Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 27, 2020

In a lot of the conversations I have with B2B marketers, many are overwhelmed when confronted with how to build truly actionable buyer personas. Building actionable personas takes a fair bit of time and effort. And along with that, so is your persona project. 3 B2B Buyer Persona Types. Primary Buyer Persona.

Buyer Personas 69

Buyer Personas Effectiveness B2B B2B Thought Leadership 69

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

For those of you who know me, you know I spend much of my time talking to my clients’ customers to do the research necessary to build buyer personas that can truly inform content marketing, product marketing and sales enablement programs. You will need their buy-in to use personas successfully in your company.].

Conversion 93

Conversion Planning Buyer Personas Dwell 93

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 15, 2021

While the events I’ve attended and material I’ve read tend to apply the focus on sales as the central pivot for RevOps, I find that approach distracting for sales and a discredit to B2B marketers. This means they are better able to spot trends and engagement patterns (and gaps) that sales and customer success may not see.

B2B Marketing 131

B2B Marketing Lead Ranking B2B Paid Search Agency 131

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 18, 2019

For those of us who sell outcomes based on a complex sale, we really need to embrace simplicity and clarity. Buyer Personas are the Key to Buyer Context. And that results in well-constructed buyer personas that give you the depth you need to create content that resonates. Small steps.

Buyer Personas 119

Buyer Personas Buying Cycle Case Studies Case Study 119

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

The Job of Sales Content. For this post, let’s focus on content’s job for sales. Sales content must focus on creating buying intent. To do this, it must either instigate inquiries from your buyers or invoke curiosity and engagement when used by a sales rep or dealer rep in outreach or in support of conversations.

Effectiveness 122

Effectiveness Work Management Content Marketing Management 122

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 23, 2017

One of the key foundational elements to a content marketing strategy is a buyer persona. Yet merely 57% of B2B marketers say they have a deep understanding of the buyer personas included in their strategy. A B2B Buyer Persona is a Functional Tool—Not a Poster with a Few Platitudes. 4 Steps to Developing a Buyer Persona.

Buyer Personas 74

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy 74

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 24, 2021

Think about what your buyers have already gone through before they engage with your sales reps. There’s a reason statistics exist that verify buyers push sellers back to the end of the buy cycle and only spend about 5% of that time engaged with your sales rep. If you’ve developed effective buyer personas , you will have this insight.

B2B Thought Leadership 62

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership B2B Gartner 62

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 22, 2022

Given that 94% of B2B Buyers say they are very well informed or somewhat informed before they talk to a sales rep, there’s a lot of opportunity for marketers to help buyers self-qualify as ¾ of them push off engaging with sales until the end of their change process. This is what well-built personas bring to the table.

Work Management 62

Work Management Marketing Management Ideal Customer Profiles Sales Qualified Leads 62

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 5, 2022

If not, have you built those personas? This becomes even more important when you consider 73% of B2B tech companies have accelerated existing company revenue goals and 41% of them are decreasing their emphasis on net-new sales to focus on up- and cross-selling. Who you’re talking to may be different.

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Enterprise Management Work Management 62

Marketing Interactions

JULY 25, 2019

In my work building personas, I find that often to be a low-ball count. But you also must convince HR, Product, Sales, Marketing, Service and the CFO that this is the solution they each need to ensure their departments are contributing to company growth objectives. Sales cares about winning net-new logos. Let’s take an example.

Relevance 73

Relevance Work Management Marketing Management B2B Sales 73

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 25, 2022

Ask the following questions based on the internal change you’re reacting to: Has something about your persona (buyers, customers) changed? Has the problem your persona is trying to solve changed? And until all their “jobs to be done” are complete, there’s no sale. Has the way the industry approaches that problem changed?

B2B Marketing 69

B2B Marketing B2B Budget Programs Marketing & Strategy 69

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

I was interviewing a client’s customer a few days ago for a persona project and something he said made me stop and think. When I think back to what I hear a lot from customers during persona project interviews, there are a lot of cultural references. Curb the sales messaging. Curb the sales messaging.

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Lead Gen B2B Vendors 100

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 8, 2017

If you know me, you know I’m all about creating and using B2B buyer personas to drive content marketing strategy. I’ve created more than 400 buyer personas over the last four or five years. A B2B buyer persona should never be treated as a silo. A B2B buyer persona should never be treated as a silo. I can hear you.

Buyer Personas 48

Buyer Personas Budget Programs B2B Cross-Selling 48

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

One of the assumptions that marketers and sales reps make when people show interest in your website, content, or booth at a virtual summit or trade show is that they’re buyers. Ultimately, buyers spend only about 20% of their buying process in conversations with sales reps. The Opportunity for Marketers and Sales Teams.

