Determining a buyer’s persona is a crucial element for successful inbound marketing, particularly for sales. It is important to know who you are marketing and selling to. Ask yourself these simple questions about your target audience to determine how to go about your personas.
1. What is their demographic information?
To perform more targeted offline and online marketing, collect demographic information about your personas. It also helps to paint the whole picture of who your personas are. For instance, are they married? Are they male or female? What’s their household income? How old are they? Where do they currently live? Do they have children? This is a great place to begin sketching your personas to be able to formulate a clearer definition of your customer type.
2. What is their job and level of seniority?
The level of importance you assign to your persona’s career and seniority level does depend on the product or service you’re selling. If you’re a B2B, this information becomes crucial. If your persona is at a senior management level, they are the ultimate decision-makers. This is where you need to really ‘WOW’ them, as opposed to someone at an introductory level that might not be able to make those purchasing decisions. Determining their goals is important to be able to cater the conversation to where it will appeal them. Communication is key in sales and marketing, therefore researching your persona’s career will direct you on how to approach the conversation to appeal to them.
3. What does a day in their life look like?
After gathering information about your persona’s characteristics, you can put together how a typical day in their life would run. Define the difference between where they are and where they would rather be. What their hobbies are, what kind of car they drive. Going through this exercise will help paint the picture of what your target audience. Therefore, you can keep the message you’re sending across consistent.
4. What are their pain points?
Think about it. You are in business because you’re solving a problem for your target audience. Go into detail, and focus on the clues that will tell you how the problem makes them feel. For example, imagine your product is a Real Estate software system. You might have a persona who just got their Real Estate license. They probably are a little intimated by the prospects of finding the right homes for their clients. They will have a need for your product, however, you need to hit their pain points to make them realize that they need you. These pain points are going to differ from a more advanced agent who has years of experience under their belt. They still are in need of your product, however, the points you want to hit on will differ
5. Determine what their values and goals are:
What is it that they do and don’t care about? Ask yourself what would make your persona get excited about your product. For example, that fresh new Real Estate agent probably values a product that makes searching for homes easier and user-friendly. Address these pain points to paint the picture for your prospects.
What are their expectations? If a persona is looking for a product like the one you are offering, make it clear the expectations they should receive from using your product. Don’t oversell here, or build false expectations. A persona will appreciate honesty and a plain and simple explanation of the product.
8. What common objections are you getting?
If you anticipate the objections your persona might have, you will have the advantage of pre-empting them. Educate them on what you have to offer, and how it will better help their lives, and take away any fears right away. What would make them hesitant to buy your product from you or any competitors? What might be their fear of switching over to using your product from what they are currently using?
220 Marketing specializes in Online Marketing and Management for industries such as Insurance Marketing, Real Estate Marketing, and Mortgage Marketing.
