High-Tech Communicator

Facebook for Business

I’ve been skeptical about using Facebook for business. I’ve always thought it creeperish (as my teenage daughters would say) when former colleagues who I don’t know on a personal basis friend me. But I recently encountered a Facebook page that changed my mind.

Over the past few months, one of my daughters has been performing in a musical at a community theatre in Raleigh (www.raleighlittletheatre.org). As she moved from rehearsals into the actual performance, I became mesmerized with their Facebook page. The crew that creates this page has a great understanding of how to use Facebook in a business setting. 

The following are four observations of why Facebook works as a vehicle for promoting the theatre.

1. Facebook communicates quickly and effectively with many audiences at once. These include:  

• Actors—In the 2010-2011 season, the theatre will put on 11 plays including adult and youth theatre. Directors are constantly recruiting actors to audition for these plays. The more actors it can bring in, the more choice they have in casting. They use Facebook to encourage actors to audition by publicizing the auditions and by creating a feeling of community among people who have performed in productions, making it more likely they'll try out for new productions.
• Parents—With five youth performances a year, the theatre relies on an army of parents of actors who must transport their kids to the theatre and provide volunteer labor to help with the shows. Constant updates keep parents informed of everything that‘s going on regarding a particular show.
• Patrons—The theatre clearly needs to get people in to see the shows. Facebook publicizes shows throughout their run and lets people know if shows are selling out to create a sense of urgency. Behind-the-scenes views of the show help create excitement and interest.
• Volunteers—With a skeleton crew of paid staff, the theatre relies on an army of volunteers to build and strike sets and perform other technical tasks for each and every show. The staff pleads for additional workers on Facebook. In addition, all of the publicity and insider information about the shows helps keep volunteers engaged. 
• Sponsors—A number of local companies sponsor the theatre and its productions. They want to know that their money is well spent. Constant updates serve this purpose.

2. To maintain a steady stream of patrons coming to see the show and to develop a feeling of community among the many volunteers, the theatre uses Facebook for ongoing communications. Types of communications include:

• Behind-the-scenes views—The theatre works hard to give people a behind-the-scenes look at shows so people want to come see or volunteer for the shows. These include links to photos and videos of rehearsals or interesting facts about a show's history. Actors will talk about getting ready for opening night. When one of the directors was hospitalized, they posted a brief updates on his progress on Facebook.
• Promotions—During the run of a show, the theatre posts regular promotions. Whenever the local press publishes an article or runs a story on local television, a copy is posted on Facebook. Often, the theatre will do brief promotional events at local venues such as at a local bookstore and children’s museum; they’ll publicize the event beforehand and post photos of it afterward.   
• Announcements—Facebook will announce auditions, call backs and cast lists for upcoming shows. These are of interest not only for the cast themselves, but for people who may know the cast members. Facebook is also used to announce new shows, new classes, even the latest version of the newsletter.  
• Community comments—In some cases, people within the community post comments—whether it’s a volunteer about to take cast photos, an actor about to go to the theatre in their pajamas, or a friend of an actor going to see the show. This certainly creates a feeling of engagement with the productions.

3. By creating continual communications with all of these different constituents, the theatre helps build a relationship with the local community.   

4. The theatre tightly integrates its Facebook page with many other forms of marketing communications.

• Website—The Website lists all shows and upcoming classes, a history of the theatre, past award winners, information about shows from previous seasons, and much more. It also displays prominent links to the theatre’s newsletter, Facebook page and Twitter.
• Twitter—The theatre tweets announcements and news of interest.
• Newsletter—The theatre also produces a newsletter that publishes announcements about upcoming shows and promotions, volunteer opportunities and auditions.
• Email Listserv—The theatre also has a listserv that publishes pleas for volunteers.

While the theatre duplicates much information in these various venues, different people want to receive information in different ways. The theatre uses multiple avenues to communicate with people where they want to receive information.   

While I’ve been skeptical about using Facebook for business, this theatre page demonstrates one way that Facebook can be used in a business setting in a personalized, yet professional manner. Many of these ideas can be directly applied to many other types of organizations.

How does your organization use Facebook?

What’s Your Philosophy of Writing?

The other day, I was talking to a marketing manager at a large technology company about a potential writing project. Usually, in an initial get-to-know-you phone meeting, marketing people will ask what types of projects I do and how I work—all  very tactical questions. But this woman asked instead, “What’s your philosophy?”

