How We Develop Buyer Personas and Define the Buyer Journey

A successful marketing program begins with knowing your buyers inside and out. You need to know who they are, what job functions they perform daily, where they spend their time online, their professional priorities, what decision criteria they use, and the list goes on and on. Once you have all these details, you need buyer personas (examples of genuine buyers who influence or make decisions about your company and products or services) so that any person driving marketing strategy or producing content can succeed.

 

At KODA, in-house brand journalists develop buyer personas and define the buyer journey through our Buyer Insight Process. Designed after months of outside research and education, our process incorporates the Buyer Persona Institute's 5 Areas of Buying Insight and has proven instrumental in informing marketing strategies.

In short, it allows us to become experts in your buyers, business and industry.

  1. Decision Criteria

  2. Priority Initiatives

  3. Success Factors

  4. Perceived Barriers

  5. Buyers Journey

 

How Our Buyer Insight Process Works

To begin the Buyer Insight Process, you will provide your KODA brand journalist with 10-12 people to interview. The first group of interviews will consist of 3 to 4 performed with your employees and may include:

  • Leadership Team Members

  • Heads of Marketing and PR

  • Appropriate Sales Personnel

  • Appropriate Product Managers

The second group includes recent and potential buyers who did not become customers (sales you count as "closed-lost"). These should include the following:

  • 3 to 4 half-hour interviews with recent customers

  • 3 to 4 half-hour interviews with closed-lost sales

The ideal person to interview in each situation is the person who “did most of the work” during the buying process. The brand journalist will reach out to each potential interview subject individually and request an interview. The journalist—at the convenience of the source—then schedules interviews and sends a Google Calendar invitation with Zoom or Teams login information.

After all, interviews are completed, the brand journalist analyses interview transcripts for common buyer sentiments. These sentiments are condensed into our Buyer Insight Report and provide the framework for developing buyer personas and recommendations for future content.

Buyer personas and the buyer journey become the framework for every marketing initiative. By undergoing our Buyer Insight Process, you can rest assured that your buyer personas and buyer journey will be thoroughly researched and correctly identified.

We can create and implement a winning buyer insight strategy that helps you achieve your business goals.