Adrienne Barnes' 4 R's of userful buyer personas that win more business

[00:00:00] Ramli John: Most buyer personas are useless. You often have a quirky name like "Mark the Marketer." And some info like 37 years old, married for eight years, two kids, mid-level manager at a tech company. The problem with this is that Mark isn't real. Here is what Adrienne Barnes, founder of Best Buy Persona says about this: 

[00:00:20] Adrienne Barnes: The reason it creates bias is because it's, you have basically assigned your entire persona to a 28 year old white female maybe who has these kind of traits.

[00:00:34] Then you automatically create all content, all marketing, all products, everything for a 28 white female. When we know that your entire audience of consumers are not 28 year old white females. And I don't really feel like those demographic type information do a good job of creating personas.

[00:01:00] Ramli John: Adrienne is on a mission to help businesses create actionable, data-backed, and needle-moving buyer personas. In this Marketing Powerups episode, you'll learn: First, what's wrong with how most marketers create buyer personas. Second, Adrienne shares the four Rs to the best buyer personas that will help you win more business.

[00:01:22] And third, Adrienne's advice to young marketers about gaining confidence. For each episode, I create a powerups cheatsheet you can use to download, fill in, and apply the marketing concept to your business right away. Go to marketingpowerups.com to get those right now. Are you ready? Let's go 

[00:01:41] Announcer: Marketing Powerups!

[00:01:44] Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John. 

[00:01:52] Ramli John: Jump in and talk about marketing powerups, and one of the power ups that you have really honed in on is on best buyer personas. Before we get to that power, what? What's wrong with the current personas that marketers use, and I'm really honing in on one of your tweets that has over 700 likes that you said that fictional characters and personas really laid the foundation for bias and inaccurate marketing campaigns.

[00:02:20] Can you talk a little bit about that? Why personas lead. To all of those negative things that's mentioned in that week. 

[00:02:26] Adrienne Barnes: One of 

[00:02:26] the things that, or the reason how it all begins, I'll say, is that it starts with the creation of the persona, right? So usually what I've seen a lot in the past is marketing team, a cmo.

[00:02:38] We'll get into a room, we're on a Zoom and say, okay, we need. Some personas. So who are our customers? And it's a lot of assumptions. They have a really good time. People get creative. It's oh, and I bet she loves a macho latte from Starbucks, and I bet she Dr. Drives a gray minivan and I bet she has a cat and her kid plays soccer and basketball.

[00:03:04] So these fake people. begin to form, right? Like they don't actually exist. They're not real in reality. And it's not based upon solid data and customer backed conversations or social listening, or actually like going in and looking at behaviors of online the way your consumers behave.

[00:03:26] It's a lot of we've heard this from sales, we've seen this a little bit. Maybe our customer support told us, and this is what we think. So we're just gonna lay this out. And the reason it creates bias is because if you have basically assigned your entire persona to a 28 year old white female maybe who has these kind of traits, then you automatically create all content, all marketing, all products, everything for a 28 white female.

[00:03:58] When we know that your entire audience. consumers are not 28 year old white females. Like you could have all ages, all races, all genders. And I don't really feel like the, those demographic type information do a good job of creating personas. Now people wanna push back and argue, and they say we have to know that like in word D toc, we gotta be able to sell to.

[00:04:25] Women who are buying lipstick, there's not very many men who buy lipsticks. So what are you trying to say, Adrian? And my point is that it's not that you shouldn't know that information or use that kind of information in your marketing, it's that your persona should not be. Like created because of this information, it should not be the persona.

[00:04:46] As a marketer, you should be aware much more intuitively to what are their pains, why are they buying the product? What is the process that they go through to find out that you exist or to realize themselves that they need a solution. Those are much more, I. For marketing teams to understand than 28 year old, white female da, whatever the thing may be.

[00:05:09] So that's why I say, when you've begun in such a way where those facts, quote unquote, become your persona, it really is laying a foundation for bias. 

