You have buyer personas? Why don’t you use them?
If you are in marketing or know marketing even a little bit, you know that buyer personas are a necessity. They help in company messaging, positioning, sales strategy, marketing campaigns, and many other aspects of a business. In short, they are what businesses are built around.
Whether you realize it or not, a persona does exist for every product, solution or service available. One area we see this often overlooked is on company websites. We know what you are thinking, no way is something this important overlooked! Just recently we have had several conversations regarding what the client would like to do regarding promoting what is on their website, BUT, they levitate to items that THEY would like to see vs what their target customer wants to see. The famous response when calling this mindset out is “I, too, am a customer and I know I would want to see the site this way”. Although probably true, you are also a business owner or representative and therefore need to think a bit differently.
The buyer per
sonas for your business should shape your site and your online marketing. If you think about Social, for example, some personas will not respond to or even look at a business’ facebook page. Recently we saw a reseller b2b company kick off a Facebook push, but why? I happened to be in their industry at one time and from experience I know that very few (if any) of their target clients will even look to Facebook for business connections! Why companies waste their time is beyond me.
Newsletter and blog signups are another area I see spoken about quite often. If you are truly shaping your approach through your buyer personas then visitors to the site/blog will want to subscribe because they will see value. The unfortunate thing is most have the thought that as long as they have the ability to sign up people will… nope! You need to have a strong compelling reason to do so and by the way it needs to match what your buyer’s interests and intents are!
We could seriously go on and on about this but for the sake of my typing fingers and your attention span I will not go on and assume you see my point. Don’t just create your buyer personas in order to make a check next to a list of to do items, but post them around your office to ensure everyone is aware that whatever they do they need to speak to these people; otherwise, their efforts will be wasted.
Lastly, if you are struggling or want to take another look at your buyer personas, we have a template posted in our resource section. Also, check out this blog on HubSpot posted earlier this year, it outlines some mistakes you could have or are making with your persona development.
As they may say in a Star Wars movie, MAY YOUR BUYER PERSONAS BE WITH YOU!
