Imagine you're about to make a significant purchase for personal or business reasons—a decision involving considerable consequences and investment of time, effort, and money.
Consider a scenario where the item or service is something you've never purchased before or purchased only infrequently. You might find yourself comparing multiple providers and their various solutions, only to discover that the options are difficult to differentiate and evaluate.
Meanwhile, the decision carries substantial risk: The wrong choice could have long-lasting repercussions. This type of decision may also require the input and agreement of several people involved.
Examples of such high-consideration buying decisions for consumers include buying a house, choosing a college, and deciding where to relocate and retire. For businesses, high-consideration decisions might include the procurement of enterprise software, selection of a professional services firm, or investment in major equipment.
Such decisions are marked by their complexity and high stakes, and buyers in those scenarios often experience considerable anxiety.
Accordingly, they search for a provider they trust—one that fully comprehends all their needs and concerns, demonstrates how their solution will meet these requirements, and provides guidance that reassures them through the decision-making process.
That dynamic is well articulated in Matthew Dixon's and Ted McKenna's book, The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Indecision. Their analysis of over 2.5 million sales calls, made during the COVID pandemic, reveals that fear of making a mistake—rather than a preference for the status quo—is the predominant reason buyers hesitate. That fear leads them to avoid taking actions that might "rock the boat" or lead to regrettable decisions.
Strategic Marketing for High-Consideration Products and Services
For marketers and sales teams targeting high-consideration buyers, this insight has two important ramifications. They must...
1. Focus on a buyer's needs and desired outcomes early in their buying journey
Early in the sales cycle, it's vital to recognize and communicate how your offerings meet the buyer's specific objectives. That alignment shows you understand their challenges and can provide effective solutions, thereby positioning your offerings favorably in their initial evaluations.
However, merely continuing to emphasize the benefits becomes less effective as the buyer progresses in the decision-making process. At more advanced stages of their journey, buyers seek detailed proof and substantive evidence that your solutions will fulfill the promises made, enhancing their trust and confidence in choosing your product.
2. Proactively address a buyer's fears and concerns in the later stages of their evaluation
In the later stages of the sales cycle, crafting messages that directly address the fears, concerns, and questions that buyers have can significantly influence their decision-making.
Once buyers have recognized the need for a solution, the next phase presents an ideal opportunity to distinguish your offerings by actively addressing and alleviating their specific apprehensions. Successfully doing so can reassure buyers about your capabilities and mitigate their fears of making an incorrect decision, thereby strengthening their resolve to choose your solution.
Price aside, in high-consideration buying decisions providers are ultimately competing on trust. Whoever does the best job of instilling that trust in the buyer usually wins the business.
Focus Your Personas on the Buying Decision You're Trying to Influence
Modern buyer personas, crafted through interviews with those who have recently completed the buying decisions you are targeting, effectively guide your marketing tactics from the initial through the later stages of the sales cycle. They provide you the insights you need to build a buyer's trust in you and your capabilities.
Personas are not mere theoretical constructs of potential buyers or roles; rather, they provide a comprehensive and realistic view of what potential customers actually go through before they decide to purchase.
That authenticity and applicability stem from the detailed insights into the buyers' thought processes and the steps they took from recognizing a need, evaluating options, to finally making a purchase.
A modern buyer persona is built on the framework of the 5 Rings of Buying Insight, as conceptualized by the Buyer Persona Institute:
- (1) Priority Initiatives and (2) Success Factors. Uncover the primary motivators that compel buyers to start searching for solutions like yours, along with the outcomes they hope to achieve. Using these insights early in the sales process helps demonstrate your understanding of their objectives, setting the stage for deeper engagement.
- (3) Perceived Barriers and (4) Decision Criteria. Reveal the reservations that buyers have about making the investment or choosing your solution, and the questions they use to assess their options. Addressing those questions and concerns directly, especially in the later stages of the buying decision, can alleviate buyer anxiety and build their trust in you.
- (5) Buyer's Journey. Tells you whom to target, where to find them, and the best ways to engage them effectively.
By using this modern buyer persona framework, you can eliminate much of the guesswork in your marketing efforts, ensuring that your strategies are not only well-informed but also precisely tailored to meet the needs of your buyers at every stage of their buying journey.
To Build Your Personas, Interview Recent Buyers
To build authentic buyer personas that your entire organization will trust and act on, you must interview recent buyers; only they are the experts in what they want to know and experience in order to trust you with their business.
A recent buyer is someone who was involved in the past 3-6 months in the exact same buying decision that you're trying to influence. They may or may not be your current customer. It's only important that they went through a buying decision for the same type of solution that you're selling.
By interviewing recent buyers, your personas will...
- Represent the full market you're targeting. By interviewing recent buyers who chose a competitor, and not just your own customers, you will ensure that no critical perspectives are missed and your buyer persona will be representative of your entire target market.
- Be accurate and authentic. Recent buyers provide accurate details about their buying experience; they are not making anything up or recalling long-past thoughts and actions. They are providing details about their mindset and behaviors during a buying decision they were just recently involved in.
- Deeply connect you to your buyer's mindset. The buyer quotes collected during interviews give your organization a genuine connection to buyer sentiments, enriching your buyer personas with depth and authenticity that are unmatched. Such real-world input is invaluable for developing strategies and messaging that resonate deeply with your prospective buyers.
- Align your organization. The authenticity and credibility of a buyer persona developed from interviews with recent buyers will align your marketing, sales, and product teams around a shared understanding of your prospective buyers. By incorporating direct quotes and insights from these buyers, you solidify the credibility of your personas, making them a more effective tool across your organization.
By systematically integrating insights from recent buyer interviews, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, ensuring they are deeply rooted in the real experiences and needs of your prospective buyers.
Why Modern Buyer Personas Are So Important Now
Modern buyer personas, based on deep insights about the buying decision rather than fictional archetypes of individuals involved in these decisions, has never been more important.
In today's marketing place, buyers are inundated with options and information. They struggle to make sense of all the available information in an effort to make buying decisions about which they can be confident.
Marketers who cultivate buyer persona insights to craft strategies and messaging closely attuned to buyer needs and concerns will be best positioned to garner trust and secure their business.
More Resources on Buyer Personas
Beginner's Guide to Creating Fleshed-Out Buyer Personas for B2B Inbound Marketing
Buyer Personas: How Much Detail Is Too Much?
Four Tips for Building Fail-Proof Buyer Personas
Switching From Product-Centricity to Customer-Centricity With Personas
