The new decade changed the world quickly, and in ways many didn’t or couldn't predict. Now we’re all doing our best to adapt, adjust, and attend to business in a way that is efficient, compassionate, and human. Crafting messages that maintain that balance of empathy and still serve value are aided by well thought-out buyer personas.
Buyer personas are critical to long-term success. The process takes time, but if you invest in defining your consumers properly, your efforts will be rewarded tenfold. Maybe even a thousand-fold.
A buyer persona is a detailed, illustrated representation of your ideal buyer. Consider this an activity in creating a historical fiction character for your company. Historical because you should be using data representative of your most successful past and current customers. Fictional because they shouldn’t be an exact copy of a current customer/client.
Give them a name, we tend to like alliterative names because they are easy to remember, plus they’re fun; something like Marketing Meredith. Think about Meredith’s demographics, her professional life (is she a marketing coordinator or a CMO?), her challenges, typical objections to your products/services, her goals. Really paint a picture and think about who she is and represents.
Once you’ve fully fleshed out Marketing Meredith’s profile, consider what segments of your customers she doesn’t satisfy. You’ll likely need to create 3-5 buyer personas to characterize all your consumers. As we’ve said, this exercise takes time. Start by depicting your most ideal customers/clients and fill in the gaps as needed.
Sounds fun, but not convinced they’re necessary? Yes! But since you need some convincing here are...
In short, by using your time to transform your “target markets” into documented buyer personas, you’ll be one step closer in aligning your sales and marketing teams. You’ll be able to communicate to them in the manner and location they prefer. In essence, you’ll be able to treat them like humans (which they are) instead of simply “contacts.”
Ready to exceed your customers expectations? Contact us today and we’ll help you work through the process!