[00:05:19] Ramli John: All that you're saying is around assumptions. Assumptions, like and generalization. You're generalizing your customers as this big group of people.

[00:05:30] When people are people , right? They have different pains and situation. That's what you're really like trying to hone in on is like generalizing marketing and Needs some bias is what you're really driving 

[00:05:43] towards, right? 

[00:05:44] Adrienne Barnes: And it of course there's gonna be some level and some degree of creating stereotypes.

[00:05:49] That's almost what a persona is as you're creating a stereotype. But I would much rather have different audience segments based and focused on why someone bought a product. Why do they come to us? How do they use it? What are their pain points? Segment those people together rather than. job title, age, gender that kind of a thing.

[00:06:12] It's much more, it's a much stronger way to segment your audience. You're not going to people like, so because she's 28 1 year, next year she's aged. Is she no longer a customer? No, of course not. If she gets married and she's loved your product for forever, but all of a sudden she, whoever the she is, you know what I'm saying?

[00:06:29] She gets married. Is she now no longer a valued customer? No, of course not. When you think about how people actually use products, I don't come to our product and think, oh, I am, I happen to be the right age. And the bright profile for this, and it stems from media buying, right? If you go onto LinkedIn or if you're especially in b2b, if you're buying ads anywhere, you have to know that to buy.

[00:06:53] Media and reach a certain audience. So what I always say is that you might reach if you know that, but you'll never resonate if that's all you know. You have to be able to understand what is the pull for them, what is the thing that's going to hit home for them, that then once you've reached them, you can say, okay, we, we understand you though, like we really get where you're at.

[00:07:16] We understand that this is a problem, or is this a problem? If so, here's what we've seen. That's how you begin to resonate with your. 

[00:07:23] Ramli John: I love what you just said there, cuz it starts just a little bit of liberation. You'll reach them, but you'll never resonate with them. If you are really focused on those information with the persona, you're really leading towards your framework that you use in jobs without framework to, to define a much to your business name, best Buy a Personas,

[00:07:44] Can you talk a little bit about that process now, so you were already leading towards understanding the can you share your process to helping companies define their best buy personas and grow past 

[00:07:56] stalls? 

[00:07:57] Adrienne Barnes: The jobs to be done is just a very useful framework for understanding people, for being in a situation where you're trying to figure.

[00:08:10] What is at the core motivation? What is a core motivation of someone? And I, I basically have studied Bob Ma West, up and down at, he was at the business of software conference. He goes every year, and so I've. Studied his interviews and read the books and really wanted to get a really solid idea of how do I learn, how do I find out from people what's important to them and why they buy and basically those pain points of that entire journey and jobs to be done does that really well.

[00:08:41] It once to situ you in a situation where you're almost gathering information like a. like somebody who's running a news report, right? Like it's a a biography of sorts. And so you're really trying to say, okay, tell me about that day. What was going on? What did the weather look like? Why did you do these certain things?

[00:08:58] So you can really get to understand those core emotions and the core emotions. , of course, for any marketer is what you wanna be pushing on. That's what you wanna get to. That's what you wanna understand. Those are the insights that allow you to create content that is helpful or funny or entertaining or whatever you're trying for your content to be.

[00:09:18] It really does give you the information necessary. To have the stuff that resonates, like we said earlier it's basically the key to understanding who and why your buyers are. I say we always talk about you need to know your buyers, need to know who your customers are, know your customers.

[00:09:35] But nobody really explained what that meant because e consultants did a survey. a few years back, but it said basically brands feel like they do know their customers. They'll tell you, like 98% of people are like, yeah, we know our customers. But then on the customer side, they don't feel understood.

[00:09:53] They don't feel valued. They don't feel like things are going the way they would like them to. And so there was a disconnect. So for me, I was like, why is there such a huge disconnect? And I really believe it starts with identifying what does it mean to know your customer? . So if you're gonna know them, you need to know how they behave online or in, in your product, essentially.

