Imagine sitting down at your computer and writing. You write an amazing how to blog post. It’s just the right length, you address a problem with directional drilling, you identify the underlying cause of this particular issue with directional drilling, and you provide a solution to solve this problem.
The solution sells for $150,000, which is 10% less than your nearest competitor, and our solution can be implemented in half the time.
It’s a guaranteed win. You are a content marketing superstar and will go down in history as an energy industry genius/tycoon.
You then click publish and go live with this amazing piece of content on americangirlblog.com. A blog for young girls and collectors of the American Girl Doll.
Know Your Audience
This sounds ridiculous. But, how many of us are doing this same thing by not knowing who our customer really is? As foolish as it is to sell expensive high-end drilling equipment to 11-year-old girls, it is also foolish to try to solve problems your customers don’t have or sell products your customers don’t want.
We need to know who our customer is and how to reach them. How old are they? Where do they spend their free time? Where do they look for the solutions to their problems?
Knowing the answers to these questions allows you to be where they are looking, grab their attention, and solve their problem.
No… You Really Need To Know Your Customer
Many business owners have a problem with either not knowing who their customer is or assuming their customer is just like them. Yes, many businesses are started by scratching your own itch. However, times change and sometimes we don’t remember what it’s like to not have the answer.
Luckily this is a day in age where we can learn what our customers are looking for. What are their problems? What do they search when they are trying to solve those issues.
Creating Buyer Personas for Inbound Marketing
The solution is creating Buyer Personas. A Buyer Persona is a profile for a fictional customer that is based on fact.
Create your Buyer Persona by looking at your customers or potential customers and answering the following questions:
Who exactly are your customers and what specific problem are you solving for them?
What are they trying to achieve:
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Address:
Occupation:
Married (Y/N):
Children (Y/N):
The specific problem you can help with:5 Places they spend their time online/offline to resolve this problem:
You may be tempted to try to solve more than one specific problem, but let’s just stick to one for now.
Go ahead and copy the questions into a Google Doc. Then start answering. Answer the questions as completely as possible. Some of these questions may not seem important. “Why do I need to know that my customer is married?” Well, there are a few reasons.
For one, do you need to target your customer or your customer’s spouse?
Digging Deeper, Getting Creative, Overcoming Obstacles.
What if you don’t know some of these answers? What if you haven’t sold anything yet?
Then I would start in places people ask questions. Some good places to start are Quora.com or Facebook.
Start with Quora and type your service or product.
In this example, you are a house painter. Here you can see what potential customers are asking, where they are and what they are looking for. Looks like they are asking where they can find you and how much you charge. This is good to know because you can come right out of the gate answering these questions on your website.
Facebook is another great source. Typing in your product or services will reveal some of your competitors and who follows them, groups you can join full of information that pertains to your business, and public posts from people talking about your industry. From there you can see profiles, which go along way to helping you accurately and factually answer the questions on your Buyer Persona.
If you already have an active business page on Facebook then head over to Insights and go to “People” on the left. There you can see valuable demographics on who has been visiting your page, how old they are, where they live, gender, and more.
Once you have your first Buyer Persona completed create another, and another, and another if necessary. You want to get a complete picture of who your customers are for each product or service you sell. Now that you have your Buyer Personas completed you can start targetting your website, content, marketing, videos, social media, and anything else to that buyer.
Tying back into your inbound marketing, this is a lot better than stabbing in the dark and hoping you get it right. Or having to go back to cold calling and hoping you resonate with the person on the other end. Who wants to do that.
Do you need to create Buyer Personas for your business but don’t have time? Contact us. We would love to sit down and create your Buyer Personas for you so you can start reaching the right people and moving some product.
