Do you know the important characteristics of your customers such as how much money they make per year and how they shop? While these may seem like trivial facts, they may help you better understand who you are marketing to and how to adapt your marketing plan to meet those factors. This information will help you better understand what offers your clients will respond to so that your marketing efforts are targeted in the areas that will yield the most results. Knowing the personas of your clients helps you understand their needs and wants so you can be a fit for what they are looking for.
If you are struggling to come up with marketing campaigns that really get the attention you are looking for from your customers, doing a little research and creating personas for your key demographic will be well worth the time and investment you put into it. Here are six benefits to building personas for your customers and how to use them to your advantage.
1. An understanding of customer needs/interests: When trying to buy the perfect gift for a loved one, you can picture them in your mind while you’re shopping. Thinking about what they do for fun and what interests them helps you narrow down your search and figure out what to buy. Customer personas work in the same way in that they give you an idea of what your customers need and want, and help you get on a more personal level with them. By knowing the problems your customers have, you will be better able to find solutions for them. Have a lot of clients who purchased homes at the top of the market and are struggling with high interest rates? Offer a special incentive to refinance so that you can help them.
2. Knowledge of Where Customers Spend Time: Once you’ve gathered a basic background of your customers, it will be easier to figure out what social networks they utilize, where they go for their information and how they delegate their time spent online.
Knowing where customers spend time online will let you know where you should put most of your efforts. If your client base spends the most time on reading emails and never really got hooked on Facebook, you know that your time would be spent putting together email newsletters instead of posting on your wall.
3. Better Quality Leads: So now that you have your personas identified what interests your clients, how they communicate online, and what they need, how is this going to help you? Now that you know how to cater to your customers and where you will be able to reach them, you will be able to get better quality leads resulting in a higher conversion rate. Use this information to change the content in your campaigns whether they be through email marketing or pay per click. When you better understand what your customers want, you will be able to get higher quality leads and in return better customers who will be loyal and spread positive feedback about your company.
4. Consistency Across Your Business: Personas will help you better understand what your different target groups are and be able to identify them without a problem when discussing marketing strategies with your coworkers. When everyone is clear on what group you are talking about, you will have more productive brainstorming sessions and be able to provide a consistent message to each group. This will also help your sales or recruitment team better understand what points to mention when trying to bring new customers on, and how to modify their pitch for each target group without fumbling for words. This will also help them answer questions that may be brought up during a sales pitch. If a salesperson makes the potential customer feel that your company will be there to answer any question they have and that you understand their needs, you will have a better chance of closing the deal.
5. Better Product Development: If you know what your clients are looking for to begin with, it makes it a lot easier to develop a product that will feed their needs from the start. Personas will help you identify what aspects your business is missing, and how you can better fill the voids that exist. If you build products that will grow and transition right alongside your client, they will stick with you and help your company grow. Use the information you gather for your personas to suggest ideas to the people in charge of development so they can implement it in their design process.
