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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.
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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. Goals Success Criteria Challenges Objectives
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 • Map out your buying process • How are your products purchased? • Who is involved in the purchasing process? • What are their roles in the organization? Reseller Enterprise VP Operations Store Manager Manufacturer
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… • Develop agile marketing strategies • Have direction for content creation • Change and build digital products • Design your website, blog, mobile app, etc. • Create marketing resources / materials • Do keyword research and on-page SEO • Targeting social media activities (look alike) • Positioning and how to address user needs • Build compelling offers and landing pages • Determine customer lifecycle process flows http://bit.ly/personas-in-b2b
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!
Persona name • 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 Including a real photo from Creative Commons or iStockphoto helps everyone envision the same person. Establishing your messaging prepares your organization to convey the same message.
Sample sally 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 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.
Sample sally 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.
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