Should Marketers Move Past Buyer Personas in 2020?

    Buyer Personas, Buyer Persona Research, Marketing Strategies, Marketers, Buyer Mapping Journey

    Since its inception in early 2000, buyer persona has been the buzz word used by marketers while designing their marketing strategies. However, for 2020, marketers need to move on to more advanced technologies.

    Marketers need to do primary research about buyers’ thoughts, preferences and buying capacities, right from the beginning of their buying journey. Therefore, mapping a buyer journey is critical since it offers marketers a view into the role and engagement of each persona in a particular stage. This comes in handy while creating effective marketing plans.

    Technologies such as marketing automation help marketers to build and implement engagement plans by making use of detailed buyer insights. Generally, the ownership of buyer personas, as well as buyer journey mapping, is a topic of dispute within companies. However, segment marketing is an ideal department that can be the best fit to take care of buyer personas.

    Not all companies are keen on high-level investments for tools that collate increased data about buyer personas. They would instead conduct internal research with the help of their sales teams, to other the primary and even secondary data. However, this is not the most effective method to know the buyer. In recent times, B2B buyers are using digital mediums to engage with marketing content for their buyer journey. Therefore, the buyer journey insights from sales representatives will differ drastically from those provided by actual buyers.

    Buyer personas are not constant; in fact, they are evolving and transforming constantly. Using outdated buyer persona can harm the targeted result. Therefore, it is essential to continually learn about new social media trends and evolving content formats to make the best use of the existing buyer personas. Buyer personas should ideally be refreshed at least every 18-24 months.

    Although industries have witnessed a sea change in the way marketing technologies have evolved, the fundamental trends such as buyer persona data gathering are here to stay longer.