How do you build a buying persona

There are two ways to build a buying persona and choosing a wrong one might ruin your marketing campaign

Different Personas for B2B and B2C marketing

I’d been building Buying personas for several years helping startup founders as a consultant until in 2020 I was invited to help with product positioning and messaging into a B2B Thailand-based SaaS. To tell you the truth, my experience with B2B SaaS was not impressive. I worked a lot in B2B sales from 2005 to 2010 while building my content marketing agency but it was not a SaaS experience. When I started coaching and consulting startups I mostly dealt with B2C companies, marketplaces and even DTC startups (the only one from “almost B2B” was a Canadian company in crypto space but they still targeted a lot the end users, though the service was delivered via partners — therefore, they needed to build a B2B sales pipeline too).

Anyways, when I was invited, I figured that it can’t be that different from B2C — company’s executives are humans too, therefore they have the same implicit motives as we all do, and as long as I stick with the basics — I’ll be fine. It did not work out. I crafted a buying persona based on interviews I held plus surveys that the company marketing team ran on their own.