5 Steps for Understanding and Targeting Your Buyers Personas

Knowing buyers personas is a no-nonsense shortcut to revenue growth and solid brand presence. The buyer personas knowledge gives you the opportunity to focus all your resources in a way that will ensure maximum efficiency and is a powerful strategy for conversion rate optimisation.

Marketing Insider Group conducted an interesting survey not too long ago. In it, we find out that 56% of all companies that utilize the power of buyer personas reported significant growth. Thus, we’ve decided to explore the entire persona targeting process. In this article, you will find out all about the 5 elementary steps of grasping and using buyer personas.

Step 1 – Gather all the necessary information

This first insight throws light on how can you identify different traits of your buyers personas. Before you can start with any campaign, you have to set a distinct time period of intelligence gathering.

The buyers personas don’t include just traits, but also how do the buyers express these traits. You need a sample size that leaves room for changes and deviations. This allows you to make a conclusion. To make the analytics gathering easier, we’ve separated the first step into 5 key components. They are: 

• Identify your priorities. Before you even make contact with new buyers, you have to know what the priorities of your brand are. How are you going to accomplish any goal if you haven’t planned anything? Knowing your priorities will give your HR department and associates a chance to avoid unnecessary information.

For example, if you are a real-estate agency, you can cross off anyone that isn’t financially independent. This is achieved by knowing what your priority is. 

• What are the success factors involved? Talk to your buyer and give them room to express themselves. By finding out what their goals are, you can know what to focus on for your buyer personas. For online sport apparel shops, customers may be interested in bundle packs for holidays. This will help you gather information and know what to do. It’s the road to success.
• What makes a buyer question your credibility? This step of the process is for identifying potential obstacles on the road. Is there something your buyer has had a bad experience with? Where do they abandon your website the most? Talk to your buyers about the biggest deal-breakers when making purchases and to further enhance your buyers personas.
• Identify the buying process. Inquire about the way your buyers complete their journey. Begin with triggers, how much searching they do and how quick are they to make the purchase. Also, you need to assign each step of the customer journey a distinct role, so the process can be replicated or modified.
• Know the buyers’ criteria. Nobody has infinite funds. Your service won’t be perfect, and some features and steps will end up being ignored. To make the right decision, ask your buyers about what they deem to be the most important.

Step 2 – Create a map of the entire buying process

Even though the customers are a number one priority, you need to have an overview of the entire process. This requires to map out the buying process, but from all sides. Include your brand and the participation it has during the key moments of the process.

How does this affect the way you target your buyers personas? There are three key components:

• Mapping out the process gives you much more room for efficiency. Every sector of your company will be able to target different aspects of the buying process. If you take a look at the previous step, you will see that identifying buyers’ priorities is important. For example, eCommerce buyers deem the interface of a website important. Upon finding that out, you can task your developers to improve on that facet.
• You know what resources you need. When you talk to your buyers, you will know their needs. As you consult your team, a plan for future use can be made. Planning in advance is always welcome, as you can gather the resources that you need to satisfy your buyer personas. We can address the website example again. Your customers prefer a simple interface. Knowing this gives you time to hire additional developers before your next campaign. Minimalist buyer personas are the reason you can utilize this information, with a mapped out buying process.
• There is room for backup plans. Analytics are important when looking to run your campaigns, but you can never plan for everything. Trends can change quickly, so you have to be prepared for such occurrences. When you map the buying process, you can look back at it and create alternatives.

The buyers personas are closely connected to the buying process. Creating a map is, perhaps, the most important part of the targeting process for buyer personas. However, you have to execute it next.

Step 3 – Choose the right content

Perhaps the hardest part of the process is over. You’ve gathered all the necessary information, and there is the targeting itself to complete. But, where do you begin?

To choose the right approach, you have to pick the content which appeals to a certain group of buyers. There are different ways you can combine and use the right content at the right time. Let’s look at a few examples.

Video marketing is a cutting-edge method that you can use to engage your buyers. This interactive form of providing information can aid you in so many ways. Content marketers and brand managers love to use video if they’ve determined that their customers are always in a hurry.

