Tony Zambito

AUGUST 14, 2016

Information Overload by Jenny Chisnell. This approach of having 15 plus profile categories amounts to buyer profiling. Yes, buyer profiling can be helpful for sales and marketing automation, for instance. And, more importantly, truly informs on customer strategies. Why do I say labeled in name only ?

Buyer Personas 102

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles Profiling CMO 102

Tony Zambito

MAY 7, 2021

Which includes authentic buyer persona understanding and not the fluffy or inaccurate sales-intelligence profiles that have not served you well to date. . For marketing and sales leaders seeking to develop an in-house expert or you want to Become A Buyer Persona Expert , visit this link for more information.).

Buyer Personas 220

Buyer Personas Allocation Paid Search Agency Advertising Agencies 220

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 4, 2015

Marketing and sales still rely on market segmentation and buyer profiling as it has for the last twenty-five plus years. Where the disconnect occurs is when CMOs and their team focus solely on profile-based information as described above. Trying To Connect On An Impersonal “Business-Speak” Level Does Not Work.

Direct Marketing 100

Direct Marketing Buyer Personas Allocation Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

Personas can be insightful and informative towards decisions on designing user experiences, customer experiences, formulating marketing strategies, developing sales enablement programs, and devising content strategies. Oftentimes, we see B2B businesses confuse buyer personas for profiling the roles they are targeting within segments.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 17, 2016

Understanding that helps inform how they can create content that is personalized to the goals and situations of their buyers. When I first began my involvement with personas in the ‘90’s, they were primarily aimed at attaining a deeper understanding of user behaviors to inform overall design strategies.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Research Personalization Marketing Budget 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 26, 2015

Resulting in a 3D view of buyers, which can help inform strategies related to each. From a research point of view, not much has changed or moved beyond buyer profiling in the last couple of decades. Even more so, buyer profiling is still confined within the context of win/loss despite changes in terminology.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Paid Search Agency Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

Meaning marketers today must account for how to adapt to behavioral shifts caused by the omnipresence of digital and online information. What they are left with are fragmented bits and pieces of information. This is true even with efforts being performed in buyer profiling and buyer personas.

Buyer Personas 0

Buyer Personas Planning Paid Search Agency Content 0

Tony Zambito

JULY 6, 2011

As an individual with a background in marketing and sales, I began to think of how this could be a process to help make informed decisions not just about users but also buyers.    The latest trendy term of content marketing has even resulted in buyer personas being characterized as content profiles. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Peer-to-peer Ideal Customer Profiles Psychographics 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 4, 2011

  Mainly, buyer personas are presented as a means of templated profile building.    As buyer personas makes their way into the dialogue of B2B marketing, content marketing, lead generation, and lead nurturing, this seems to be what is happening:  buyer personas are being seen as another means for profiling buyers. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Research Ideal Customer Profiles Demand Generation Agencies 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 3, 2016

45% stated they were able to achieve deeper understanding of buyers in unexpected ways while the remaining 55% believed they engaged in buyer profiling and confirmed previous foundational understanding already possessed. Without it, the heartbeat of buyer personas as an integral part of informing and shaping customer strategy will fade.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Correlation Effectiveness Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

JUNE 26, 2016

Much of what is coined as buyer personas today are in fact still focused on how to define the “who” buyer profile as opposed to a true understanding of goals and behaviors. Key insights that can inform audience development and engagement are found in understanding goal-directed behaviors.

Buyer Personas 104

Buyer Personas Research B2B Fulfillment 104

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 8, 2015

At the same time, the growth is fraught with the perils of buyer personas being misunderstood, mislabeled, and serving as a cover for basic buyer profiling. My hope is the survey will yield informative insights and offer a pathway on how to properly assess and utilize buyer persona development.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Customer Surveys Ideal Customer Profiles Organic Leads 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 19, 2010

This is one of the key rules that separate buyer personas from being a customer profiling exercise to a means of providing senior executives with the informed insights they need to make sound decisions about customer strategy. As in visiting a foreign country, visiting buyers can be akin to going on foreign territory.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Wikipedia Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

JULY 18, 2011

  At the same time, offer perspectives on the future of buyer personas in the social age. ”  Social buyer persona development must change to be more about informing on listening competency than messaging competency. From Profiling to Narrative.   The narrative is part science and part art. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Lead Ranking Ideal Customer Profiles Opt-out 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 21, 2010

The quest for information can be addicting.    In organizations where the leadership is mostly analytical in nature, the need for information and analysis can be interwoven into the corporate culture and is a component of every decision.  Image by kevinzhengli via Flickr.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Sample Validation 100

Tony Zambito

AUGUST 3, 2011

.  There are 6 essential guiding premises that will help to embed true buyer persona research into your organization and to do so where you are not merely creating buyer profiles but are performing the bona fide practice of buyer persona research: Do The Real Thing.   This should be a red flag for you if promised by third-parties. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Organization Viral Marketing Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 12, 2011

Don’t Fall in the Profiling Trap : a misunderstanding I wrote about in my recent article, Use Buyer Personas to Segment by Buying Behavior , is thinking that buyer personas are a profiling of specific titles and/or roles in your target organization.  Eliminate Information Fog and Selling Friction!

