Definition
A buyer persona is a short profile of the person who buys what you sell: their role, what they are measured on, the problem that makes them look for help, and how they decide. In B2B it describes a role inside a company, not a consumer. Until you check it against real people, it is a guess.
Why it matters when you sell B2B
The persona decides three things before you write a word: which job titles you search for, which pain you open with, and whose inbox gets the first email. Get it wrong and the whole sequence lands on the wrong desk, however good the copy is.
In B2B there is rarely one persona per deal. There is the person who feels the problem, the person who signs (the economic buyer) and the people who will use the thing. A useful persona says which of those it describes.
Leave out the age, the hobbies and the stock photo. In B2B what matters is what the person is measured on, what changed recently that makes the problem hurt, and who else they need to convince.
The persona is not the person
A persona is written once for a whole segment. Accounts are not segments, and in account based marketing you sell to accounts. At one company the problem belongs to a director with a team. At the next it belongs to nobody, which is often your best opening. At a third, an outside firm handles it. Same persona, three different conversations.
So before you write to an account, ask a practical question. Who at this company actually owns this today?
A worked example
Say you sell expense software, and your persona is "head of finance at a software company with 50 to 500 staff". Look at three companies that all fit.
One persona, three companiesExample
60 staff
The founder
No head of finance yet. The founder approves every expense and an outside bookkeeper closes the month.
Write to the founder about time lost each month.
200 staff
A finance ops manager
There is a head of finance, but the expense process sits with a finance operations manager.
Write to the manager who runs the process.
450 staff
A team of six
A controller runs the process with a team. The head of finance signs, but only after the controller agrees.
Write to the controller first.
If you had written to "head of finance" at all three, you would have reached the right person once. Our approach to research shows how we check who owns the problem on real accounts.
Common mistakes
- 1Writing a consumer profile for a B2B buyer. Age and interests do not decide a purchase. Targets, budget and a recent change do.
- 2One persona for every company size. At a small company the founder often owns the problem. At a bigger one there is a team for it, with its own head.
- 3Trusting a title count. Search a job title and you will count people who only share the word. Read every match.
- 4Treating an empty search as proof. No results can mean the lookup failed. Check the staff count against the company's headcount before you believe it.
- 5Never updating it. If replies keep coming from a title that is not in your persona, the persona is wrong, not the replies.
Check a persona against one real account
- List everyone at the company, not only the people whose title matches.
- Check the list is complete: compare the count with the company's stated headcount.
- Read every title that touches the problem, and the profile behind it if the title is vague.
- Write down one of three answers: someone owns it, nobody owns it, or an outside firm does.
- Write the first line of your email for that answer, not for the persona.