- Wrong Messaging: Misplaced Messaging that has no impact on the Persona Messaging is all about showing someone how your product or service can change the customer’s world. It’s guaranteed that a company’s IT department and the finance department will require different messaging.
- Information Glut: Too much information packed into limited space People scan web page text and often look for bullet points that apply to them. The head of Customer Service probably doesn’t need or want to know technical implementation requirements and the requirements shouldn’t be part of their journey.
- Distractions: Unnecessary or distracting information that may turn off or discourage one or more personas Sifting through too much unnecessary data that isn’t persona-directed can make people turn away, lose interest, and cause your company to falter in closing the sale.
- Too Technical: Overly technical data or messaging that may not be able to achieve its goal Specifications and features only matter if they meet the needs of the particular persona. Sales and Marketing may want to know all about the built-in chat bot to the CRM and how trainable and customizable it is, but does Finance? HR?
Persona Journeys
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What are they. When to use them. How to implement.
What Are Personas?
Persona Journeys come in many different sizes and flavors. Some apply to consumer journeys (the most prevalent of Persona Journeys) and others in B2B sales. They apply, in varying forms, to virtually any business or industry. Amazon creates them. So, too, do Spotify and Netflix. In this article, I want to focus on one particular type of B2B Persona Journey: the long, complex sale.
There are certain factors built into the long sale. First, the product is almost always complex and expensive and is used across organizational departments. Second, implementation is often difficult. Tech companies mostly fall into this category. Their products are often complex and require the buy-in of several department heads and decision makers (Personas), all of which have specific needs and perspectives. Building a journey specifically for those personas can make the decision process easier and, if done well, the Persona Journeys can be a game changer for your organization.
Personas, in this instance, are the individuals involved in the purchase of your product or service. An example easy to illustrate is the purchase of a CRM (Customer Relation Management software). This may involve an organization’s Sales, Marketing, HR, IT, Finance and Customer Service teams. Each of those personas has uniques needs and concerns. The traditional single line approach to selling the company may lead to a series of issues that are likely to turn potential customers away, such as:
Understanding what Persona Journeys are can help you look at your customers in a different light, and help them to understand your product or services better.
When To Use Persona Journeys
In a B2B environment, Persona Journeys become necessary when the buying process involves multiple C-level employees who need to buy-in to the product or service. For instance, in a healthcare organization, what requirements does the CFO need of an EMR (Electronic Medical Records) package? How does that differ from IT? Caregivers? Customer Service? Each of those paths is different and needs to be addressed with the proper messaging. On top of that, what does the Business Owner’s path look like?
When you know the purchasing process requires selling to multiple personas you need to consider creating unique pathways for each.
Implementing Persona Journeys
Plan. Plan. Plan. Persona Journeys for long and complex sales require thought. The amount and type of content that needs to be designed will vary for each persona. Some personas require videos (overview, explainer or demo) and articles that are more technical in nature, while others need Case Studies and White Papers. The point is, you have to understand and map out the needs of each persona in order to deliver a world-class experience to prospective clients.
Collaboration within your organization is important when defining a Persona Journey. Sales, Marketing, Product, Finance and others will all have input that is crucial to the success of the journey.
Persona Journeys begin with content—website and PDF or printed—but don’t end there. Once someone is in the stream there needs to be continuing contact. Email campaigns (autoresponders) targeted at their persona (email list segmentation) to help educate and inform are important. Follow up calls from sales to schedule demos and Q&As, tech lab invitations—all of these are part of the Persona Journey, and especially important in longer, technical sales.
Each part of the journey is a measurable KPI, either through Analytics or personal interactions. Knowing where the prospective client is in the system and where there might be bottlenecks and roadblocks helps refine the approach.
Conclusion
B2B Persona Journeys—for long, complex sales—can impact your organization in multiple ways. First, it communicates clearly your product or service to the right person at the right time with measurable milestones. Second, it can shorten the time from initial contact to sale. Third, it involves your entire company and helps align the company through Marketing Orchestration. Finally, it separates your organization from the crowd, which leads to industry leadership and authority.
Jack McDaniel has been a great resource to CognitiveScale. He has helped build out a new website, write content, and develop a management dashboard to help us track Marketing KPIs. He quickly understood our business and contributed to writing and editing content, which has always been a challenge for us given the complexity of our technology. Jack was able to dive right in and contribute to our new messaging, and then translate this to SEO, advertising, and a number of Marketing campaigns. And his work drove results that were very valuable."
