Looking for inspiration to fuel your content strategy? Look no further than your buyers. Your buyers are the best source of insights to confirm what content you should be producing to grab their attention and influence their purchasing decision. This e-book explains how buyer persona insights can be used to support your B2B marketing strategy and sales enablement and generate a wide range of content. This includes your value proposition, customer success stories, content marketing pieces, sales playbook, objection handlers, provocative insights, buyer checklist, and message blueprint.

1. Eight Powerful Ways to Use
BUYER PERSONAS
to Build Your Content Arsenal
By Gordana Stok, Buyer Persona & Content Marketing Consultant
8

2. Looking for inspiration to fuel your content
strategy? Look no further than your buyers.
Your buyers are the best source of insights to confirm what
content you should be producing to grab their attention and
influence their purchasing decision.
That’s why interview-based, buyer personas are increasingly
becoming a popular tool for understanding what’s important
to buyers and how they tick.
When you interview buyers who bought from you and your
competitors, you’re essentially asking them to tell you a story
about their buying journey. Not only will you capture the cold
hard facts around how they made their purchasing decision and
why, you’ll understand what motivated them, both personally
and professionally, and the biases that factored into their
decision.
What’s more, there’s nothing more powerful than hearing buyers
describe their journey, with all of its bumps and joy, in their own
words.
5 Rings of Buying Insight™ is a powerful methodology for interviewing
buyers and capturing deep and actionable insights about their journey.

3. 5 Rings of Buying Insight™
Reveals why some buyers
make your solution
category a strategic
priority while others
choose the status quo.
Reveals what pain
points buyers are
looking to eliminate
and improvements
they expect to see.
Reveals why some
buyers would not
perceive your company
or solution as their
best option.
Reveals which buyers
are involved in the
decision and what
resources they trust to
guide their decision.
5 Rings of Buying Insight is a trademark of Buyer Persona Institute
Reveals what criteria
buyers use to evaluate
solution options and
make a purchasing
decision, and why.
PRIORITY
INITIATIVES
SUCCESS
FACTORS
“Our industry lives on
razor-thin margins. When
revenues took a dive due
to market conditions, we
had to find creative,
new ways to
cut costs.”
“I like to read case
studies but they have to
be detailed enough that
I can determine whether
the solution will work in
my environment.”
“We can't risk going
with the smaller guys.
I mean what if they go
out of business? How
would we get our
data back?”
“Our goal was to
reduce paper and shipping
costs by 50% by getting
new customers to complete
applications over
the web.”
DECISION
CRITERIA
“It has to be easy to
use. That means customers
should be able to complete
applications without having
to install any plug-ins.”
BUYER’S
JOURNEY
PERCEIVED
BARRIERS

4. Insights to Action 8 Ways to Use
The best thing about interview-based
buyer personas is that the insights
can be used immediately to generate
a wide range of content in support of
your marketing strategy and sales
enablement.
Continue reading to learn about the
eight ways buyer persona insights
can be used in your content to give
you a competitive edge.
Buyer Persona
Insights:
• Value Proposition
• Customer Succes Story
• Content Marketing
• Sales Playbook
• Objection Handlers
• Provocative Insight
• Solution Checklist
• Message Blueprint

5. 1
Value
Proposition
When you hear buyers express their pain points and needs in their own words, along with the
criteria they use to evaluate solution options and make their purchasing decision, it becomes
crystal clear what needs to go into your value proposition.
Buyer persona insights will help you to succinctly communicate the value of your solution from the buyers’ perspective
using language that they understand, rather than confusing or meaningless marketing-jargon and sales-speak. It will
become a whole lot clearer how to write attention-grabbing headlines, short blurbs and elevator pitches, and narrow
down the benefits and capabilities of your solution to the top five to seven points that matter most to buyers.

6. When you interview buyers, you’ll capture inter-esting
anecdotes about their buying journey and
the emotional impact it had on the different
people involved.
Buyers will readily share the facts and requirements that shaped
their purchasing decision, as well as the doubts, fears, relief and
joy they experienced as they went from status quo to successful
implementation – especially if a lot was at stake for them.
2 Customer Success Story
This makes for significantly more powerful and entertaining,
storytelling than the standard “problem-solution-benefits”
case study format.
Use these insights as the foundation for a follow-up interview
with buyers to capture how their world has changed for the
better since implementing your solution, and to tell their
inspiring story.

7. 3
Content
Marketing
If you’ve ever struggled to come up with ideas for content marketing, your struggles are over!
Every buyer persona insight can be turned into a content marketing piece that you know
buyers will find relevant and want to learn more about.
A typical buyer persona generates between 10 to 15 key topics that you can easily break into sub-topics and package up
in different lengths and formats to align with the different stages of the buying journey and provide buyers with the
information they need to make an informed purchasing decision, while also serving as lead generation and lead
nurturing assets.

