https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rMGLRr6S9U&t=5s

Exhibit A: non-Brightspark

There is plenty of information in here, but are you really going to trawl through all of the text? How much of it do you think you will retain?

A lot of work has obviously gone into creating this persona but it may not do what it sets out to, simply because it requires too much concentration. There is just too much information.

And now for the Brightspark approach to personas 👇

1. Ask Simple But Deadly Questions

We have come up with a simple but deadly set of questions that works across industries and really gets into the hearts and minds of the people we are trying to identify. We don’t believe in building out personas to include all the fluffy details such as favourite foods, music, or anything non-work related. We ask questions that draw out their motivation to buy and places them at the right stage of the buyer journey.

2. Bring It To Life Through Design

Our buyer personas work well because they relay the information in a visual manner. We had reason to work with some personas that were given to us by a client – they were done by an actual brand agency – and they looked like Exhibit A above. Awful.

If you want everyone on the team to engage with the persona, make it look nice! Add some personality like we did in the example below, which was done for a Professional Services firm – names and some detail have been removed to protect the client’s identity:

Don’t you have a much clearer picture of who Steve is and what he wants, even with significantly less text? 

Really Get Into Their Heads

Try to discover what they need and want. Take the time to think about these two simple things and you will have more focused and relevant B2B buyer personas that will form the basis of your strategy. It’s really important that you get the personas right. Taking the time to read this should help.