Have you ever seen those small airplanes that carry advertising banners in the sky? Thousands of people see them fly by, and the marketing message is spread far and wide. How effective do you suppose it is?
Unfortunately for the advertiser (and the company paying for the ads), it’s not very effective! The same goes for irrelevant ads and popups that litter websites and social media. For many of us, our mouse pointer is on the “X” before we even read the message, and some of us have developed ad “blindness” to the point where we just don’t see the ads anymore.
Given that traditional advertising is no longer effective, how do you attract traffic to your website?
The answer is persona-based marketing — a content-based strategy that leverages technology to attract the right customers to your website. With persona-based marketing, you create relevant SEO-optimized content that speaks to potential customers while they are actively looking for the solution to a problem they’re facing (or didn’t know they had).
Sounds too good to be true? Read on to learn how it works, and how it’s done in five easy steps. We encourage you to follow along with this guide by using our free personas spreadsheet.
Buyers in the digital age have all the tools they need to get whatever information they want at every stage of the decision-making process. Most don't want to be showered with generic flyers or mass messages — the pinnacle of outbound marketing. That’s why you need personalized, inbound marketing to increase the chances of converting them during their buying decision.
So how can you tailor your marketing strategy to your target market? By developing buyer personas.
A buyer persona is a representation of your potential customer that describes them in detail using characteristics such as professional and personal motivations, demographics, career status, goals, interests, and pain points. Once you have a clear idea of your ideal buyer, you can create a content strategy that appeals to that specific buyer persona at every point in the buying cycle.
You would not use the same inbound marketing approach for a single professional in their early 30s as you would for a stay-at-home parent with children of school age, right? In the current environment, the key to effective content creation is to accurately define your persona and magnetize target customers to your offerings with engaging content that speaks their language.
Alternatively, a negative buyer persona (also called an anti-persona) is an identical exercise you can perform to clarify who is not your ideal customer. These negative personas can be helpful to define any behaviors or demographics that disqualify specific users from your pool of delighted, paying customers.
A detailed persona should be created during service and product development, ideally, but they can be made at any time. Your product should be designed to meet the customer's needs, instead of the early days of marketing where sales teams were required to educate the customer about the product.
With your persona in mind, you can tailor your product, service, and user experience so it becomes an irresistible offer they can’t refuse! Your advertising dollars will also be put to better use by showing your messages to people currently in the buying process, and not thousands upon thousands of users that aren’t in your target audience.
Before we jump into our five steps on how to make the perfect buyer persona, let’s go over some of the common pitfalls we see when our clients develop buyer personas of their own.
With that disclaimer out of the way, are you ready to get started? There are numerous ways to create a buyer persona, from a simple one-page summary to an agency-grade analysis that takes hundreds of factors into consideration.
Fortunately, if you need a template to get you started, we can help! Follow along with our process and get our free personas spreadsheet to make your persona creation process a breeze.
For now, let’s get the process going with the following five easy steps:
A customer segment is a group of customers specific to a part of your business. Some businesses have multiple segments, while others may only have one. This is where addressing motivations can be extremely important in building out your buyer groups.
For example, a hardware store may have a section for professional contractors, a section for gardeners, an aisle for hobbyists, and another area with sewing equipment. These are all different customer segments with diverse types of personas that would benefit from varying marketing strategies. In contrast, a toy manufacturer that specifically makes building blocks for children may only have one or two segments.
Your task in this step is to determine what motivation segments form your customer base, and to choose one for this exercise.
Mary has an online coaching business that offers eBooks, webinars, and live coaching sessions to people that want to start a business. She recently launched a new course and wants to use persona-based marketing to attract the right type of customer that would succeed in her program.
Her main segments include:
She could also break out her personas to address the motivations of why individuals are seeking business coaching:
For this exercise, we are going to go with (3) Retired people/senior citizens.
While all individuals are unique, everyone in your segment is going to have some common characteristics. For this step, you’re going to roughly outline and research some critical information that includes:
Mary’s target group of senior citizens/retirees is rather large, so for this exercise she is going to narrow down to a subset of that segment that has the following characteristics:
For this step, you’re going to bring your persona to life, give him or her a name, and make them real.
To help with this step, do an internet search on your persona and browse images of real people. Find a picture of someone that would look like your persona, give them a name, and create a story. That way, you will be able to create relevant content that speaks directly to them.
Mary’s persona is named Everyoung Evelyn. She’s 65 years old and in great health. All three of her children have left home and she has five grandchildren she adores. She is grateful for everything she has, but feels the pain of mounting bills and economic uncertainty.
She’s always wanted to start her own business, but due to being a young mom and participating in a traditional family structure didn’t allow it.
Now as a retired woman in her 60s, she doesn’t know where to begin. Her idea is to create stylish clothing for active people her age. She’s always worked out and has a great figure — for her age is just a number! At the same time, most clothes at the department store look drab and boring, while at the same time the stuff in the trendier departments is either too tight or revealing.
Evelyn is talented, hardworking, and has a lot of time on her hands — she just needs some guidance to get going!
Your next step is to create the ideal future for your persona by clarifying her “before” and “after” scenarios. Think about how your persona feels, sitting in front of their computer, doing internet searches, and trying to find a solution to their problem. Once you have a clear picture, answer the following questions:
Once you complete the above exercise, do it again - but this time answer the questions after they have purchased your product or service. Create a dream scenario for your persona — a true happy ending!
For this exercise, Mary is picturing Evelyn endlessly scrolling on Facebook, watching YouTube videos, and searching for advice on starting a business.
Here are the answers to the questions for both the “before” and “after” scenarios:
Include lots of details to make your “before” and “after” scenarios as real as possible. You can even find stock pictures like the ones below to create a dream scenario that your ideal customers will love!
Before After
Now that you have your personas outlined in clear detail (make sure to grab that free persona template if you haven’t yet!), you can create content that speaks to their pain points, desires, and goals. Some examples of content types include:
With Everyoung Evelyn in mind, Mary has created a persona marketing strategy to target her specific segment with the following types of marketing content:
Many social media platforms make audience targeting easy. Mary’s job is to create content that speaks directly to that group of people so when they see that content they feel like it was written specifically for them.
This quick guide is just the beginning of your persona-based marketing journey. At BridgeRev, we can help you create personas with laser-focused precision that magnetize the best customers to your products and services.
Book a complimentary assessment, and we’ll show you how!