I’ve blogged before about the importance of crafting detailed and accurate buyer personas. The truth is, you can’t market effectively to your target audience if you don’t really know who that audience is. I’ve also commented on the importance of reviewing and updating buyer personas on a regular basis. People change, your market changes… you need to ensure that your personas stay current. But even if you faithfully complete both of those tasks, your efforts will be wasted if you don’t do one other thing—work to keep them at the forefront of your mind.
At 30dps, we’re big believers in the notion that you can’t market to an audience you can’t “see.” That’s why we put so much emphasis on defining and maintaining buyer personas. If you’re not familiar with personas, they are “characters” you create to represent your target audience. You give them a name, an occupation, personal interests, etc. You also note their motivation for seeking a product or service like yours as well as the criteria they’ll use to make their purchase decision. The purpose is to help you focus on who it is you’re trying to reach.
You are a savvy marketer who knows the value of understanding your target market. You’ve done extensive persona work and have a firm grasp on what each of your prospect types is looking for in products and services like yours... or, at least, you had a firm grasp.
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Buyer personas are fictional, generalized aggregations of your typical types of customers. These fictionalized representations help you relate to and understand your customers and prospective customers better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to their specific needs, behaviors, concerns, and buying scenarios. Following are five significant ways in which buyer personas can transform a business:
