Buyer Personas for Effective Marketing

CREATING YOUR CREATING YOUR BUYER PERSONAS BUYER PERSONAS

TODAYS TODAY S AGENDA AGENDA 1 | First, a Tale About Fishing 2 | 2 | What is a Buyer Persona? 3 | 3 | How Do You Use a Buyer Persona? 4 | 4 | How to Create a Buyer Persona 5 | 5 | Your Buyer Persona

First, A TALE ABOUT A TALE ABOUT FISHING FISHING

First, a Tale About Fishing First, a Tale About Fishing In my days as a traditional marketer, we had a saying, Fish where the fish are referring to our target market. This mainly dealt with demographic data at a geographical level and the philosophy was that people of similar demographics would gravitate towards one another and reside within secular groups. While this principle was better than a blanket approach to marketing and provided some level of segmentation, it was lacking for companies that targeted other businesses. If we consider a fisherman on a weekend getaway at the Norfolk Broads, the river represents his target market. Within it there are plenty of fish and if he casts his line, he is sure to catch a fish. But what if he specifically wants to land bream. He would have to study bream and know which type of bait they prefer, what tackle he should use, which area of the lake to focus on and what time of day is more likely to see bream activity. www.struto.co.uk

First, a Tale About Fishing First, a Tale About Fishing Our fisherman is well-equipped. He knows that bream are predominantly nocturnal feeders and therefore late evening or early morning fishing would be best. He knows that bream favour bread, maggots, casters, sweetcorn, worms and ground bait. By understanding their preferences and habits, our fisherman is far more likely to hook a bream than any other fish. The fisherman s knowledge of bream can be compared to a marketer s buyer persona profile. As marketers we need to understand our ideal customers challenges, interests, needs, attitudes and behaviours in order to successfully feed them with the content that will hook them as customers. So, let s take a deeper look at buyer personas, shall we? www.struto.co.uk

What is A BUYER PERSONA?

What is a Buyer Persona? What is a Buyer Persona? A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. They are a profile of this person s role, challenges, needs, concerns and behaviours. Buyer personas are usually given role-orientated names, such as Marketing Manager Mary, Salesman Stan, HR Director Harriet or IT Technician Ian. We also assign a photo to a buyer persona to bring them to life and give them a physical identity that we can picture in our minds when we create content for them. Strong buyer personas are based on objective market research and insights from your customer base through interviews or surveys. Your specific business will dictate whether you have 1, 2 or 10 buyer personas. If you re starting out, rather keep it to a minimum at first and build out more as you grow. www.struto.co.uk

How Do You USE A BUYER PERSONA?

How Do You Use a Buyer Persona? How Do You Use a Buyer Persona? When it comes to inbound marketing, you use your buyer persona to inform practically every decision regarding your efforts. From what to blog about, to where to publish, what format to use and what words to use in your social posts. Every content piece and action is created with the buyer persona in mind. When you have multiple buyer personas, it becomes particularly helpful to be able to target and personalise your marketing for the various segments. You could, for example, send different emails to each buyer persona based on their specific requirements or needs. Buyer personas are incredibly powerful when we cross reference them with the stage of the buyer journey our prospects are in. This insight helps us create hyper-targeted content for our buyer persona. www.struto.co.uk

How to CREATE A BUYER PERSONA?

How to Create a Buyer Persona? How to Create a Buyer Persona? One word Research! The most critical aspect about creating a buyer persona is to base the profile on objective market research. That means leaving your subjective inferences about who you think your ideal customer is, and turning to interviews and surveys of your actual customer base for insight. For best results you should also look outside of your existing database to prospects that match your target audience. Methods to collect data for buyer persona creation: Interview customers to determine what they like (and dislike) about your product, service and company Study the behaviour of your contacts base to uncover how customers and leads find and consume content Chat to your sales and support teams to learn about frequently asked questions, the typical sales cycle timeline, common challenges facing clients and the objections they regularly encounter www.struto.co.uk

Your Buyer Your Buyer Persona Persona Persona Name: Give your persona a name. Enter a persona name Background: What s their role? Career path? Family? Enter a persona background Demographics: Male / Female? Age? Income? Location? Enter persona demographics www.struto.co.uk Better Marketing. Better Business.

Your Buyer Your Buyer Persona Persona Identifiers: Demeanor? Communication preferences? Enter persona identifiers Goals: Primary goal? Secondary goal? Enter persona goals Challenges: Primary challenges? Secondary challenges? Enter persona challenges www.struto.co.uk Better Marketing. Better Business.

Your Buyer Your Buyer Persona Persona Real Quotes: About goals, challenges? Insert real persona quotes Common Objections: Why wouldn t they buy your product or service? Enter common objections What Can We Do: to help our persona achieve their goals? to help our persona overcome their challenges? Insert what you can do to help persona www.struto.co.uk Better Marketing. Better Business.

Your Buyer Your Buyer Persona Persona Marketing Message: How should you describe your solution to your persona? Enter marketing message Elevator Pitch: Sell your persona on your solution! Insert your elevator pitch www.struto.co.uk Better Marketing. Better Business.

THANK YOU THANK YOU www.struto.co.uk