Tony Zambito

MAY 14, 2021

In fact, the best leaders I have seen will not make a strategy or tactical decision without first validating their buyer personas. The purpose is to help inform important go-to-market strategies. And inform what buyer interactions matter. There are plenty of buyer persona creation services these days.

Buyer Personas 232

Buyer Personas Validation Deliverability Thought Leadership 232

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 8, 2020

At Ford, he was best known for his efforts in the creation of one of the most famous cars in auto history – the Mustang. Iacocca, who died at the age of 94 in 2019, was a visionary leader who was the only executive in modern times to lead two of the Big Three American automakers. Ford and Chrysler.

Allocation 187

Allocation Buyer Personas B2B Lead Ranking 187

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 3, 2016

While there may have been redundancy in previous surveys , this particular survey is devoted to understanding the best practices associated with buyer persona development. I wish to thank the (124) respondents of the State of Buyer Personas 2016 Survey for taking the time to complete the survey.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Correlation Effectiveness Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 27, 2020

Initially, there will be a number of phased-in constraints that will make choices and purchase decisions difficult at best. Buyers and customers will not be returning to a world where they can easily flick a switch and operate as they had. We do not know. Plan for the long haul. Make Sure Your Buyer Personas Are Based On Goals.

Buy 182

Buy Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles Amazon 182

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 13, 2015

By doing so, organizations can best position themselves as helping customers to make better-informed decisions on how they can achieve their goals. The real intent of buyer persona development and in-depth buyer research is to understand the effect of goal-directed behavioral and underlying influences on buyer decisions.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Lead Ranking B2B Sales Research 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 4, 2020

Anticipating the impact of the pandemic on businesses in this current state is guesswork at best. A refrain heard often today, like an echo in a mountain range, is simply “I don’t know.” Business leaders today will stress the need for deep insights into buyers and buying behaviors.

Marketing AI 173

Marketing AI Buyer Personas Advertising Agencies Conference 173

Tony Zambito

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

Where views on which segments best represent ideal target customers can become muddied over a decade or more. In fact, it can be quite a complex effort for organizations to undertake. Oftentimes, companies can lose sight of who exactly are their customers from a segmentation viewpoint.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles Segmentation Profiling 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 26, 2012

The attempt here is to answer some tough questions that help to bring more focus to an SMB strategy: Who are our best customers in the SMB segments and why? In what SMB sub-market segments are our best customers? Who are our best prospects and in which SMB sub-market segment are they?

SMB 100

SMB Enterprise Management Buyer Personas Marketing Management 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 24, 2016

Because these dynamics are unfolding at a rapid pace, it is getting harder for CMOs and their teams to resist the many cliché expressions that will suffice such as “grabbing the shiny object” or “jumping on the bandwagon”. The temptation being great to go “all in” on the latest hot topic or trend and hope for the best.

Planning 100

Planning Buyer Personas Paid Search Agency Marketing & Strategy 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 31, 2017

The concept derives from the notion that your best customers are your existing customers. It is an example of how an old concept can be recycled and be claimed anew again. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, ABS, the acronym for Account-Based Sales, was all the rage then.

Account Based Marketing 211

Account Based Marketing ABM Digital Transformation Paid Search Agency 211

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 31, 2011

Uncertainty on how best to understand buyers today as well as engage buyers is on top of the list for … Continue reading → Changes in buyer behaviors continue to march on as new social technologies take root into the mainstream of B2B businesses.

B2B 100

B2B B2B Marketing Marketing & Strategy Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 3, 2010

  I’ve been asked in a few emails to repost the definition of buyer personas that is reflective of elevating buyer personas to a best practice – we call Buyer Persona 2.0: To become a best practice of Buyer Persona 2.0, The Definition of Buyer Personas. Buyer Personas are richly detailed archetypal representations of real buyers.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Profiling Tactics Practices 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 17, 2016

Basically, offering a profiling exercise at best. It involves the use of qualitative research best practices to get the “whole” view of your customer’s world. For example, use of marketing and content technology requires us to bring a design methodology to buyer persona research.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Research Personalization Marketing Budget 100

Tony Zambito

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Last July Tony Karrer at Browse My Stuff and Tom Pick at WebMarketCentral created and launched the B2B Marketing Zone , a community collecting and organizing the best information on the web about B2B marketing.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Marketing B2B B2B Sales 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 14, 2018

In vogue the last few years is the idea that the buyer’s journey is the best way to view how buyer’s get to a decision. As forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders prepare for 2020 and continuous digital disruption, it is time to alter this line of thinking. Is The Buyer’s Journey The Right Perspective For 2020?

Marketing AI 174

Marketing AI Buyer Personas Top of Funnel Digital Marketing Funnels 174

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 25, 2011

  Qualitative as well as contextual inquiry based methods common to ethnography and anthropology are best suited to get at the unarticulated goal choices of buyers.   If that is the case, then we best find out what exactly is considered business today by buyers. . 

Demand Generation 100

Demand Generation Internet Marketing Purchase Buy 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 26, 2010

  Organizations today also are attempting to understand the best mix to offer with many resorting to trial and error.      Without understanding the end goals of its buyers, organizations will be hard pressed to lay out the best paths for buyers to reach their end goals.  As with the Way of St.

