Post on 08-Apr-2017
WHO REALLY IS YOUR BUYER PERSONA?
Using the Customer to Predict your Market Success
http://bit.ly/unfunnel
CONTENT WITH A PURPOSE
Your content may be well-written, accurate and pretty, but if it’s
not written for your MVP (most valuable prospect), you’re not
going to get results.
“Content writing is like sculpting a piece with the
buyer in mind, massaging the thoughts you
want to convey into a shape that the buyer will
like. With well-built buyer personas, this is
relatively easy to accomplish.”
- Buyer Persona Institute, Inc.
WHAT IS A PERSONA?
A persona is a detailed description of a specific person in your target audience; it’s an
archetype of the ideal customer.
The persona goes beyond statistics and demographics to create a picture of the person—
including their goals, behaviours, motivations, preferences, personality traits and limitations.
Challenges Success Criteria
Objectives
Goals
WHAT IS A PERSONA?
The goal of a persona is to gain deeper insights into your target audience. With that
understanding, you can create marketing messages that reach potential customers on a more
personal level.
Effective personas contain a great deal of information about your customer, from demographics
to personal motivations. Anything that influences how the customer thinks about your company
or product is important for the persona.
A ―buyer‖ can be anyone who uses your product or service—buyer personas are equally useful
for B2B and B2C companies. Most companies will have more than one persona; each one
represents a sector of your target market.
WHY YOU NEED PERSONAS?
Team Alignment
When everyone creates experiences targeted to the same
persona, the end-result is more cohesive and powerful.
Personas are common touchstones for all departments.
WHY DO YOU NEED PERSONAS?
Prioritize your Products & Content
In marketing, what’s killer for one person
can be irrelevant to another.
Personas help you create content that
speaks directly to the needs of a specific
person.
Tailored messages are more effective than
content trying to reach everyone at once
WHY DO YOU NEED PERSONAS?
Focus on the Customer
Effective marketing focuses on the needs
of the MVP, not the marketer.
Personas help you reduce the assumptions
about your target audience and focus on
the facts.
Personas help reduce self-reflection in
product development.
WHY DO YOU NEED PERSONAS?
Prioritize your Marketing Efforts
The process of creating personas helps identify your
ideal customer, the sub-segment of your target
audience that’s most important to your business
Personas can help you both qualify leads and
prioritize online marketing strategies
Sales-Ready Lead (SRL)
Qualified
Somewhat Qualified
New Lead
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR PERSONAS
1. Map out your buying process
How are your products purchased?
Who is involved in the purchasing process?
What are their roles in the organization?
Store
Manager
Reseller
Manufacturer
Enterprise
VP
Operations
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR PERSONAS
2. Consider the user’s professional role
What are their day-to-day responsibilities?
What are their unique challenges?
How do they measure success?
Who evaluates them?
What are the risks during the purchasing process?
HOW TO DEVELOP USER PERSONAS
3. Organize and prioritize groups
Who can be grouped together based on similar
needs or preferences?
Who are the key influencers?
Who has the purchasing power?
HOW TO DEVELOP USER PERSONAS
4. Humanize your top personas
What is their educational and professional background?
Core skill set(s)?
How old are they?
Are they married?
Do they have any relevant hobbies?
How do they seek new info? How do they get it?
How do they prefer to interact with vendors?
GET THE INFORMATION YOU NEED
In order to answer all the necessary questions, you’re
going to have to conduct interviews
Conduct internal meetings and workshops with your
sales team, customer service and marketing –
anyone who has regular contact with customers from
diverse perspectives is preferred
Gather and document each of their insights into your
existing customer base
GET THE INFORMATION YOU NEED
Test your internal profiles – reach out to existing customers
and prospects - if you can gain access to them
Win / Loss interviews with prospects who did not become
customers can be most enlightening
For those not in the list today, get creative in your recruitment
process - use tools like SurveyMonkey and social media
(LinkedIn to seek out connections and feedback from groups)
If there’s no relationship established with the interviewee,
incentives are very important
Make it clear you’re not doing a sales pitch, and be flexible to
accommodate their schedule and preferred interview situation
“CHANNEL” YOUR PERSONA?
When you…
1. Develop agile marketing strategies
2. Have direction for content creation
3. Change and build digital products
4. Design your website, blog, mobile app, etc.
5. Create marketing resources / materials
6. Do keyword research and on-page SEO
7. Targeting social media activities (look alike)
8. Positioning and how to address user needs
9. Build compelling offers and landing pages
10. Determine customer lifecycle process flows
http://bit.ly/personas-in-b2b
HOW TO PRESENT YOUR BUYER PERSONAS
USING A PERSONA TEMPLATE
After you’ve done the research, use this template to explain your
persona and disseminate that information across the organization
in attractive, yet organized format.
Let’s walk you through how to input and format the info collected
in a way that’s easy for your team to understand.
Now that your research is done, this is the fun part!
BACKGROUND:
• Basic details about the persona’s role
• Key info about the company
• Relevant background, hobbies or education
DEMOGRAPHICS:
• Gender
• Age Range
• Income (and spouse’s HHI, if relevant)
• Urbanity (urban, suburban, or rural?)
IDENTIFIERS:
• Buzz words
• Mannerisms
PERSONA NAME
GOALS:
• Primary goal
• Secondary goal
CHALLENGES:
• Roadblock to user success
• Secondary challenge
HOW WE HELP:
• How you solve each challenge
• How this better achieves goals
PERSONA NAME
SOCIAL PROOF
• Include a few real quotes – that
represent your persona well
This will make it easier for employees to
relate to and understand your persona.
COMMON OBJECTIONS:
• Identify the most common objections
raised during the customer journey
PERSONA NAME
MESSAGING:
• How should you describe your solution
to your persona?
ELEVATOR PITCH:
• Make describing your solution simple
and consistent
PERSONA NAME
EXAMPLE OF A COMPLETE BUYER PERSONA
BACKGROUND:
• Head of Human Resources
• Worked at the same company for 10 years; worked her way up from HR Associate
• Married with 2 children (10 and 8)
DEMOGRAPHICS:
• Skews female
• Age 30-45
• Dual HH Income: $140,000
• Suburban
IDENTIFIERS:
• Calm demeanor
• Probably has an assistant screening calls
• Asks to receive collateral mailed/printed
SAMPLE SALLY
SAMPLE SALLY
GOALS:
• Keep employees happy and turnover low
• Support legal and finance teams
CHALLENGES:
• Getting everything done with a small staff
• Rolling out changes to the entire company
HOW WE HELP:
• Make it easy to manage all employee data in one
place
• Integrate with legal and finance teams’ systems
SAMPLE SALLY
QUOTES:
• ―It’s been difficult getting company-wide adoption of
new technologies in the past.‖
• ―I don’t have time to train new employees on a million
different databases and platforms.‖
• ―I’ve had to deal with so many painful integrations with
other departments’ databases and software.‖
OBJECTIONS:
• I’m worried I’ll lose data transitioning to a new system.
• I don’t want to have to train the entire company on
how to use a new system.
MESSAGING:
• Integrated HR Database Management
ELEVATOR PITCH:
• We give you an intuitive database that integrates with
your existing software and platforms, and lifetime
training to help new employees get up to speed quickly.
SAMPLE SALLY
CONCLUSION
In the end, you want the reader to look at your content and think,
“Wow…They totally get me!”
Because you do. It’s a challenging feat, and it’s one we know better than most.
To learn more about how we can help you build your online revenue using these
personas, check out the FREE content mapping guide at the link below:
http://bit.ly/free-content-mapping-template