Stop Personalizing by Persona, Start by Responsibility

Personas Aren’t People

Marketers love personas.

They give structure. They simplify complexity. They let you say things like “this campaign is for CIOs” and feel strategic.

But here’s the problem: Personas don’t do the buying. People with responsibilities do.

A “VP of Operations” at a logistics startup handles entirely different tasks than a “VP of Operations” at a manufacturing conglomerate. Same title. Same persona. Completely different challenges, KPIs, and influence paths.

If your content is built around persona labels and not the actual responsibilities behind them, it won’t resonate, no matter how polished your personalization looks.

The Limits of Persona-Based Personalization

Persona-based marketing assumes homogeneity. It says:

• “All CISOs care about security risk”

• “All CFOs care about cost reduction”

• “All Heads of Marketing want pipeline”

And while these may be broadly true, they ignore:

• Company stage and business model

• Regional and regulatory nuances

• Internal ownership and team structure

• Specific quarterly or annual goals

For example:

• A CFO at a private equity-backed firm may care more about EBITDA optics than operational cost savings

• A CISO in healthcare might prioritize HIPAA audit readiness over broader risk frameworks

• A VP of HR in a high-churn industry likely thinks differently than one in a unionized environment

This is where most ABM content collapses. It speaks to personas, not to problems tied to responsibility.

Why Responsibility > Persona

At Dynamic Drift, we believe real personalization happens when you build for what the person actually owns, influences, or executes, not what their title implies.

That means we look at:

• Job descriptions, not just titles

• Org structures, not just departments

• Decision patterns, not just influence diagrams

• Initiatives and ownership, not just vertical segmentation

We don’t ask: “What does a Head of Procurement care about?”We ask: “What is this specific Head of Procurement being measured on this quarter?”

How We Apply This at Dynamic Drift

Every landing page and content asset we create starts with mapped responsibility sets, not static personas. Here’s how we do it:

Step 1: Role Research

We pull real job descriptions from hiring portals, LinkedIn, and internal profiles across accounts. This gives us the actual verbs of their job, not assumptions.

Step 2: Company Context

We overlay structure. Is this a flat org or heavily layered? Centralized or distributed? Who owns cross-functional decisions?

Step 3: Goal Mapping

We study signals such as hiring patterns, new leadership, and tech changes to understand what this role is likely being measured on right now.

Step 4: Narrative Adaptation

Each asset is rewritten to reflect this. If a role is driving internal buy-in, we position content to help them “sell up.” If they’re leading implementation, we frame benefits through rollout efficiency.

The Difference in Action

Let’s compare how typical ABM personalization stacks up:

Tactic	Persona-Based Approach	Responsibility-Based Approach
Title	"Whitepaper for CISOs"	"A Practical Guide for Building SOC2 Readiness Before Q4 Audit"
CTA	“See how our platform helps CISOs manage risk”	“Compare how firms like yours reduced audit delays by 3 months”
Messaging	General risk, compliance themes	Direct reflection of their team’s job scope
Outcome	Passive interest	Actionable traction and relevance

This is why responsibility-based personalization doesn’t just improve engagement. It increases conversion quality.

How This Changes Results

One recent campaign targeted Heads of Procurement across global manufacturing firms. Instead of sending them a PDF titled “The Future of Procurement Automation,” we created:

• Role-specific intros based on their sourcing responsibility

• Real examples based on whether they owned direct or indirect spend

• CTAs aligned to internal influence, not external action

Outcome:

• 3X higher click-to-conversion rate

• More qualified conversations

• A pipeline opportunity that closed within the quarter

Because the content felt relevant. Not to a persona, but to a real person doing a real job.

Conclusion: Personas Are a Starting Point, Not a Strategy

B2B marketing needs to evolve past job titles and surface assumptions.If you want personalization that works, focus on the responsibilities behind the role, not just the role itself.

That’s how we build every asset at Dynamic Drift.Not around who someone is on paper, but around what they are accountable for in reality.

Because real personalization starts with relevance. And relevance starts with responsibility.