[00:10:14] Who they are, how do they self-identify, that's some of that demographic information. And then why do they behave the way they do? And a lot of people want to run surveys or use hot jar, use these amazing tools, social listening to see how people behave. You can, we can learn a. online and with tools, but what we can't learn is why they made the choices they did.

[00:10:40] Why do they feel the way they did? The only way to get that information is through interviews, and that's why the interview process is the most time consuming, the most expensive, but the most important part. of the persona process. 

[00:10:54] Ramli John: I'm totally with you there. I feel like that's, no, it's an introvert.

[00:10:57] I try to avoid customer interviews, but I know that the value and the insights and all the advantages that come with having conversations with customers really do come because it's easy to lie on a survey, right? It's easy to like, yes, I am this, I love it. But when some, when you're talking to somebody, when you're looking at a bit in the.

[00:11:18] There's hopefully some clues that they're they're really excited. Eyes slide up. They get they get more emotional and more Yeah, active versus when they're not really excited about that. Before we continue, I wanna thank the sponsor for this episode 42 agency. When you're in scale up mode, you have to hit your KPIs.

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[00:12:23] That's offer. Now, let's jump back into this episode. I. Share. So you interview them, you get their insights, and then you use that as the core to the best buyer persona, not based on gender or race or age, but really based on the motivation and the pain points that they're facing.

[00:12:43] Are there any other things that you would add to a great buyer persona that you know, that we. chat about. So 

[00:12:50] Adrienne Barnes: especially for b2b, one of the things that I like to include is what I call the four Rs. So you wanna know their relationship, their responsibilities, their rituals, and their routines. So when I say relationship, what I've found, what I've got, B2B sellers, B2B marketers, is we need to know where do they sit in the organization.

[00:13:10] Where are they the champion? Are they the buyer? Are they the the user? Do they have the credit card? Product where it's gotta be like, now we gotta go convince their boss to buy. All of that information is really important. So that's the relationships. I like to identify their internal hierarchy, essentially.

[00:13:29] What does that organization's hierarchy look like and how does it buy products? How do they go about that? Rituals, what does their day-to-day look like? , what other kind of tools do they use? What do you know? Are they meeting in offices? Are they a fully remote company? Like all of those things are really important to know.

[00:13:47] Or can be, especially for B2B routines is there something that. Is consistent with them. Maybe the routine is they purchase new products in the spring or they only purchase, they can only shop once every three years. know, If you get to enterprise B2B contracts are locked in. It's valuable to know when those contracts come up.

[00:14:07] So what kind of routines and cycles is the company a part of? So all of that's really something that I like to look at When we do the buyer personas, also the buyer's journey, what does that look like? Where does the level of awareness happen? What are the common steps?

[00:14:24] Obviously everybody takes their own, and especially internal and enterprise companies, you have buying processes. That can be extensive and six months, a year long kind of a thing. But it's important to understand what does that process look like? Where does, who has to be involved, who are the decision makers, things like that.

[00:14:45] Also very important. And so when we put together a persona, one of the things I like to do, and this is how we developed into growth stalls and understanding how. Push companies through the growth stalls is, one thing I would do is I would always start with stakeholder interviews. And I would say okay, what are you assuming about the product or assuming about your company, about your customers?

[00:15:08] What do you know and what do you need to know? And what I, we would find is oftentimes there were mis like misalignments, confusions, silos with information, silos with like educational gaps, huge knowledge gaps for different people. and that became really important information for the ceo e and the executives to know.

[00:15:30] They were like, oh. We didn't realize that. We didn't realize that our head of product and our head of sales were on two completely different pages with their goals and where things were going. So we started actually leaning more into understanding internal processes. So the growth stalls part comes from understanding your, Customers, the outter, the external, and the internal.

[00:15:53] But those internal questions are always answered in the persona. So I would say what do you need to know in order for your projects to be most successful? And I'm, I would talk to all of the stakeholders in the organization and they'd let me know what oh, I need to know what kind of price they'd be willing to pay, or I need to know what other tools do they use or all of the different things.

