Leverages Buyer Personas to Target a New Type of Buyer
Challenge: Ensure our messaging is clear and relevant to a new buyer persona
PandoLogic is an AI-enabled recruiting platform expanding into a familiar market category – HR recruiting –
with a new and unfamiliar technology. According to Michelle Meehan, Director of Brand Marketing, before
turning to the Buyer Persona Institute (BPI), “the company’s go-to-market plan was based on a combination of
gut instinct and general market research.” But precisely because AI-enabled recruiting is a nascent technology,
“we had to be sure what we are saying has real resonance with our buyers; we want to push the adoption
factor.”
Solution: Develop a persona with insight into the buying decision
The problem was not that PandoLogic did not have personas; the problem was they had too many of dubious
value. “Having too many personas was undermining our GTM strategy,” says Meehan. “We wanted to home in on
what exactly we needed to say to actual decision makers, the people who could be our inside champions.”
Meehan conducted her own research into persona development and found one option that broke the mold:
Buyer Persona Institute. “We’re committed to learning from the business elite, from the companies that are
actually leading the conversation,” Meehan says. “We realized that BPI was doing something different in the
marketplace.” By focusing its research on the buyer’s journey – asking participants to recollect the process that
led to a decision – BPI eliminates unnecessary noise and uncovers new insight into buyer motivations. “Their
research exposes what the market conversations really are, without bias,” she says.
In the next phase where the research serves as a foundation for message-building, Meehan appreciated the
collaborative nature of BPI’s Persona Activation Workshop.
“We got all the key stakeholders in the room,” she says: marketing, sales, product, and more. “It required a
real time commitment from our leaders. But the BPI facilitator kept the process engaging; everyone was
convinced the process was worthwhile. And everyone got treated equally – leveling the playing field
eliminated the dominance of any one person’s bias.”
Results: Full utilization and alignment around the buyer persona’s expectations
“The research told us what’s really important to buyers,” says Meehan. PandoLogic discovered that its
technology was often misunderstood in the marketplace, leading to unwelcome confusion. “We streamlined our
messaging to the most important touch points, to the kind of education buyers actually want. Now we can say to
our colleagues, ‘These are the messages we need to say and why.’”
“PandoLogic is experiencing tremendous growth that has required additional personnel. “Today, the BPI work
is part of the onboarding process,” Meehan says. “With the research plus the top messages, new hires are
learning first-hand what our focus should be. Internal cohesion is the biggest thing; now we’re all singing
from the same hymnal.”
