Inbound Organization

Chapter 13Inbound Strategies Are Persona Based

Personas are at the core of inbound strategies. An ideal buyer persona is a representation of the person your organization helps the most. Personas are semifictional representations of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. Personas include demographic information but put more emphasis on a psychographic profile. Psychographic factors are characteristics relating to someone's activities, interests, and opinions and include common behavior patterns, shared pain points (professional, personal), goals, wishes, dreams, attitudes, and values.

Personas are the basis for inbound strategies because of their emphasis on emotional connection. Most companies sell to at least three or four buyer personas. Personas evolve as habits change. Companies need to focus on their primary personas. Inbound organizations consistently evaluate their personas based on company direction, revenue and gross profit contribution, and impact on enterprise value.

After decades of watching great companies fail, we've concluded that the focus on correlation—and on knowing more and more about customers—is taking firms in the wrong direction. What they need to home in on is the progress that the customer is trying to make in each circumstance—what the customer hopes to accomplish. This is what we've come to call the job to be done.¹

A persona embodies a person, ...