Insights Into The Buyer Persona With Douglas Burdett [Episode 66]

Figuring out what problems prospective customers have and how your company can provide a solution for them is the key to making sales.

But what's the most effective way to get that information?

Douglas Burdett is here to share his knowledge on buyer persona and the importance of really understanding your customers and what’s going on in their head, as well as what you can do with all that information to maximise profitability!

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Buyer persona, where does this fit into practical business applications?

• There are five insights you need to find out in order to get a deep understanding of your customers.
• Companies that win are the ones that have the best understanding of their customers.

So, is this buyer persona thing related to the same thing as this customer avatar that I’ve heard so much about, is it the same?

• It could be. An example or archetype of a real buyer that gives you some insights into what the world is like, what their hopes and dreams are and what their fears are.
• It enables you to better understand the customer from a marketing standpoint. Which helps to create better more helpful and more relevant content, where prospective customers will say this company really seems to get me.
• This helps companies better develop products and services and basically the way they run their companies, the way they deliver their services because they better understand the buyer.

For an organization, how many personas should there be?

• Most companies need fewer than they think they do.
• Rather than developing multiple personas, start with one which is your most profitable customer or profitable prospective customer. This is the most important, use it, then add others later.

What is the first question we really should be asking in order to get the right level of understanding?

• There are 5 things of buyer insight.
• What is it that triggers your buyer to seek a new solution? What prompts a prospective customer to start to actually look for a solution that your product might actually help with?
• The second is the success factors. What do they need from your solution? Lower cost or greater productivity is not the right answer. What it means is what do they want emotionally from it, to be seen by their peers as competent, to keep their job, to feel more in control.
• The third is perceived barriers. What gives your buyer second thoughts about your solution? It may not be valid reasons but it reasons that they might think.
• Find out these perceived barriers, ignore that most are illegitimate, it’s what’s in their head that matters.
• Then there is the buyer journey. When did they finally decide to buy? What are the things they tend to go off of to figure out if they want to buy from you?
• The fifth is the decision criteria. What is the most important thing to them when they are buying. And it’s usually not what companies think it is.
• Think like a therapist in the sense to better understand what’s going on it that customers heads. If you just do it a little bit it has an enormous impact on your customer's reaction to your company.

What is the point in the customer's journey that we talk about? Which point is it that we enter the conversation?

• What are all the questions you get from your customers? A lot of that is content that you could be putting on your website.
• The last third of the buyer's journey is to engage with companies after they have self-educated themselves and done a lot of research.
• What’s going on in the buyer's world, from clients with customer questions, or buyer persona interviews, to get all that info, figuring out keyword research that customers actually use.

When working with a client, where could customer personas make a big impact fast?

• Start creating content. Produce content for prospective customers.
• Start from the bottom working your way up the sales process.
• Sales and marketing alignment. Too much marketing is not aligned with sales. Beta marketers have a deep understanding of sales.
• This generates faster growth and profitability.
• Sales can’t do it alone and marketing exists to make sales easier for customers to buy.
• A single revenue team. Eliminate the marketing and sales departments. Have dual responsibility aligned around buyer persona and revenue.
• Agree on what a qualified lead looks like, where buyer persona comes in. What is a good lead? What is our worst customer? Which can bring us closer to what is an ideal customer for us?

A book that you would recommend…
Buyer Personas by Adele Revella

What is your top success habit?
Commit to ongoing learning and you will do well. Big learners, big earners.

Who do you look up to?
David Meerman Scott

What are your favourite apps right now?
Nozbe

Here’s the big one… who do you like more, Rob or Kennedy?
Kennedy, just because you have one name and I think that’s great for personal branding.

Finally, where can folks go to find out more about you?
Connect with Douglas on LinkedIn or check out marketingbookpodcast.com