There’s an endless amount of marketing strategies and plans businesses can implement. But they all have one thing in common - you have to make sure your plan is taking your ideal clients (aka buyer personas) into consideration for the actions to be successful. If a marketing effort is going to fail, it’s because it’s not based on research - specifically, research on your target market.
What do you know about your ideal clients? Having a thorough understanding of your target audience will guide every step you make to actually reach them online.
Back to The Basics: Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer. At LAIRE, we make it a priority to do as much research on personas as possible . It's vital for us to know about and talk to our clients’ best customers. This gives us an understanding of what marketing plans will be the most productive and where to focus our time during implementation.
If you have skipped this step in creating your marketing strategy, we would highly recommend going back and completing this step. Here’s why buyer personas are so important:
Buyer Persona Research Leads To More Effective Marketing
Believe it or not, buyer persona research can be an enlightening experience. Researching your personas can provide a new perspective on your business that you cannot provide as an owner, manager, or employee.
It's true; business owners and marketers sometimes live in a bubble. The fact of the matter is that it's important to get customer feedback. It's one of the best ways to make sure that you’re communicating effectively with your audience. For example, what you call one of your products or services might not be what your customers call it.
Website Messaging
Knowing who your ideal customers are, as well as understanding their pain points and challenges will greatly improve your capabilities to reach your target individuals or markets. Persona research will improve your website visitors’ experience when the text on your web pages relates to them.
Additionally, your site navigation should have what they need and make it easy for them to quickly find what they are looking for. Otherwise, they may bounce right off your site without looking at any other pages.
Content
Buyer challenges and pain points should always influence the content you’re producing. Make sure your content is serving your ideal customers by solving a problem, providing a resource, or answering a question they have.
Persona research also factors into search engine optimization best practices and techniques. Understanding the lingo your ideal clients use will help you appear in more searches online. If you are in tune with your ideal clients and create content that truly answers their questions and concerns, you will be seen as a trustworthy resource and a subject matter expert. Businesses that produce relevant and helpful content typically stand out amongst their competition and are talked about by ideal customers to other potential clients.
Advertising
Businesses choosing to advertise need to know where their ideal clients are, what types of media they consume, and what their behaviors are on those platforms. The reason being - the best advertising campaigns are highly targeted.
In fact, you’ll find the best return on investment comes when you spend your advertising budget if you research your personas and learn about the appropriate way to reach the right people. These individuals will be the best fit for your company with specific messaging they will identify with.
Social Media
Social media is an excellent tool any business can use to promote a brand, drive website traffic, and engage with its audience. How do you know which social channels are best to use? You guessed it! Buyer persona research. You can never assume your target audience is on Facebook or any other platform. Take the time to learn where your people are by asking them directly and looking where they are the most actively engaged.
Sales
Persona research also influences sales. When a lead is ready to speak with a salesperson, that seller should know how that lead prefers to communicate, whether that be via phone call, email, or chatbot. A phone call may seem too personal to a lead, and an email may seem too sterile. Doing your buyer persona homework will better influence your communication methods with your leads, and in turn, improve your sales numbers.
Do the Work to Reap Reward
Every marketing and sales initiative should be based on research or data, and that includes buyer persona research. Relying on guesswork and assumptions might be able to accurately describe some parts of your target client, but you cannot understand the whole picture of your personas without digging deep.. Keep your persona research on-hand and challenge processes and techniques at your company to make sure they are evolving with your target market.
While it would be ideal to do the homework before you write, design, or post anything, it’s never too late to get started. If you need help nailing down your company’s ideal customer or persona, let us know. We take pride in producing measurable results for ourselves and our clients. And the only way we can promise results is to do the research!
Want to see what other marketing tactics you could be doing to get more leads through your website? Request a free marketing audit!
This blog was originally published on June 25, 2018 and updated on February 26, 2021 for accuracy.