[00:16:14] And so I that become, Key information in the persona. So each audience segment, each persona, cuz there usually are multiple is actually has a lot of supportive information. So there's quotes, there's that every statement that I say this and this is fact, there's a quote to support it because we've gone through the interviews and we know that it's true.

[00:16:37] Yeah, we really wanna make sure that when we create these persona documents that it's usable across the organization. That it doesn't just sit in marketing. We want product to be able to use it. We want. Customer support and sales and the executive team to be able to base strategy upon it. It really does become a core foundational document for the organization to grow.

[00:16:59] Ramli John: I totally love that. That four r I can't get over it. It's, I just wanna read it. It's relationship Rituals. Routines, and I don't remember the responsibilities. Responsibilities. So that's so good. That's a gold mine. You said something there, and that's super interesting that for most B2B products, there's usually more than, persona, is that what you would say is would you agree to that?

[00:17:20] Like what is what's the average you've seen working with companies? And it totally depends on like how flex is your product, the industry. Do you have any guidance on if your B2B only have one persona, then maybe you should think about other ones that you're not covering.

[00:17:34] Adrienne Barnes: So it does, it really does depend on the products that are out. I've worked with companies where there's six or seven products within it within the one company. But myself, and I've talked to a few others who do really strong jobs to be done. Audience segmenting. We've never seen more than three to five.

[00:17:54] So if you end up with and I, what I've seen when people do it through demographics is that there are 16 personas throughout the company because sales will have about three or four personas. Marketing will have about three or four personas. Product has three or four personas like each.

[00:18:13] Department has created their own personas because they need to know who the customers are. And it's all very geared towards their perspective, right? What do we need to know about in order to make our goals met? What do we know about our people? So they're all a little different. And that's really why when I come in and there are nine to 10 personas for a company, or especially when there's.

[00:18:36] One or two products, it's a smaller company. And it's okay, we need to revamp and rethink about the way we segment these people because if we work through jobs to be done jobs, we don't usually absorbs two or three or four of those personas. And then if we can clarify and get to know the information necessary for all of the departments, then you have a much more streamlined process.

[00:18:58] It's a clear here's our slide. It's useful for everybody. And it's not so siloed as each department having their own personas. 

[00:19:08] Ramli John: I wanna shift gears and I wanna talk about career. Yeah. I believe you've been in marketing for how many years now? I feel like you're like I'll let you an expert, obviously an expert in this 

[00:19:20] Adrienne Barnes: space.

[00:19:20] Gosh, I think this is, we're working on year. seven. 

[00:19:24] Ramli John: Nice. So not terribly well. Yeah because you were a teacher before, right? I was a teacher before. Same. Yeah. I think that's an interesting, you have an interesting perspective now that transition from teaching to now marketing. What's.

[00:19:39] in the last seven years. What's something that's helped you in your career as you progress? As a 

[00:19:46] Adrienne Barnes: marketer, there are a few things. Number one, especially since I am a consultant, freelancer, solopreneur, whatever you wanna call it. Basically I'm running my own shop. I'm not and in-house marketer is I have to.

[00:20:02] Push through the cringe, push through the awkward push through the days of nobody wants to hear from me or I don't have anything to say and try to show up authentically in some way. And sometimes that's just me saying I don't know, or asking questions or just being vulnerable. Sometimes it's me saying, no, I really do know this.

[00:20:22] Like I'm really what I, when I know something, I'm pretty confident in what I know. But I never want to. Put out there and make it look like I know more than what I know. So that's something that has definitely been helpful, is just being willing to show up in different spaces. Be a little awkward, or it's just it just feels awkward, right?

[00:20:46] Like you're pushing through you you think nobody wants to hear from me what do I have to say? But pushing through that anyways, ignoring that. And just doing it regardless, that imposter syndrome. The second thing has just been to be obsessively curious. About what it is I'm doing.

