How to Create a Buyer Persona and Journey for B2B Software Marketers

With tighter marketing budgets and data regulations, it is more relevant now than ever before to create highly targeted messaging around the interests of your buyers. In fact, nearly half of all buyers are more likely to consider businesses that personalize messaging to address their needs. Before being able to create customized content, it is crucial to understand your buyer personas and their buyer journeys.

Creating buyer personas has several benefits; it impacts go-to-market success since buyer insights help marketing, sales, product, and customer success determine “who to target” and “how to target” with these personas. Understanding buyer personas also helps B2B software marketers save time and resources by executing more digital campaigns that are more likely to have higher engagement and conversion rates at every stage of the marketing funnel. Building buyer personas and journeys elevates success across the entire organization and makes marketing and sales more customer-centric. The process lets teams collaborate and align on buyer personas, share customer insights, and transfer customer knowledge that can optimize lead generation and increase marketing-influenced wins.

Kickstart Your Buyer Persona and Buyer Journey Initiatives

Achieve marketing success in 2023 by implementing a consistent framework that will help you:

• Align marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams on who your target buyer personas are.
• Motivate teams to collaborate and share knowledge about buyer personas and journeys.
• Identify 12-15 customers and prospects to interview.
• Activate insights for more customer-centric lead generation, product development, marketing, and sales.

Using our methodology will lead to greater stakeholder alignment, optimize product-market fit, increase open and click-through rates, generate more qualified leads, and shorten the sales cycle. B2B software marketers can experience up to 50% improvement in their efforts by activating findings from buyer persona and journey insights.

SoftwareReviews Methodology

Phase One: Document Team Knowledge of Buyer Persona and Drive Alignment

1. Outline a vision for buyer persona and journey creation and identify key stakeholders.
2. Bring stakeholders together, identify the initial buyer persona, and begin to document team knowledge about buyer persona and journey.
3. Validate the initial buyer persona and journey with industry and marketing analysts.
4. Identify a list of potential buyer interviewees.

Outcomes of Phase One include:

• Select a steering committee and team.
• Document team insights about the buyer persona and journey.
• Validate findings with industry and marketing analysts.
• Align marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams.

Phase Two: Interview Target Buyer Prospects and Customers

1. Schedule interviews and document findings from calls.
2. Validate initial drafts of buyer persona and create an initial documented buyer journey.
3. Review findings with key stakeholders, steering committee, and supporting analysts.
4. Complete remaining buyer interviews.

Outcomes of Phase Two include:

• Complete the interview guide.
• Create a target interviewee list.
• Validate the buyer persona with insights from buyers.
• Document the buyer journey with asset types, channels, and “how buyers buy.”

Phase Three: Create Outputs and Apply to Marketing, Sales, and Product

1. Summarize findings from Phase Two.
2. Reconvene the steering committee and the team for a final review.
3. Communicate with key stakeholders in product, marketing, sales, and customer success for activation.

Outcomes of Phase Three include:

1. Develop an education deck on buyer persona and journey for stakeholders across teams.
2. Activate insights to optimize lead generation, increase sales effectiveness, and develop better product-market fit.

Once teams are aligned on buyer personas, the next phase is to create a buyer journey for each persona. Understanding the buyer’s journey is crucial to creating effective digital marketing campaigns that drive measurable results. What’s more, documenting the buyer’s journey enables marketers to nurture personas with the right messaging at the right time and on the right channels, which yields higher conversion rates. B2B marketers are advised to update their buyer journeys annually and with greater frequency given the emerging media trends and technology shifts.

Final Takeaways

Overarching Insight

Buyer personas and buyer journeys are essential ingredients in go-to-market success, as they inform product, marketing, sales, and customer success who we are targeting and how to engage with them successfully.

Align Your Team

Marketers developing buyer personas and journeys without alignment between marketing, sales, and product teams will waste valuable time and resources throughout the customer targeting and acquisition process.

Jump-Start Persona Development

Marketing leaders leverage knowledge about buyer personas from in-house experts as well as analysts who regularly speak with customers.

Buyer Interviews Are a Must

Conducting buyer interviews helps B2B marketers design a better buyer journey with customized content and more effective digital marketing campaigns.

Watch for Disruption

Marketing leaders are advised to update their buyer journey annually and with greater frequency due to emerging media and technology trends.

Advanced Buyer Journey Discovery

Digital marketers who ramp up their lead gen engine capabilities to capture wins and measure engagement will build a more data-driven view of the buyer journey.

To accelerate business growth and increase marketing-influenced wins, marketers are advised to update their buyer personas and buyer journeys. Jump-start this initiative by discovering data-driven customer insights about your buyers and map their journey to optimize your marketing funnel.

Download our actionable, step-by-step buyer persona methodology research.  > Create a Buyer Persona and Journey