What the hell is a value archetype

Ethan Bresnahan
Aug 8, 2017 · 5 min read

Your content needs more empathy than a buyer persona.

I’d like to tell you about Mary the marketer — Mary is 27, lives in Boston, and is a content marketer. She’s strapped for time because she doesn’t have a large team to create content, but wants to see her content do well. Oh, and one more thing…

Mary doesn’t exist.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

The definition of a buyer persona paints a picture of your ideal customer. The creation of a buyer persona demands that you examine your product, your market, your existing and/or potential customers.

At Boost Linguistics, we’ve been using buyer personas since we had the information to do so — we conducted potential customer interviews, we examined at the industry, and we extrapolated the goals and hurdles that our customers have to leap.

Employees are people too

Looking at the multitude of posts about how to create a buyer persona and what to do with it, I was struck by something — the concept hinges on the job, not the person. Sure, we stick a name at the beginning for reference but beyond that it is all focused on the person as an employee: What is their job title? What KPI’s do they rely on most? What does they workday look like?

With the rise of the gig economy, we are left with a methodology that is no longer effective.

In the age of the gig economy, your goals should be to connect with the individual, not the cog in the corporate machine.

Ironically, the buyer persona framework is based in a selling mindset rather than a buying one. Mark Leslie wrote a piece for the First Round Review outlining the difference between a product that is bought versus one that is sold using toothpaste and a jet engine as examples:

Something interesting is happening today. Products that were once sold are shifting into a buying mentality. SAP, the epitome of ‘sold’ SaaS products (one that requires a salesforce to sell it, consultants to set it up, and a service-force to provide 1:1 support when something goes wrong — all very high touch) has begun shifting their products into the cloud. Rather than spending months working to set up a new SAP product, a customer can simply buy a product online with little setup. SAP is one of many examples of companies that have leveraged the cloud to make their offerings far less setup intensive, allowing customers to buy a product rather than having to go out and sell it.

How does a buyer perona fit into this new buying-centric world order? Well, it doesn’t per se.

Now we’re stuck with a framework that is based on principles that we no longer use — one based on an employee as a cog in the corporate machine, not a person who happens to hold the job title.

If we take the concept of jobs as a collection of tasks, there are certain individuals who are better suited for or enjoy those tasks more than others. Therefore it stands to reason that there is a select group of mindsets that are attracted to any given job.

Now, think about a product and who that company is targeting in their buyer persona. The foundational piece of a buyer persona is a job, if we take the principle that there is a finite group of mindsets that that job appeals to, then each type of mindset can see a different form of value in a product that we’re trying to sell.

Enter the Value Archetype

Rather than building off of a customer as an employee, the Value Archetype framework is predicated on the idea that we just discussed: there is a finite number of ways a customer can perceive value in your product.

A product is sold to a company, its bought by an individual.

Think back to highschool art class — the teacher had the class sit around a table, placed an object in the middle, and then asked you to draw it. Low and behold, each drawing was different because each student focused on a different aspect of the object.

Your product is the object, and your customers are the budding young Picassos.

Think about how many unique ways a potential customer could tell a friend or colleague about your product. What excites each mindset about your product? What concerns do they have about it?

Building on those questions, think about why a person with this mindset would see and emphasize this value. What do they like about their job? What hobbies do they have? All of these questions are in one persuit — what is the thought process of each type?

Rather than creating a profile that solely focuses on the rational part of your customers’ thought process (only 20% of the decision process according to Marketing Profs), you can build a hollistic archetype that gives you insight into the feelings of your customers (80% of the buying process).

Applying the value archetype

Initially the value archetype model appears to be uniquely product centric in the world of inbound. Your means to developing an archetype is centered around your product. However, using the value archetype model as a foundation allows you to explore new avenues in your ideation process.

Your value archetype helps you create content to preemptively respond to concerns that your potential customers have based on their mindset. You will be able to build content around the interests of your potential customers, appealing to their interests rather than only focusing on a small portion of who they are (day job).

A value archetype helps you speak the language of your customers. Not the industry specific jargon that plagues marketing materials today. Rather, you can use the knowledge of what excites your target customers to speak their language and convey your product’s value in language that they not only understand but resonate with on an emotional level.

Boost Linguistics

The content marketer’s AI solution — Official Blog

Thanks to Jeff Nowak

Ethan Bresnahan

Written by

🔒 ✍️ 👀 🗣 | Boston

Boost Linguistics

The content marketer’s AI solution — Official Blog

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