About 70% of consumers want a personalized experience from brands. This percentage continues to climb year after year.
Buyer personas are critical in helping to build a personalized experience for consumers. Through a buyer persona, a business can gain a deeper understanding of its target audience. In short, a buyer persona is there to help a business zero in on a consumer’s pain points and address their needs through each step of a content marketing strategy.
In order to create buyer personas for content marketing, there are certain key questions that must be asked:
What Basic Information Should Be Included in a Buyer Persona?
A business should use data collected about its consumers to help in the creation of buyer personas. A complete B2B buyer persona will include a spectrum of information, ranging from demographics and personality traits to job position and daily work tasks.
Here are some key aspects that must feature on a buyer persona:
- Name
- Job Title
- Industry
- Level of Influence
- Age
- Goals
- Pain Points
- Like/Dislikes About Job
To help team members relate to the buyer persona, name each profile and add an image representing that persona. By doing this, marketers will have an easier time viewing the persona as a person and not just data.
How Many Buyer Personas Are Needed?
When it comes to B2B, decisions often must go through multiple levels. This means that there should be a buyer persona for each person involved in the decision-making process.
This committee of decision-makers might look something like this:
- Initiator
- Influencer
- Decision-maker
- Buyer
- User
- Gatekeeper
If a business offers multiple services or products, then that will hold appeal to different types of audiences. There should be a persona for each.
A specific persona is needed for each group because how the business engages with them will vary. On top of that, there will also be different personas who engage with the buying process at different stages.
Let’s take a look at an example to illustrate this point.
A top-level executive (gatekeeper) who has the final say in all decisions likely won’t deal with the buying process until it’s at the last stage. This person will have an interest in case studies, costs, and product comparisons.
Now, a sales manager (initiator) might be the first point of contact between companies. This person will be most interested in what solution a specific product solves and possibly market research surrounding the product.
What Social Networks and Associations Does the Persona Engage With?
When it comes to ads on social media, about 49% of Millenials and 54% of Gen Z say they prefer this channel.
What this means is that a business should always seek to leverage social media to push sales and build brand awareness. To make this an effective strategy, though, a business must first have a deep understanding of which social networks or associations their target consumer uses.
It’s easy enough for a business to know it should advertise on a social media platform or on an association or organization’s blog. It takes research and a firm grasp of the target consumer to know which specific channels to use.
Once a business knows which social media platform to use, it can begin to craft targeted ads that will have a high success rate. Also, knowing what organization or association a target consumer visits helps to give a business link opportunities. A business can use the data on what associations or organizations a consumer belongs to or keeps tabs on and then go to LinkedIn to research related industry groups to include on a buyer persona profile.
What Type of Content Would the Consumer Prefer and Use to Research Related Products/Services?
This question serves to help a business discover whether they should be writing short-form content (500-word blog posts), long-form content (1,000-word to 2,000-word blog posts), or instead be creating videos, infographics, or any number of other types of content.
It’s essential for a business to understand what type of content to produce in order to connect with its target audience. A buyer persona helps to flesh out the different forms of content a specific consumer might gravitate toward. In turn, this gives rise to a business having a better understanding of its keyword research and lead generation.
For example, one buyer persona might be for a man in his 50s who is the manager of the sales department. This person might have a preference for reading case studies and watching informational videos. Another buyer persona could be for a woman in her mid-20s who works as the assistant to the manager. She prefers infographics and short-form blog posts when researching products or services to bring to her manager’s attention.
How Does the Target Audience Feel About Your Competitors?
This might seem like a weird question to study in-depth for a buyer persona. However, it holds real and critical relevance.
By understanding how a target consumer feels toward a competitor of the business, said business can discover holes within the marketplace that the brand can fill. Beyond this, it can also help a business identify mistakes to avoid that might turn away a potential customer.
In short, the key to this question is that the answer helps a business improve upon and grow from both the mistakes and wins of its competitors.
Dive Deep Into Fleshing Out Buyer Personas With Targeted Questions
By asking specific questions about the target consumer and collecting valuable data, a business can gain a deeper understanding of their customer. Through the use of buyer personas, businesses can learn the pain points of the consumer, what goes into their decision-making process, what type of content they most prefer, and so much more.
Once a business has gained information on its target audience and created buyer personas, it can then go on to craft personalized content and ads that will drive the success rate of lead generation and conversion up.