Buyer personas add context to our inbound marketing efforts - they are a fictional representation of your target customers.
They are designed to focus your marketing and produce a content strategy that is solely focused on delighting your ideal customers into purchasing, by answering their questions and specifically solving their pain points.
We recommend by starting this process with our Buyer Personas workshops, these are specifically tailored to get the key information from you about who your highest value, best performing, happiest customers might be.
Your buyer personas should have a tailored customer journey from the first touch point upon landing on your website until they click 'Buy' at the checkout, 'Subscribe' on your blog or sign that contract!
If you're hoping to go it alone and produce your own buyer personas, these are our recommended steps:
- Work out the questions you need to ask to identify these personas - think of real life examples but don't focus on these real people. Go for a mix of personal and professional questions. Our guide might be a good place to start.
- How will you prove the validity of these personas? Complete market research, send basic questionnaires to trusted clients - do they resonate with what you've identified as your personas or have you got it wrong?
- Build their story - focus on their behaviours and why they do what they do, choose one primary persona, tell their story - make them realistic, but not a real person.
Why they work for UK SMEs
UK SMEs are most worried about growing their business (whether thats sales, leads, brand awareness) and not having enough time to do it. By taking the time to focus your ideas for marketing and promotion, you save time on producing content and activity that targets the wrong customers.
Sometimes personas can be fickle and although they may seem the right fit for your business' direction, it may turn out they're wrong. By paying close attention to the attributes and requirements of your ideal customers - primary persona - you can really focus your efforts, saving time, money and resource in the long run.
Once you've produced your buyer personas you can the create the content that suits them, creating an everlasting self-serving marketing channel.
For example, Supply Chain Charlie comes onto your website, identifies with a few blog posts, downloads an ebook, opts in to email communication and knows it's you he/she wants when they come to a purchasing decision.
You have potentially never had direct communication with Sam at this point, but they will be confident and trusting to reach out to you.
For more information on buyer personas, why not read our blogs?
- What Are Buyer Personas?
- 4 Reasons to Make Time for Buyer Personas
- Using Buyer Personas to Perfect Event Marketing
Or download our ebooks on the subject?
You can also arrange a discussion with our Director, Johnny Woods, about our Buyer Persona Workshops and how they may support your organisation's inbound marketing journey.
