In this article, Bryter Senior Insight Consultant Rob Jones, reflects on his years working on B2B persona projects.
If I were to point to a single tool that has helped B2B business decision makers align on strategy (depending on the research question), and helped bring business ambition to life more consistently than any other, it’s got to be buyer personas.
Not the laminated kind that get wheeled out at away days and forgotten by Monday. I mean living, breathing personas — I know many business I have worked with have their B2B personas hanging as posters on the walls of offices, ready for a quick reference. This is what we want to get to with personas, it's the kind that sales teams name-check on calls. The kind that shapes product roadmaps. The kind that make complex decisions feel a little simpler, because everyone’s finally talking about the same customer (usually with a handy and memorable name).
That’s what we do at Bryter. We help organisations connect the dots between market complexity and internal clarity — and personas are one of the best ways to do that, with the goal to supercharging business growth.
Scattered knowledge > shared understanding
One thing I’ve noticed in almost every persona project: our clients already know a lot. Product teams have customer feedback. Sales teams have war stories. Marketers have campaign data. But often, well usually, that knowledge lives in separate places with owners of that knowledge unaware of what else is know. Personas are the tool to bring all that disparate knowledge and information together, where it can be most useful.
So, what do we actually do? Well we start by understanding the B2B audience landscape — either qualitatively through interviews and workshops, or quantitatively through segmentation. Sometimes (and most helpfully) both. Then, together with our clients, we look beyond the surface-level labels — “enterprise buyer,” “IT lead,” “SMB owner” — and go deeper, much deeper:
- What pressures are they under?
- What do they want from a supplier?
- What keeps them up at night — and what gets them promoted?
This process is always collaborative, and it’s always revealing. There’s usually a moment when something clicks — when the team sees their audience not just as a role or a number, but as a person. That’s when we know we’re on to something powerful.
Personas as clarity engines
In the wider insights world, we often talk about personas as being a bridge between insight and action. But honestly, in my experience, they’re more like an engine.
A well-built persona sharpens positioning. It gives marketing teams a reference point for tone of voice, creative choices, and channel mix. It gives product teams direction on what to prioritise and (importantly) why. It even helps the C-suite sense-check whether strategic bets really align with customer needs, because if not, what are we doing?
Some of my favourite client moments have come from this: when a persona helps unlock a decision that had been circling for months. Suddenly, a “maybe” becomes a confident “yes.” Not because it’s easier, but because it’s clearer.
That clarity doesn’t come from guesswork. It comes from insight — insight that our clients have been brave enough to seek out, listen to, and act on. That openness is what makes the work meaningful.
Aligning teams around a shared customer view
That's when you get to the biggest hidden wins from personas: helping teams get on the same page — literally and figuratively.
When everyone is working from a shared, well-evidenced understanding of who the customer is, it eliminates a lot of friction. Suddenly, sales, marketing, product and leadership aren’t debating opinion — they’re working from insight.
We’ve seen clients use personas to harmonise content strategies across regions, tighten alignment between demand gen and product marketing, and improve cross-functional collaboration in launch planning. That kind of coherence is powerful. It saves time, reduces misfires, and makes the B2B customer experience more consistent end-to-end.
Best of all, it gives teams a renewed sense of purpose — because they’re not just delivering outputs, they’re building something for someone they understand.
Clients lead the way — we just help them get there
What’s especially rewarding is that more and more businesses are starting to embrace this. There’s a shift happening.
The clients we work with aren’t treating B2B customer understanding as an afterthought. They’re leading with it. They’re asking better questions. They’re pushing for richer insight. And they’re using personas not to simplify reality, but to make sense of it.
In every project, we see how insight leads to energy. When teams understand their buyers, they stop second-guessing. They stop defaulting to generic. They start creating things that fit. Products that serve real needs. Messages that resonate. Campaigns that don’t just land, but connect.
That’s not just exciting — it’s effective.
Measuring what matters: how personas drive performance
For all the creativity and collaboration that goes into persona development, I know that business leaders also want to see something else: results.
That’s something we’re passionate about at Bryter — not just building great personas, but making sure they deliver genuine commercial impact.
Time and again, we’ve seen the ripple effect that happens when buyer personas are done right. Conversion rates improve because messaging becomes sharper. Sales cycles shorten because reps can tailor their pitch more effectively. B2B customer satisfaction increases because product teams are prioritising the right features for the right people — at the right time.
Those results don’t happen by accident. They come from putting in the work — listening carefully, thinking deeply, and always coming back to the same question: What does our B2B customer really need from us?
When businesses ask that — and act on the answer — the performance tends to follow.
Bringing personas off the page
The best persona projects don’t end in a PowerPoint. They start conversations. They travel through teams. They get stuck on walls and cited in stand-ups.
We help clients create tangible outputs that make personas easy to use and hard to ignore. That might be visual profiles, posters, magazines, interactive toolkits, short films, or playbooks packed with messaging guidance.
The goal: not just visibility, but impact. When personas become part of the daily language, they stop being a nice-to-have and start being a competitive advantage.
Fuel for future planning
Personas aren’t just about what’s happening now — they’re a tool for what comes next.
A well-constructed persona doesn’t just reflect current needs. It gives clues about what those needs will be in the future. What’s changing in the buyer’s environment? What trends are reshaping their goals? What frustrations are bubbling under the surface that your next innovation could solve?
That future lens makes personas even more valuable. They stop being snapshots and become storyboards — helping teams anticipate, not just react.
Why this work keeps us curious
B2B personas might not sound glamorous from the outside. But the truth is, they’re endlessly interesting. Every new project means a new audience to learn about, a new set of internal dynamics to navigate, and a new team to collaborate with.
It’s part research, part storytelling, part strategy. And when it clicks, the value is immediate.
I stay in this work not just because of the insight, but because of the people — especially the clients. The ones who lean in. Who stay curious. Who are bold enough to say, “we don’t know our buyers as well as we should — help us change that.”
That’s the kind of brief we’ll always say yes to.
Conclusion
For us at Bryter, personas aren’t the end goal — they’re the foundation. A shared language. A decision-making lens. A spark for bigger thinking. When done well, they don’t just sit in a slide deck — they fuel alignment, unlock creativity, and drive performance across the business.
It’s been a privilege to partner with clients who are brave enough to look inward, curious enough to dig deeper, and ambitious enough to act on what they find. That’s what makes persona work so rewarding: it doesn’t just describe customers — it changes how organisations serve them. And that shift, when it happens, is always worth it.
To read more about how market research services key sector like healthcare and pharmaceuticals, technology, gaming and B2B markets read our article Bryter - Applications of B2B Market Research
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