A common theme amongst the most successful content marketing strategies and campaigns is that they all have the target audience at the center of their thinking.

This is because prior to creating the content the experienced marketer evaluates and researches their target audience with precise detail to make sure they fully understand what messaging will resonate best with the types of prospects they want to engage with.

Therefore the importance in developing your brand's buyer personas can not be stressed enough, however it is also vital that you regularly review these to ensure your content always remains on point.

Is this article we will run through buyer personas in detail, both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C), and how you can go about creating the right buyer personas that you can use in your content marketing strategy.

 

Buyer personas are fictional representations of an organization or brand's ideal buyer created by undertaking real life research.

They should accurately reflect the specific characteristics of the buyer with an understanding into their way of thinking, emotional state, why they want to buy and where they fit into the decision making process.

The primary purpose is to gain insight into buyers' concerns, goals, decisions, and preferences and understand what really makes them take action.

Buyer personas are prominent in the content marketing world and for a good reason: they yield results.

By having accurate and detailed representations in the form of buyer personas a marketer will be able to produce content that is tailor made that appeals directly to them.

It is likely that many brand's will have more than one typical type of ideal buyer so by spending time and thinking about each of these the marketing team are able to segment and target different types of content with each of these in mind.

For example, in a B2B environment a high ranking executive will likely be interested in and rely on different sources of information to that of the technical IT manager, even though they may both be involved in the buying process for a particular product.

By making sure you have carefully understood and developed your buyer personas for each type of individual involved in your sales process you can make sure your content is focused on their specific needs.

In addition, by always focusing on your ideal buyer personas you will gain more insights into other useful information to assist with future developments and changes around your existing products and services.

Buyer personas will look very different based on whether your brand is focused on selling to consumers or to businesses.

You may want to target both however it is important to make sure you consider the different aspects involved.

For B2C the focus is on the individual and making sure you know your target group as well as possible and understanding what drives them to take actions and ultimately buy from you.

For B2B you have to also think about the business you are targeting as well as all the people involved in making the purchasing decisions.

With this in mind you should go about creating your buyer personas whilst considering the whole buyers journey and the possibility of other individuals being involved in the buying process.

To create your own buyer personas it is important you get the right information so that your future marketing activities have the best chance of success.

The aim of creating your buyer personas is so that you know the right type of content, the specific topics, the right tone and style on the best platforms and how to deliver in a way to get their attention.

With this in mind here are some things you need to consider in relation to your typical customer and ideal buyer.

Even though you may be selling to businesses, ultimately it is people who will be making the decisions.

Often these decisions could be made collectively, sometimes many may have some involvement.

With that in mind you can break up the creation of B2B buyer persona into different categories:

What you specifically need to include in each area will vary but here is an overview of what you should consider.

Consider their personality type and traits when completing this section. Are they process and results driven and very ambitious individuals?

Also think about how risk adverse, open minded or set in their ways they might be which can affect their state of mind and willingness to entertain new ideas and concepts.

Understand the characteristics of the typical organization that you are targeting.

Consider the industry they are in and the types of products and services they provide. In addition also appreciating their company size, revenue and in basic terms how they make their money.

Try to understand all aspects of their working life covering their motivations and feelings involved in making decisions.

Be clear on the potential barriers that might be relevant and how these relate to their goals and challenges of their day to day work.

What influence does your persona have in the buying process and who else is likely to be also be involved in the decision making process.

Where do they go to seek information and assistance either online or through other community and industry related groups.

Get specific with the real details that matter and try to understand all the variations of the problems that both the organization and your persona faces and is looking to solve.

By being clear on what the solution and ideal scenario looks like for your buyer persona and the organization they work for you can start to envision a pathway and likely scenario that will appeal the most and how you can lead the way in this process.

A good final test and exercise would be to construct a short sales pitch that is no longer than a couple of paragraphs that would really resonate the strongest with your persona.

Something that you could read in no more than 30 to 60 seconds that would immediately capture the attention of your persona and make them interested in finding out more about you.

If you have accurately built your target persona then this should be something relatively easy for you to complete.

To create your B2C buyer personas a greater focus is on deeper insights into their character, environment and everyday experiences.

You have to get yourself into the mind of the buyer and understand what it is that will resonate with them and appeal to their wants and needs.

You can break up a B2C buyer persona into these different categories:

Put together a profile of the buyer that gives a real insight into their personality, traits and attitude that drives their behavior.

Include all factors that are relevant and in the context of your products and services.

If the demographics are about the what, here is about the why.

Focus in on the emotional drivers and the factors that act as motivational and the elements that will really move the persona to take action.

Find out what social media platforms your persona hangs out on, who they engage with and what influencers they follow.

Find out where else they go online to get their information and other brands they follow.

This will enable you to not just find your target persona but also understand the type of content and language that resonates with them already.

You should have a good idea now of the type of person they are but to get close to them you have to envision what their life around them is like.

What they experience day to day and what types of media they engage with and how.

Now that you have a good understanding of the insight and data that you wish to develop you now need to go and conduct real life research.

Here are some ways that you could do this:

Outline how you have collected the data that informs each buyer persona you have identified.

Methods might include face-to-face interviews, tele-research, online surveys or analytics.

Outline your approach across each of the groups and channels such as:

The approach you take here will entirely depend on your current organization's existing position both in the market place and existing prospects and customers.

Before you sit back and admire all your hard work about all those laser focused target personas for 2020 that you have worked hard to create, a quick word of warning.

Here are three of the most common mistakes that people make when creating their buyer personas.

Try to avoid only getting information from your sales and service teams about your customers and prospects.

Sometimes buyers and customers might be reluctant to share all information with your colleagues who might not be asking the most pertinent questions to get the data that the marketing team needs.

A well planned interview with as many customers as you are capable of speaking with will provide you with information that is unobtainable elsewhere and vital to help you to produce content superior to your competition.

Aside from B2C organizations with specific niche targeted products often the specific buyer gender, marital status and hobbies are not that crucial in helping define the right content.

Many buyer personas include information that is ultimately nothing to do with what is driving their buying decision.

The goal is to influence people to take action, understand priorities, barriers and decision criteria.

Who your buyer persona is does not help you devise a marketing strategy, understanding why they need your product and why they take actions will provide the insights required to help build out a content marketing strategy.

It can be easy to start creating a different persona for each different type of individual that might be interested in your products but in a lot of cases this is not just a waste of time it is also not necessary.

Keeping the number of buyer personas to a minimum whilst covering the most important pain points, solutions and scenarios relevant to your products and services is ideal.

Again however, there can be exceptions, in that case ensure that you have enough resource to provide the content and support required to target them all.

Otherwise scale back and focus on the personas that will bring you the quickest route to success.

Once you have finished creating your buyer personas and started to create and plan your content strategy you should already be planning your next review.

A buyer persona validation work flow should be implemented taking in feedback from your sales, marketing and customer service teams alongside continuous direct customer feedback using whatever process is most suitable for your organization.

This means you can assess the data and characteristics used to build the personas in the first instance against the communications and experience that your sales, marketing and service teams are having with your customers.

Customer service teams especially have direct contact with your customers and ultimately in place to gather real life feedback and understanding about how well you are really helping your customers and other potential areas of improvement.

The more you understand your customer and how your organization can help, the higher your chance of long term success.