Buyer Personas in B2B Marketing

I've been doing a lot of reading lately about how many B2B marketers create and make great use of Buyer Personas to inform much or most of their marketing efforts.

Rather than re-state what I've been reading, I prefer to give all the credit where it is due. These sites, blogs and articles were helpful to me, so I thought I'd share with you:

Tony Zambito

Tony Zambito's Blog (@TonyZambito)
Tony is the author of "The Guide to Buyer Persona Development," which will be published in the near future. I've never met Tony, but I imagine if I ever do, he will instinctively ask me a lot of questions to learn about my business goals, my personal goals, and much much more. There's a reason he ranks high on google for any search related to Buyer Personas -- his content is excellent. And it's clearly because he lives and breathes Buyer Personas and has great success in turning insight into results.

• Tony's Buyer Personas Blog: "LET's TALK: Understanding Buyer Behavior in the New Digital Age"

• 10 Ways to Know Your B2B Buyers Deeply Using the Buyer Persona Canvas which includes this helpful infographic below (IMAGE A: click to enlarge)

• "Five Buying Behaviors of the Personal Buying Cycle," which includes the infographic below (Image B: click to enlarge)

A: 10 Ways to Know Your B2B Buyers Deeply                                         B: 5 Buying Behaviors of Personal Buying Cycle

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Ardath Albee (@ardath421)
Ardath Albee, CEO of her firm Marketing Interactions, "works with B2B companies with complex sales to help them create eMarketing strategies that use contagious content to turn prospects into buyers."

• Content Marketers Institute -- "Why Content Marketers are Keeping B2B Buyer Personas in the Closet"
• The page is full of additional related articles

I hope you find these as helpful as I did.

Saying [and meaning] the right thing at the right time

I've had a few rare opportunities to say just the right thing at just the right time to capture a moment and inspire myself and others. One of those times was 25 years and 25 pounds ago.

Disappointment
Dan and I sat across from each other, our faces separated by a few feet. And just 6 inches to our left and right, water was drifting past. Our faces said it all to each other. No words necessary. In our minds, our season was floating away. 

After 3 races, we had been relegated to our Crew Team's Junior Varsity (JV). Yes, it was University of Pennsylvania, but no, it wasn't the Varsity. For those of us who were seniors or had been in the Varsity just a week prior, it was heartbreaking.

Seniors had been to practices -- grueling practices -- from the week school started until the week after school ended. Freshman, Sophomore and Junior years. And summers too for a handful of us. For us seniors, the dream of racing in the Varsity was, well, just a dream now.

Even More Challenging
We were starting practice that Monday in what would be the JV boat for our race against Princeton in a few days. Princeton's Lightweight Team wasn't just our arch rival. They were everyone's arch rival, producing year-after-year of fast, champion caliber boats. Psychologically, it's a very tall order to believe you can beat a team that has defeated yours at every level for as long as anyone can remember. And it's an even taller order to cross the line ahead of a team you don't believe you can match.

Hope
I was the coxswain, and Dan was sitting in the "stroke" seat. We're the collective brains of the boat. A coxswain is one part Jockey and one part Coach. The coxswain steers a 60 foot long, 2 foot wide boat with a rudder smaller than the palm of your hand. More importantly, the coxswain helps the team get the most out of its combined energy, through individual 'technical coaching' and collective inspiration. The coxswain literally puts the 'foot on the gas' at the right times to win. And never, ever, let's the boat run out of gas.

I noticed something that day that the rowers couldn't quite perceive. 
We. Were. FAST! 

As an experienced coxswain I could see this. Clearly. I believed we were going to beat Princeton! The 8 oarsmen in front of me? Disappointed in their lot, and burdened with the weight of years of losses to that team, they could not see what was so obvious to me.

We all gained confidence that week, having great practices, and the oarsmen hearing from me over and over (and over!) again that we would be the faster boat.

