What is a ‘Buyer Persona’ and How Can It Improve Your Marketing?

These days, it’s virtually impossible to lump all customers together and try to market to them the same way. Thanks to ecommerce and other consumer-empowering changes in the marketplace, the audiences you aim to serve have moved from one large, undifferentiated mass to many subsets with individual tastes and preferences, needs and challenges.

If you’re not careful, your team can waste valuable time and resources chasing after unqualified prospects who don’t really want or need your products. That’s what happens when a business relies upon a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing.

So, how can you adjust your marketing efforts to identify qualified prospects and best serve your company’s various niche markets? One key strategy involves building “buyer personas.”

You already have broad-based demographic information about your customer base. But creating buyer personas “takes that a step further to include psychographic information based on actual current client and target prospect research to focus on why your target customer makes a purchase decision.”

Here are four tips to help construct buyer personas that fit your business and industry:

Organize your search for relevant data. A thorough profile of your customer emerges from numerous sources. Start by asking your current customers why they buy your products or services (as opposed to those of your competitors). What specific problems do your offerings solve? How do these products improve their own businesses and/or lives? Also, reach out to former customers and ask for candid assessments of what you did right (and wrong) when they were buying from you.

Look at trends and solicit online information. Most leads follow a certain pattern or trend; the key is analyzing the data to see what those patterns indicate. Have your sales team look closely at which customer appeals are most effective, and with which group of customers. Compile information relating to customer age, gender, location, job title, education level, etc. Make sure the team understands why customers make the decision to purchase your products—and, conversely, why other prospects choose not to buy.

Focus on solving problems. One or more buyer personas will emerge from all this data. You’ll have a fairly sophisticated profile of what your customers are like. The key from there is looking beyond who these people are and concentrating instead on what it is they require from you and your business. What problems do they face that you may not have considered before? Are there ways to upgrade your products to better solve these problems?

Create an ideal customer experience. By understanding a buyer persona, you can alter your messaging and the content you share on your website and social media. This will inform every stage of the marketing process, including product packaging and advertising, and customer follow-up after a purchase is made. You know the people you’re marketing to, so you can reframe your message in ways that genuinely resonate with them.

Often, crafting a buyer persona will narrow the scope of your leads—since you’re not trying to attract everyone with one generic message across the board. There’s always a concern when your team is reaching out to fewer prospects. But, by leveraging buyer personas and other pertinent data, the result will likely be a higher percentage of qualified leads, ready to move through the sales funnel, with less time and money spent on the qualification process.

Want more advice on improved marketing strategies for your business? Give us a call to find out how we can help you.

When To Hold A Press Conference - And When Not To

A Big Production For Big News

A press conference is not an easy event or a casual one. It's a big production and should only be saved for big issues. If you schedule press conferences every week, or every day, the press will stop showing up. If you schedule a press conference for news that is not worthy of the media to travel to, you will burn your relationship and they won't come the next time (newsworthy or not).

So when should you do a press conference?

• When it's truly big news

A  press conference is typically set only to announce huge news, something you'd want to give TV reporters advance notice and time to drive down and set up their cameras.

In politics, you'd do a press conference to announce a run for office -- or to drop out of a major race.

Same thing for other public figures. A business would hold a press conference for earth-shaking news like mergers and bankruptcies. An NFL quarterback might hold one to announce he's asking for a trade to a different team.

• When the news breaks

The news has to be fresh. If you schedule a press conference for Friday, but leak the news to your favorite reporter on Tuesday, there's no reason for any reporters to show up to your press conference. They already got scooped.

If you're going to have a press conference, you've got to have it when the news breaks. No leaks. No favors. No hints to friendly reporters, because good reporters will sniff around and figure it out.

• When the phone won't stop ringing

If reporters are calling you all day about an issue, wondering when you'll make the announcement, that's a good time to have a press conference.

If not a single reporter has asked about this issue, that's a sign. Don't schedule a press conference about it. Save press conferences for big news. If you have them too often, the press will stop showing up.