Buyer personas & why are they so important when creating inbound marketing content
According to Hubspot, buyer personas are “fictionalized, generalized representations of your ideal customers”. These representations contain a wide array of information about your buyer, such as:
- Where the buyer works & their role in the company
- Goals & challenges of the company
- Personal demographics (age, location, education, etc.)
- How the buyer accesses information
Creating buyer personas makes it possible to create context, to get mindset of the buyer and understand their goals and challenges to figure out what gaps you can fill.
How buyer personas can be used by the average business
Let’s say you’re a graphic design firm working primarily with small businesses in the area. You may create the buyer persona of Small Business Sandy. Sandy has owned and operated a catering company for 10 years. She enjoys keeping her business fresh and unique and is always updating her menus and website, looking for ways to grow her business. When she’s not working, Sandy enjoys spending time with her husband and 3 children. She is very active on social media and enjoys reading articles found using those channels.
Why it is important for you to know all of this information about Small Business Sandy
The information that makes up buyer personas should guide the type of content you produce and how that content is distributed and optimized. With all the different types of content you can create; blogs, whitepapers, FAQ sheets, how to guides, it is important to think about your buyers.
When developing content, we are trying to understand where the buyer is in their buyer journey, whether they’re in the awareness, consideration or decision stage. Buyers at different stages need different types of content to move them through their journey. For example:
- Awareness stage | I have a problem or a need…
- Blog posts, editorial & educational content, analyst reports, research reports, whitepapers, how-to guides
- Consideration stage | What options are available?
- Podcasts, worksheets, comparison whitepapers, videos, expert guides
- Decision stage | Which one is best for me?
- Case studies, free trials, live demos, product literature, vendor & product comparions
Small Business Sandy might be interested in things like blog posts and how-to guides, content that provides ideas and tools she can use to help her catering business. Different buyer personas may be more receptive and in tune with different distribution channels. Small Business Sandy is very active on social media and might be more engaged by content posted on Facebook or LinkedIn, whether it is an article or a link to a blog post.
It is also very important to consider buyer personas when optimizing content. Consider what your target customer would be searching for and the way they would phrase things when typing them into search.
- What keywords will they use?
- Will they be using industry specific terms or not?
Small Business Sandy might be conducting searches that are more general and don’t use a lot of industry jargon.
Need help creating content tailored to your buyer personas? Download our free worksheet!
Utlilizing buyer personas is one way of improving your digital marketing strategy. Another is utilizing Marketing & Sales automation. Want to learn more about using automation tools? Check out our upcoming event, Hubspot on Tap!