Create a Buyer Persona and Journey

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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.

Create a Buyer Persona and Journey Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Our Executive Brief summarizes the challenges faced when buyer persona and journeys are ill-defined. It describes the attributes of, and the benefits that accrue from, a well-defined persona and journey and the key steps to take to achieve success.

Create a Buyer Persona and Journey – Executive Brief

1. Drive an aligned initial draft of buyer persona

Define and align your team on target persona, outline steps to capture and document a robust buyer persona and journey, and capture current team buyer knowledge.

2. Interview buyers and validate persona and journey

Hold initial buyer interviews, test initial results, and continue with interviews.

3. Prepare communications and educate stakeholders

Consolidate interview findings, present to product, marketing, and sales teams. Work with them to apply to product design, marketing launch/campaigning, and sales and customer success enablement.

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

1.1

Outline a vision for buyer persona and journey creation and identify stakeholders.

Documented steering committee and working team

1.2

Identify buyer persona choices and settle on an initial target.

Executive Brief on personas and journey
Personas and initial targets

1.3

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

2.1

Share initial insights with covering industry analyst.

Analyst-validated initial findings

2.2

Hear from industry analyst their perspectives on the buyer persona attributes.

2.3

Reconcile differences; update “current understanding.”

2.4

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

3.1

Identify actual list of 15-20 interviewees.

List of interviewees; calls scheduled

3.2

Hold interviews and use interview guides over the course of weeks.

3.3

Hold review session after initial 3-4 interviews to make adjustments.

Initial review – “are you going in the right direction?”

3.4

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

4.1

Summarize findings.

Complete findings

4.2

Create action items for supporting team, e.g. messaging, touch points, media spend, assets.

Action items for team members

4.3

Convene steering committee/executives and working team for final review.

Plan for activation

4.4

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

5.1

Review final copy, assets, launch/campaign plans, etc.

Activation review

5.2

Develop/review implementation plan.

5.3

Reconvene team to review results.

List of suggested next steps

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
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Guided Implementation #1 - Drive an aligned initial draft of buyer persona

Call #1 - Collaborate on vision for buyer persona and the buyer journey. Review templates and sample outputs. Identify your team.
Call #2 - Review work in progress on capturing working team knowledge of buyer persona elements.
Call #3 - (Optional) Review Info-Tech’s research-sourced persona insights.
Call #4 - Validate the persona WIP with Info-Tech analysts. Review buyer interview approach and target list.

Guided Implementation #2 - Interview buyers and validate persona and journey

Call #1 - Revise/review interview guide and final interviewee list; schedule interviews.
Call #2 - Review interim interview finds; adjust interview guide.
Call #3 - Use interview findings to validate/update persona and build journey map.
Call #4 - Add supporting analysts to final stakeholder review.

Guided Implementation #3 - Prepare communications and educate stakeholders

Call #1 - Review output templates completed with final persona and journey findings.
Call #2 - Add supporting analysts to stakeholder education meetings for support and help with addressing questions/issues.