8. Sales
Playbook
4
Buyer personas will earn marketers new
found respect from their sales counterparts.
The insights can be used to create one of the
most actionable sections of a sales playbook
– how to engage with buyers.
Your sales team will know:
• Who to target within the buyer’s organization and what
role each person in the decision-making team plays
• When buyers will be most receptive to hearing from them
• The most critical pain points and needs to focus on
• What to say to buyers to persuade them to choose your
solution instead of your competitor’s

9. Your sales team is well aware of the objections that your
customers and prospects have had with your company or
solution. But what about the buyers who never contacted
your organization in the first place?
Buyer personas contain insights about the real or perceived barriers that may
cause all buyers - both known and unknown to you - to eliminate your solution
from consideration. Use this insight to create content that proactively addresses
buyers’ objections or clarifies misconceptions about a topic that may lead them
to believe you’re not their best solution option or go back to the status quo.
Publish the content on your website and third party sites to educate buyers and
increase your chances of being short-listed for evaluation.
5
Objection
Handlers

10. Provocative
6 Insight
A buying insight often missing from an organiza-tion’s
sales and marketing knowledge base is
what triggers some buyers to make their solution
category a strategic priority and do something
about their problem, while others choose the
status quo.
This insight can be effectively used to reach buyers even before
they have an identified need with thought-provoking content that
says, “You may not have experienced this yet, but it’s coming.
This is why you need to do something now, and this is what others
have done about it.”
By demonstrating your subject matter expertise in this manner,
you’ll position your company as a trusted advisor and get ahead
of the RFP process.

11. Product Checklist and Competitive
7 Comparision Chart
A common request from buyers is they’d like a
solution provider’s website to make it quicker
for them to assess whether their solution is worth
short-listing and easier to compare competitive
offerings.
Armed with the knowledge of what criteria buyers use to compare
and evaluate solution options and make their purchasing decision,
you can easily turn these buyer persona insights into a product
checklist that confirms you understand and meet all of the buyer’s
requirements.
The criteria can also be used to build a chart that compares your
features and capabilities against your competitors’, making it a
handy tool for sales.

12. Message
Blueprint
Use the insights you capture about buyers’ expectations as
the launch pad for building a solid message foundation that
will help guide the development of all your marketing and
sales content.
This is done by identifying the strongest capability of your company and solution
to meet each buyer expectation, while providing a proof-point to back up each
claim, responding to a possible objection or misconception buyers might have
about your ability to meet their need, and - if applicable - providing a reason why
your competitor can’t meet their need or their approach is inferior.
8

13. Aligning Your Offering with Buyers’ Needs
Buyer
Expecation
Expection 1
Expection 2
Expection 3
etc.
Capability 1
Capability 2
Capability 3
etc.
Proof Point 1
Proof Point 2
Proof Point 3
etc.
Weakness 1
Weakness 2
Weakness 3
etc.
Objection 1
Objection 2
Objection 3
etc.
Response 1
Response 2
Response 3
etc.
Our
Capability
Proof
Point
Competitor
Weakness
Buyer
Objection
Our
Response
When you align buyers’ expectations with your capabilities and arguments in this manner, you’ll be sure to communicate
the value of your solution from the buyer’s perspective, instead leading with features and functionality. Second, you’ll
map out the logical progression of ideas needed to persuade buyers why they should buy from you instead of your
competitor. Not only will your argument be complete and rock-solid, it will almost seem conversational in tone - like a
friendly, back and forth banter between you and your buyers.
Third, because you’ll do the heavy lifting in terms of identifying WHAT needs to be communicated to support buyer’s
expectations, your creative resources can focus on what they do best: HOW to communicate the messages with
maximum impact. This will reduce the time and cost of producing your content assets, while making sure all your
internal and external content contributors stay on message.

14. Conclusion
Q.
Q.
Q.
Q.
Q.
Q. The insights you capture by interviewing real buyers
of your solution will ensure that you create more
relevant, engaging and persuasive content.
You’ll know precisely what information buyers are looking for as they move
through their buying journey, and how to capture their attention using
language that they understand and can relate to.
You’ll then be able to craft content that speaks directly to their pain points
and needs and helps them to make a more informed purchasing decision,
while influencing their views on how to successfully solve their problem
and persuading them to purchase your solution instead of your competitor’s.

15. About the Author
Gordana Stok is a Buyer Persona Institute Certified
Practitioner and Content Marketing Consultant with
end-to-end, content strategy and development
experience spanning marketing, sales and support.
During her 20-year career, Gordana has had the privilege to work
with many B2B start-up, mid-size and enterprise companies - both as
marketing communications manager and an independent consultant.
Her responsibilities have consistently included crafting content
targeted at B2B buyers, C-level executives and end-customers
across a wide range of industries.
CLICK HERE to visit Gordana’s website or connect with her on
social media.

16. Other Buyer Persona Resources
This e-book provides answers to frequently
asked questions about buyer personas, and
the methodology used to interview and
capture deep insights about buyers.
CLICK HERE to view the e-book.
This infographic compares
the pros and cons of three
popular buyer persona
methodologies.
Co-presented with Adele
Revella, President of
Buyer Persona Institute
and inventor of 5 Rings
of Buying Insight.
CLICK HERE to view
the infographic.