“Wow! That’s refreshing,” I thought. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”

Her question gets to people’s perception of writers. Often, people look at writing as a tactical task where the writer strings together sentences and polishes up the grammar. But when that’s all a writer does, marketers are invariably unhappy with the results and become distrustful of all writers. As one content expert recently noted, “Many writers seem to just not understand the topics, so while they may be grammatical experts, they destroy the message.”

By asking me my philosophy, this woman was saying that she understood that writing is a complex and strategic function that goes beyond stringing together sentences.

So What’s My Philosophy?

My writing philosophy centers around the type of writing I do and the process of writing.

Writing Types

With the idea of content marketing spreading like wildfire, marketers are actively looking to create content that describes how their solution helps people operate their businesses or do their jobs more effectively. The idea is that customers are actively looking for solutions for problems on the web and it behooves marketers who want to attract customers to give them what they’re looking for.

I come from a background of service journalism. In other words, I started out writing articles for niche publications that in some way, shape, or form provided information that helped people operate their businesses or do their jobs better. Whether it was a case study that showed how one business solved a particular problem, a comparative review of multiple products in a single category, or a trend piece that described changes an organization needed to be aware of, all of the articles I wrote always had a service bent. The white papers, case studies and other materials I write typically reflect that focus.

Writing Process

To create the type of materials I focus on, the writing process comes down to gaining a true understanding of the message the client wants to disseminate and then translating that into a piece that has meaning to the customer. The process is sort of like translating poetry from one language to another. This is more complex than it looks. After all, think about what would happen if you ran a poem through translation software. You’d get gibberish.

Why?  

Most poems are chock full of obscure references. If you don’t understand the references, you don’t understand the poem. But when you get a good professor to explain the poem, a whole new world opens up.

Similarly, pieces about technology contain all sorts of jargon, acronyms, and obscure references.

So for papers where the content is well defined, such as a white paper based on a sales presentation, the job of a writer is to be the poetry professor and translate the “poem” (in this case the technology) into language that students can understand. Since I’m not really an expert at any one technology, I do deep background research looking up obscure articles explaining the technology until I “get it” enough to explain to someone else.

But for many white papers, the client only has a 30,000-foot view of what they want to say. In that case, I need to come up with most of the content from scratch through interviews and research. I then shape it into something that meets the client’s criteria and that readers can understand.

So to summarize, what’s my philosophy to create value?

1. Create service-type pieces that help customers do their job or run their business better
2. Find out in a deep way what the client is really trying to say.
3. Make sure I get all the background I need to truly understand the message.
4. Learn what the customer wants to know and translate the message in such a way that the customer understands the value of my client’s message.

And that’s how writers add value to content during the writing process.

What’s your philosophy about producing marketing materials?

 

Looking for Ideas for Impactful Content for B2B Marketing?

One of the biggest challenges content marketers face is developing compelling content that will attract B2B buyers. Here’s one suggestion that few B2B content marketers consider.

Let me start with a story.

Years ago, when I was an editor for PC Magazine, I was assigned the task of developing, managing, and editing a special “blockbuster” issue about software applications that help investors select stocks. We enlisted trading experts and IT staff at several large brokerage firms to help us evaluate the software.

Although these people were used to making gobs of money in their day jobs and we paid relatively little for their efforts, they eagerly worked on this project. Part of the reason they participated in the project was that they liked the publicity of being featured in a large, well-known publication. But the more important reason was that they believed that they needed to explore every single one of their software options to make sure their firm knew which ones would give them a competitive advantage.   

As a result of this project (and discussions with many other IT buyers), the editors at PC Magazine ultimately redesigned the format of the publication. Instead of writing general interest articles about personal computing, the magazine ultimately concentrated on product evaluations. Not only did product evaluations become their sole focus, they also made a point to review every single product they could find in a category, rather than just the top five to 10 products.  

Today, the market has consolidated and IT buyers no longer have a choice of dozens of IT solutions to every problem. Nonetheless, IT buyers are voracious consumers of solid information about how to address their challenges—particularly since fewer trade publications are available to talk about these issues.

Marketers can provide a valuable service by developing white papers that compare and contrast the various options available for solving specific problems. While a vendor may not be able to get away with a white paper that actually ranks competitive products the way PC Magazine does, it can provide frank discussions of the types of technology options available in a particular category and their pros and cons for different applications.  

So consider white papers that compare technologies as part of your content mix. This information is sure to be of great interest to your buyers and will allow you to position yourself as a company that provides true value to your customers.

How have you used technology evaluations in your marketing efforts?

