Do not screw up your buyer persona profiles!
Despite the recognized importance of contents in our digital era, 88% of marketers do not believe they can target the right audience with relevant content.
Within the top 5 reasons for this fear, we find issues strongly related to buyer persona profiles, like:
lack of content specifically developed for target audience
lack of relevance of content <for target audience>
difficulty in reaching the right decision makers with <the appropriate> content …
... through the right distribution channel.
If we relate these findings with the situation where only 43% of companies claim to understand buyer journey and to adapt marketing mix in accordance, we can detect a disturbing storyline.
In many companies, buyer persona profiles and buyers’ journeys (if at all existent) are definitively of sub-optimal quality! And this generate a chain reaction impacting
appropriateness and relevance of content,
identification of decision makers
and of their preferred information channel.
Scrolling to the bottom of the Infographic, some best practices for marketers try to offer a cure for the disappointing situation. While being acceptable as common understanding, these best practices lack – in my opinion – a very key success factor.
High-quality buyer persona profiles and buyers’ journeys are not resulting from internal meetings between sales and marketing (or whoever thinks to have something to say).
High-quality buyer persona profiles and buyers’ journeys can only result from intensive primary research: talking with customers, with not-yet-customers and with once-lost customers is key to precision.
Within the framework of an integrated digital-marketing plan, there is an opportunity to approach buyer persona profiles and buyers’ journeys in a structured, comprehensive manner, continuously revise those, and learn.
Lorenzo Nanetti helps companies transform marketing, sales & service for digital age. Contact Lorenzo at lorenzo.nanetti@wanadoo.fr or www.lorenzo-nanetti.com
