You will find this to be fun and challenging. It's an exercise that will make you think and might even make you a little bit crazy. The information gained can be invaluable. When you've completed this exercise, your business will be better positioned to attract new customers.
What I’m so cryptically talking about is Customer Persona Development.
What’s that?
A customer persona (sometimes referred to as a “customer avatar”) is a profile of a person who represents your target customer. You can create as many customer personas as you like, but in general, I'd recommend having at least three, and no more than five.
At this point, you’re probably saying “I already know my customer.”
That’s fair. After all, you own your business and sell to your customers every day. However, can you remember the last time you sat down and REALLY thought about who they are?
What do they do every day? What media do they consume? Are they married? Do they have kids? How educated are they? What type of messaging do they react to? What are their everyday challenges? What do they aspire to become?
You’ll need to develop answers to these questions, plus many more.
Why is creating customer personas important for your business? Creating customer personas will help you create content that’s relevant to your buyers and reaches them at the right time, with the right messaging, and in the right tone. Customer persona development will increase your sales and streamline your marketing efforts.
What can you expect from developing your personas?
Over the years, I’ve hosted several workshops dedicated to this. I can undoubtedly tell you that your takeaways will be these:
Customer persona development will improve your marketing strategy. Personas will help you identify effective messaging that speaks to your customers. Persona creation will help you create marketing funnel strategies to engage customers at various points and ultimately convert them.
Speaking to your customer persona will increase your website traffic. When you create content that's more relevant to your target customers they will better relate to your site, spend more time on it, and consume more of its content. They will feel a connection to your business.
Through customer persona development, your messaging can address their pain points and provide a solution to their challenges. Your odds of turning the visitor into a lead have just gone up. More leads equals more sales.
Steps to getting started on your personas:
Keep in mind that there’s time that you'll need to sacrifice on the front end of this exercise. In the future, you’ll even want to revisit your target personas, as your customers can change over time.
For now, here are a few tips to get you started.
Review your past customer information if you have it. Look at their demographics (age, gender, location, etc.), company size, and past orders. If you have a CRM, this should be easy to find out. If you don't, do your best based on record keeping, memory, and pier input.
Now take the entire customer "pie" and think about how you’d slice it up. Remember, not all customers are created equal. Some are more apt to buy from you than others. Concentrate on the main segments. Depending on the size of your pie, I’d recommend staying between 3-5 personas. These will be the customers who you're most likely to deal with regularly.
Think about your first target customer. Begin by forming a general picture of them in your mind. Name them and even assign them a face. Put yourself in their shoes. Think about who they are, what they want, and how they spend their time. Go deep and trust your work. Remember, it’s your customer and no one can do a better job at this than you.
Once you have your persona written down, show it around. Get input from those around you like employees or even customers themselves. Ensure that a general “buy-in” exists for who this persona is. Now repeat the process for each additional persona.
This step can take some time and thought, but it’s also the part that will earn you future dividends. Once you’ve developed your personas, don't just throw them on your desk and call it a day. You went through this process for a reason. Use them. Consider things like your current messaging and if it appeals to them. Think about the content you’re presenting to them and how you’re presenting it. Does it line up with what that persona wants and needs?
PRO TIP: If you can, it may help to involve someone in this process who is as familiar with your business as you are. It's nice to have someone to bounce things off of.
Your customer persona's details will matter:
When you develop a customer persona, the details matter. The greater the level of detail, the better you’ll understand them and be able to create content and marketing funnel strategies to reach them. What should you be asking yourself during the customer persona development process? Here are a few questions to get you started:
What are their demographics? Consider their age, gender, income, education, location, the company they work for, and the title they hold.
Do they have any pain points? What challenges do they face every day? What can you offer to ease their pain or help them overcome their challenges?
What are they trying to achieve? What are their aspirations? How can you help them achieve their goal or be the person they want to be?
Do their buying decisions take minutes or months? When do they start to consider a product or service? How do they narrow their search? What’s happening along the way? What does their decision ultimately come down to?
How do they usually spend their time? What media do they consume? Are they busy with their kid's sports and only have time to surf Facebook on the sidelines? Or are they high-achieving professionals scrolling through LinkedIn posts, trying to get ahead?
What motivates them? Is it a general sense of security? Is it a “good deal”? Is it the adoration of others? Is it being an earlier adopter of the latest… anything?
If you’re committed to growing your business and spending your marketing resources wisely, I’d highly recommend you consider engaging in a customer persona development process. You may also want to consider aligning yourself with a content writing service experienced in guiding you and your team through the process. If you need some help getting started or simply chat more about it, we'd love to talk!
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