Build Personas Around Buying Drivers, Not Channels

B2B personas work when they're built around why each buyer says yes, not where they hang out. For each role, capture the goal, the fear, the main question they ask and the proof they need, then make sure there's a page answering that question when they're deciding.

A go-to-market consultant I talked with recently put it this way. If you don't understand the differences in your buyers and their preferences, it's very hard to market to them. And when you look at personas, it's a lot less about what channels they consume information on and more about the information you put in front of them.

Most persona documents get this backwards.

What's wrong with most personas

The typical persona has a stock photo, a made-up name, an age range, and a list of channels. "Marketing Mary reads LinkedIn and listens to podcasts."

That tells you where to post. It doesn't tell you what to say. And in a B2B deal, what you say to each person is what moves it.

Different buyers, different drivers

In a typical deal, several people weigh in, and each one is asking a different question:

• The person with the problem: will this actually fix it?
• The economic buyer: is it worth the money and the risk?
• The technical evaluator: will it work with what we have, and is it safe?
• The end user: will this make my day better or worse?

Same product, four different reasons to say yes, and four different reasons to say no.

Build personas around drivers

For each role that influences the decision, write down five things:

• Responsibility. What they're measured on.
• Goal. What they want from this purchase.
• Fear. What they worry will go wrong.
• Main question. The one thing they need answered before saying yes.
• Proof. What evidence convinces them.

Keep each persona to a page. If it's longer, nobody uses it.

Get it from real conversations

Don't build personas in a workshop. Build them from:

• Interviews with recent customers in each role.
• Sales call recordings, especially the questions asked.
• Win and loss notes.
• What your sales team hears every week.

Use the buyer's words. If finance always asks "what happens if we cancel," that's the main question, phrased the way they'll search for it.

Map each question to a page

This is where personas pay off. Take each persona's main question and check: is there a page on our site that answers it clearly?

• The economic buyer's cost question might need a pricing explanation.
• The technical evaluator's question might need an integration or security page.
• The person with the problem might need a comparison with the alternative they're considering.

Where there's no page, you've found your next piece of content. And it's bottom-of-funnel content, the kind that moves deals.

Channels still matter, just less

You still need to know where buyers spend time. But that's a distribution question, and it comes after you know what to say. Get the message right for each driver first.

Signs your personas aren't working

• Nobody on the team has opened the persona document in months.
• Personas list channels and job titles but not the question each person needs answered.
• Deals stall in finance or IT review, and marketing has nothing to send.

What to do this week

Pick your three most important buyer roles. For each, ask two reps: what's the one question this person always asks before they'll agree? Write the answers down. Then search your site for a page that answers each one. Any question without a page is your next piece of content.

A worked example

Here's a channel persona: "IT Director, 40s, reads industry blogs, active on LinkedIn." Here's a driver persona: "IT Director. Measured on uptime and security incidents. Wants fewer tools, not more. Fears a rollout that creates tickets. Main question: what happens to our data and who can access it? Convinced by: a security summary and a reference from a similar company." Only the second one tells marketing what to write.

Common mistakes

• Inventing personas in a workshop. Use real conversations.
• Making them too long. A one-page persona gets used. A ten-page one gets filed.
• Forgetting the blockers. Finance and IT often decide whether a deal closes.

Find the questions you're not answering

Each persona's main question usually shows up as a search: comparisons, pricing, alternatives, fit. The 15-minute traffic check shows which of those you're missing.

See the traffic you're missing. BoFu, Baby builds bottom-of-funnel content engines for B2B companies: 15 money pages and 15 supporting posts in 90 days, built to rank on Google and get you named by ChatGPT. See what you're missing.