There are online businesses that run for several years but don’t know how to create a buyer persona or what exactly it means! However, it doesn’t imply that they are stabbing in the dark. Perhaps they are unknowingly following some strategy which is almost similar to concentrating on buyer persona.
A buyer persona is “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” – HubSpot
However, if you know how to create a buyer persona and how to use it in your inbound marketing content strategy, your digital marketing campaigns would be far more balanced.
Inbound marketing is all about connecting with your customer base. A strong and successful inbound marketing content strategy starts with a fully developed buyer persona.
Buyer persona and inbound marketing content strategy
Most of the marketers struggle when they start creating buyer personas for their businesses. And, the most common complaint they raise is “All customers are different and unique in their own way”. Of course, their argument is true too!
Remember, a perfect inbound marketing strategy does much more than boost website traffic. Successful development and implementation of inbound strategy largely depend upon how well you have created your buyer persona. If you have not yet dealt with it for your online business, you should implement it NOW.
Tips to Create Buyer Persona for your Online BusinessCLICK TO TWEET
1. Identify your best customers
However, vast your business is or whatever ranges of services you cater too, somewhere you have to begin with creating a persona for your business.
You can start with identifying best customers from whom you can get the best margin and who are comparatively easy to win. Pen down their details: starting from their age group, gender, education level, purchasing power, interests, hobbies, etc.
These details form the outline of your buyer persona.
“Too often, Buyer Profiles are nothing more than an attractive way to display obvious or demographic data.” ― Adele Revella
2. Figure out general pain points of your customers
This is regarding how they finalize their buying decisions. This is the second step in creating personas. A pain point is a touchpoint in the customer that creates frustration for him/her while making the buying decision.
Based on the outline derived in the first step, figure out the pain points they might consider while making buying decisions. Do they focus on cost, quality, reputation, or any other parameter?
For all possible questions, ask yourself ‘WHY” and come up with the best-fit answer. Once you get these basic answers, you will get a pretty good basic awareness of their pain points and how to deal with it.
QL Tech Tip: Once you identify the entire customer negative touchpoints i.e. pain points, you can improve them with positive moments of truth.
3. Conduct interviews and dive into extensive research
This step largely depends on your availability of time and flexibility of budget. If you are not getting the perfect questions or their answers, you can opt for conducting interviews. It is indeed costly but worthy! In case, your budget is flexible, you can offer them some FREEbies or incentives so that they turn up for interviews.
In case there is a budget restriction or deficit time to conduct interviews, opt for surveys.
4. Walk in the shoes of your persona
When writing for a specific buyer persona, you need to approach industry to speak and jargon lightly.
Daniel Reed, Creative Director at Square 2 Marketing
After knowing the above details, generic features and pain points of your personas, you need to put your leg in their shoe. It means to try to get into the character of your prospective buyer. This will enable you to plan and craft a content that connects with them personally and professionally.
B2b Buyer Persona Elements
For a B2B buyer persona, Liz Smyth, Marketing Director EMEA, Marketo recommends the following elements:
- Persona summary and basic details
- Job details and their likes/dislikes
- Sources where your persona does his or her research
- Primary and secondary goals
- Challenges and pain points
- Preferred content medium
- Quotes related to insights gathered during interviews
- Anticipated objections during the sales process
- Role and influence in the purchase process
- A marketing message that speaks directly to this persona
Killer reasons why you need to create a buyer persona
Till now, we learned how to create a buyer persona for your business. Let us understand why it is imperative for your business:
1. Help you define your audience
A well-defined buyer persona helps a marketer to identify the needs and wants of a prospective buyer.
For example, when you go to a shop to buy a gift for your friend or spouse, it is very easy for you to visualize their needs and wants. Similarly, buyers’ personas help define your audience, their needs and wants.
Honest buyer personas improve your sales pitch, your customer service, and even your product development.
Raka, Director of Inbound Marketing, Brian DeKoning
2. Understanding of buying decisions and stage of the buyer journey
The biggest advantage you get by creating buyer personas is to obtain a thorough acquaintance of buying decisions. It helps you to connect with your customers. With the help of buyer personas for your business, you can provide a general platform for language and communication about buyers.
Through in-depth study and research, you can identify how they arrive at their buying decisions, what all factors they consider, etc. This relevant information will aid you to create relevant content for your target audience. If you know what they are looking for, you can tailor your content in line with their needs and buying patterns. It means selling your products/services without sounding like a salesperson.
3. Create more targeted content and thereby effective content marketing
Every bit of the content that you create as a content marketer is fundamentally based on the buyer persona. It gives you a clear picture of what to create, with whom to connect, and in front of whom to share your content. Rather than blindly creating content and then sharing it haywire, it is vital to define and consider your personas in detail.
Understanding the needs, wants, goals, challenges, etc. of your personas allows you to better understand what type of content will appeal to them. Since you know what is valuable to them, you can target your content towards those values and develop content that is relevant to them.QL Tech Tip: The entire content you develop should be targeted towards at least one of your buyer personas, if not all.
4. Segmentation of email lists
Email marketing is also an old but effective tactic to reach out existing as well as prospective customers. A buyer persona is crucial for creating personalized email marketing campaigns that convert
One study by MarketingSherpa showed a 7% conversion rate for a persona-based campaign.
Your buyer personas play a huge role in the segmentation of your email lists. Email lists that are segmented on the basis of personas help you create more effective and relevant email content.QL Tech Tip: When you ask your website visitor to fill out a form on your site, ensure that you ask their goal of visiting a website. If you know what persona they fit into, you can better segment email lists.
5. Generate better quality leads
Targeted email campaigns enable you to get better quality leads and build better lead nurturing programs targeted at different personas. It means you would be in a better position to cater your marketing to the right people in the right places.
Signing off…!!
To summarise, it can be said that precise research on the potential of buyer insights help to develop an accurate buyer persona. The more researched a buyer persona is, the more effective an organization can accomplish inbound content strategy goals. Buyer personas assist you to create the right content that will efficiently and effectively attract your ideal visitors, convert them into leads, and close them into customers.
If you would like to add anything to the buyer persona and its effectiveness, feel free to drop in your thoughts in the comments section. We’d love to hear from you!