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Inbound Marketing Blog

7 Buyer Persona Insights That Will Attract People To Your Business

Posted by Stacie Chalmers on 22-Jul-2015 10:00:00

business-people-sittingWhen I start developing buyer personas with my clients I ask them to fill in a worksheet of questions, to give me a greater insight into who we’re writing for, and why these people would be interested their product or service.

What I have come to learn over the years of creating buyer personas is that people still don’t fully understand how to tap into the important details of their buyer personas.

The answers I get are often high level, generic answers like: “make more money”, or “get their job done faster”.

These results are not specific enough to provide insight into what information buyers are looking for, and what marketers / content writers should be publishing.

So here are my 7 tips to ensure you create accurate buyer personas:

1. Get detailed

If you try to reach everyone with your content, people will think it’s not for them. You won’t stand out, it won’t resonate with people and you won’t get the results you were hoping for. So, identify one person and get very detailed on their company description, job title, responsibilities, how they measure success, what their frustrations and pain points are, and how you help.

2. Understand their unique benefit from buying your product or service

What is it they gain from buying from you? How does it help them succeed in their job? Use words they use. For example if you target manufacturers of windows. Rather than publishing an article titled: “Learn how manufacturers can optimise operations”, write, “How Window Manufacturers Can Increase Quantity and Quality”. It’s clear, and more specific. If you were someone in the window manufacturing business you would know this article is for you and how the information will benefit you.

3. Use words they use

Have conversations with people who are likely to buy from you. Ask open-ended questions and give them time to respond. Listen carefully to words they use to describe their job, responsibilities and painpoints.

4. Don’t use industry jargon

This is easy to do. I know I do this without realising. When you spend 8+ hours a day in your industry you get so used to certain industry terms you don’t realise that your buyers may not understand what those words mean. Or in some cases certain words can mean something completely different. I remember when I first introduced inbound marketing to a Chamber event in 2012. We had to go around the table and briefly explain what we did. I had been involved with inbound marketing since 2009 in the USA and was so excited to introduce myself as an inbound marketing consultant. I was sure everyone would be excited to learn more about inbound marketing as it has been so successful in the USA. But no one at my table knew what inbound marketing was. I had some one ask me if that meant I handled marketing for importers, as in inbound shipments.

5. Understand how their success is measured – specifically

Rather than using generic terms or statements like, make more products, improve productivity, or get more done with less. Be specific like “5 Ways window manufacturers can reduce cost per windows.”

6. Don’t try to be all things to all people

Identify one very specific person, who has a need you can help. This is tough because you feel like you’re excluding people who can and will buy from you. But you won’t. Start by identifying the one buyer persona who has a compelling need for your product – most likely to buy from you. Or a market that is lucrative and you want to increase your customer base in that area. Once you’ve published content for one specific person, it’s much easier to then repurpose that information for another buyer.

7. Understand their reasons for not buying

This is so important when publishing content and often something overlooked by marketers. We get so caught up on the reasons why and how wonderful our product or service is that we don’t understand what skeptical or confused customers may be feeling. They don’t know if they can trust you. They don’t understand your product like you do. They may be looking at cost, and not total cost of ownership so they think your solution is expensive compared to others. It may mean a change to their current processes that may seem too hard. There are so many reasons people won’t buy. To understand these reasons speak to your sales people and ask them to document all the pushbacks they get on a daily basis. Make sure these push-backs are all addressed in your content. An FAQ- Frequently Asked Questions - is a great place to list these questions with answers. I recommend my clients start writing FAQ articles, say one per month and once they have enough we create an FAQ page on their website link to the blog article for the answer.

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Topics: Buyer Persona

 

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