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.

ChallengesSuccess 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

Find this info quick by

administering surveys

of your current

audience.

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

Conduct interviews with your target audience to learn about their goals and challenges in more detail.

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

Identifying common objections will help your sales team be prepared for conversations.

PERSONA NAME

MESSAGING:• How should you describe your

solution to your persona?

ELEVATOR PITCH:• Make describing your solution simple

and consistent

Establishing your messaging prepares your

organization to convey the same

message.

Including a real

photo from Creative

Commons or

iStockphoto helps

everyone envision

the same person.

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 SALLYGOALS:• 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 SALLYQUOTES:• “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