- Contacts fail to convert to leads because messaging fails to resonate with buyers.
- Products fail to reach targets given shallow understanding of buyer needs.
- Sellers emails go unopened and attempts at discovery fail due to no understanding of buyer challenges, pain points, and needs.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Marketing leaders in possession of well-researched and up-to-date buyer personas and journeys dramatically improve product market fit, lead gen, and sales results.
- Success starts with product, marketing, and sales alignment on targeted personas.
- Speed to deploy is enabled via initial buyer persona attribute discovery internally.
- However, ultimate success requires buyer interviews, especially for the buyer journey.
- Leading marketers update journey maps every six months as disruptive events such as COVID-19 and new media and tech platform advancements require continual innovation.
Impact and Result
- Reduce time and treasure wasted chasing the wrong prospects.
- Improve product-market fit.
- Increase open and click-through rates in your lead gen engine.
- Perform more effective sales discovery and increase eventual win rates.
Onsite Workshop: Create a Buyer Persona and Journey
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Align Team, Identify Persona, and Document Current Knowledge
The Purpose
- Organize, drive alignment on target persona, and capture initial views.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Steering committee and project team roles and responsibilities clarified.
- Product, marketing, and sales aligned on target persona.
- Build initial team understanding of persona.
Activities
Outputs
Outline a vision for buyer persona and journey creation and identify stakeholders.
- Documented steering committee and working team
Identify buyer persona choices and settle on an initial target.
- Executive Brief on personas and journey
- Personas and initial targets
Document team knowledge about buyer persona (and journey where possible).
- Documented team knowledge
Module 2: Validate Initial Work and Identify Buyer Interviewees
The Purpose
- Build list of buyer interviewees, finalize interview guide, and validate current findings with analyst input.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Interview efficiently using 75-question interview guide.
- Gain analyst help in persona validation, reducing workload.
Activities
Outputs
Share initial insights with covering industry analyst.
- Analyst-validated initial findings
Hear from industry analyst their perspectives on the buyer persona attributes.
Reconcile differences; update “current understanding.”
Identify interviewee types by segment, region, etc.
- Target interviewee types
Module 3: Schedule and Hold Buyer Interviews
The Purpose
- Validate current persona hypothesis and flush out those attributes only derived from interviews.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Get to a critical mass of persona and journey understanding quickly.
Activities
Outputs
Identify actual list of 15-20 interviewees.
- List of interviewees; calls scheduled
Hold interviews and use interview guides over the course of weeks.
Hold review session after initial 3-4 interviews to make adjustments.
- Initial review – “are you going in the right direction?”
Complete interviews.
- Completed interviews
Module 4: Summarize Findings and Provide Actionable Guidance to Colleagues
The Purpose
- Summarize persona and journey attributes and provide activation guidance to team.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understanding of product market fit requirements, messaging, and marketing, and sales asset content.
Activities
Outputs
Summarize findings.
- Complete findings
Create action items for supporting team, e.g. messaging, touch points, media spend, assets.
- Action items for team members
Convene steering committee/executives and working team for final review.
- Plan for activation
Schedule meetings with colleagues to action results.
Module 5: Measure Impact and Results
The Purpose
- Measure results, adjust, and improve.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Activation of outcomes; measured results.
Activities
Outputs
Review final copy, assets, launch/campaign plans, etc.
- Activation review
Develop/review implementation plan.
Reconvene team to review results.
- List of suggested next steps