Alex Swann, Lesniak Swann
The most effective B2B marketing is rooted in a strong understanding of – and balance between – both rational purchase-drivers and the emotional motivations of the target audience.
Of course, to do this well you need to have a thorough understanding of who you’re looking to communicate with: what are the most important factors in getting them to engage with your brand, make a purchase and come back for more?
One view on this challenge, as David Ogilvy put it, is that, “The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.”
Although any market researcher worth their salt would argue that’s extremely reductive – and that we’ve simply included the quote because it’s a great soundbite – there is some truth to it, insofar as there’s a fine balance between how and when quant and qual data is useful.
That’s certainly the case when looking at structuring personas for B2B customers. There will be a whole gamut of quantifiable information on who, how and what to target to best generate leads. But unless you’re getting under the skin of the people involved in agreeing that purchase, understanding how they tick on an instinctive, irrational level, you won’t be promoting your brand as effectively as you could be.
This is the foundation of the work we do at Lesniak Swann – you can read more about the thinking behind it here.
Do keep the stats and numbers – no one can argue they have a crucial role to play. But make sure assets such as personas prioritise giving clarity on the human aspects your marketing activity needs to consider. The focus is on building a full, instructive picture of the individual(s) you want to communicate with.
In the construction sector, decisions often involve multiple stakeholders – from project managers and quantity surveyors through to procurement officers and site engineers. Each brings their own priorities and pressures.
Understanding their individual motivations – e.g. ensuring project timelines are met; keeping investors happy; avoiding stressful risk-taking – is crucial for effective communication.
Face it
Here’s how we typically structure personas to ensure that the human element comes across effectively.
- A name and face is given to the persona. Although this might seem twee, it can play an important role in generating empathy for the persona and enhancing communications.
- A quote from the perspective of the persona is used as the headline. This should encapsulate the most important aspects of their job that a brand should align with and offer ways to achieve.
- This quote is expanded upon in a short narrative section giving more information on the individual’s role. This story-based section isn’t just about the emotional state of the target audience – using this narrative format is an effective way to ensure those learning about the persona (e.g. copywriters) can recall their mindset with ease.
- Goals and motivations are focused on human aspirations – how they want to feel, what they want to do, what they want to be. This is an effective way of ensuring that the information mapped out at the segmentation stage such as purchase drivers is communicated in a way that ensures the individual is considered as the central factor.
- Purchase criteria is laid out in a clear, graphical fashion – allowing easy understanding of priorities and comparisons with other personas.
- In many cases, there will be a greater range of information that you can usefully display on one page. In these situations, it’s important to maintain a short ‘at a glance’ bio. The full version will contain more in-depth information on specific behaviours and preferences – for example, procurement manager in a construction firm prioritising compliance with new industry standards, or a project manager being fixated on timely, trackable delivery.
Volume or value?
On first consideration, making sure you have a comprehensive range of detailed personas for all target audiences and sub-audiences may seem like the best way to bring clarity and focus.
But generally speaking, we’ve found that there’s a law of diminishing returns with a higher number of personas. It becomes more difficult to achieve desired value from marketing – i.e. a satisfactory level of cut-through and saliency – with multiple different messages in play across audiences that often cross over to some degree. Plus, more personas means more potential for confusion within marketing teams, the wider business and partner agencies as to which persona should be used for a particular application.
There’s no one magic number as to how many personas a brand should have, but the fundamental rule is to look critically at where your marketing activity is best served. How can personas best be aligned with commercial priorities? Where can overlaps be removed to ensure clarity of message? What insights can your market intelligence give you on where marketing is best focused?
After all, developing these personas is a facet of strategy – and strategy is about the possibilities you don’t choose to take as much as the ones you do.
In construction, focusing solely on the true decision-makers – e.g. project directors, procurement heads, site managers – can help streamline your marketing efforts. Tightly tailoring messages solely to these key figures will yield better engagement than spreading resources across too many audiences.
Spread the word
Once this has been done, the challenge is to ensure that all of your communications to a particular persona are striking the required tone, articulating the right messages, and doing so through the right channels.
The bigger the brand, the more complex the work in doing this and the higher the risk of marketing messages being diluted, mixed or miscommunicated.
It’s important to remember that this won’t just be a marketing task. Your personas should be known and adhered to across all departments that have some level of interaction and/or influence on the audience – including sales and customer service.
At a glance – getting more from your personas
- Assess what is an ideal number of personas for your brand based on 1) commercial priorities; 2) market intelligence on customer behaviour and segmentation; 3) the practicalities of the volume of information your marketing team is likely to find useful.
- Use an emotionally focussed format with a quote from your persona as the headline. Consider moving tactical and targeting information to a secondary page, or expanding the format to a short-medium-long structure.
- Include specificity where it’s useful and realistic – a persona’s common project challenges, for example, or recent regulatory changes that will be concerning them. Such details will make your marketing feel more relatable and empathic to your construction audience.