how about business-to-business sales? Do you appeal to an individual or a business? If you deal with businesses and several executives participate in making a decision, or if you nurture a lead who will eventually have to defer decision-making to a higher-up, how do you target B2B leads?
Discovering B2B buyer personas is part of the lead generation cycle, too. From lead research and cold email outreach to nurturing leads and appointment setting, many companies outsource B2B lead generation services in order to focus on sales.
B2B Leads: How to Build a Buyer Persona?
Customer relationships are not that different in B2C and B2B. B2B customers also want to get personalized engagement and get treated like people. When creating B2B buyer personas for your business, you include more work-specific information – where they work, how they do their work, what they do in particular – in addition to the basic demographic and firmographic data.
For example, here’s a description of a buyer persona who is a non-decision-maker.
Basic info:
Name: Non-Profit Nick
Title: Marketing Manager
Industry: Education
Decision-maker: No
Age: 29
Salary: $35,000/year
Education: BA in Marketing
Detailed info:
Goals: Increase awareness for social media marketing campaigns through more engaging content production.
Challenges: Inconsistencies in content production due to come-and-go freelance content makers.
How we can help: Connect Non-Profit Nick with effective content makers.
Messaging strategy: Focus on how to increase engagement for Non-Profit Nick by providing experienced photographers/videographers and writers for projects.
Buyer Persona Research
What should you keep in mind when you start working on your business’ buyer personas? It’s not what you would like to see in your target audience. It’s not some generalization based on unsupported assumptions. It’s not an ideal customer profile either. All well-developed buyer personas are based on research and data and describe the people who get the most value from your business (products or services).
First, you run quantitative and qualitative research to find out where your buyers work and how they behave. Then, you analyze the data and make sure that the segments you specified for your buyer personas are truly effective. If they are not, come up with new interpretations of data points you’ve gathered during the research stage.
● Ask existing customers
Start your buyer persona research by generalizing and analyzing your existing customer base. Look for trends in how they interact with you on social media and navigate your website, what channels of communications they use, and how your B2B leads are converted into loyal customers. Get your customers to fill out surveys and questionnaires by offering them free sample products or coupons.
● Use your analytic tools
Start with your social media. Both Facebook and Twitter will provide valuable insights into the people’s social background, age, location, device, and other crucial data. On LinkedIn, you can manually browse profiled fitting your assumed personas and gain some insights. Google Trends will show you generalized information on different buyer types. Your CRM B2B database also contains useful pieces of information on your current customers. Website visitor tracking software, like Leadfeeder and Lead Forensics, will detail the anonymous traffic to your company’s website.
● Invest in focus groups or one-on-one interviews
This method of gathering quantitative research is valuable because you may learn about concerns and pain points you missed earlier or never knew. Invite your existing clients for one-on-one interviews or hire a third party to run focus groups for you. An interview is an extremely effective tool as it allows you to have a deep and sincere conversation focused on quality. You may find out what creates a barrier for a customer to buy a service or a product. You may even pick up the exact words your customers are using to describe the product – include them in your copy. Finally, interviews help interpret hard data you get from analytics.
● Validate the market for generating leads for new businesses
It is crucial to make sure the market will accept a new product, especially if you are just breaking into the new market. Sales