Developing a B2B White Paper Strategy

From time to time, someone will call and say, “I need a white paper. We don’t have any and I have nothing to give people.”

Unfortunately, simply creating a white paper for the sake of having one isn’t an effective use of the time, effort and money. To get the greatest bang for your buck, it’s best to develop a strategy that matches the papers you create to the information requirements your customers have at different stages of their buying cycle. (Of course, other types of content will also be appropriate at different stages of the sales cycle, but I want to focus on white papers here).

The following are four commonly used types of papers that will help your customers through their buying cycle:

Generate awareness

Today, potential B2B customers start their purchase process by doing a web search for information that will educate them about possible solutions to business problems they may face. As a result, it’s a good idea to create a white paper designed to meet this customer need for information. These white papers are typically thought-leadership pieces that describe the particular customer problem and the benefits of solving it using a specific type of solution. 

Because companies may target the same product to different industries or different roles within a particular company and each of these target markets may have different concerns, companies often create different variations of papers for the same product targeting these different audiences. The key is to carefully define these key audiences and their business challenges that you can address, and then educate these audiences about the benefits of the type of solution you offer to their particular role or industry at a business (not technical) level.

Another way to educate your readers at the awareness stage of the buying cycle is to perform primary research and publish the results. Such research often documents the magnitude of a particular business problem, why customers are having difficulties addressing the problem, describing best practices for solving the problem and finding out how many companies follow these best practices.

Often complex products, such as ERP software, address multiple customer problems. In this case, you might want to address key problems one at a time rather than describe all the problems the solution addresses at once. For example, an ERP software vendor might do a series of educational papers talking about how ERP solutions can address different business issues—such as how it improves productivity, enhances business intelligence, improves financial returns and increases collaboration.

Describe the product

Once the customer becomes interested in your particular solution and is comparing yours to other solutions, you’ll need a white paper that describes your actual product. Such a paper should briefly summarize the problem the product addresses, possibly describe the pros and cons of alternative solutions and technologies, then describe your specific differentiators, key benefits and the key features that provide those benefits. Generally, because companies generally provide data sheets to describe the features and benefits of a particular product at a high level, a white paper will tend to describe more technical details for a more technical audience or describe the product in greater depth than a brochure.

Address common questions

During the sales process, certain questions will arise repeatedly. You can create white papers to address these frequently asked questions. For example, one common issue that companies address with white papers is how the product addresses compliance with a particular new regulation or how it fits in with a new technology category. Again, these white papers are typically used when the potential customer is actively involved with the salesforce.

Validation white papers

Finally, toward the end of the sales process, you’ll want papers to reassure your customers that your products actually do what they say they’re going to do and that give customers quantifiable information they can take to their boss as they make their final decision. Papers that are useful support for this part of the sales process might document the total cost of ownership, especially for products like virtualization hardware that promise to dramatically reduce a company’s operational costs. Another variation on this theme is a paper that describes how a customer can measure the return on investment. Such papers look not only costs but also the top line benefits of implementing the solution. Often these papers can be paired with an ROI tool that companies can use to measure the ROI they can expect from implementing the solution in their own environment. Still another variation gives three to five examples of how customers have benefitted from the solution.

These four categories of white papers form the basis of a white paper strategy that will enable you to start meeting potential customers’ information requirements throughout all phases of the sales cycle.

What’s your white paper strategy?

Will Anyone Ever Really Market with “Brutal Transparency”?

Rohit Bhargava, author of the Influential Marketing Blog, recently predicted that what he called “Brutal Transparency” or “Aggressive Honesty” will become one of the top social media marketing strategies in 2011. Bhargava argued that being extremely honest, you can create edgier and more effective marketing.

For example, the post gave the example of how customers compare Domino’s Pizza crust to cardboard.

In theory, I loved this notion of aggressive honesty, especially for technology marketers. After all, most customers have, at one time or another, been burned by overenthusiastic technology marketing claims and it’s a perfect way to overcome customers’ lingering doubts.

Broken Promises

I’ll never forget the time, years ago, when I worked for a company that was touting an overarching vision of an end to end solution. Unfortunately, the solution hadn’t actually been built. Professional Services was supposed to build the solution for the first customer that bought it (and who thought they were buying a packaged solution). That purchase would, in turn, fund the company’s development of a solution that they could then later sell again to other customers. Eventually, the company did find a customer. They even proceeded to get the customer to endorse the product in a press release and an event.  But before long, it became clear that that the implementation would be much more complex than the customer had imagined. And the customer called the company to task in a series of heated meetings. 

