How is a Buyer Persona created?
Personas are fictional representations of ideal customers based upon real data of demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations and concerns.
The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. (Note: If you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed.)
Here is a template of Buyer Persona of a CIO:
Enterprise
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Mid-Market
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Key Titles
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• Chief Information Officer
• SVP of IT, VP of IT (highest level IT executive in a company /division)
• CTO (some common interests with CIO)
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• SVP of Technology
• SVP Business Technology
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• VP of Technology
• IT Director (as highest IT role)
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Role of Buyer
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The most senior decision maker for the IT organization; final approver for majority of IT expenditures.
Control 65% of company’s IT spend (CIO Magazine’s “State of the CIO 2014”).
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Challenges
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• Create business value
• Provide agility and drive innovation with IT
• Reduce IT costs and improve business efficiency
• Deliver “IT as a Service” - position internal IT as preferred service provider; rapid delivery of IT as a consumable, optimized service
• Attract, retain and develop IT talent
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• Maintaining/ transforming legacy apps
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• Reduce costs focus; greater % report to CFO
• Trend to move faster to cloud/outsource IT staff
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Buying Center
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Corporate (44% of CIOs report to the CEO) and Finance (18% report to the CFO) per CIO Magazine’s “State of the CIO 2014 “report
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Daily Responsibilities
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• Drive innovation - identify opportunities for competitive differentiation and develop a culture of innovation within IT and the business
• Align IT initiatives with business goals; cultivate partnerships between IT and business
• Improve IT operations/control costs; manage system/architecture decisions, manage crises
• Technology Coherence – make sure new technologies, applications, and other assets fit. Understand with business architectures and infrastructures
• Business Continuity – establish predictable, high service levels and always-on IT services
• Provide and validate technology vision and direction to the IT organization, business stakeholders, end-users, customers, partners and vendors
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Content Preference
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• Business Publications (e.g., WSJ, Economist, Forbes); Peer Research, (CIO/CXO assoc and events); Executive Summary Reports; increasing exposure to multi-media/social networking
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• Social media use by staff
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• More likely to use social media
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Watering Holes
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Industry Groups; Analyst Summits; Partner/Vendor/3rd party CIO events
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