Looking for the perfect content? Create a buyer persona!

Content is king in the online marketing world. Content helps you attract new customers, convert website visits in to leads, leads in to opportunities, closing deals and delight customers. This means content needs your attention! Specially because customers are active on different social channels and expect to find your content on those channels. 75% of key decision makers uses social media to find information about vendors. But only sharing content is not enough. Content needs to add value to your prospects and customers. When your content isn't relevant for your prospects and customers it adds no value at all. So, how do you know what to share, when to share and where to share your content? 

The answers is simple; create buyer personas

A buyer persona is a complete (visual) overview of your customer. The overview gives answers to questions like, what is your buyers job title, organization size, behavior, years of experience and interest. The more specific you make your buyer persona, the more value they have for you and your organization. A buyer persona is never finished. Your customers are changing and you get to know your customer better after working together for months or years. This means you have to update your buyer persona on a regular base. When you use a buyer persona you know what is in the interest of your customer and where your customer is in the buying process or the sales funnel. This information helps you to create content that is relevant for your customers. A person who visits your website for the first time needs different content than a customer at the end of the sales funnel. Ask yourself the question, what do you know about your customers and prospects? And where do you find this information?

Use your organization and customers to find information for your buyer personas

Creating buyer personas isn't simple or done in a hour. You need input from different parts of the organization. Your sales team knows your prospects and customers very well. They speak with them on a daily bases. Your delight team or customer success managers have a good understanding of your customers as well. And don't forget the support team and the technical team. All the different departments in your organization can help you create a 360 degree overview of your prospects and customers. But also your customers can help! A short survey or interview can give you very valuable information. And asking your customers for help will engaged them with your organization, that's a win-win! Use forms and landing pages to get a good understanding of your prospects on your website. And don't forget your CRM solution and other data collecting solutions your organization uses. These are great sources of information as well! So you have a the information you need, what's next?

Find trends in your information

Every customer is different, but you will find trends in the information. By looking for trends you will see that you can split your customers in different groups. A great example of splitting up by groups are the different stages in the sales funnel. But take a look at other trends like; content performing and engagement, most active social media channels, which content converts leads in to opportunities and click through rate. Find the most relevant trends for your organization and again, this is a changing process! Ready to create your buyer personas?

Create a new worksheet for every buyer persona

Buyer personas can be used in every part of the organization. Be aware of this and make your buyer personas as clear and simple as possible. Use a new worksheet for every persona and find a clear structure to set up your worksheet. Use real customer quotes in your buyer personas and give examples of a day in the life of your buyers. This will help you and the other people in your organization to understand your buyer personas. And maybe even more important, add visuals. Visuals say more than words and make your buyer persona's almost real people. I prefer to give buyer personas a name as well. Let your buyer personas become part of your organization. This is the moment to start using your buyer personas, ready?

Let's get started!

Time to start using your buyer personas. Start with creating content. Write a blog that perfectly fits to one of your buyer personas. Post your blog on the company website and share the blog on the right social media channels. Use the right forms and landing pages to take your customers trough the sales funnel. The most important part of the process is measure success. Measure for example; website visits, engagement and shares on social media channels, number of new leads and quality of the leads. When you measure results you know your buyer personas are good and complete or not. Let everybody in your organization be part of this. Ask them to share your content, engage with prospects and customers on social media and maybe even write content as well. Do you think writing and creating buyer personas is a lot of work? I promise you, ones your start it, you will love it! And when you see the results you can't image what life would be without buyer personas!