And that’s not the only story I’ve heard of broken promises from technology companies to their customers. I do a lot of customer success stories. Many times even a customer who’s very happy overall with the product will start the interview by talking about a problem they had with the vendor or something they decidedly don’t like about the product.

Coming Clean

Since potential customers know that technology installations will inevitably have problems, why not build your credibility by admitting to the potential problems up front, and then turning the issue around by explaining how you successfully addressed the issue. I personally think it would be a breath of fresh air and would give me confidence in the vendor’s ability to solve the problem.

Not Likely

As much as I think that Brutal Transparency or Aggressive Honesty is the way to go, do I think this type of marketing will ever get very far?

No.

It’s a simple matter of human nature. How many politicians do you see admitting to wrongdoing before the proven facts bite them in the you-know-what? What about businesspeople? Same story.

Indeed, judging by the dozens of vendors I’ve worked with, marketing people are mortally afraid of even the slightest whiff of negatively. The fear is that you will plant a negative thought in someone’s head that wouldn’t have been there otherwise, which will in turn lead to doubts that will cause people to choose another vendor.

I don’t think that most marketers will ever adopt Brutal Honesty as a strategy until more people are willing to admit that no one is perfect and no situation is black and white. In today’s polarized political climate, I’m not sure that’s possible. Only when people do gain a more nuanced view of the world, will marketing be able to follow suit and be more honest. When that day comes, marketers will perform a true service by fostering a win-win situation where people, with all their imperfections, have all the information they need to realistically weigh the pros and cons of solutions, with all their imperfections, and t find the product that’s truly the best fit for their requirements.

How honest have you been in your marketing? How’s that worked out for you?

Marketing Materials for the “New Normal” Economy

When you develop marketing materials that talk about ways to solve customer problems, chances are you’re going to run smack into the economy. In other words, current economic conditions are often one of your customers’ most important challenges—and you’re going to need to talk about how your solutions help customers address the challenges brought on by economic conditions. 

For example, most B2B companies today are dealing with the impact of the “New Normal” economy. In most recent economic recoveries, economic growth has been robust. Marketers seeking to address customer challenges during a recovery therefore tended to focus their marketing messages on how their products help companies improve their top line growth.

In the “New Normal” economy, however, despite economists’ claims that we’re undergoing a recovery, the high jobless rate means that many consumers don’t see any economic improvement. That means customers are saving more and spending less. These consumer actions have translated into a fitful recovery. Thus, while many companies want to invest in growing their business, but at the same time, want to keep their expenses in line and improve profitability. Marketers must respond by helping cautious customers make a strong financial case for their products.

Several of my clients have been producing just such pieces to address the precarious economic recovery and the cautious customers that result from that economy. These include papers about:

Creating a Business Case

One recent paper concentrated on ways that customers could create a business case for the type of product the company created. Such a paper should discuss the types of business problems the software is likely to address, the benefits customers can expect to see from the software, the costs that comprise total cost of ownership (TCO), implementation, and expected ROI.

TCO/ROI

Another type of piece details examples of ROI customers can expect to achieve by implementing a particular type of technology. Such a piece will look at all the factors that influence costs and how a particular technology can reduce those costs. For example, a paper promoting a hardware product might look at not only acquisition costs and the cost of maintenance contracts, but also at the costs of facilities, energy costs, administration costs, and any other related expenses. It’ll then compare costs of the various alternatives.

Success Stories

While the first two types of papers provide theoretical examples, the third type of paper details actual savings from an actual customer, looking at the specific problem a particular customer faced, why they chose a particular solution, and the specific benefits they achieved from that solution.

Overall, the more specific you can be about the cost savings of your products and the ROI they deliver, the more you’ll be able to capture the attention of cautious customers facing the “New Normal” economy.

What techniques have you tried to address cautious customers?

How to Choose Customers for Case Studies

Case studies are extremely powerful marketing tools. But how do you choose the right customers to profile for case studies to make the most of limited marketing dollars?

Here are some of the criteria companies use to identify the most strategic case studies:   

Star Power

If the customers you’re going after Fortune 500 companies, you’ll certainly want the legitimacy that having case studies from big name customers will provide. Certainly, I have plenty of clients chasing after these big names.

However, beware that these are the most difficult to line up and can result in wasted resources. Many large companies have policies that prohibit them from endorsing other vendors’ products—thus be prepared to expend much more time and effort finding big companies willing to do a case study. Even if a company says they do case studies, approvals may be withheld at the last minute, often with no explanation. This can result in wasted money for stories that are never approved. You can minimize (but never completely eliminate) this risk by determining in advance the company’s policy on case studies, who’s in charge of the project, and ask their permission before beginning the process.  