Penn Lightweight Crew 1989 JV -- I'm in the red shirt, facing Dan

The Race
As I expected, we tore off the starting line, plowing through the competition during the first 500 meters of our 2000 meter, 6-minute race. During the next 500 meters (the 2nd quarter), heading into the halfway mark, Princeton held on, with our Penn boat maintaining, but not increasing our 2.5 second lead. It was a meaningful lead, but one that could be lost if an opponent made a strong move. At the halfway point, with 1000 meters to go (approximately 3 minutes), and every oarsman feeling the intense pain they all do at that stage, Princeton was still "there," hanging with us. Even moving back a tiny bit. 

This was the point in the race where Princeton was known to make their move and speed past the competition.

In my desire to crush this move, without thinking, I shouted with conviction:

"How much are we gonna win by?"

The boat jumped. I felt a jolt of energy and we moved out more. 500 meters later we started our finishing sprint at the same instant Princeton did. And yes, we won.

Why am I telling you this?
During those 2000 meters, those 6 minutes, I did and said a lot of things. I felt us winning, was confident in our speed, and ultimately we did win.

It was only afterwards, as the rowers and I reviewed the race, that I learned just how important that one phrase was. You see, our rowers bore years of losses on their shoulders, and carried vivid images imprinted in their memories of "still being in the race" at the halfway point, only to have Princeton gallop through them with ease, winning by wide margins.

We were ahead, and as a coxswain I made it clear from beginning to end. But every rower... EVERY rower... believed that we were behind. Despite our lead we were losing in our own minds. It's nearly impossible to understand, but it was true.

It was only when they heard, "how much are we gonna to win by?" that they realized as individuals and as a team that they were AHEAD. They could win! No. They WOULD win! And of course, they did. They just needed to believe it was possible. Preparation, technique, power and boat speed were all requirements. But so was belief. Without it we would have folded.

As a leader or teammate, confidence and belief, when grounded in reality and preparation, are contagious. 

Prepare. Believe. And share the belief.

Do You Appreciate Your Customers?

Thanksgiving is an appropriate time to discuss two extremes of companies in terms of how they think about their customers. Or rather how their behaviors demonstrate their underlying beliefs and corporate cultures. There are many "in between," but the extremes are worth exploring:

THE THANKFUL: "We appreciate when customers choose us."

Not long ago I was CMO of Guidepoint Global, a primary research firm focused on serving Institutional Investors in hedge funds and private equity firms as well as consulting firms and corporations. Delivering high service level, with the highest level of compliance, is at the core of the company's belief system. And from a growth perspective, we believed that by delighting our customers that they would use our service more (i.e. volume growth) and be better advocates for us.

This wasn't an explicit perspective. We all just knew that our growth would come from providing a great service with the highest levels of integrity. Growth would come from customers choosing our service more frequently. This was part of our culture.

THE THANKLESS: "Our customers are a bank account"
To contrast, I've seen competitors across industries treat their clients like they are bank accounts from which to withdraw money:

• "We're the only game in town because of X, Y, and Z. Your renewal will cost 30% more"
• "We promised you an unlimited contract last year. Now we're increasing price based on that unlimited usage"

A SEASON OF THANKS

My point is actually about attitudes, not actions. A culture of appreciation will long outlast one of arrogance. A culture of appreciation will inspire your team members to be the best they can be and will generate goodwill among your clients. 

Who will you choose as a service provider? 

• One who you seeks to deliver higher ROI for you? To serve you better and more efficiently?
• Or one who seeks to find new ways to increase contract size without seeking to increase the value they provide?

Ultimately a culture of appreciation works best on many levels. It develops inspired and appreciated team members who pay it forward to your clients. Clients who will undoubtedly pay it forward to your company and back to your team members too.

Thanks and appreciation -- gifts that keep giving!

Veterans Day Inspiration

Winston Churchill has given some of the most rousing speeches I've ever heard.

This Veteran's Day I thought I'd share some of my favorite Churchill quotes:

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

And one that just makes me smile:
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Top 3 Reasons You Should Read This Post

Alternate Title: Why should you look to Glamour Magazine for B2B Content Marketing Inspiration?

Reason 3: To understand what the real playbook is for B2B Content Marketing
Reason 2: To challenge all of us to think differently
Reason 1: The title includes "Top 3 Reasons"

If you've gotten this far, you can probably see where this is going. I've seen one to many blog posts with titles "Ripped from the Headlines" of Glamour Magazine and Men's Health.

