Many buyer personas fall short of their potential impact, often limited to surface-level details like job titles and demographics. But to truly drive your marketing and sales efforts, personas need to go deeper. Actionable buyer personas must capture insights about the specific buying decisions you aim to influence—helping you engage more effectively and guide buyers toward a decision.
At the heart of this deeper approach are the 5 Rings of Buying Insight™, each offering valuable information that can transform your strategy. From understanding buyer motivations to mapping the journey and identifying key decision-makers, these insights are crucial for making the right connections at the right time.
In this article, we’ll break down each of the 5 Rings, exploring what they reveal and why they’re vital to creating buyer personas that truly inform your marketing and sales efforts.
Priority Initiative
What Is It?
Priority Initiative insights explain the most compelling reason(s) that buyers begin to evaluate a solution like yours. It’s the trigger event or conditions that cause a buyer to look for a solution NOW while others (even those with similar needs), are content with the status quo. These triggers could include personal or organizational circumstances. Consider a digital solution to support hybrid events (in-person and remote attendees). Examples of a Priority Initiative that triggers the search could include:
- COVID changed everything overnight, no one was meeting face-to-face
- Our current solution can’t achieve the quality of voice and video we need
- We’re using different solutions across the company which is frustrating and inefficient
Why Is It Important?
Because Priority Initiatives insights describe in detail why an organization allocates their time, budget, or political capital to purchase a solution like yours, you’ll know when buyers are receptive to hearing from you and which roles are triggering the decision to make this investment.
Marketers use this insight to define and execute marketing strategies that resonate with buyers at the earliest stages in their decision. By demonstrating that you understand their situation, you also take the first step in developing a buyer’s trust and positioning yourself as a market leader.
Success Factors
What Is It?
Success Factors insights describe the results that buyers expect from purchasing a solution like yours. Success factors resemble benefits or outcomes from the buyer’s perspective – what THEY expect to achieve. Examples of Success Factors for a hybrid event solution could include:
- We will have one centralized, holistic solution for meetings across the entire company
- We will use reliable, high-quality tools that enable effective communication
- We will engage with our international teams across the globe
Why Is It Important?
Success Factor insights eliminate the need for marketing to guess or reverse-engineer messaging based on your solution’s capabilities. These insights enable more targeted content plus the certainty that prospects are motivated to buy a solution that delivers these benefits.
For example, where you might be emphasizing your solution’s ability to reduce expenses, Success Factor insights could tell you that your buyers are more motivated to achieve one company-wide, centralized solution. Your unique clarity about the outcomes buyers expect from a centralized solution will ensure that you tailor this message to your buyers’ mindset.
Perceived Barriers
What Is It?
Perceived Barrier insights reveal the fears and concerns that cause buyers to prefer the status quo, and why they perceive a competitor’s solution as a better fit for their needs. This insight identifies everything that eliminates providers from consideration as buyers narrow down their options. Examples of Perceived Barriers for a hybrid event solution could include:
- We need a global company that has a local presence in the countries we operate in
- We need a licensing structure that is flexible and adaptive to our unique requirements
- We can’t consider providers that don’t pass muster with our security team
Why Is It Important?
Perceived Barrier insights are sometimes overlooked by marketing – why focus on the negative? But wait! If you’re able to directly address a prospective buyer’s top concerns, this could be your best opportunity to differentiate your solution from everyone else’s.
For example, if a Perceived Barrier insight describes the buyer’s belief that most of their users are non-technical and that they’re concerned about the implementation time, you could deliver videos and customer stories emphasizing your ease of use. The insight would reveal the details about this concern so that you can create content that addresses a top buyer concern.
Once companies identify Perceived Barriers, we often see them develop Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) and sales support assets that directly address a buyer’s top concerns.
Decision Criteria
What Is It?
Decision Criteria insights reveal the specific company and solution capabilities that matter to buyers as they evaluate your ability to deliver success. These insights are the questions that buyers are asking throughout the buying journey. Marketers are frequently surprised that cost is a small part of their buyer’s Decision Criteria, and that buyers explore their solution’s features and company capabilities in such detail during the buying journey. Examples of Decision Criteria for a hybrid event solution could include:
- What is your process and timeline for implementing the solution?
- Is the solution scalable to allow the right number of people to join simultaneously?
- What bandwidth does your solution require for a stable connection?
Why Is It Important?
Decision Criteria help marketers escape the trap of benefits-only marketing that sounds just like their competitor’s. Companies that communicate relevant and straightforward answers to a buyer’s most important questions will gain their trust and win their business. You’ll see how to focus on the capabilities that have the most impact on your buyer’s decision, delivering proof that your company is best qualified to deliver the benefits buyers want.
Remember that in high stakes buying decisions, buyers are looking at multiple options and it’s often confusing to make direct comparisons. By directly addressing your buyer’s questions, you will make the buying decision easier and instill confidence in choosing you.
Buyer’s Journey
What Is It?
Buyer’s Journey insights reveals the behind-the-scenes story about the work your buyers do to evaluate options, eliminate contenders, and settle on their final choice. These insights include who is involved in the buying decision, the specific work your buyers must do at each step, plus the information sources they use and trust. Examples of Buyers Journey insights for a hybrid event solution could include:
- We form an internal committee to develop and prioritize a list of requirements
- We review analyst reports to identify an initial set of solutions to look at
- We conduct a proof of concept with finalists to evaluate use cases in a test environment
Why Is It Important?
Buyer’s Journey insights enable you to align your marketing and sales activities to the most influential buyers at each phase of their decision, with an emphasis on the resources that matter most to them. While the first four Rings of Insight will inform your content and messaging, this last Ring specifies who you should communicate to, how, and where.
We call these the 5 Rings of Buying Insight because they work together to deliver confidence that every one of your sales and marketing activities will deliver value to buyers and help you win more business.
