Build Buyer Personas Before Content

You need to know your customers to sell to them. Craft an engaging message and your sales will soar. But if your content is anything short of compelling, you’ll fail. If only there was a way of finding out exactly what customers want.

There is. It’s called buyer personas, and they are essential to a successful content marketing strategy.

Buyer personas are detailed descriptions of different types of potential customers: what they want and need, what motivates their preferences, who and what influences them, and so forth.

Internal stakeholders often argue that they already understand their buyers. And yet, when you ask them specific questions about their customers’ behaviours and decision process, it is surprising to see how little they actually know.

So, if you are still encountering resistance to building buyer personas, here are the major reasons why you really need them before you can create content.

Make it easy for customers to find what they want

On any given day, Google receives over 63,000 searches per second. Of those searches, WordStream estimates that 50% of queries are four words or longer.

So if you can figure out which customers are using a particular string of keywords and which are using another, you can direct them to different web pages, instead of broadcasting the same message to all customers.

Buyer personas reveal insight into the best long-tail keywords to include, helping you create content that matches your buyer’s search intent.

Identify where customers spend time on social media

Are your customers on Facebook or LinkedIn? Do they prefer Instagram or Twitter? How are they using these channels?

When you’re aware of the platforms your buyers most frequently use, you don’t have to spread yourself thin attempting to create a strong online presence across all networks. Your efforts will yield better results if you focus on the social media services that matter most and format your content accordingly.

Speak your customers’ language

Whether it’s casual or technical, each industry has its own language.

While you should avoid confusing jargon, you will always drive more engagement when your audience feels that the content is speaking directly to them.

Proactively address customers’ concerns

Having buyer personas means recognizing your customers’ pain points and challenges. This gives you the ability to tailor your marketing message to address their immediate concerns.

Ultimately, persona-based content attracts more engagement because it is created with purpose. Without buyer personas to guide you, you would be wasting a considerable amount of resources and effort on developing content that would go unnoticed.

Continually re-define your buyer personas to ensure that you’re targeting prospects effectively with content that adds value.

What’s your biggest challenge when developing personas? Convincing internal stakeholders? Interviewing prospects and customers? Share it with us in the comments section. If you found this post valuable, please spread the word on LinkedIn and Twitter.