Key to the success of any marketing strategy, defining your buyer persona or customer profiles remains a delicate task. From their definition to their construction (free model), put your targets at the heart of your strategy.
More than a quarter of companies set up marketing actions without knowing their targets and without really worrying about their expectations. Result? A meteoric failure and an unnecessarily wasted communication budget.
Indeed, how to implement actions that can bear fruit without determining to whom they are intended.
What is a persona?
A persona, also known as a buyer persona, is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer whose typical portrait you must create. In order to make your character more real, his profile must be extremely detailed, precise, and correspond as closely to reality, based on socio-demographic, psychological, and behavioral criteria …
A buyer persona is a representation not of a single individual but of a set of customers with similar points.
Generally, it is necessary to create several because companies rarely address only a single target. However, we advise you to prioritize quality over quantity; It is better to identify three profiles of perfectly detailed target audiences rather than ten without interest and without precision.
What are buyer personas used for?
Determining the clients you dream of reaching has several interests:
- understand the behavior of your audience
- implement marketing actions corresponding to the expectations of prospects and customers with high added value only
- improve your return on investment
- develop new products or services
- define types of content to create
- set up an inbound strategy
For all these reasons, you understand why your next step will be to study your targets in depth.
Their importance in your inbound marketing strategy
Attracting an individual to your website, converting them into a prospect, and then into a customer to then retain them and thus make them an ambassador are the four steps of an inbound strategy.
In order to advance your targets in the sales funnel, studying them precisely upstream is essential.
Indeed, by determining your personas, you will be able to carry out marketing actions in line with their expectations, thus allowing you
- To attract visitors by developing your website design and creating relevant content, via a blog for example, which response to the issues of your targets.
- convert your visitors into leads thanks to landing pages by inserting visible CTAs and call-to-action CTAs as well as forms to collect their data.
- transform your prospects into customers by using the lead nurturing method in particular, i.e. by feeding your leads with content, by email, or on social networks, until they are mature to buy your product or consume your service.
- to retain your customers so that they become ambassadors by asking them for a testimonial, for example.
As you will have understood, determining your prospects and typical customer profiles is an essential step for all companies wishing to set up an inbound marketing strategy.
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How to define your targets?
To determine the profile of your ideal customers, you must be based on real information, not on assumptions. How to collect this information:
- data from Google Analytics,
- those you have on your subscribers on social networks,
- by directly soliciting your prospects and customers via online questionnaires,
- conduct face-to-face or telephone interviews
The collection followed by analysis, sorting, and grouping of data helps create similar customer segments.
Then it’s time to create your buyer persona. His profile must contain basic information such as his name and surname, his age, his address, his marital status, his function or the name of the company in which he works … In order to humanize your character and obtain a better representation of this one, the use of a photo is strongly recommended.
In addition to socio-demographic criteria, refining your fictitious characters by identifying their personality, behaviors, hobbies, motivations, objectives, breaks, media used, schedule … allows you to make them as precise and real as possible.
As the behavior of your targets changes, an update of their profile is necessary regularly.
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We also advise you to create your negative personas, that is to say, to define all the people you do not want to reach.
Now you should also know about negative buyer persona:-
What is a negative persona?
For heads in the air, a little reminder of the definition of a persona is in order. We call a buyer persona a semi-fictitious and generalized representation of your ideal customers based on socio-demographic, psychological, and behavioral criteria.
Do you see it coming to the definition of the negative persona? Also called an exclusion persona, it is a semi-fictional representation of the people you absolutely do not want to reach with your products or services.
What are they used for?
Well yes, what could it do you good to know all the people who will never become customers?
Well, contrary to what you might think, identifying people you don’t want to reach has multiple interests.
I’m sure you don’t see which ones yet. So let’s read on.
Already, you won’t waste energy and budget unnecessarily on people who won’t earn you anything.
You will be able to focus your marketing efforts only on the targets (your buyer personas) that contribute to your growth, positively impact the effectiveness of your most profitable marketing actions and optimize your cost of acquiring a lead.
But beware, some people, even if they will never buy your products or consume your services, can be very engaged with your brand on social media.
Do not neglect them and maintain a special relationship with them because one day they may share your content, recommend you to those around them, and become true ambassadors of your brand.
How to recognize or identify your negative personas?
A negative persona can be:
- a competitor: he offers the same products or services as you but comes to your website to spy on you and draw inspiration from your assets and/or your content by explaining to you that we all do the same!
- a student: he is interested in your content for his studies. We were all a student one day!
- a potential prospect but who does not have the budget even in the medium term to buy your products or consume your services.
- an individual who does not need your products or services.
- someone who is outside your preferred geographic areas.
Conclusion
You would have understood it. All of the content, actions, and decisions you take should be closely related to your Persona. Taking the time to give a human face to your ideal customer profile considerably increases your chances of success.
Now that you have all the cards in your hand, all you have to do is take the time to determine them.
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