Your Buyer Isn’t a Persona

A fictional persona won't tell you why a deal stalled. A business problem will. But for years, B2B marketing teams have built their strategies around buyer personas: "Maggie the Manufacturing Director," "CTO Carl," and "Procurement Paula." These templates are meant to help us empathize. But instead of driving clarity, they often distract us from what buyers actually need.

The result? Content that checks boxes but doesn't create traction. Campaigns that look good on paper but fall flat in the pipeline. Marketers who know who they're talking to but not why that person would care.

The Problem With Personas

Most buyer personas are built to humanize the customer. But in practice, they often oversimplify them.

They rely on:

• Demographics: Job titles, years of experience, company size.
• Aspirational goals: "Wants to innovate," "cares about efficiency."
• Generic traits: "Likes data," "needs stakeholder alignment."

None of these tells you why someone will say yes, no, or not now.

Real buyers act under pressure. A system isn't working, a deadline is approaching, or a budget is about to be cut. They move because they feel risk or see a clear, credible way forward.

On the other hand, persona-based marketing tends to play it safe. It's well-intentioned, but it leads to messaging that's soft around the edges. Professional-sounding, yet unconvincing. It often says the right thing but fails to say anything that matters.

A Better Approach: Problem-First Marketing

Instead of asking, "Who is the buyer?"

Ask: "What's the problem they need to solve—urgently?"

Problem-first marketing flips the strategy:

• You don't start with job titles. You begin with the symptoms buyers are experiencing.
• You don't generalize needs. You pinpoint friction in the business.
• You don't guess at motivations. You uncover the real consequences of inaction.

Example: From Persona-Based to Problem-First

Why Does Problem-based Messaging Work?

Problem-based messaging:

• Creates urgency. A clear problem drives action.
• Builds trust. Buyers don't want more fluff. They want to feel understood.
• Differentiates you. Most competitors talk about features. You're talking impact.

When you align your campaigns, assets, and offers around problem narratives, your lead gen doesn't just attract names. It activates qualified conversations.

How do You Reframe Marketing Around Problems?

Here are the top 5 action items to guide your messaging reframe:

1. Map the top 3–5 buyer pain points.
   • Get specific. Not "inefficiency" but "manual data entry creates reporting delays."
2. Trace those problems to business risk.
   • What's at stake if nothing changes?
3. Audit your messaging.
   • Is it built to describe a person or address a problem?
4. Revise your offers.
   • Make sure each guide, CTA, or asset helps the buyer make progress toward solving the issue.
5. Loop in sales.
   • What objections, blockers, or moments of friction show up in real conversations? Build content around those.

How Problem-First Marketing Fuels Better Campaigns

A problem-first mindset doesn't just improve your copy. It transforms how your campaigns perform.

When your marketing starts with clear, tangible buyer problems:

• Conversion rates improve. Your offers speak to real urgency, not general interest.
• Lead quality increases. Your content attracts buyers who are already wrestling with the issues you solve.
• Campaigns accelerate deals. You're not just building awareness—you're guiding decisions.

Meanwhile, persona-based campaigns tend to generate surface-level engagement:

• High impressions, low action.
• High leads, low intent.
• Polished assets that don't equip sales teams to move deals forward.

If your lead generation isn’t producing qualified conversations, or your pipeline is filled with leads that don’t convert, your messaging may be the problem. It’s likely focused on fictional personas instead of real business challenges.

Problem-first marketing becomes your campaign blueprint:

• Offers are built around decision-stage questions.
• Content maps to operational pain, not demographics.
• Forms, CTAs, and follow-ups guide buyers through the "why now?"—not just the "who are you?"

It's not just smarter messaging. It's a better system for building a pipeline that converts.

A Smarter Way to Market

It's time to retire the imaginary buyer with a clever name and a vague job description.

When you build your marketing around urgent business problems, you don't just generate leads. You create clarity. You make it easier for buyers to start conversations, make decisions, and champion change inside their organizations.

The best-performing B2B lead generation campaigns today don't start with personas. They begin with questions like:

• What's holding our buyer back from taking action?
• What problem is costing them time, money, or trust?
• How do we give them a credible path forward?

That's the shift from marketing that speaks about the buyer to marketing that works for the buyer.