What is your strategy around segmenting buyer personas? What factors do you segment on?

We use segmentation both at the account and contact level since we are a multi-solution company. Start with what problems your solution(s) solve, then determine which people (using title, seniority, department, or other factors), industries, companies, and available TAM from those companies for a specific solution/product would make up your ICP and group them into segments based on that criteria. If you are a single solution company you would still want to segment based on the people criteria above so you can tailor your messaging to the specific persona.

Buyer personas and segmentation is a crucial part of any demand generation strategy to understand who to market to and what messages to deliver to that person. However, I find that the most difficult part of the strategy isn't defining the persona(s) themselves. Rather, making sure you have the correct data to label personas in your systems ends up being the more difficult part of executing and sustaining your strategy.

To answer the question directly, I focus on the following so I can build sets of customers/prospects that either are trying to solve a similar problem, are using a product in a similar way, or are the buyer in purchasing solutions:

• What problem the person deals with (use cases)

• Whether the person is directly involved with the purchase (end user, influencer, decision maker, etc.)

• What the person does (job function and level, job title, team or department, etc.)

• Additional insights (industry, revenue potential, current satisfaction level, etc.)

As I mentioned, the difficulty usually is with the actual data itself to be able to segment using the above criteria. As part of your overall segmentation and buyer persona strategy, make sure that you have processes, tools, and systems that enable continuous data enrichment and data cleansing to make sure that you not only have the persona data but are constantly making sure it is accurate.

Alignment with sales distribution models: sales teams typically slices their segmentation by company size or revenue bands. Marketing should also create strategy based on how sales go to market. Many more mature sales organizations will also have segments by vertical and industry-first GTM varies dramatically by vertical/sub-vertical (i.e. Healthcare GTM is going to look very different than Communications and Media).

If your company segments by company size. I would ensure you have a different strategy for:

1) Enterprise: heavy focus on field events, incorporate ABM against your company's/sales Top Strategic Account, clear strategy on CxO strategies (i.e: how do you nurture relationships via your strategic events and 3rd party? how should you think about executive roundtables and dinners?)

2) Mid-market: similar motion to Enterprise but less costly CxO in person events and ABM will not show up in this segment.

3) SMB: this is about volume and closing deals quickly and get customers in the door and start to upsell/cross-sell when appropriate. Ensure you have a clear strategy to drive leads, optimize digital/website, ensure you are doing everything you can to optimize every stage of the lead>opportunity funnel (i.e: web forms to MQLs, MQLs to valid/sales accepted leads, leads to stage 1 opportunity, and etc).

Before going to market, I believe any strong demand generation practitioner or leader needs the segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) crafted. An STP is a three-part formula to help marketers segment their audience, target the right buyers and/or influencers and position their solutions in a way to make the biggest impact.

An STP will allow demand generation to understand who (company and person) they are targeting and what they are saying to them. Not only that, but it drives alignment between demand generation, product/solution marketing, sales and marketing leadership. Crafting an STP requires collaboration between these groups and (in an ideal world) it is driven based off focus groups, customer conversations and data so that there is confidence in it.

When this fundamental step is skipped, I find that there is misalignment between who we should be going after and what we should be saying to them. The alignment driven by the STP process allows for everyone to be on the same page, demand generation can stay on strategy because there actually is one and demand generation practitioners get confident in who they are targeting and why - leaving less reliance on solution marketing which drives business efficiency.

My guidance would be to research STPs and build your framework out from there.

The most common I would say are company size, company industry, Geo, recent funding, hiring, acquisitions, tech install. Then on lead title, job function, seniority.

My strategy for segmenting buyer personas largely focuses on the problem you are solving for the customer. You have to meet the customer where they are. Based on this information, it will help dictate how you segment your buyers. Here are additional elements to consider:

• Ideal customer profile (ICP): Who is your champion versus your buyer? Depending on the goal of your segmentation, this will be criteria to consider for segmentation.
• Buying behavior: Similar to your ICP, how prospects prefer to make a purchase should be criteria to consider.
• Jobs to be Done (JTBD): This is a popular framework for segmentation. What problems are your customers trying to solve? How can you segment based on this to best serve the customer?
• Go-to-market (GTM) motion: Depending on your GTM motion, you may want to consider the most appropriate way to segment how you speak with your customers. Not all customers have the same concerns, and you need to speak with them in a way that is most helpful to them.