Buyer's Journey 100

Buyer's Journey Buyer Personas Wikipedia Social Media 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 16, 2010

  The home theatre enthusiast may find that Best Buy personnel and carried equipment will help to meet his or her goals whereas the aficionado might require a specialty shop with brands that are not carried by Best Buy to meet his or her goals. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Demand Generation Agencies Social Media Correlation 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 11, 2010

  Attaining such a deep understanding is no easy task but the use of qualitative and experiential analysis rooted in anthropological principles offers the best means for this understanding.  To deeply understand why buyers buy requires a deep understanding of buyer’s goal orientation. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Buy Wikipedia Customer Satisfaction 100

Tony Zambito

JULY 17, 2016

Putting their organization, in the eyes of customers and buyers, as the one organization that can help them to best accomplish their goals. They can transform by mapping to the intentions and goals of their buyers. The need for transformation in marketing is a growing concern for many CEOs and CMOs.

Intent 100

Intent Buyer Personas CMO Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 19, 2010

  Paul Greenberg put it best this year when he said buyers today do not want to be an object of a sale but a subject of an experience.    Over used yes but the best example is Apple.    Apple has put together one of the best consumer buying experience in history. 

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Trends Conversion Buyer Personas 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 20, 2015

It is helpful in gauging the understanding of buyer persona best practices and experiences. While there has been perhaps one too many surveys on buyer personas this year, I am asking readers to take my annual State Of Buyer Personas survey. Yet, we still have miles to go.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Research Studies Demand Generation Agencies 100

Tony Zambito

AUGUST 21, 2011

  It is either Best Buy or Office Depot.    Best Buy, Verizon, and others simply cannot duplicate the experience one can get in an Apple retail location.  .  Apple’s retail presence allowed buyers to get informed about the iPad, touch it, experience it, and talk to knowledgeable Apple dedicated folks. 

Distribution 100

Distribution Buy Marketing & Strategy Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 16, 2010

The Playbooks are designed to enable strategy, buyers, sales, and marketing in a way that creates alignment to best serve buyers’ goals.”. Buyer personas, archetypal representations of buyers and their buying processes, serve as guides to marketing strategy, sales strategy, customer and sales messaging, and content development. "We've

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Marketing & Strategy Enterprise Management Buying Cycle 100

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

Banks that best positioned themselves in a state of readiness to assess and handle market disruption are faring better than those who haven’t. The upstart Number 26 Bank ( N26 ) is aiming to further disrupt banking with a digital service designed entirely for mobile.

Organization 100

Organization Enterprise Management Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 23, 2016

We have also seen organizations struggle with how best to adapt to new market dynamics related to customer behaviors and the role of content in reaching customers. Customer behaviors have significantly shifted in the last decade impacting conventional thinking on the role of marketing and sales and their abilities to connect with customers.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

They can best be characterized as only helpful today but not revealing. Several executives I interviewed in the last six months of 2011 are saying it best: “What we’ve learned is that buyer personas, building tools for sales, creating lots of content, and etc.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking B2B Marketing Buyer Personas B2B 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 26, 2015

In complex B2B environments, important insights can oftentimes best be seen rather than heard. Which, at its origins, was and still is predicated on the use of ethnographic research. This has never been more important.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Paid Search Agency Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 4, 2010

  The roles of sales and marketing with respect to engagement are best defined when shaped by how they contribute to the overall buyer experience.  .  The advent and rise of engagement channels related to digital marketing and social media has made this undoubtedly a perplexing issue for many B2B leaders. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Marketing Automation Services Buying Cycle Lead Ranking 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 18, 2011

  Adam says it best on why: “This needs to come first.  If you want to prevent failure in demand generation strategy, then investing in an organization-wide effort to arrive at a robust and deep understanding of your target buyer persona is the means to do so. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Demand Generation Demand Generation 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 13, 2008

Dave's point that the gap is best defined through culture, philosophy, and business orientation gets to another crucial point. What I am finding most interesting is that the definitions surrounding the "sales & marketing alignment" conundrum are, to use the proverbial expression, all over the map.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Conference Marketing & Strategy Webinar Metrics 100

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

The goal for a B2B CMO, in today’s digital economy, is to strengthen the common view of customers by which their organization can make informed decisions on how best to be relevant. Thus, making it even more difficult to foster customer-centric marketing. 10 Essentials Of Becoming Customer-Centric With Buyer Personas.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 5, 2011

Since lead nurturing is a new concept, it still struggles from not receiving the executive buy-in it should causing many sales and marketing teams to make best do with a limited budget. The dilemma an organization can be faced with is the way lead nurturing has been approached. 

Lead Nurturing 100

Lead Nurturing Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Planning 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 29, 2012

To a greater degree, companies will be better able to identify and predict the ideal scenarios that give them the best shot at winning and being a long-term alternative to buyers. Buyers are getting their information needs met at the right time, the right place, and the right situation of challenges they are dealing with.

Lead Nurturing 100

Lead Nurturing Lead Ranking Leads Lead 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 29, 2010

A struggle for any CEO is to communicate the story of how the organization can and will best serve the goals of it’s’ buyers.  .  The 10th and final rule: Rule 10: Buyer Persona Development Serves as a Communications Platform to Tell the Story of Customers and Buyers.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Marketing Automation Services Wikipedia 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 27, 2011

  Some of the best non-fiction books ever written are acclaimed for their deep investigation as well as creative narratives that engage the reader.  .  Without investing in gaining contextual understanding, you and a team will most likely engage in a form of fictional story and scenario creation. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Storytelling Touchpoints Interactive Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 14, 2010

  Believe me; if executives of major corporations see buyer personas as a “tool” to profile buyers and not a best practice, then the buyer persona development process will not have much hope of expanding beyond that. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Ideal Customer Profiles Social Media 100