Target Industries

Often, customers are concerned about whether you understand their specific industry—whether that’s manufacturing, retail, or life sciences. Creating case studies about customers in all of the industries that constitute your target markets will ensure you have the right materials on hand to alleviate those concerns.   

Product Line

Clearly, you’ll want case studies for each product in your product line so you can demonstrate your success in delivering promised benefits for each product.

Geographic Area

Some companies target case studies geographically. For example, one client that markets to physicians  highlights customers practicing in each region of the country.  

ROI

ROI can be extremely difficult to quantify. In many cases, companies that want a lot of case studies will produce some that highlight qualitative benefits. Still, make sure that some of your case studies demonstrate strong quantifiable ROI. 

Momentum

In many cases, quality will be more important than quantity. If resources are an issue, you don’t really need dozens of case studies that illustrate the same point. It’s better to make sure you have at least one case study for each key product, target market, or other initiative. At the same time, some companies find it very important to demonstrate momentum and adoption in their marketplace. One way to meet these requirements is to create customer press releases; short and sweet descriptions about your new customers and why they’re choosing your products and release them on an ongoing basis over the wire services. 

Miscellaneous

Every once in awhile, I’ll come across a unique reason to create a case study or customer press release. For example, one company produced customer press releases and case studies specifically about customers who had come to them after defecting from their main competitor. This was an interesting exercise because no customer will allow you to directly say that they dumped a previous vendor in your favor.  What you can do is produce a standard case study or press release about these customers. And presumably, the sales rep can fill in the missing details in one-on-one conversations.

Another customer had come from a business that had evolved over time from a document printing company to one that automated document processes. A prize case study for them was one that covered the entire automated process, rather than individual automated capabilities.

Companies produce case studies for many reasons. When you’re looking for customers to profile, chose the ones that are most strategic for your business.

How does your organization select customers to profile with case studies?

 

The Age of Micro Targeting

In my recent series on buyer personas, I wrote about how some technology companies are beginning to employ buyer personas for use in targeting their marketing materials but are having trouble developing and using them. Technology companies have much more experience and success in targeting their marketing pieces to specific vertical industries. Today, I’m seeing companies increasingly targeting their marketing to much narrower niches within vertical niches.    

For example, a few years ago, I did a white paper that targeted retailers—but a single piece covered all retail markets from large department stores such as Macy’s to mom-and-pop grocers—even though my client knew that the concerns of these two markets were significantly different.

In contrast, just the other day, I spoke with a company that also targeted retailers. But this time, the company was looking to separately target lawn & garden and nursery retailers, independent pharmacies, hardware stores and seed stores for farms and ranches.

These are hardly isolated examples. In the healthcare industry, I recently targeted different pieces specifically to medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, large group medical practices, and OB/GYNs.

These examples demonstrate that technology companies do understand the importance of knowing and speaking very specifically to a tightly focused audience. While my recent series on buyer personas shows that many companies have even more to learn about their customers, this focus on highly targeted markets is a step in the right direction.

Here’s why I think micro targeting is such a positive trend:

• Different industries have different challenges. If you want your audience to think you understand (and can solve) their challenges, you need to be very specific in stating and addressing those challenges in your marketing materials.
• Even if the challenges are very similar, many customers want to know you can address people “just like me.” This is especially true in highly risk averse industries. For example, physicians have traditionally been very reluctant to adopt electronic health records. In recognition of this fact, one vendor went so far as to create case studies that targeted different specialties (e.g. obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, pediatrics, etc.) in different geographic locations (e.g. the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast and so on).
• You can speak their language. Different industries use different jargon. If you want to appear to be an insider, you need to use that jargon.
• You can tailor your product benefits to your customers. That same product may provide different benefits to different audiences. The best marketing materials will adapt your messaging to the needs of the particular target market. For example, if your key messages are improving productivity, reducing costs and minimizing compliance risks, pieces targeting highly regulated industries such as financial services may spend more time emphasizing compliance while those targeting the construction sector might emphasize cost cutting.

Years ago, technology companies often spoke about their product features while neglecting to explain product benefits. Many (though hardly all) technology companies have come a long way since those bad old days of marketing. While companies can always do more, particularly in terms of using buyer personas, micro targeting is a giant step forward for technology marketing.

What are your experiences with micro targeting?

