Buyer Personas – Who, Besides Your Mom, is Your Audience?
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Continued from previous post Why You Need To Become a Trusted Expert in Your Field
In this next step to becoming a Trusted Expert, you need to develop buyer profiles, which we should actually call buyer personas, because they should be well-rounded enough that they seem like a real person. Only then can you get real insights on what problems these people have that you can solve, and how to reach them with that information.
You may have several buyer profiles for your site, or you may have only one. However many you do have, you will need to figure out the best way to communicate with and serve the needs of that group.
A buyer persona is a fictional person that you have made up who is representative of as type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest (a problem you can solve) in your company. Once you’ve developed them, all communications are then targeted towards them. You use the language they use, you advertise in the places that they like to go. You just need to know who they are
By using these personas to develop unique, personalized communications strategies that target each segment specifically, you have a chance to send out a message that truly resonates with your intended target. Because of the two-way nature of web communications, each time you speak with them you have the opportunity to gain even more knowledge about the group, and apply those learnings to you next communications with them.
And to know what problems they have, you need to understand who your buyers are. You need to know who they are, why they need your products, and what problems your products can solve for them. And then, once you know who they are, you can concentrate on creating authentic, compelling web content that will reach them and effectively communicate how you can make their lives easier.
So how do you learn about them? The best possible way would be to interview them; but, as we all know, this isn’t always possible with an online interaction. A survey is also a good way to find information, but again there can be problems. Most people don’t want to take surveys so it’s not a true picture of your audience, and if you offer an incentive, then you get people who aren’t really your target market, but are taking the survey to get the incentive, and skew the results.
The best way to start is to use the information that you already have at your fingertips: analytics.
- How did people get to your site?
- Where did they go afterwards?
- How many visits did it take them to convert into a sale?
- What was their average time spent on each page?
You can also gain valuable information about your site and how well it’s working with these questions, but that’s another chapter.
But information from your site is not the only information you should use when determining your buyer personas.
The danger there lies in this…
What if your true targets haven’t been visiting your site?
What if they’re still out there, looking for a solution to their problems, not finding your, or worse, finding one of your competitors instead.
So what you need to do is first figure out what problems your site solves. Then, you figure out who has those problems. Everything else comes out of that. You need to also know what else is out there in your market, and how your competitors are solving problems themselves. Perhaps there is a niche that you’ve identified that no one in your market has identified yet.
When you truly understand what your buyers are looking for and what problems they want you to solve, you can eliminate the guesswork in your communications strategy, and you’ll know where, when, and how to target them.
Stay tuned for next post where i talk about How to Become a trusted Expert!
So whats your thoughts and comments?
[...] Buyer Personas and Your Website Written by John Cow on July 7th, 2009 // Continued from Buyer Personas – Who, Besides Your Mom Is Your Audience [...]
Another great point John and like I said in my last comment I am already on top of this and it is comforting to know I am on the right path. The hardest part about it was to realize that it realy does take work and only wish I had found you 6 moths ago lmao, but its like everything else live and learn…..
Peace!
Great post, John.
Also it is nice to give your persona a name, social status, etc.
Go Deep, you can never go deep enough with this stuff.
Igor