The Importance of Buyer Personas and 5 Steps to Create Them
Content marketing is a hot buzzword these days and with great reason. Companies have seen the proven benefit of content marketing. According to a survey on Yahoo Finance, companies are now using content marketing to drive sales (88%), grow customer referrals (83%), and build a customer base (75%).
So you realize the importance of Content Marketing and you want to create something that’s interesting for your audience with the hope of gaining their trust and ultimately their business. Do you just sit down and start writing? If that’s the route you take, you’re skipping a crucial step.
There’s a saying that goes "Creating content for everyone, resonates for no one.” This statement is 100% true. Great content connects with your user’s identity, emotions, and gives them relevant information.
These three elements aren’t just something you can know how to tap into without really getting to know your audience. This is achieved by creating personas and buyer journeys.
So what is a 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.
Step 1
Layout the relevant demographic information and format them into questions that you can ask real people. Think about the following:
- Background (Career? Education? Family?)
- Demographics (Age? Gender? Location? Income?)
- Identifiers (Communication preferences?)
- What are the goals and challenges they face?
Step 2
Conduct Interviews with a sample of people. There’s a variety of sources you can use to get data from including:
- Current customers (both happy and unhappy)
- Prospects
- Former customers
- Your sales teams
- Your customer service teams
- Survey Data
Step 3:
Create the buyer journey
Write a story of several people that fit into your target. Be sure to use a real name, picture and quote of something they might say in addition to all the demographic information above. Here are some examples to get the creative juices flowing.
Step 4
Develop your messaging strategy using the data. With the information that you gained from the interviews and the buyer journeys you created you can really start to hone in on some of the key elements that will shape the story you tell.
- What can you do to help your personal achieve their goals and overcome your challenges?
- Think about the potential objections and why they may not want to buy your product/service.
Step 5
Review your selected audience’s preferred content medium. Are they business focused and primarily receiving their information from LinkedIn? Are they younger teens who spend their time clicking through links in instagram? How are they consuming information and what sort of information is relevant/interesting to them?
Now that you have laid out the foundation, you’re ready to start creating interesting and relevant content to your targeted audience. Happy writing!