Whether your company is at Seed stage or nearing Series A – you most likely have developed different target markets. This means your company is selling its products or services to different buyer personas or ICPs (ideal customer profile).
Not every ICP is the same, so you have to start segmenting these buyer personas to create more qualified leads and ideally improve your time to value. If you don’t, you could end up with leads that don’t meet the requirements for working with your sales team or worse get frustrated in the sales process because they just aren’t the right fit.
You might have several target markets in mind when designing buyer personas, but it may not be clear which ones should be the source of the lead your sales team is looking for. To give you an idea of how this can affect the way your team approaches their leads, here are some tips on how to segment your buyer personas to create more qualified leads:
Define the properties you’re looking for in your buyer personas
People use different words to describe the features and benefits of various types of products or services. But what do these words actually mean to customers?
For example, if you’re selling a supplement that helps with muscle recovery, you might want to start with the following questions to help you define your buyer personas: What is the benefit of the product to the customer? How does the product help the customer achieve their goal? What are the barriers the customer experiences and how can the product help eliminate or reduce those barriers?
Create a Buyer Persona map
When you know the differentiator between your personas and the competition, it’s easier to decide where to focus your marketing efforts. And with a persona map, you can see which aspects of your product or service are most important to differentiate you from your competitors and how to target your different personas better. To create an effective segmented persona map, begin by brainstorming a list of the main ideas or benefits your leads will experience. From there, list out any key triggers or indicators your leads will have, such as their activation sequences, keywords that are critical to each persona, preferred points of contact, demographics, etc. This is where you will begin to notice subtle differences.
For instance, if you are a B2B SaaS company a CTO persona will have different needs than a Product Manager. They both see value in your product, but the features that are important to a CTO are different from the Product Manager. This is why using a map to segment your ICPs is critical to personalizing the process.
Example of Buyer Persona Map Stages:
- Awareness Stage
Awareness is where your customer journey begins. This is when your prospective customer becomes aware of your product.
- Comparison Stage
This is when prospective customers assess their options or even compare your products and your competitors side by side. This stage is crucial because they are analyzing features, prices, and reviews.
- Decision Stage
The final stage of your map is the decision stage. Here the customer is either going to purchase your product or not.
Look at activity on your buyer personas map
When you build your list, it’ll probably be pretty clear what type of customers you’re targeting. But what are the subtle differences in your perceived value to them? To help your team understand which customers you should be directly marketing to, it’s best to look at their past activity. Create a buyer personas map that shows the activities and value of your current and prospective customers.
You can then use this information to better personalize and target your marketing efforts. Personalization examples such as personalized landing pages, segmented email campaigns, and highly targeted paid and/or referral campaigns.
Use two-step qualification on leads to help your team judge fit
In some circumstances, it’s best to do some extra detective work and go with a two-step qualification process when deciding whether or not to work with a lead. The first step is typically more subjective and based on the lead’s actions and behaviors.
For example, you might want to ask the customer whether they would consider buying from you in the future. You can then take this information and use it in your purchasing process to help you build better products and services for more customers.
The other way you can use two-step qualification is as a form of personality-driven qualifying. You could ask your customers whether they like your company, and if they do, you can use that feedback to help you deliver better experiences and products in the future.
Pro Tip: for new customers onboarding your product ask them why they chose your product. How did they search for your solution? What were their top 3 needs when it came to selecting your solution?
Keep iterating until you have high-quality buyer personas
At some point, you’ll have a ton of leads, and you’ll want to ensure that your sales team focuses on the most qualified leads. To ensure you have a faster sales cycle, you can use lead scoring to help you create more high-quality leads. Leveraging lead scoring, your sales team can quickly create a scoring report for each lead to help them decide which leads to focus on immediately. With a few simple adjustments, you can turn a bunch of unqualified leads into a high-quality buyer persona. Once you’ve done that, you can start focussing your efforts on these leads instead of wasting time on other leads that won’t help you sell.
Invest in lead nurturing and automation
Automating the lead process can help you get more value out of every lead. By adding a few extra steps, you can add even more value to each lead. Use auto-responder software to automatically send follow-up emails after each lead has been surveyed.
After you get feedback from your leads, automatically send them surveys to collect data, like what products they like and what services they would be interested in. Invest in lead nurturing strategies like email frequency and Personalized follow-up emails. Lead nurturing strategies will help you get the most out of every lead and create the best experience for your customers.
Segment Buyer Personas
There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to growing your business. Every company is different and requires a unique approach to growth. Different markets require different strategies and leads should be treated as unique as you are.
Using the right tools and techniques, you can create more qualified leads and increase the success of your sales pipeline. Get ready to segment your buyer personas to create more qualified leads based on your core features and benefits. If you map and humanize these personas you have a better chance of creating more qualified prospects who are more likely to purchase your product or service.