In the beginning the Internet was a unidirectional system, where users searched for information without having any kind of interaction. On the contrary, nowadays we know that people spend their time online mostly looking for connections and entertainment, with over 90 hours a month spent on the net only as far as young people aged 18-24 are concerned.
It is the interaction between users and the internet that characterizes our epoch and shows the importance of Buyer Personas, something that should already be part of your digital marketing strategy. But what’s that, exactly?
In short, a Buyer Persona is something that represents the peculiarities of your ideal customer, which are identified through surveys, market analysis and information caught from “real” customers that we have learnt to know through our experience in a given sector.
In addition to this, empathy and listening are essential to understand the peculiarities of the average consumer of our product.
But how are Buyer Personas and content marketing connected to each other? Why are they so important for our strategy?
Even if you are not working on an inbound marketing strategy, it is important to create a Buyer Persona that helps you shape your marketing strategy, because this enables you to know your customers’ needs. On social networks this is a necessary activity for the development of an editorial plan, because it allows us to make our message personal.
If you run a coffee roasting business, for example, and you know that your ideal customer loves crime novels, your coffee and to make time to relax after a hectic week in the office, it will much easier for you to write a content especially conceived for her/him, attracting her/his attention.
It might be something like that:
“Rainy Sunday? The perfect mood to immerse yourself in the latest masterpiece by Camilla Läckberg and get warmed up by a cup of fine coffee!”
On the contrary, if we are addressing to a generic target, we will be inclined to have a detached tone of voice, which will cause users’ lack of interest; at worst, they might leave. Moreover, you will be losing time speaking to people that are not interested in your offer and you will be investing money and energy in activities that are unlikely to become fruitful.
We should remember that our role on social network is to provide contents consistently with users’ interests, in order to get conversions and make people approach our brand. This is how we get the chance to start a selling process, entering the life of Buyer Personas silently, without interrupting the experience they are living online; on the contrary, their experience will become reacher. They will perceive you as similar to themselves, able to understand them. In this way, you will win their trust.
Once you know who your customers are, it is important to understand in which phase they are. Are they ready to buy? Do they need more information? To answer these questions, we need to go deeper into the concept of Buyer’s Journey, in order to direct the purchasing process creating a marketing funnel that can convert.
The Buyer’s Journey has three phases:
1. Awareness: the buyer recognizes to have a problem to solve.
2. Consideration: the buyer has understood what the problem is and needs to evaluate the best solution.
3. Decision: the buyer has understood what the ideal solution is and needs to decide whom to rely on.
For each of these phases, we need to build specific marketing activities that can satisfy the user’s needs in the right moment and in the most appropriate way. For online activities it is essential to focus on language and visual. Try to be clear and captivating, use the right words, the words that your user can recognize. On the other hand, if you do not use the expressions that your customers look for, how can you reach them? You need to become a reliable guide that will take them to only one possible decision: the purchase of your product or service.
If you are planning to start a Buyer Persona construction process (we hope so!), you can test your skills starting from some basic questions that include both demographic details (gender, place, age, qualifications) and psychographic information, such as interests, objectives, professional needs, difficulties.
Once you have gathered these information, you will have a good base to start from and develop your work.
Have a good time!
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