Buyer Personas Part 8—Challenges Marketers Face in Adopting Personas

Several months ago, I posted some questions on various LinkedIn Groups about marketers’ experiences using buyer personas. Some of the most interesting feedback was “war stories” on what can go wrong with producing buyer personas.

Here are some of these marketer’s comments.

Reasons Why Marketers Have Trouble Implementing Personas

Difficulty in obtaining buy-in

• “I’ve used personas in two technology start-ups. One ‘got it.’ They put in the time and effort to create buyer personas and use them in their marketing and sales programs. But in the other company, most of management and field support did not put in enough time and effort to make good buyer personas and to use them effectively.”
• “I’ve found organizational resistance and apathy to using this approach.”

Lack of understanding of what they are and how to build them

• According to Adele Ravella,  “Although there is increasing awareness of buyer personas , in the greater scheme of things, buyer personas are not a well understood concept. And among people who do know what a persona is, most don’t know how to build or use them.”
• “In all honesty, I can’t get inside the head of my B2B buyers.”
• “Organizations massively overcomplicate the process.”
• “We find that personas are frequently too product specific, as though someone in the company believed they should write personas, but they merely produced product scarecrows—that is, product stories dressed up in the clothing of a persona. This is understandable because product marketing people are often ‘forced’ to create them. But without the imprint of real customers, they have no power to make marketing more customer centric.”

In sum, buyer personas have great potential, but marketers continue to face roadblocks in successfully implementing them in their organizations.

What have your road blocks been in implementing buyer personas in your organization?  What tips do you have for overcoming them?

Buyer Personas Part 7--Surprising Lessons Learned

Marketers often create campaigns based on guesswork and theories. But they often have no way of proving these theories. Creating buyer personas gives you information about what customers and prospect really think. As a result, they’re likely to present surprises, big and small.   

This post discusses three examples of unexpected information marketers have gleaned in the process of creating buyer personas that they wouldn’t have learned otherwise.  

Example 1—Marketing ERP Solutions to Healthcare Providers

Recently, I was involved in creating buyer personas describing people responsible for purchasing ERP solutions within small to mid-size healthcare provider organizations, such as group practices, nursing homes and assisted living facilities.  To create these personas, I spoke to people in various roles (physicians, CFOs, payroll and so on) at a number of customer sites, as well as sales representatives who specialize in that target market.  

Some of the things I learned from the process that I might not have considered otherwise include:   

• The people involved in the purchase process and their concerns. For example, I learned that the person responsible for purchasing ERP solutions is the CFO and the HR director. Their biggest challenge is selling the physicians that own the practice on the need for an ERP solution. Department heads in areas such as payroll and purchasing also influence the purchase and they’re concerned with whether the product features allow them to do what they need to and how easy they are to use. The technical staff also gets involved in the purchase process, but only to make sure that the ERP solution is compatible with systems they already have in house.
• The ERP vendor’s competitors in this market and why customers choose one product over another. For example, customers choose one product over another either because they’ve used one of the products previously or because they find one of the products easier to use.
• How customers use the product and the benefit they receive.  

Example 2—Marketing ERP Solutions to the Travel and Transportation Industries

Eddie Reeves, Principal of Reeves Strategy Group, spoke with me about his experience developing buyer personas in an effort to market an ERP solution to the travel and transportation industry. A few of the issues he uncovered that surprised him were:

• The travel and logistics industry was undergoing a human capital crisis. As Reeves noted, “Mid-level logistics experts that get the products we use every day delivered on time were retiring in droves. Yet almost no young people were entering the field. It was a huge business issue. As a result, we discovered that if we could talk about the technology in the context of how it mitigates that problem, we could reposition ourselves in a helpful way.”
• They also found that people in travel and transportation are likely to have a military or engineering background. That made the HR crisis more acute because those people aren’t very HR oriented.

Example 3—Selling Security Solutions to Technical Buyers

One product marketing manager I spoke with sells computer network security solutions to technical buyers. By talking to customers and prospects, who tend to be in security operations, this marketing manager learned that one of his customer’s key problems was selling solutions up the organization—for example, to the Director of Security, CIO or VP of Network Engineering. As a result, he learned he needed two personas, one for the security operations guy and the other for that person’s boss.

He also learned that buyers were looking not for products, but for solutions to problems—specifically for help complying with regulations such as PCI, FISMA and HIPAA.

The process of creating buyer personas provides real-world input that marketers would be unable to uncover otherwise.

What unexpected insights have you gained as you’ve created buyer personas?