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Do you know whom you are addressing when you create marketing content for your business? Do you know what types of offers are appropriate for the different audiences you are targeting? If you do not know the answers to these questions, you need to determine who your target readers are by creating buyer personas.
You cannot be everything to everyone. Buyer personas provide a detailed picture of your target audience, so you can create content that speaks directly to your intended readers. Follow these 5 steps to create buyer personas that help you fine-tune your content marketing efforts.
1. Determine who your ideal client is
The central focus of any business is to find customers, sell products and services to those customers, and satisfy them so that they buy from you again. The more clarity you have regarding who your ideal client is, the more effective and focused your content marketing efforts will be. Define who the ideal clients are for the products and services you sell, defining their education level, occupation, and socioeconomic status. Other traits that you may want to consider include daily activities and personal qualities.
2. Identify your clients’ needs and pain points
Your products and services are designed to address your target audience’s needs and pain points. Identify the problems your ideal client is facing, what their most pressing needs are, and how these issues affect them in their daily lives.
3. Determine how you will solve your clients’ problems and meet their needs
Now that you know what problems your clients are facing, define solutions to these. What specific products and services do you offer that will pique your clients’ interest and meet their needs?
4. Find out how your clients get information
In order to deliver content to your target audience, you will need to know how and where they consume information. Do they conduct research on websites? Do they read blogs? Do they look at product reviews? Do they use social media? Determine how your ideal clients get information, so you can then develop content that is appropriate for those channels.
5. Develop specific personas for each group
If you sell multiple products and services to different audiences, develop a buyer persona for each of them because you will have to engage with them differently. Each target group has unique needs and interests. You can create a template and fill it out for each buyer persona. The template might include fields like title, occupation, age, daily activities, needs, and drivers.
If you are targeting B2B clients, create personas for each stage of the buying process, such as initiator, influencer, decision maker, buyer, and user. The initiator is the first person your company interacts with. This person may be interested in general content that describes their problems and proposes a solution, such as white papers and reports. The decision maker is someone who does not enter the buying process until the last stage, so this person would likely be interested in case studies, product comparisons, and other product-specific content.
Try making the personas you develop as personal as possible by giving them unique names and using images. Creating descriptive personas will also help people in your organization relate to them better. You may want to train different groups within your organization to teach them about the different personas you are targeting and why.
Creating personas is important because it allows you to segment your target audience and create stronger marketing campaigns. Follow the steps above to create your very own buyer personas and empower your content marketing efforts.