Reason 3: Women's and Men's Magazines are the inspiration for B2B Content Marketing
I read a long time ago that those numbers we see on the covers of Glamour, Men's Health, et. al. sell magazines. Magazines have tested this on a weekly basis, and content marketers have tested this too -- numbers in headlines and titles "sell." And in my 5 minutes of research, the following Titles appeared in my Social Media feeds:

• "8 Great Reasons to Run Your Business from Your Phone"
• "5 Important Growth Hacking Lessons from the Man Who Coined the Term"
• "Is grit more important than smarts, skills, luck? 4 ways to boost your grit."

... And my favorite: "3 Key Behaviors all successful leaders exhibit." That's right, according to the heading, ALL successful leaders exhibit ALL THREE key behaviors. Taking the whole numbers game a bit too far I think.

Reason 2: To challenge all of us to think differently
On the one hand, maybe we should all take a break, read Men's Health or Cosmopolitan, and consider what they are selling via their articles (ad space, product placements), how they are doing it, and learn what we can. Yes, we can learn a thing or two.

My challenge to myself? To see if I can (after this post), take the high ground and avoid manipulating people into reading my content. Let's face it, these numbers in titles are very arbitrary, and unconsciously make us think that the "lists" in the articles are all inclusive. Or objectively ranked. They're not, and they're not.

How can we take the high ground? Make our findings and insights so compelling that readers will be interested without amping up our titles with numbers.

Reason 1: The title includes "Top 3 Reasons"

If you know only 1 thing about SEO, it better be this...

Imagine trying to find a specific article you want to read in the newspaper, but there are no headlines. Now imagine that you're google. And you're sifting through millions of websites. And some were kind enough to say, "hey, this is what my web page is about." Others don't bother. No "headlines."

Who is google going to find first? 

Now imagine reading a how-to book on just about anything. And on the very first page, it says, "Step 1 is the most important one of all..." 

Now imagine paying an outside firm to design your website, and guess what? They skipped the first step!

In Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Step 1 is to optimize your <title> tag.
And an appalling number of websites, from startup social media analytics companies to $1B+ business services companies, skip step 1. How? Why? I'll never understand. 

I wonder ... would they  bother to send a distress signal if they were stranded on a boat in the middle of the ocean?

In B2B SEO, especially in uncrowded categories, step 1 can get you very very far. 
Think of it as one of the most powerful spotlights you can shine on your business in a sea of irrelevant websites. I've managed to get page one rankings for searches such as "SaaS CMO" and "B2B SaaS CMO". If I can then you can.

What's a title tag? The easiest way to understand is to do a google search on just about anything.

• Every search result will start with a very brief one line description followed by another couple of lines of additional detail. 
• The first line comes directly from the title tag. There's a single line of code in the website that includes these words. And to google, these words are very, very important.

The title tag is your opportunity to attract the right visitors to each web page in two different ways:

• First, it tells search engines: "When searchers use these keywords, my site is the most relevant"
• Second, after performing a search, it tells searchers: "My web page is the most relevant site for your keyword searches."

Of course, the content must support the keywords and vice versa.

Best Practices:

• Include: only 5 to 7 keywords. More words will dilute the important ones
• Use: 65 characters or less (including spaces). More characters are likely to get "cut off" in the search result"
• Include: critical keywords 
• Exclude: Your company name (unless it happens to be keyword rich) and other meaningless words such as "home", "about", "contact us". Nobody is searcing on those terms, so there's no reason to waste your valuable title tag on them.

Every page should have it's own unique or semi-unique keywords. Otherwise google will ask itself, "which page is the right one?"

What keywords should you use?  Start with your homepage. If you're a "Social Media Analytics Software" company, then those 4 words would be a good place to start. 

Check your title tags. Do they simply say, "Company Name | Home"  "Company Name | About"? If so, you can spend 10 minutes per page improving them, and you or a tech resource can spend another 5 minutes per page implementing them. You will be in a much better place.

And since some of your competitors have missed page 1 of SEO 101, you will leapfrog over somebody. Maybe over a lot of websites.

For more information, see this presentation: 

B2B Product Marketing - B2B Search Engine Optimization (SEO) from Michael Fertman