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Sales B2B Buying Cycle 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 3, 2010

part 6 , I addressed the distinction between buyer profiling and buyer personas.   As buyer personas become increasingly popular, it is important for the fundamentals to serve as a reminder of what buyer personas can mean strategically – that is to inform on strategies to meet buyer goals. In the series on Buyer Persona 2.0,

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Profiling Tactics Practices 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 6, 2016

That is, making their buyer personas about customer research and not confirming existing buyer profiling assumptions. If this were truly the case, then for most B2B companies’ information and content marketing would be a slam dunk. However, a big problem exists in buyer persona research and development today.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B B2B Sales 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 26, 2010

  The outcome being buyer personas resembling a wire mesh of columns and rows that have every conceivable bit of information on the “what” of a buyer persona.  An over emphasis on what buyer personas do versus on the insight that can inform customer strategy. .  It is a natural tendency to layer data on top of data. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Wikipedia Social Media 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 28, 2010

  When static data is used to create buyer persona profiles, it is an exercise akin to just looking at the quantitative analysis.   Very much counter to the prevailing view of buyer personas being a profiling process only.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles Analysis Validation 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 31, 2016

While the content medium has changed to digital and the stream of information has exploded, the function of gatekeeping is resurrected in a different capacity. Beyond Buyer Profiling To Buyer Personification. New Dilemmas For Marketers. Worth the listen.). Related articles.

Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Ideal Customer Profiles Leads Lead Marketing Qualified Leads 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 25, 2012

For decades, B2B sales and marketing has relied on business information of the likes of Hoovers , Dun & Bradstreet , and others. Business information also plays a role in providing B2B with a level of company profiles and firmographics data about organizations within markets.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Allocation Peer-to-peer 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 24, 2010

Informs Functions Such As Strategy and Long Range Planning”. Mr. Anderson makes the assertion from the start that ethnography is not just for innovation anymore but now plays a role in informing strategy and long range planning.   I also make this same point in an interview with Stephanie Tilton on her blog Savvy B2B Marketing.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

  Without investing in informing buyer insights, executives will be in the dark on how to craft buyer experiences that makes them part of an organization’s buying strategies.   I have written extensively about the concept of buyer personas and how they are vastly different than profiling.  Buyer Personas.

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Buyer Personas Buyer's Journey Digital Marketing Funnels 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 30, 2011

  In the arts, you are forced to go beyond simple profiling of your audience.    In the business context, crafting buyer personas with an eye towards audience development means you must go well beyond the idea of simple profiling.   Here’s how.    You must get to know them at a deep level. 

Social Media 100

Social Media Social Marketing Buyer Personas Planning 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 23, 2010

  Buyer persona development, as I have made the case often recently, is not an exercise in profile building.    Several senior leaders we worked with embraced buyer persona development as a transformative process versus viewing the effort as a tactical profiling means. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Wikipedia Ideal Customer Profiles Social Media 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 2, 2011

Create informing buyer personas that teams can respond to.   Step 2: Informing Buyer Personas.   The term informing is used here to emphasize the fact that buyer personas are meant to be informing.    Informing about what?  Map the buyer’s journey and the buying process.  

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Buyer's Journey B2B Sales 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 11, 2011

  Setting them down the path of building what are more buyer “title and role” descriptions and profiles masked as buyer personas.    The resulting profiles adding a little more knowledge about potential buyers but not yielding the deep insights needed to discern buyer behaviors. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Segmentation Buy Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 18, 2011

  The buyer persona development process, if done with this purpose in mind and not as a customer profiling or segmentation exercise only, can serve as the means to achieve this complete realignment of B2B demand generation and content marketing around your target buyer – in this case – your target buyer persona. . 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Demand Generation Demand Generation 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 2, 2011

  Push messaging is clearly still happening through content marketing as one buyer interviewed suggested: “The amount of incoming emails and information nowadays is just too much.    Do they prevent buyers from finding the information they need that furthers their intelligence?   Way too busy for that!”. . 

Trends 100

Trends Buyer Personas Lead Ranking Content 100

Tony Zambito

AUGUST 2, 2011

  It is fair to say that if you examine their buying processes and decision criteria’s and other sales related variables, you would wind up with very similar buyer profiles.  .  For example, you can have two senior IT executives working in different corporations and environments. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Viral Marketing Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Sales 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 16, 2010

Goal Centric addresses senior leaders’ need to gain critical market and buyer insight to inform strategies that result in top line revenue growth. The Buyer Persona Playbooks provided us with the information we needed to win in the mid-market space. For more information, visit www.goalcentric.com. # # #.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Marketing & Strategy Enterprise Management Buying Cycle 100

Tony Zambito

AUGUST 22, 2011

  Keeping informed on the malleable shapes of your buyer’s ecosystem will mean the difference between being a part of it and somehow finding yourself excluded.   The foundational purpose of personas – be they user, consumer, or buyer personas – is to inform strategy related to product innovation and marketing innovation. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Viral Marketing Research Planning 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 29, 2010

.  It is my hope that these rules will serve as guidance for understanding the foundational principles of buyer persona development as a process and methodology for understanding buyers.  Thank you to those who have retweeted these articles and to those who have emailed me. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Marketing Automation Services Wikipedia 100

Tony Zambito

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

  Without investing in informing buyer insight, executives will be in the dark on how to craft buyer experiences that makes them part of an organization’s buying strategies. Buyer Personas. Buyer Personas, archetypal representations of real buyers, have enjoyed increasing attention over the past few years. 

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Buyer Personas Marketing Automation Services Buyer's Journey 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 11, 2010

  All can offer helpful information and insight into how to better meet the needs of customers. .  Focus groups, online surveys, customer satisfaction questionnaires, win-loss analysis, needs analysis, customer advisory groups, user groups, competitive intelligence, and more to name a few. 

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Buyer Personas Buy Wikipedia Customer Satisfaction 100