Use Buyer Personas to Guide Your Content Marketing

We previously wrote about how to create buyer personas here. In simple terms, buyer personas represent real buyers who influence or make decisions about purchasing your products or services, but creating buyer personas is just the beginning. The next step is using these buyer personas to form your content marketing strategy. In a Corporate Executive Board study of more than 1,400 B2B customers, customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a typical purchasing decision researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, among other things, before even having a conversation with a supplier. Researching and reading informational content online is an important part of the decision making process for many buyers in the digital age.

Great content is capable of convincing potential buyers that they need your product or service, without ever making them feel like they are being sold to.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to content marketing. In order for a piece of content to be successful, it has to speak to a specific person and address his or her particular needs. Your content ought to reflect a deep understanding of your audience and where they are in the buying cycle. Your buyers should serve as a source of insight that will set your content apart from that of your competitors.

Let Your Buyers Guide You! Potential buyers seek out and consume your marketing materials because they are looking for a solution to a problem or because they are evaluating different options on the market. Therefore, your content needs to be easy for potential buyers to find and provide them with the answers they seek. Your content has to help readers see that your products or services will solve their problems and make their lives easier. After you gain a thorough understanding of your buyers and develop detailed personas for them, you have to create appropriate messages for them at each stage of the buying process. Depending on where your buyers are in the buying process, you may need to provide them with content that does the following:

• Raises awareness: Your content should raise awareness about your company’s offerings and let them know that you provide solutions to their problems.
• Demonstrates your expertise: Your content should demonstrate your company’s knowledge and expertise and differentiate it from the competition.
• Compels readers to take action: Provide potential buyers with all of the information they need to make a purchase decision.

Buyer personas take the guesswork out of content marketing because they reveal what your target audience wants to hear from you and when.

You can use buyer personas to inform what you say and how you say it in your content. Simply think about your buyers’ questions and keep your buyers’ needs in mind as you write. If your buyer personas are well developed, you can improve the chances of your target buyers reading your content and being persuaded. As buyers move through each stage of the buying process, they will learn more about the issues that they need to resolve.

Get clear on exactly what buyers want to know at each step of the buying process.

Your content should give readers confidence that they are on the right track and address the ideas they have about the problems they face. Buyer personas are the foundation of your content marketing strategy. If you need help creating buyer personas or require assistance in developing and executing a content roadmap, get in touch with Business Fluid today for more information about our solutions!