Editor’s Note: For our first ever guest post, Tim Grenda from Elevator Agency stops by to talk buyer personas. Take it away, Tim.
Many business, maybe even yours, engage in content marketing to help drive more visitors, leads and customers to their websites. Content marketing is the use of articles, videos and other types of content that is distributed online to reach, engage with and convert online customers.
If you are already doing content marketing, good for you! But are you creating content that is designed to reach the types of customers you want to attract? Is the content you are creating and promoting online tailored to satisfy your prospective leads and ultimately turn them into satisfied customers who will tell their friends about your company?
Using buyer personas to help guide the way is a key step in building an effective content marketing program that will drive visitors, leads and customers to your business.
What are Buyer Personas?
Buyer personas are fictionalized figures that are based on actual data you can glean from your current prospects or customers. By creating a fictional character outline using real-world data, you can better understand the types of customers you want to attract to your business. You can also learn the types of customers you want to avoid attracting.
Buyer personas can be as detailed as needed, but they generally include data such as your target customer’s:
- Age
- Gender
- Household Income
- Job Title
- Location
Your buyer personas can also include where your target customer goes for information and any unique challenges they face. The more detailed your buyer personas are, the more effective they can be in helping your business focus its marketing efforts on attracting the right kinds of customers.
How Do I Use Buyer Personas?
Once you have developed your buyer personas, it’s time to incorporate what you’ve learned about your ideal customer into many aspects of your content marketing program.
Buyer persona data can help you decide:
- What topics does my target customer like to read about?
- Where does my target customer go to find content?
- What format of content does my target customer prefer?
Putting this into practice, this means if your buyer persona tends to read long-form white papers or eBooks about your products and services that are shared among professional associates on LinkedIn, then you should be creating that type of content and promoting on that social media channel.
However, if your buyer persona is more into short videos on Vine or Instagram, you should put your content marketing efforts into that area.
By using buyer personas to help you create and distribute content that is tailored to reach, satisfy and convert your target customer, your content marketing program can be more effectively and profitable.
Do It Yourself
Now that I’ve introduced you to the idea of how buyer personas can help drive more revenue for your company, you’re probably itching to create your own buyer personas.
But where should you begin?
At Elevator, a digital strategy and branding agency located outside San Diego, California, we work with clients of all types and sizes to build spot-on buyer personas and use them to drive more qualified visitors, leads and customers. We’d love to work with your company or organization on a content marketing program.
If you’re more of a do it yourself digital marketer, we’ve created a free Buyer Personas Guide and Templates to help walk you through the process. The Microsoft PowerPoint download gives you all you need to create your own spot-on buyer personas.
So get out there and build some buyer personas!
About Tim Grenda