Understanding whom you’re trying to reach is one of the most important first steps to building a smarter content marketing strategy.
Blogging, social media, premium download content are all great ways to attract and engage buyers, but it’s important to start with one simple truth.
Everyone is not your prospect
How a buyer persona helps inform your content marketing strategy
First let’s start with an explanation of what is a buyer persona. Simply put a buyer persona is a snapshot of your ideal customers. Most businesses have two or three broad categories of their ideal customer. Sometimes it’s a final decision maker; sometimes this is someone who has influence on the final purchase decision. In both cases your content marketing strategy needs to be able to appeal to both.
A good buyer persona will include an outline of your customer segment, their demographics and behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.
Buyer personas can be created through surveys, and interviews of your target audience. This can include a mix of current and past customers, as well as prospects that align with your target audience. The information you collect can be both qualitative and quantitative to paint a picture of who your ideal customer is, what are their challenges or pain points, what they value, and how your solution fits into their daily lives.
Using your buyer personas
One of the best uses of a buyer persona is to help guide decisions on your content marketing strategy.
- What questions are they asking and importantly searching for online to?
- What information or content will help them see how they can solve their challenges?
- Exactly how does the challenge or pain chain impact the buyer’s organization?
- How is your company positioned to help them solve these challenges?
Align your content development to answer these questions and you will be on the path to creating content that attracts and engages more qualified prospects.
