Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs

CHAPTER 5

Step 2: Understand Buyer Personas

How do we identify who will buy our offering?

 

 

 

 

 

The Nalge Company was founded to produce high-quality laboratory equipment. One of the company’s bestsellers has been the durable, shatter-resistant, lightweight Nalgene-brand plastic water bottle. Available in many different shapes and sizes, the bottles were originally designed and sold for lab use, catching on because they are lighter than glass and protect against leakage, breakage, and contamination. For many years, the bottles were only available in translucent white.

But then something remarkable happened.

Nalgene bottles began venturing into the great outdoors, as scientists and lab workers liberated them from the laboratories and for use on camping trips and wilderness expeditions. Soon the bottles began appearing at Boy Scout campouts and similar events. And everyone wanted to know where the rugged, lightweight, and incredibly useful containers came from. As a result, the president of the company tuned in to the unresolved problems of a completely new buyer persona and decided right then to begin offering Nalgene bottles to explorers, adventurers, and campers around the globe. The exact same product that had been sold to one buyer persona (scientists and laboratory workers) transformed into a product for another, entirely different buyer persona by being marketed and distributed through outdoor retailers such as EMS and REI.

Soon Nalgene bottles started appearing on college ...