Seven-Point Discussion on Building Personas (Essentials of Digital Marketing)

As heard before personas are real persons who drive sales. All personas cannot be the same or all businesses have similar personas.

Let's get a review of the definition of a Persona:

" A Persona is a composite sketch of a target market based on validated commonalities - not assumptions - that informs content strategy to drive productive buyer engagement (i.e., revenue) - Ardath Albee - 

Referring particularly to content marketers, applying this definition enables easy planning of marketing strategies and implementation.

Let's assume for a while, that we do not know about personas. In that scenario, how would you know who's your buyer? or a prospective buyer?

Impossible to know and you never understand how to create a marketing plan.

Pertaining to content publishing, personas help in writing for your target audience.

Therefore, if you are initiating content marketing, you need personas.


12 Things to set your B2B content marketing strategy


Now, we‘ll see how to start working on a Persona.

Point # 1. Your business prospective customer

As every business operates with customers, you're in need of an ideal customer persona who for sure buys your products.

So, you create a need to buy with ideal persona.

This also conveys a fact that your content is in the interest, delivering value and quality that brings confidence and assurance to make a purchase.

Ideal customer can be he or she with certain specific characteristics.

You as a content marketer, need to understand and get a favorable view and indepth understanding of your qualified persona.


Point # 2. Knowing your customer completely

Imagine you have a wide variety of products with various price tags. A customer sets certain budget, quality and distinct needs to buy from you and picks the item accordingly.

You can neither enforce your interest nor compel to make a purchase.

But here's what you can do:

- Arrange the product as affordable

- Keep the quality consistent

- Assure the quality with high performance

- Offer guarantee

- Ensure to make the product work to the complete satisfaction of customer

- Make the product easily available for purchase

- Offer best shipping and customer service

If you‘re able to understand your customer as a persona, you've struck the deal.

You‘re good to go !


Point # 3. Get a thorough view of needs, wants, requirements etc.,

Though there are innumerable wants, for the purpose of marketing, you focus on needs.

What is a need?

To talk with friends, family, office colleagues and business purposes, a mobile is a need.

Its not a want.

Therefore, if you are able to supply the needs to your persona, your content is created for the purpose of marketing.

Let's take an example of want.

' I want to have a king size refrigerator in my house.'

That's a want.

Needs are quickly met with a purchase whereas a want may take sometime to do a purchase.

Let's see what a requirement is:

If I have to take a travel, I require a bus / train / flight ticket.

So, initially, check how your business fulfills the demands of your customer.

• By needs?
• By wants?
• By requirements?

Build your persona accordingly.

Point # 4. Profile of your customer (hobbies, interests , occupation)

Every online shopper has a profile that comes with several hobbies, interests, income stream, occupation and family.

Consider not only Point.3, but also Point 4. that produces a whole view of a persona.

Because, some of the buying decisions are co-dependent on income and family as well.

Let's see an example:

I would like to buy an iPhone. But I cannot afford it, because it is outside of my income stream and several monthly expenses.

I may plan to buy in the near future, but not currently.

Questions for Persona analysis of profile:

- What is the occupation?

- What are the income streams?

- What does he or she do in leisure time?

- What are the probable interest areas?

- What are the hobbies?

- What kind of person are you?


Point # 5. Challenges, problems and pain points

There are many challenges for your persona and there's every scope for you to get a study and focus. This brings a better scope to design several product solutions to help your customer to cope with the challenge.

After all, your business is driven by solving the problems of your customer.

Problems get solved with solutions.

Are you able to perceive and get a view of challenges confronted by your persona?

Does any of your products help in solving the problem?

There are also likely pain points such as - a health issue, repayment of loan, expenses due to repairs or such other.

There's definitely interconnectivity between these and you can never ignore one and accept the other.

But, you've got to take the side of your customer and stay.

This means you have a human-centered approach to make your persona converting into your customer.

The approach is philosophical, human-centric and solution-driven.

What you're doing here is by understanding the 360 degree view of persona and creating content that actually interests, engages, interacts, educates and discusses all about persona.

Point # 6. Life style, goals, objectives

Simple or luxury, there's a specific lifestyle attached to your persona and one goes with it.

Additionally, some are driven by goals, ambitions, aspirations and objectives.

In the process of marketing, you're journeying through these attributes and prepare the way for more effective content.

Because, a life that is driven by goals cannot be challenged.

You've just few minutes to hold the attention to read through your content and catch the interest.

So, you've to really impress upon it and never interfere or counter the life's ambitions of persona.


Point # 7. Buying decisions and preferences

This is a crucial stage. Simply stating, how does your persona arrive at a buying decision set by you?

The better choices available must be your product for sure.

This means, your product should be highlighting, value for?money, deliverable, accessible, affordable, reliable, trustworthy and most importantly, quality-satisfying.

Some of the questions to ask:

• Why to buy?
• What are the pros and cons of buying?
• How long will  this work?
• How competitive is this product?
• Does it deliver value for money?
• Why choose only this product?

Have a B2B business or a B2C business? You have a big task to build your audience. Alongside, you need content marketing strategies.

As content marketing experts recommend persona development for the purpose of content marketing, there's more emphasis on research, practical survey, interviews, and other opinion based answers that offer various accurate perspectives on persona development.

Demographics is yet another essential aspect as discussed in point.4. Occupation, job role, location etc.,  matter in differentiating the prospects of becoming a customer.

Therefore, the framework approach is definitely important during the process of building personas.


Conclusion

Now its so much clear to work on personas for your content marketing strategies. We‘ll discuss about strategies in the next blog post.

Read more interesting blog posts about content, content marketing, SEO and much more.

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