While there are many parallels between B2B and B2C marketing, both must appeal to human emotions, needs, and desires. Both are strongly reliant on understanding your personas and target audience. Ultimately, how you define a persona in B2B does not require the personalization needed in B2C. Let me clarify.

A father of three in his mid-40s who watches The Mandalorian, plays board games, and engages on Discord with focused hobby-related channels says nothing about his job-related challenges.

A mother of two in her mid-30s, a lawyer who teaches yoga and consults on the side, says nothing about the obstacles she faces at work.

While these are valuable insights in B2C, they are nearly useless in B2B.

However, many B2B companies choose to be more detailed and personal with their persona profiles, leaving out some very important B2B nuggets.

B2B Personas Basics

B2B personas should focus on job descriptions, what they want to accomplish, their responsibilities, and, most importantly, their pain points and roadblocks at work.

Our role as product marketers, and marketers in general, is to demonstrate the value of our products. How do you do this? Show how the product addresses the persona’s pain points.

You must establish an emotional connection with them and reassure them that you can solve their problems and improve their lives. Knowing they watch Star Wars shows on Disney+ does not accomplish that. Knowing they have a very slow manual purchase approval process that stifles their efficiency is extremely helpful.

Job Descriptions over Job Titles

Don’t get me wrong, job titles are important for many marketing tasks. However, job titles do not fully describe a persona. An IT manager at a small company may perform the same duties as a Director of IT at a larger company. If you only target directors and up, you may be missing out on a sizable portion of your target audience.

When defining your personas, make sure you understand the job description completely. You can then create content that focuses on solving the problems outlined in that persona’s job description.

Persona Pain Points

Armed with the job descriptions, you must now determine what challenges those personas face on a daily basis. What roadblocks do they encounter? What is keeping them from being efficient, and what are they concerned about?

One of the most important aspects of creating a B2B persona is identifying the challenges that your persona is facing. This is how you learn how your product can help them overcome their obstacles.

Your personas’ goals are almost as important as their challenges. What are their role-specific goals, and how can your product assist them in achieving these goals?

Why are goals important? Because those pain points typically prevent your persona from achieving their goals.

Other Important Details

We know the persona’s job description, challenges, and goals, but there are a few other important details to fill out a B2B persona.

Another two important pieces of information to consider when developing a persona are why they won’t buy and what closes the deal. These two pieces of information inform you of how you should address their fears and apprehensions about purchasing your product, as well as what they value when buying your product.

Both of these will help you understand your persona’s emotions. As I stated at the outset, marketing is about making emotional connections. Let the buyer know you understand their pain, understand their fears, and can reassure them that you can assist them.

Two final key details for a complete basic B2B persona are the most valued and least valued features.

Why is this important? It allows you to understand how this specific persona interacts with your product—what features they value and which they don’t. This data can also help shape the product roadmap. If all of your personas value certain features but not others, you can improve the product to make it more valuable to all personas.

Putting It All Together

Now that you understand what details comprise a B2B persona, you must go find the answers. Personas must be grounded in facts. Don’t make assumptions. Do not make generalizations based on company preconceived notions.

You have to engage with current, potential, and former customers. Nothing is more important in marketing than talking to people who have used or are considering using your product.

Begin with customer interviews, progress to win/loss interviews, and finally, talk to people at events. Even if you talk to people using a competitor, find out what they like and dislike, what challenges they are facing, and what major projects they are working on. Every conversation reveals a golden nugget.

Personas form the foundation of your content. Do not cut corners. Do the work and lay the groundwork for many successful future launches.

If you don’t have the time or resources to create your personas, let G2x Marketing do the heavy lifting for you by creating detailed B2B personas that will help you in creating memorable and actionable content.

B2B Messaging Personas