If they spend just a minute or two on your website, then they might get bored by your current content. To engage customers more, pick videos.

Use introductory ones, as well as testimonials from other buyers. Make them “radiate warmth” and be modern. Of course, you can choose different styles depending on other parts of the personas you’re targeting.

Infographics are always a welcome addition to your website. They are great for later steps of the buying process you’ve mapped.

Combine them with blog posts to offer evidence to support your brand in an interactive form. People love claims that are backed up by numbers. Why not use the opportunity and showcase your sources in an entertaining way?

A blog is an excellent means of targeting buyer personas. Your buyers need your products, but they will need them more if you inform them about the benefits of your brand beforehand. Think about the topics related to your brand and products. Write about them extensively, in an engaging manner.

Volvo pride themselves in car safety. So, what do they do? They spread knowledge about the history of safety, to put more focus on their product.

Step 4 – Choose the right channels

With a mapped-out journey and the right content, you can almost feel your revenue growing. However, the right data isn’t useful, unless you use the right channels for spreading that content. A marketer nowadays has a myriad of tools at his or her disposal, so you can allocate your content any way you want.

For B2B marketing, the best choice would be LinkedIn. Here, brands can interact with one another and exchange services, as well as form collaborations. You can directly answer questions and provide direct and verified information.

Additionally, you can run very specific ads because of the nature of the network. The range of options is broad and can easily enhance your campaigns’ performance.

A big part of a buyer persona is the age group they’re in. If the majority of your buyers are 16-30, why not focus on a modern and visual approach? The ideal tool, in this case, is Instagram.

With direct marketing options and tools such as stories and Instagram Shopping, you can showcase your service. We would recommend Instagram for the most daring campaigns, as the format of the ads is very orthodox. This gives you room to experiment and capture your buyer’s attention.

Facebook is also a staple in content marketing. Facebook Ads gives you a plethora of opportunities for showcasing your content and invigorating your campaigns.

The data you’ve gathered in Steps 1 and 2 will be advertised in this particular section of the targeting process. Additionally, you can deploy content from your website in an automated sharing manner.

Twitter is a useful means of sharing images, infographics and short news forms. It’s also a good channel for direct communication with your buyers. By replying to them instantly, your customer service will improve, and you won’t face problems with timing. The way you reply is also determined by the persona you’ve mapped out.

Google, of course, is a staple in providing targeted ads. Analyse keywords and utilize them properly for maximum results. Other search engines can also aid you, but be careful how you allocate your temporal and financial resources. 

Step 5 – Using the right parameters and running multiple campaigns

You know what to post and advertise, where to do it, what to use and more. But what are some of the factors you have to consider? The first thing you should pay attention to is to have multiple campaigns at once.

As your customer body grows, it will be impossible to get the most out of your content. This is why you have to segment your audience, according to the persona of your buyers. 

Of course, new buyers can change the persona landscape, but it’s easy to adjust with timely updates. What you have to choose is the most common trait in all your regular buyers.

The key is to use the parameters to your advantage. Various marketing channels give you the opportunity to target people very specifically. Gender, interests, education, and region are just some of the targeting options a marketer can use to reach their goals.

Another thing you will see as your brand grows is the importance of multiple campaigns. They can be in specific languages, with different images, styles, and even different price placements.

Of course, your team will think of a multitude of ideas, but A/B testing will help you solve the dilemma. As you see which ads perform better on different channels, the choice will be much clearer. There can also be a case of “targeting along the way,” where you inquire with your buyers about the appeal of your ads.

As your split testing and campaigns bring results, you will be able to acquire even more data for your targeting. With more information, your brand will grow, and one success will fuel the next. Targeting and understanding buyers personas is nothing more than a simple process you have to establish. 

Concluding thoughts

With the right analytical basis, you can know the behaviour of your customers. From that point, you can choose the content and channels, according to the mapped buying journey. With segmenting and clever campaigns, you will be able to accomplish all your business goals. You can also use free buyer persona templates to communicate your personas internally. Stay consistent, and you will see your success grow in real time.

Featured image by TomOfficial on Unsplash