How To Use Buyer Personas To Create Valuable Content
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If you want to create engagement on your business blog, writing great content is only half the battle.
Customers are bombarded with marketing messages all the time. Unless what you have to say is useful, or at least relatable, it’s easy to tune you out. You need to ask yourself what matters to your target readers and what their needs are.
But before you can do that, you need to know who they are.
That’s where buyer personas come in.
What are buyer personas?
Put simply, a buyer persona is a description of your ideal client based on market research, demographics, client interviews and a few educated guesses.
A complete profile reads like a real person. It includes statistical information such as age group, gender, education and income level as well as information on family size, career history, hobbies and goals. More importantly, it will list common objections, challenges and fears.
And that’s where it gets interesting.
Buyer personas are your window into the lives of the people you want to get through to with your marketing efforts. Done well, they tell you how your target clients think and what matters to them.
This is powerful stuff, because it makes it possible to tailor your message so it’s much more relevant and personal to your audience. The more personal your message is, the more likely it is to succeed.
How To Develop A Buyer Persona
A good buyer persona isn’t a series of wild guesses. It’s backed by solid market research.
Luckily, this isn’t as complicated or time consuming as it sounds. In fact, you’re already sitting on a goldmine of information: your past and present customers.
Your client database is a great starting point for your buyer personas. Study what your clients have in common and identify trends such as age range, gender, educational background, profession and financial situation. This will tell you a lot about their worldview, their priorities, how they process information and even how much they’re willing to pay for your products or services.
But don’t stop there.
It’s also a good idea to ask customers some direct questions about your products or services. This is as easy as sending out a questionnaire.
Here are just a few questions you could ask:
What lead you to our product or service?
What made you decide to try it?
How did it solve your problem?
The answers to these questions will help you build a better picture of the challenges your clients face. You’ll also learn what actually matters to prospective buyers when push comes to shove.
How Buyer Personas Fuel Better Content
The more you know about your target customers, the better you can tailor your message.
A good buyer persona tells you what matters most to your clients. You’ll no longer have to talk about problems in general, because you’ll know the specific issues your clients face. Your content will be much more relevant and compelling as a result.
Buyer personas will also make it easier and less stressful to come up with relevant topics for your blog. If you know your audience’s pain points and which questions loom largest on their minds, you can build your content around what they’re actively seeking. No more stabs in the dark.
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