How to Craft B2B Buyer Personas For Ad Targeting

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Bryttney Blanken

Hey there B2B marketing grasshopper 👋

In this article, we're channeling our inner Mr. Miyagi from "The Karate Kid," because we're about to master the art of creating B2B buyer personas. 

Wax on, wax off style – but with less wax and more wisdom!

Let’s dive into it. 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

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What Is a B2B Buyer Persona?

Just like Daniel-san needed to understand his opponents in the All Valley Karate Tournament, it's important to understand your B2B buyer personas to win in the market. 

It's critical because these personas are your roadmap – they guide every marketing punch and kick you make.

If you don’t do this, your marketing efforts might be as off-target as Daniel-san trying to catch a fly with chopsticks on his first try. 

Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san how to capture a mosquito using chopsticks in the Karate Kid movie

We're talking about misdirected resources and messaging that misses the mark, leaving your ROI down and out — so let's break it down, Karate Kid style:

What is a persona? It’s the semi-fictional characters that make up your target audience. It’s a great way to unpack who makes up your ideal customer profiles, called an “ICP”

3 Major B2B Marketing Personas

In B2B marketing there are 3 major personas or roles to understand in the sales process.

This is also referred to as a buying committee:

  1. Decision Maker – The person who makes the final decision to purchase
  2. Champion - A person who enthusiastically supports your product or service in their organization
  3. Influencer - A person who can influence other members of the buying committee
Three circular images showcasing b2b buyer personas labeled as "Decision Maker," "Champion," and "Influencer," each accompanied by a brief description below.

Your marketing and advertising efforts should address their needs and concerns when it comes to buying and using your product or service. 

Knowing what these personas are looking for will help you tailor your messaging to make your ads stand out.

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For example: imagine your buyer persona 'Finance-Manager-Frank'. He's in his mid-40s, loves numbers more than karate, and is always on the lookout for tools that bring efficiency and balance. Where does he find his information? → LinkedIn and financial blogs

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Knowing this, you’d be able to hone in your advertising strategy to use LinkedIn ads to demonstrate how finance managers find more efficiency from their investments by using your product.

How to Develop a B2B Buyer Persona

There’s 5 major segmentation buckets to consider when putting together a B2B buyer persona:

  1. Demographic Segmentation
    • Targeting potential customer based on their role (ex: Job Titles, Job Functions)
  2. Firmographic Segmentation
    • Targeting potential customers based on company traits (ex: Industry, Company Size)
  3. Geographic Segmentation
    • Targeting potential customers based on their company and physical location (ex:USA)
  4. Technographic Segmentation
    • Targeting potential customers based on the tech they use (ex: Slack, Teams) 
  5. Behavioral Segmentation
    • Fine tune your messaging based on your potential customers Jobs To Be Done, decision-making process, and more.

Within each segmentation, there’s key information you should collect to build your personas which will ultimately inform your advertising channel strategy, targeting, and messaging. 

Getting crystal clear on your buyer personas will also help you maximize your resources, build internal trust with your sales and service teams, and drive better results.

Let’s dive into the five segmentations in greater detail. 

The Five B2B Buyer Persona Segmentations:

Demographic

Target potential customer based on their role

  1. Role: Identify the job title and role they’re in and what level in their organizations they fall (individual contributor, middle management, or in the C-suite – chief roles including CEO, CFO, CMO, etc).
  2. Responsibilities: Identify all the key areas they oversee and manage. Pulls who they report to.

Firmographic

Target potential customers based on company traits

  1. Company Industry: ex: Technology, Manufacturing 
  2. Company Employee Size: ex: 500 - 1,000 employees 
  3. Company Revenue Size: $1,000,000 - $10,000,000 ARR

Geographic

Target potential customers based on their company and physical location

  1. Company Location: ex: United States, Canada
  2. Employee Location: ex: United Kingdom 

Technographic

Target potential customers based on the tech they use

  1. Tools: This breaks down the tools they use or need to do their jobs (ex: Slack, Teams)
  2. Company Competitors: list out any relevant competing technologies 

Behavioral

Fine tune your messaging based on your potential customers Jobs To Be Done, decision-making process, and more.

  1. Goals: This details how their job is measured by
  2. Jobs to be Done/Pain Points: This elaborates on the biggest challenges they face in their role
  3. Decision-Making Process: This goes into detail on who they need approval from when buying a new product/service, who signs the contract, who owns the budget
  4. Evaluation Process: This details how this persona typically decides on a product
  5. Objections & Concerns: this outlines what prevents them from making a decision 
  6. Consumption Habits: how do they gain information for their job and what social media networks do they use

B2B Buyer Persona Template

To help you put this into action get a free copy of my B2B Buyer Persona template in Module 2 - Lesson 2 of my B2B Advertising Foundations Course when you sign up for free.  With this template you will be able to easily map out your buyer persona across the five segmentations.

screenshot of the b2b buyer persona template from adconversion focusing on demographic and firmographic criteria for ad targeting.

Translating B2B Buyer Persona’s into Ad Targeting 

After completing the B2B Buyer Persona template you should be very clear on who you’re going after. 

Now you’ll want to review your persona’s segmentation and find possible targeting opportunities in the platforms you’re considering advertising on – your options will vary greatly by channel. 

Create a draft campaign in your ad platform of choice and review all of the audience targeting options available – sometimes you’ll need to get creative! (example below of LinkedIn Ads). 

linkedin ads manager targeting criteria selection menu with options to add b2b audience attributes, including company demographics and education background.

And that my advertising friends is your way to craft a buyer persona you can use to identify the audiences you’ll be targeting in your B2B advertising.

Hope you found this article useful! 

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Jumpstart Your B2B Marketing Career

If you’re serious about mastering B2B advertising then you definitely need to check out my free course that will teach you the foundational knowledge to becoming a high-performing B2B marketer who knows how to use advertising to drive legit business and revenue impact without the fluff or wasting your time and money learning the ropes the hard way.

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  • Module 1: you’ll get a crash course in the B2Bverse and master terminology, sales processes, and working across teams.
  • Module 2: you’ll learn how to become your customer's psychologist and understand them deeply with buyer personas that allow you to craft effective messaging.
  • Module 3: you’ll master the B2B funnel and learn how to think like a CEO to identify performance bottlenecks and convert more leads into revenue.
  • Module 4: you’ll learn how to put it all together and build your go-to-market strategy that gets your ad in front of your dream buyers and converts attention.

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This course was designed for absolute beginners in mind.

Accelerate your learning curve and start the course today for free.

Bryttney Blanken
Want to level up your B2B advertising skill set?
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