Buy 77

Buy B2B Peer-to-peer Work Management 77

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 8, 2021

“Sellers use their sales process to place solutions.”. The other is a change management initiative with individualized criteria sales reps lack insight to. This is because our marketing-to-sales models and processes are not built to help buyers buy. They are sales-driven, not buyer-driven. They drive, but you can enable.

Buy 62

Buy Work Management Lead Ranking Marketing Management 62

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 15, 2021

The sales folks who answered the post leaned toward the feeling that their time was valuable, and they weren’t inclined to waste it on those not ready to buy. And, before you start yelling that you “have” to send everyone to sales, I’ve heard this antiquated notion shared by marketers in a variety of companies. Lack of Agreement.

Marketing Qualified Leads 62

Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Ranking Sales Qualified Leads High Quality Lead 62

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

Requests come from sales teams, service teams, and executives with ideas they want to be executed as content assets. The attributes of hirable content include: Relevance to a specific, defined target audience (persona). With some jobs to be done, different personas need the same information. Content Must Also Pivot to Context.

Content Marketing 60

Content Marketing Planning Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 60

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 4, 2017

This includes personas, messaging, stories, content marketing programs, sales enablement programs, and more. It takes campaigns out of the equation and focuses marketing, sales, and service attention on helping our target list of accounts get the job done—from start to finish. Marketing and Sales Alignment.

Account Based Marketing 64

Account Based Marketing ABM Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 64

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 25, 2023

Yes, dare I say it – build or revamp buyer personas. Your sales reps will fixate on the last conversation they had with a specific customer – focusing on whatever stood out to them the most. Review the risk averse reasons for beige content above and decide to eradicate that thinking. Start by talking to buyers and customers.

B2B Marketing 91

B2B Marketing Content Marketing B2B Content 91

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 20, 2021

Sales thinks marketing messaging is, well, too “marketing like,” so they replace it with the casualness of personalized conversation for face-to-face meetings—including those conducted virtually—which can result in lost context and relevance, depending on the buyer’s experience with the brand, and via which channels, thus far.

B2B 62

B2B Marketing Management Customer Satisfaction B2B Sales 62

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 7, 2022

In the hundreds of persona interviews I’ve conducted over the years; price is very seldom the reason for a lost deal. In fact, a mix makes your podcast more impactful and less of a blatant sales effort. For a high majority of your lost deals, I’m going to wager that it’s not price. Pricing is usually an easy way for buyers to say No.

Ideal Customer Profiles 88

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer 88

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 30, 2017

There are a number of strategic tools that come to mind to achieve this outcome, such as personas and customer journey mapping and storytelling but to create and use them effectively; you need to embrace three fundamental pivots: Continuity: From Campaign to Continuum. We need to become customer-obsessed.

B2B Marketing 73

B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Webinar Metrics 73

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 3, 2022

I’ve worked on several projects lately where clients provided me with buyer personas to create customer retention programs. Your B2B nurturing programs must account for the dynamism of the customer lifecycle to be effective. Unfortunately, many marketing campaigns provide the same content to both buyers and customers.

B2B 69

B2B Paid Search Agency Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 69

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 11, 2019

Five years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for me to work with a marketing team in one department that never spoke to or even knew the marketing teams in other departments: the social media team or the sales team or customer success teams. I’ve facilitated those introductions more times than I can count.

Peer-to-peer 53

Peer-to-peer Content Enterprise Management Broadcasting 53

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

Plan content initiatives based on content marketing strategy informed by buyer personas, behavioral analysis, and engagement data, and map these initiatives against organizational goals. Even account-based marketing challenges B2B marketers to evolve their approach to sales enablement and contribute to pipeline velocity.

Cost 69

Cost Content Marketing Automation Services Work Management 69

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 13, 2021

Unless you ARE the persona you’re selling to, what you think doesn’t matter. Whoever “they” are, it’s unlikely that they’re your persona, either. Marketers need to get out of their heads and into the shoes of their personas. Most of them don’t want to talk to your sales rep. The content isn’t for you.

B2B Marketing 174

B2B Marketing B2B Gartner Purchase Intent 174

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

If you can only apply resources to one persona effectively, then do that, and do it brilliantly. Your buyer personas should be the guiding light, so get them out of the drawer, dust them off, and use them. Shortening the sales cycle brings faster turn over for revenue, so put that narrative to work to pull buyers forward.

Planning 118

Planning Paid Search Agency Content Marketing Marketing & Strategy 118