B2B Persona Dimensions You Shouldn’t Miss

This post provides an overview of some key dimensions we recommend including in your B2B buyer personas. Persona templates are widely available from organizations like the AMA and the PMA, and you can find endless variations with a simple online search or Gen AI query.  General persona templates provide a basic foundation. However, most persona templates were not developed for B2B marketers.  Their consumer-marketing origins are evident in their example questions, such as “What’s your dream job?” “How did you end up where you are today?” “What’s the hardest part of your job?” “Would you say you’re a follower or a leader?”

These questions are interesting and can inform aspirational messaging but are not actionable for B2B marketers who face the realities of limited marketing budgets and complex buyer journeys. They don’t have the luxury of developing multiple nuanced campaigns and materials for several different personas. B2B marketers need practical persona information they can directly integrate into their marketing and sales efforts.

Incorporate these 3 dimensions for practical B2B buyer personas

Based on our 20+ years of persona and buyer profiling research in B2B markets, Isurus has found that adding these three dimensions makes a B2B buyer persona more practical and useful.

1. The Buyer’s Definition of Success
2. Frustrations and Obstacles
3. Tactical vs. Strategic Focus

The Buyer’s Definition of Success

A big part of how B2B buyers view their world, their needs, and themselves is through the lens of accountability to their company and themselves. Incorporate into the persona:

• Their primary job-to-be done – the outcomes they are responsible for
• How their company defines success for their performance
• The metrics they are held accountable to
• How they define success for themselves
• The degree to which their motivation is intrinsic (knowing they do a great job) vs. external recognition (promotions, awards, and salary).

Relevant Frustrations & Obstacles

B2B buyers may have frustrations with their company that likely do not relate to your solution, e.g., they are unhappy with their last raise or corporate decision-making. Therefore, when exploring frustrations and obstacles, stay focused on their jobs-to-be-done and their definition of accountability. Useful areas to explore include:

• Frustrations and obstacles to meeting what their company has defined for success
• Obstacles that keep them from meeting their personal definition of success
• The negative consequences these frustrations have had on their professional and personal life

Tactical vs. Strategic Focus

A buyer’s strategic orientation isn’t always correlated to their organizational level. Some senior leaders tend to focus on tactical issues, and some more junior employees have a long-term outlook. Whatever their outlook, their orientation influences what they look for in solutions and vendors. Useful areas to explore include:

• Is their focus primarily on meeting their short-term goals and requirements
• Are they looking ahead to what comes next
• Will they fight for a strategic win
• What are the most interesting parts of their job
• Why do they come to work every day despite the frustrations (beyond the paycheck)

Other dimensions to explore

Depending on the nature of your solution and how you plan to use your personas, the following are a few other dimensions to consider including.

Solution-specific dimensions: In persona research, the goal and responsibility of the B2B marketer is to figure out how higher-order themes that emerge apply to your solution. Some of these connections will express themselves naturally in the conversation. But there will also be some dimensions specific to your solution that you will want to ask about directly.

Decision making: B2B buyers tend to include a short exploration of the decision-making process in their buyer persona research. While this can be helpful in some cases, it also runs the risk of being vague and predictable. “I influence the decision.” “I leave it up to my reports to review our options and bring me recommendations.” It is more productive to ask about the scope of decisions and budget authority that each level can make. For example, do they have to use preapproved suppliers, or are they free to pick the partner they feel is best? When do they need to get budget approval? What types of decisions involve approval from other stakeholders?

Information Sources: Marketers are always tempted to squeeze in a few questions about information sources. In our experience, these are fine to explore if you have the time in the conversation, but they are typically not that fruitful. The answers you get are usually the ones you could have guessed in advance. Googling around. Peers. Sales calls. Etc.

Don’t Force Differences that Don’t Exist

One last bit of advice is to resist turning minor differences into personas. Most persona projects start with the assumption that there will be many differences across buyer personas. This can be true if your personas are from different functional areas, e.g., engineering vs. purchasing vs. marketing. However, within any function, you will often find that your personas are more alike than not. The differences between an engineering manager, an engineering director, and a VP of engineering are often focused on their level of responsibility and how they are evaluated. Their goals, motivations, frustrations, etc., are often very similar. This is not always the case, but we recommend staying open to the idea that your buyers may be variations of the same persona – not distinct ones.

The underlying principle of all of our recommendations is to explore concrete aspects of the buyer persona that can be used across your company, from marketing to product to sales. You want to focus on the buyer’s goals, their measurement of success, and the obstacles and frustrations that stand in their path. Not to define their aspirational image of themselves.

If you would like information on how Isurus can help you develop your B2B personas, you can contact us here.