What if we told you there was only one thing you needed to know to succeed at marketing? Would you believe us? Because it’s true. The key to successful marketing stands on the shoulders of one thing and one thing alone. Are you ready for it?

Understanding your buyers 

Sorry if we got you all excited for nothing. You’ve probably heard it before and you’ve probably already spent many hours banging your head on your desk trying to figure out how to understand your buyers. If only it was a simple task. We’d all spend our days in our pyjamas, sipping Moët from expensive china because who needs to do work when your incredible marketing skills bring in all the customers and profit you need? 

We don’t need to tell you that understanding what is motivating people to buy from you, knowing their buying criteria and connecting with their unique needs and goals is a challenge. Yet more and more businesses are rising to meet that challenge, and from their hard work, are seeing incredible results. So what are these successful businesses doing? They are embracing the concept of ‘Buyer Personas’, which is an incredibly helpful tool for modern day marketers. It allows businesses to market their products to the specific needs of their prospective customers. It also helps them create content that will truly connect and resonate with their buyers – content they will love.

If your business is yet to capitalise on the concept of buyer personas, it’s never too late to start. In this article we are going to talk you through the concept of buyer personas and how to develop your own. By understanding your buyers, you are creating an environment where you can deeply and authentically connect with your customers, and that is where your success of marketing lies.

What Are Buyer Personas?

Put simply, creating buyer personas is the process of digging deep into the attitudes and behaviours of your buyers to understand their pain points, the nature of their jobs and the solutions they need to fix their unique problems. Successful businesses are already doing this and it’s helping them paint a clear and detailed picture of the people who are likely to buy from them, which in turn helps businesses target the right people.

By understanding the deeper motivations that are important to customers along the buying process, you can create content that really connects with people. And, if people feel more connected to you, they are more likely to choose your services or products over your competitors. Your product or service might also be of interest to different people, different personas and for different reasons. That’s why it’s important you create several different personas with customised marketing messages and campaigns.

But we don’t want to overwhelm you so to start with, just focus on the one persona. Try and describe one person who is likely to buy from you. Here are some questions to help you get started with understanding your buyers:

1. What is their job title?
2. What are they responsible for?
3. What industry are they in?
4. What is their demographic information?

5. What are their pain points/frustrations that you offer a solution for?

6. What are their goals? What do they need to achieve to be successful, as it relates to your solution?
7. Where do they go for information? Who do they trust for advice?
8. What experience are they looking for when shopping for your products and services?
9. What are their most common objections to your product or service? What are the reasons they wouldn’t buy?

Understanding the Buyer Journey

Once you’ve answered the above questions, you can start planning out the content you will publish based on these answers. The traditional sales process is broken down into the following groups:

• Awareness 

• Consideration 

• Decision 

• Action

Awareness 


The awareness part of the journey comes down to knowing and using the same words and terminology as your buyers. You need to think about how your buyers would describe their problems and needs, and whether your lexicon matches that. It is important your words correspond with those of your buyers when you are creating marketing content. That’s because at this stage of the buying process, most people aren’t looking for certain companies but general information on their specific needs. So if your content is talking about what they’re searching for, you will already have made a connection with that buyer.

Tip: Provide answers and solutions to the needs of buyers. Don’t talk about your brand or company just yet.

It’s important that you publish content that educates potential clients and positions your company as someone to trust and who is a thought leader in your industry. People often overlook this step when trying to generate leads but the truth is, you want to build a database of people who love your company. Whether they buy from you straight away, in a week or never at all, if they were at least interested enough to read your content, you can be sure they will come back for more in time.

Consideration 
       

The consideration stage is where buyers are considering the right solution for them. At this stage, you don’t want to be selling to them just yet. If they aren’t ready to buy, you might run the risk of turning them off your company and never buying from you. This is the time to be patient and nurture your leads. At this point, you want to be publishing content that will help people make better buying decisions. This is a great opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader and someone who has expertise and can be trusted.

Decision

Next we come to the decision stage. This is where you need to help people decide on the right solution for their particular needs. At this point you want to make sure it is easy for people to access your list of clients and learn more about your company, customers, experience and expertise.

Once buyers have made their decision organically, they’re ready to choose a company to make a purchase from. This is where they’re going to start thinking about preparation, implementation, quick start costs, and customer support — the final things that will decide which solution best fits their needs and budget. Now is the time to get brand-specific with the content you publish. Think along the lines of case studies and testimonials. This kind of content shows what people have achieved by choosing you, and that you can actually deliver on your promises.

Action

Action time. This is when people have finally come to a decision and are ready to take action and buy. You need to make this process very easy for them or you will just as easily lose their business. It’s important to remember that some people move through the buying process in five minutes, while others take months, they like to take them and research their solution thoroughly. They are more likely to read an e-book, visit your website dozens of times, read your emails and spend time checking you out on social media.

The hard truth is you don’t ever really know when people are ready to take action. However, you have to ensure that every time they visit your website and every time they interact with your company, they know exactly what to do when they decide they’re ready to buy. This might mean having a clickable “buy now” or “request a proposal” button your every page of your website or timely emails with a link to schedule a meeting.

We hope this has helped you understand how to publish content your buyers will love!