[00:21:07] I've basically given myself an MBA in like interviewing and conducting research in this way. I've read every book I've. Textbooks I've gone through and you know when you can find a syllabus online? I've read every book in the syllabus. So also without actually taking any legitimate courses, it's all self-taught, that kind of a thing.

[00:21:31] So just obsessively curious and then pushing through the imposter syndrome and showing up, have really. That's what I keep striving for is just to stay consistent and know what I know essentially. 

[00:21:44] Ramli John: I love those two. And especially push the past, like know, I've been sharing visuals and stuff online and every time like, this is the worst.

[00:21:52] This is the worst thing I've ever created. And sometimes people just have to push that and just share that, that knowledge. Yeah. And that's how we actually met. I was gonna join Corey Haynes, this challenge that you did to grow up Twitter. And I was like this is, I'm not good enough.

[00:22:09] I don't have enough followers. And we got placed in the same group and that's how we became closer friends, is true to 

[00:22:16] Adrienne Barnes: that. Yes. Yeah, we did. That was a few years ago and it was like, I think it was 2020. It was a focus and it was so funny, like watching, we had a small little group. Some of us are now like mult, almost a million.

[00:22:28] I have no idea how many some of 'em have. And then there's still me who's just barely over 10,000. Like 12,000. Yeah, 12,000. 12,000. But like the goal in 2020 was to reach 10. And I didn't it's just, it's funny that you can't let. Be the thing that stops you. If I were like, oh, I guess I didn't make 10,000 followers.

[00:22:48] I'm gonna give up like nobody cares about my tweets. It's gotta be about something bigger than that, right? If you're only chasing clout numbers, you're gonna burn out real quick. 

[00:22:57] Ramli John: And the other thing is you never know who's watching you though. You're, you don't have like hundreds of thousands of, that's how I believe you got invited to speak at Harvard University was somebody found you on Twitter.

[00:23:08] And I was like, AJ and your tweets, your content's amazing. Come speak to our, this is what happens to when even even though sometimes we feel like we don't, we're not creating great content. Yeah. People are like this is amazing. . 

[00:23:20] Adrienne Barnes: Yeah, absolutely. So I tweeted something and she couldn't quite remember what it was, but a client that I work with who also has a very small Twitter following, liked my tweet.

[00:23:31] And because he liked it, it showed up in her feed and like he really has a small following. And so then she reached out to me at email and she's this is great. Can you come speak at Harvard? I can't pay you. But we'd love to have you come and talk and teach the students. And I just happened to be in Boston, going to the business of software conference, and I was like, actually, I will be in town.

[00:23:53] So we made it happen. 

[00:23:55] Ramli John: I know you talk about those power-ups. Another thing I wanna ask you is around advice for people who were young, particularly for yourself, if you had to give yourself your younger. When you're making that transition from teaching to marketing, what would you give that younger version of yourself as an advice to passing?

[00:24:18] As that person goes through, mark. 

[00:24:19] Adrienne Barnes: Okay, so a little context. I will be 40 in 12 days. So I'm turning like, this is a birthday year. It's a big birthday, right? And you're, it's middle age 40 is a big number. So I've been thinking a little bit about this and really it's sit, there are so many chapters in life.

[00:24:37] If you're in your twenties for some reason, when you hit like 20. Something in your body or society or somewhere makes you feel like you're running out of time makes you feel like, oh my gosh, haven't accomplished enough. Like I don't know what it is, but it seems to be true. It was true when I was 28.

[00:24:52] It still seems to be true. You have so many chapters, there is so much time. There are so many iterations of yourself available and out there if you just keep moving forward. Stay curious, stay learning. I'm literally relaunching a part of my consultancy like in the next couple weeks, and I'm not done yet.

[00:25:14] Like I am not done yet. And I still have 20 good years of like solid work ahead of me. Just don't have this sense of who you are today. If you're young and the job you're doing now and the skills you have now is where you're at. There's a lot of opportunity, a lot of potential, and a lot of iterations left.

[00:25:33] So just stay curious and see where the path takes you. 

