“Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t.” –Seth Godin
In this new content marketing age, companies need to consider many factors when creating their buyer persona. In fact, the only way to learn more about your Buyer Persona is to identify comprehensive information from the get go before they go through the Buyer’s Journey. From there you can strategically target the ideal audience with a plethora of data that supports your approach and gain the right results.
The first step in creating your ideal buyer persona is to identify some fundamental insight about them, such as demographic information: the location of your buyer persona, age, sex, employment position at company, and once you’ve determined their demographics, you want to identify their behavior patterns on social channels. This process is also known as segmentation, where you can categorically segment your audience based on distinct needs and/or characteristics. Customer segments provide insights about groups of consumers within a larger marketplace.
It’s important to figure out what channel your ideal persona uses to communicate on and the best way to interact with them through that channel. For example, if they’re not responding to specific emails with marketing content you thought they would find useful but instead are reading your latest Tweets with links to interesting articles, you can take stock of their behavior and change your interaction with them.
Another category of questions to consider when creating your initial buyer persona is to inquire about the goals and challenges they face.
When you have that initial information about your buyer persona, a highly effective next step is to conduct interviews. Select a handful of people that consist of current customers, prospective buyers, and even your sales teams. A recent study in 2015 indicated that 82.4% of B2B companies exceeded their revenue goals due to conducting qualitative interviews of customers and non-customers (Cintell).
Once you’ve collected the interview data, start to identify patterns and common threads between the group that will help you craft your buyer persona.
You’re now armed and ready to create the buyer journey, where you will write a story of several people that fit in your target audience. You might even use a real name, photo, and outside of their persona profile, including some key elements that outline their entire story. For example, write down a few steps your company can take to help them achieve their goals and overcome some of their challenges.
Include in this buyer journey some of the key messaging you will use to routinely interact and engage with them.
At the heart of B2B Marketing is the buyer persona. This ideal target audience becomes the driver to the initial framework of everything done within your company. All content marketing is created with intention to further engage your buyer persona and the driver of how you conduct business.
Need help creating your buyer personas so you can include them in your content strategy? Download our free eBook, How to Create Buyer Personas, to get started now.
