B2B Content Show: A Podcast About the How, What, and Why of B2B Content Marketing · Jeremy Shere

The value of importance of "buystander" personas w/Matthew Lewsadder

·27 min·1 clip

A data-center team had 10x compute density, half the cost, and still lost deals because operations leaders feared liquid on servers.

1. B2B Content Show discusses Matthew Lewsadder’s “bystander personas” for out-of-market B2B audiences. 2. Jeremy Shearer hosts the show, and Matthew Lewsadder is founder and CEO of Bright Tail, a B2B demand marketing agency. 3. The episode asks whether marketers can understand the 95% of a market that is not buying and use that insight to create demand. 4. Lewsadder says bystander personas tell marketers “why people aren’t buying,” not just what motivates buyers. 5. He says the process starts by interviewing people who are not buying, unlike standard buyer personas that focus on active buyers. 6. He lists the real cost of change as implementation costs, action costs, energy costs, stakeholder buy-in, and opportunity costs. 7. He says buyers and bystanders will not change until the cost of delay outweighs the cost of change. 8. He adds that bystanders often have different success factors, such as KPIs, OKRs, and bonus structures, which can keep them focused on the status quo. 9. He says bystanders are usually focused on other pains and priorities that they see as more urgent than the marketer’s problem. 10. He says sources of influence matter because bystanders are not yet searching Google for a solution. 11. Lewsadder explains that the term “bystander” is spelled B-U-Y stander to suggest people are standing by, not buying yet. 12. He says some out-of-market audiences may never buy, may choose a different category, or may wait for a better-fit solution. 13. He uses a liquid-cooling data-center case study to show how a strong product can still lose deals inside an account. 14. In that case, the technology promised 10x compute density, half the cost, and half the power consumption. 15. The C-suite liked the idea, but data-center operations leaders cared about uptime and feared liquid leaking into servers. 16. Lewsadder says the team repositioned the product around minimal operational risk and a bolt-on rollout, which unblocked deals. 17. Jeremy presses on whether demand can really be created before buyers are ready, and Lewsadder says category creators prove that it can. 18. Lewsadder cites Salesforce, Slack, and Drift as companies that used storytelling to turn the status quo into a visible problem. 19. The tone is interview-driven and practical, with back-and-forth examples and frequent references to marketing strategy. 20. People working in B2B demand generation and content strategy will get the most out of it; listeners wanting entertainment rather than marketing frameworks may skip it.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from B2B Content Show: A Podcast About the How, What, and Why of B2B Content Marketing