Pigs Posing As Buyer Personas: Four Ways To Finger Fakes
In marketing circles these days, it has become “fashionable” to include buyer or prospect “personas” as part of your marketing toolkit. And for good reason-these life-like descriptions of your prospects as individual people can help you hone sharper content marketing messages, deliver them more effectively, and unite your team. Piggy Buyer Personas But there’s a hitch. All those grand promises depend on the quality of the work that went into your buyer personas and the polish that comes out.
B2B Prospecting Is Not What You Think. It’s Personal.
During a research interview on behalf of a highly innovative tech manufacturer, I asked a customer, what this company’s greatest strength is. The answer-my sales rep. B2B Prospecting Is Personal It’s a tenet of my marketing belief system and a strong competitive differentiator. The better we understand our prospects and customers as people, the better we can communicate with them about their goals and challenges. Are We Making B2B Marketing More Personal or Making More Marketing?
Latest Survey Learning: 6 Marks of Business-Building Buyer Personas
If you’re old enough to remember when Al Gore invented the internet, it’s been interesting to watch the world of technology marketing become the world of marketing technology… But be careful what you wish for. We have taller and taller technology stacks that promise more ways of reaching more prospects than ever before, but our research with B2B marketing directors shows that many are feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of toys they now have.
Content Karma: Crappy Personas = Crappy Content
I was going through some old family photos the other day. Wonderful memories of days long ago that I am digitizing to ward off the ravages of time. But, in one sense, I was preserving the ravages of time. Unfortunately, the copy can never be better than the original. A poorly-shot blurry old snapshot will still be a bad picture even in 600 DPI digital form! So it is with personas and the content marketing that comes from them. Mark Schaefer noted the same thing in a recent post arguing that "customer personas may be an outdated marketing technique"... but his advice is not bother taking any photos!
Free Personas: Worth Every Penny
The most valuable part of any research is the insight. That nugget of truth that expands your understanding and guides strategy and messaging. Digging for insights isn’t easy—you have to go beyond the surface and get some dirt under your nails. And gasp! you may even have to talk with people outside your organization to widen your own (narrow?) perspective and blow up those assumptions you’ve been operating from for way too long.
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (Even If They’re Sales And Marketing)
The river between sales and marketing runs cold and deep. We can see each other’s camp on the opposite bank, just out of range. That we all work for the same corporation is often the irritant, yet I have seen how much success is generated when there is cooperation. Let me tell you how. “Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost concedes in his poem Mending Wall. He’s not entirely happy with the concept, but the sucker works, and it will work here. Building a strong fence will define the playing field (formerly, battlefield).
Content is in the Eye of the Beholder
We cram a lot of hopes and expectations into content marketing—that prospects will have a preference for our brand and use our content as stepping stones in their consideration journey. Expectations do not decrease. We need content to work harder.