Case Study Verint Systems – Buyer Persona

“We actually turned our marketing upside down,” says Marije Gould, Vice President Marketing EMEA for Verint Systems. “It’s not about continuously pushing what we do, how we can help, what we can solve. It’s about first listening and discovering which needs a customer has. Otherwise our message may be irrelevant for him.” The first step towards ‘listening’ was made by SPOTONVISION creating buyer insights across 5 European countries. With these insights a new foundation was created to develop a customized content marketing strategy.

How did you create these buyer insights?

“Offering relevant information means having real insights into the buyer journey and the interests of all those involved in the process. Verint invested in a buyer persona project with SPOTONVISION to discover exactly what these insights were. A challenging exercise because of the quantity of interviews across borders in 5 different languages. This gave the analysis an extra dimension. For each buyer we determined:

• Which problems they wish to have solved
• Which information sources they consult
• How their buyer-journey develops”

Verint identified buyer personas for more than just one European country, was one persona not enough?

“In Europe there is no such thing as one buyer. In our markets we have to deal with various cultures and levels of maturity, so we needed to identify these differences. We looked at the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, France and Poland. Executing cross-border interviews gave us a lot of new insights in the maturity of the markets. It specifically gave us insights in the information sources that our buyers consult in the various countries. We now know much better how to adapt our content marketing strategy to the various buyers in the countries.”

What did you find difficult?

“By now Verint knows that our customers follow a long and complicated buying process. Verint supports companies in making crucial decisions, based on complex information. Buyer teams are comprised of representatives from many departments: IT, Customer Services, Operations, Marketing – just to mention a few. That means that our marketing messages must be tailored to meet the various buyers’ needs, knowledge level and information sources. This results in a new marketing approach, putting the customer first instead of our own organization.”

What did this change mean for your marketing team?

“Even the marketing team has been reorganized around the buyer personas. It takes time to reorganize a team. We had to merge two teams into one and we made use of the opportunity to restructure according to the buyer personas. And seeing the appreciation with which our customers received this change, we can argue the logic of the decision.”

How did you like working with SPOTONVISION?

“We had a great click and for us the co-operation was an educational experience. SPOTONVISION made us look in the mirror on what we had been doing for years in our marketing. That was pretty confronting, as we spent a lot of energy and effort in our activities in the past and only now do we realize that we could have been more effective. I’m grateful to the SPOTONVISION team for that.”