Competing Buyer Personas with a Free Template
At around 5 years old, I had a pretty firm understanding of how to ask things from my parents. I knew that my mom would immediately say yes for some things and a straight no for others; and vice versa for my dad. For instance, if I wanted some type of candy I knew my dad would be more willing to say yes over my mom, or if I wanted a new shirt my mom would be the perfect parent to ask for the item.
And now looking back, both of my parents were abstract buyer personas that I had to market to in the right, targeted ways. Maybe if I wanted a KitKat bar, would the parent that I would be with be a qualified lead, the ideal customer and possibly fit the buyer persona that I already defined? If it was my Dad, yes, if I was standing in the check out with my mom, she would tell me it would rot my teeth out.
As a marketer in order to successfully define an overall marketing plan and to be able to market your brand/company and/or product successfully, you must create the proper buyer personas. Buyer personas help marketing identify who the target customer is by creating fictional characters that show specific demographics, potentials choices to be made, and the needs that you may encounter with the customer. After developing the personas, they help not only marketing, but also your entire company because they help everyone on your team understand your audience and how to provide the solution for their specific needs.
A couple of weeks ago at TrackMaven, I polished up our buyer personas. Maybe, I added a few quirky names and took some creative liberties with the stories, but hey it’s a fun development to identify who your customers are. Your personas are supposed to be human, so why not add humanistic qualities, right?
After adding some anecdotes to the characters, I did start to think about the other side of the personas. I’m not saying that my personas had split personality disorders, rather I wondered about opposing personas in their company who would be against using TrackMaven or the personas who were advocates for some of our competitors.
It brings back my first point about my parents. Two opposing potential buyers, or competing personas. My dad, the ideal customer in this situation understood the value of the KitKat; however, what if my mom was standing in the check out line too? How would I be able to market to her to ensure that the KitKat added potential value?
In a perfect world we wouldn’t have those oddballs, but they do exist. Adding more details into your personas, especially a competiting view helps to draw out what are the strong and weak points of your product, who will be the financial decision maker and who will convert as customers.
The Buyer Personas
The NaySayer
Looking at your ideal customer, who would be the ultimate naysayer? When your ideal customer is saying yes, who is the first person on their team to say no? The NaySayer maybe isn’t the financial decision maker or could be; however, if they are on the same team as your ideal persona and have ventured with you in this buyer journey they can affect the decision making process.
For instance, let’s say your ideal customer is a mom who enjoys womanly things like beauty products and likes to share these interests with her youngest daughter. If you were Mattel, maybe this would be your ideal customer because the mom ultimately has the financial decision to buy her daughter the Barbie aligns well with some of her interests.
Then, the NaySayer, could in fact be the other parent or the dad. The dad in the family after a long day of yard work wants to come inside and sit down with a nice book. He doesn’t really understand makeup or the “want” his daughter has for a Barbie. He would rather get her a book instead.
So you’re Mattel and you have your ideal customer, but then the NaySayer who can really wreck havoc on the sale. You identified the opposing side, so what would help them and then increase your potential for a conversion? Well since dad likes to read and would rather buy his daughter a book, why not create a Barbie that enjoys reading too? Maybe a Librarian Barbie that includes a book that Dad can read with his daughter?
Ok, so that example sounds a little silly, but I know it makes sense. Identifying common ground or some type of compromise for the NaySayer can help increase your chances for a sale. For a more marketing enabled example, what if your ideal customer was a CMO, but the NaySayer was the CEO who is afraid an increase in marketing spend won’t help ROI positively. How can your product prove its ROI positively to sway the NaySayer CEO over?
The Competitive Advocate
We’ve already gone over what happens when you don’t track your competitors, but what happens when you have an opportunity in the pipeline with the persona who is a true advocate of your product. The advocate persona is a marketing qualified lead, the demos went well and it looks like this opportunity will convert. Until, you realize that their is a persona on their team is an advocate for a competitor. The persona driving your opportunity can now be swayed with the other person on their team. Maybe the potential persona driving the sale is gung-ho about your product, but there could be the other potential persona on the team who
This competing persona could be a tricky to navigate because you don’t want to upset the competitive advocate that could spoil the opportunity and you don’t want to neglect your own advocate. However, touching upon your strongest features and how you answer the potential pain points of the entire team. Typically outlining those things with this competitive advocate persona may follow under the tasks of sales; however, portraying you strengths with your features in your marketing is essential in making sure you step out of the gate on the right foot. Why are your benefits stronger than your competitors? What do you have over them? Answering these questions aligns with your advocate persona, but also fortifies your positioning just in case you come across the competitive advocate.
The Indifferent Individual
As a very opinionated person, it really irks me when someone is just indifferent. They don’t care where the wind blows and trek along without a purpose. Maybe it’s my type A-ness coming out, but indifference is like a really bad plague…for me at least.
I’m not insinuating though that this Indifferent Individual persona is a diseased person, but can be a potentially difficult persona to market it too. Frequently, their questions or comments could be “Why does this matter?” “It won’t affect me if I do it differently” or “I don’t care.”
For example you could have you a buyer persona who really digs the data that you are offering and is thrilled that it can make their job easier while still adding more value. However, the indifferent persona may enter the picture with those questions mentioned above, causing the other persona to question what they saw.
As a marketer, you can get easily exasperated if you try to sway a strong indifference; however, understanding this competing persona can be enormously valuable. Pinpointing what will makes them tick, what they want to add value to in their day to day tasks, and what frustrates them could help sway their indifference into advocacy. However, it isn’t an easy task because often times the indifferent individual may be very passive, unresponsive or unwilling to see your marketing efforts.
The Frugal Budgeter
Do we really need this? Can we get by with the 50 free tools that we use? Is this cost really necessary?
The Frugal Budgeter is often a financial decision maker and if you have one persona that also could make the decision this frugal persona could sway them. You as a marketer should firmly believe that your product adds value and a potential ROI, but sometimes with budgeting the costs are often highlighted more than the potential benefit. If both personas are financial decision makers, make sure you can clearly show the value.
All of the questions above can sprout from a Frugal Budgeter and their concerns are very reasonable, so targeting the key value points of your brand/company and/or product will help your overall marketing. Highlighting case studies, current customer testimonials, white papers and other content can help this competing persona understand the initial costs to see the future value.
Maybe you already have your buyer personas set, but understanding the other side is key to frame your buyer market and target accordingly even with the adversaries.
As I was forming my own personas, I needed another table to outline these competing personas, so I’ve attached a table for you to fill in with your own competitive buyer personas.
Here’s an example of what you’ll be getting:
You can download the table here!
Having your buyer personas are an essential fundamental for all marketers, yet identifying the competing personas will help portray your entire market, how you better can target your potential customers and to help ensure some of the ideas of doubt turn into valuable pieces to the actual conversion.
