This document discusses measuring the effectiveness of persona marketing by aligning content to the buyer's journey and sales stages. It recommends defining key performance indicators (KPIs) like engagement, conversion, and sales lift. While common, these can be vanity metrics without measuring impact and attribution. The document also suggests interviewing customers, sales, and other stakeholders to prioritize content needs and align personas to the stages of consideration, decision, and purchase. An example is provided where tracking engaged prospects through the sales stages led to increased engagement scores, contacts, and anticipated better win rates and shorter sales cycles. The takeaways emphasize continuously engaging stakeholders, solving prioritized problems, routinely reporting engagement metrics, and filling the funnel with look-al

1. JEFF KOSTERMANS
B2B FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION
REACH ANALYTICS, GOOD TECHNOLOGY,
TALEO / RESPONSYS / ORACLE , LEADGENESYS
WELLS FARGO, ANDROMEDIA / MACROMEDIA
How To ROO-Justify *
Your Persona Marketing Investment
With Metrics
* Return on Objective
April 15, 2015
Direct Marketing
Association
Burlingame, CA

2. Definition & Agenda
Definition of Persona Marketing:
As opposed to identifying your buyers based on firmo-graphic, title, and
other generic data, it’s:
Aligning a value proposition to the buyer’s objective and enabling them to
comfortably and easily take the next step in their buying process.
Agenda:
1. Persona marketing measurement challenges
2. Your clients & sales team will tell you what to measure
3. Keep it simple
4. Validate, reveal & capitalize on findings

3. Personas: Measuring Effectiveness is Key

4. Common KPIs:
Engagement, conversion, sales-lift, retention
of those who receive the content vs. those who do not.
Page 4
Problem here is vanity metrics and
ability to measure impact /attribution of
“personified” content & discussions.

5. Asset 1. Define 2. Search 3. Eval 4. Validate 5. Purch
Benchmark Data X X X
3rd Party Blog X X X
Books
Bus. Case X X X X
Buyer Guide X X
Case Studies X X X X
Conferences X
Newsletters
Demo Video X X X
eBook
Feature
Comparisons
X X X X
Financial
Information
X X X
Which Assets Can We Realistically Personify ?

6. Asset 1. Define 2. Search 3. Eval 4. Validate 5. Purch
Free Trial X X
Industry Analysts X X X X
Market Research X X X X
Advertising
References X X X
Social
Communities
Peers X X X X X
TCO/ROI Tools X X X
Technical Briefs X X X
Tradeshows X
Webcasts X X
Websites X X X
White Papers X X X X
Search Engines X X X X X
Which Assets Can We Realistically Personify ?

7. Align Priorities to Sales and Buyer Needs:
Marketing needed to deliver more Stage 4 opportunities.
Results from interviews impacting content strategy in Stages 0 to 4.
“80% of our research is done before contacting short-list.”
“Gartner & relevant customer references are key.”
“Don’t be pushy. Don’t call me unless I agree. Emails are fine.
-- but ideally not from marketing.”
“Get back to me within 8 hours of a call.”
“Send me info based on our conversation – nothing generic.”
“Send me info based on my role i.e. LOB, Technical, C-Level.”
“Give me tools. Make it easy for me to champion internally.”

8. Align Persona Content to Buyer Journey
& Track Engagement by Sales Stage:
Define
Need
Research Eval Validate Purchase
Buyer
Journey
Sales
Stages
Awareness Consideration Decision
Content
Groups

9. Keep it Simple:
Stage : 1 2 3 4 7 $
MQL SAL SQL
Interested Access to Agreement to Eval in Order
Valid Opp. Primary DM Hold Formal Progress Processing
Influencers Eval Mtg.
Ave. Acct-based
Engagement
Score 1134 1457 1678 1987 3040 2591
Ave. # of Contacts 2 3 5 7 16 22
Key Content Website
Engaged with Webinars
Between Stages Email Nurtures
0 – 4 Events
Tracked Sales PDFs

10. Results of Tracked “Personified” Content
Tracked PDF Clickthroughs
increased from 9% to 17%
By Stage 4, ave. acct.-based
engagement scores
increased 16% from 1987 to
2304.
Anticipate that more engaged
prospects will correlate to
better win rates & shorter
sales cycles.

11. Take-Aways
 Continuously engage with customers, sales, product and other
stakeholders. Personas can change so don’t “set it and forget it.”
 Persona Marketing is a clear win for Sales Enablement – but
before you apply it to a marketing content strategy, be sure you
are “measurably” solving a prioritized problem.
 Score content that is aligned to the buyer journey and tracked
through the sales stages.
 Routinely report on engagement metrics. Avoid vanity metrics.
 After tightening up process and content , fill the funnel with look-
alike personas.

12. CONTACT INFO:
JEFF KOSTERMANS
JEFF.KOSTERMANS@REACHANALYTICS.COM
CELL: 925.771.0712
April 2015