Creating a Customer Profile: How to Build a Buyer Persona

The average B2B company or division has three to four ideal-buyer personas. That is, a general description of your ideal customer, what they need, and how you can help them get it.

So, how do you develop accurate personas that represent your best buyers and speak to them directly?

You start by first tapping into the tribal knowledge of your client-facing employees and also through general market research. Today, I'm going to teach you how to do that.

Strong buyer-persona profiles are based on two data-gathering methods:

(1) External intel

(2) Internal intel

External Intel:

Ask your customers!

Harvesting insights from your actual customer base gives you firsthand information about their personas, wants, needs, and intentions—things you want the right answers to.

Surveys and interviews (e.g., “voice of the customer” insights) are two common tools for this type of research, which marketers agree are highly effective in encouraging buyers to tell their stories.

Some companies do face-to-face interviews, while others turn to inbound marketing to let prospects group themselves according to their personas. Have you ever come across an online form asking you, “How would you best describe yourself?” This is one reliable tactic to get personal data.

Internal Intel:

Many B2B companies don’t have the resources (or the appetite) to conduct comprehensive research, surveys, and interviews, so a good alternative is to gather data through the experience and knowledge of your top salespeople and client-facing employees.

They are regularly in contact with your customers, so developing personas based on their qualitative assessments will greatly help you market your products and services accordingly. In order for you to get a 360-degree view, these discussions should include experts from sales, operations, customer service, and marketing.

It’s remarkable what happens when the insights from one division are uncovered and found to correlate with the insights from another. Clear, unique areas where you can bring additional value to your buyers begin to show themselves.

Why It Matters

Unless you maintain an up-to-date record of buyer personas, the market knowledge your team has is not available on an organizational level. Harvesting your best people’s insights and experience into your marketing strategy via buyer personas gives you the intel on what you should be communicating across your entire organization.

Remember that you must intentionally distribute this information across all levels of your organization to develop a customer-centric organization. Because buyer personas are the types of buyers you want to work with, you must be sure to complete both demographic and psychographic insights.

Demographics tell you who your buyers are, while psychographic information tells you why and how they buy. The latter can include buying habits, likes and dislikes, and values. Both data sets give you a clear picture of your buyer personas, making them more relatable to the people on your team.

I recommend that your buyer-persona profiles include details on who the individuals of the identified group really are, their work identity, their agenda, and why they’ll love you.

Who They Are

• demographics: age, gender, income level, where they live (urban, suburban, rural)
• day-to-day lifestyle: married, kids, typical work hours, personal responsibilities, favorite hobbies or escapes
• what situations make them nervous and what personal fears keep them up at night
• personality and communication style

Their Work Identity

• job details: position, role, responsibilities
• background: education, typical career path
• pain points: business issues, risks, or concerns
• goals: what they want to achieve, experience, etc.
• attitudes: buying preferences, motivations
• main sources of information: where they do most of their research and reading
• what makes them nervous and what keeps them up at night
• how they like to receive information (data, stories, videos, graphics, etc.)

Their Agenda

• their level of security in their role, what they are accountable for, the metrics they use
• where are they in their career journey/what they may be protecting
• what could get them fired
• who has ability to say yes, who their trusted advisers are

their biggest fear or frustration at work

Why They’ll Love You

• how you help them get what they want
• how your company and offering uniquely align with what they care about
• the business problem you can solve for them
• what they are unable to achieve because of this problem
• the wider impact of this problem on their team or organization
• the emotional problem you can solve
• what are you competing with, besides your direct competitors (inertia, fear of change, other business options, etc.)

Sample Documented Buyer Persona

Demographic Information

• executive vice president
• male
• late forties or early fifties
• charismatic, likable
• incredibly busy, work-life balance may be a problem
• travels a lot

Psychographic Information

• needs to hit aggressive goals
• must influence the CEO to get support on initiatives
• wants success at work but also a healthy lifestyle
• tends to read or research a lot before buying a product
• has a tendency to pay more money for quality

Using Buyer Personas

As I mentioned before, your buyer personas are decision-making criteria, not a fluffy feel-good exercise. Your buyer-persona documentation should help you decide what to say, how to say it, and where to distribute that message.

In short, it should help you go where your buyers go—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Want to dive even deeper into developing powerful buyer personas for your business?

Schedule a time to talk with an expert here