[00:25:35] Ramli John: That is so good. I feel that in my core. Yeah. I'm just like, I have goosebumps. I've been thinking a lot about that as well. I am gonna be 40 in three years like that's what is the next stage? And we're just chatting about like the.

[00:25:47] Of where I want to go in. I love it chapters and I think about books. There's different additions and different issues. The future's bright. 

[00:25:56] Adrienne Barnes: Yes, absolutely. 100%. And if you see it that way, you know it, it's much more a better you're gonna grow, right? If you see it as Ugh, I'm done, doom and gloom, then you've blocked yourself from growth.

[00:26:08] So just see the opportunity and growth will happen. One 

[00:26:12] Ramli John: other question I have around advice and career growth and power roads for. Yes. We talked about career advice. If you can leave for people at tuning in like right now they're probably a marketer within a company.

[00:26:25] And what would be like your one or two pieces of advice you'd like to share to those listeners, those audience right now? Around, around marketing or even around career or any parting advice that you would love to give to the audience? 

[00:26:39] Adrienne Barnes: Yeah. In-house marketers, B2B, and honestly, especially women, if you are a young woman in a team, on a team right now Record every achievement, every benefit, every team activity you do.

[00:26:54] You have to toot your own horn. Just like me being a consultant on the outside, no one is going to share my accomplishments for me. No one is going to get out there and tell people what I've accomplished. And no one's gonna do that within your own team unless you have a very empathetic and very supportive boss.

[00:27:11] But usually you cannot rely on that. You have to be your own advocate. You have to set forth and say, this is what I accomplished. This is how that impacted the business. And ask for more money. If that's where you're at, make sure that you've got the data to back why, and that you're able, like actually recording and tracking your progress.

[00:27:31] It's. Going to make such a difference, not even just within your own company. If you're in your own company and the growth can happen, then you want to stay there, that's amazing. But then when you're ready to go and leave, you take those accomplishments, those lessons, those values with you, and it just makes you a stronger candidate elsewhere.

[00:27:47] So if you are, you don just starting out and you're trying to figure out and you don't think you have an impact, you. You're a part of a team, everything you do is beneficial. So make sure you're tracking it and taking it with you. For sure. And that 

[00:28:00] Ramli John: also applies to consultants as well. Like now you can like, yeah, I should be charging more.

[00:28:05] Look at all those things you have, you've done in your co uh, with your clients and past companies that you worked at and that really does. Yeah, see your worth and value yes 

[00:28:17] Adrienne Barnes: to people. Get your case studies, get your testimonials. All of that stuff is helpful. Honestly, it does the work for you.

[00:28:24] It goes from you having to convince someone to sign on to them, begging you to okay, when are we working together? That it makes that big of a difference. 

[00:28:31] Ramli John: Hope you learn how to create more actual buy personas that will help you win more business. From this episode, you can find out more about eating Barnes and our work planning, subscribing to our new.

[00:28:41] Growth insights and following her on Twitter and LinkedIn. We find those things in the show notes and description. Thanks to Adrian for being on the show. If you enjoy this episode, you'd love the marketing Power UPS newsletter that I sent out. Each week, I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks.

[00:28:58] Off world-class marketers from each episode. You can go to marketing power ops.com to subscribe and you'll instantly unlock the five best marketing frameworks the top marketers use to hit their KPIs consistently and allow their colleagues. If you wanna say thank you, please and follow Marketing Power Ops on YouTube, apple Podcast.

[00:29:16] And Spotify. If you're feeling extra generous, kindly leave a review on Apple Podcast and Spotify and leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way for others finding out about marketing. Powerups. Thank you to Mary Sullivan for fading the artwork and design thanks to 42 Agency for sponsoring this episode.

[00:29:35] And of course, thank you for listening and tuning in. That's all. For now. This is your host, Ram John. Until the next. Have a powered update. Bye 

[00:29:44] Adrienne Barnes: marketing power

[00:29:50] until the next episode.