Your Client Base: The Importance of Personas

So… You’ve got this great product, super service, brilliant idea… etc. Now you need to get it into the hands of the right people. How are you going to do this? Of course we will need a marketing strategy that includes SEO, advertising, and social media promotion; but where do we start? That’s the thought many of us have but have a really hard time getting past. If you’re anything like me starting a project can be a grueling task; once I have a plan and actionable steps to get there I’m golden.

Here’s how we’re gonna get the ball rolling… Ready?! It’s called a persona (que: heavenly angels singing) Yes, I said persona. A persona is a Semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. BOOM! That was free. This is not to be confused with target markets, job titles/ roles, dependent on specific tools or technology, or specific real people. What we are looking at with personas are common behavior patterns, shared pain points (professional, personal), universal goals, wishes dreams, and general demographic and biographic information.

We don’t want to spend our time and money chasing down fruitless leads. We want a targeted approach that gets our product into the right hands.We also want to treat people like people. When we market to people (specifically the people that are interested in our offer) it creates a much more pleasurable experience for the consumer.

How can you get started with your personas? One place to start is by looking at the customers you currently have. Start creating profiles based on them… After all, they are your customer. We can’t stop there. We need to do three things: Attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Once we get started with our personas we can create content, applied in the proper context, that meets those personas as visitors, leads, and eventually customers.