In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss the problem with buyer personas and how to master B2B marketing with smarter audience targeting. You’ll learn the critical differences between ideal customer profiles and buyer personas—and why using both transforms your strategy. You’ll discover how to ethically leverage AI and data to identify hidden pain points before prospects even recognize them. You’ll explore practical frameworks to align your content with every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to retention. You’ll gain actionable tactics to avoid common pitfalls and turn casual viewers into loyal buyers. Watch now to revolutionize how you connect with your audience!
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Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.
Christopher S. Penn – 00:00
In this week’s In-Ear Insights, let’s talk about buyer personas in B2B marketing—how AI is affecting them and why.
Actually, I want to dig into this, Katie, and I want your take. What’s the difference to you between an ideal customer profile and a buyer persona? A lot of people use those terms interchangeably, but they may or may not mean the same thing. What’s your take?
Katie Robbert – 00:28
I can understand why people use them interchangeably because there’s this notion that it’s some kind of representation of somebody who would eventually purchase something from you. In that sense, they are the same. The nuance—at least the way I break them out—is an ideal customer profile covers awareness and consideration, whereas a buyer persona covers purchase and the stages beyond that.
The challenge I see in B2B marketing is many people create buyer personas, which is great, but there are assumptions baked in that this person already fully understands the problem and that you can solve it for them.
If you’re using your buyer persona to do a content strategy—to create content or evaluate your marketing—you’ve already skipped over awareness and consideration. You’re at the buying stage now.
When we beta-tested our ideal customer profile service, our friend Brooke Sellis from B Squared gave us her buyer persona playbook to compare against the ICP we built. That’s where we saw the disconnect—her playbook assumed everyone was already in the pipeline and knew the problem.
Our ICP analysis is meant to help marketers approach people who may not even know there’s a problem yet. You create content that resonates so when they *do* identify the problem, they enter your buyer’s journey. The ICP gets to them before that.
The challenge with buyer personas is they focus too much on someone already knowing what’s wrong and looking for a solution. In marketing, 99% of the time, they don’t know there’s a problem—or they know but don’t know how to solve it.
Christopher S. Penn – 02:50
Let me put on my annoying CMO hat: “I only care about buyers. I need ROI on this marketing. Forget the ICP—what do you say to that?”
Katie Robbert – 03:10
I bust out the funnel and show how it works top-down. Rarely—depending on your service—does someone go from unaware to buying overnight.
The top of the funnel is awareness: people need to know you exist. Then consideration: they need to know what you do and why they should care. Then purchase. Even if you demand immediate ROI, people still need to know you exist. You need awareness marketing to say, “We solve this problem.”
You also need to connect with buyers emotionally—show their problem can be solved quickly by you. To the CMO, I’d say: “To get people to buy quickly, we must demonstrate we solve their problems *and* help them identify those problems.”
You still need awareness and consideration—but phrase it in terms the CMO will approve.
Christopher S. Penn – 04:55
Should the ICP include non-eligible buyers?
Katie Robbert – 05:04
Yes—if they’re not eligible today because of budget, service misalignment, or partnerships. Your ICP shouldn’t include everyone, but you can layer it: exact matches first, then adjacent roles like managers or individual contributors. People in an organization have influence even if they’re not decision-makers.
Christopher S. Penn – 06:24
Influencers won’t buy but can spread awareness. Do we need an “ideal audience profile” for non-buyers who connect us to future buyers?
Katie Robbert – 06:53
Absolutely. Influencer marketing isn’t dead—it’s word-of-mouth. Engage communities and networks. If you’re not creating evergreen content for broader audiences, you’ll miss referrals like, “I don’t need this, but my friend does.”
Christopher S. Penn – 08:00
Does the ICP or buyer persona include top-of-funnel marketing, or do we need a separate profile?
Katie Robbert – 08:13
It’s part of the ICP. For Trust Insights, our ICP includes general pain points, specific pain points, and decision-making indicators—like a company posting 10 new data science jobs or a CEO prioritizing digital transformation. These insights help you be there with helpful information when they’re ready to act.
Christopher S. Penn – 09:15
How do you differentiate an ICP from a role-play persona? For example, my ICP might be “CEO of small consulting firms”—but a persona includes details like owning a dog.
Katie Robbert – 09:47
Deep research and generative AI can go beyond demographics. We analyze LinkedIn profiles of past and ideal customers to build richer ICPs. For lifestyle insights, use public social data (ethically!). If my Instagram bio says “dog lover,” you might tie content to pets to resonate.
Christopher S. Penn – 13:34
Tools like Gemini can analyze public images for qualitative data—but where’s the line between effective and creepy?
Katie Robbert – 13:58
Use the 5P Framework: Purpose, People, Process, Platform, Performance. Start with *why*. If your purpose is deeper personalization, then curated lifestyle data makes sense. At Trust Insights, we share animal-related content because our team loves pets—it’s authentic. Don’t collect data just to say you did.
Christopher S. Penn – 16:21
Scrape ethically. For B2B, LinkedIn data is better than generic social scraping. Use the CASINO framework for deep research: Context, Audience, Scope, Intent, Narrative, Outcome. Structure reports around these to avoid noise.
Katie Robbert – 19:47
Buyer personas fall short by hyper-focusing on individuals. Pair them with ICPs that analyze broader segments. Use tools like NotebookLM to query a 100-page ICP and build actionable strategies.
Christopher S. Penn – 22:31
Should ICPs include retention? “Buyer” excludes post-purchase, but retaining customers is critical.
Katie Robbert – 22:43
Yes—expand the ICP to cover the full journey. Retention requires different channels (e.g., customer portals vs. social media). Build infrastructure to execute retention strategies, not just transactional outreach.
Christopher S. Penn – 25:24
A robust ICP covering the entire lifecycle ensures content benefits both prospects and customers. For small teams, this avoids siloed efforts.
Katie Robbert – 26:12
Structure your ICP with sections for each journey phase. Use the 5Ps to align platforms and metrics—e.g., if your audience is on Facebook but you’re only on LinkedIn, adjust.
Christopher S. Penn – 27:15
Machines handle large ICPs easily. A 100-page document is trivial for modern AI. Use tools like NotebookLM to query deep research on 10 ideal companies and uncover patterns.
Katie Robbert – 28:16
Feed your ICP into NotebookLM to build mind maps and strengthen strategies. More data = better insights.
Christopher S. Penn – 28:56
Join our free Slack group, Trust Insights AI Analytics for Marketers, with 4,000+ professionals. Visit TrustInsights.ai/podcast for all episodes.
Katie Robbert – 29:02
Thanks for tuning in!
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Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.
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