Working to Build Leads Online? How Important Are Buyer Personas?

How do you make sure your digital strategies are generating high quality leads online, while also uncovering the right opportunities with the right prospects? Answering this question involves understanding who your buyer personas are and identifying how best to engage them.

Buyer personas represent the different types of customers you sell to. Marketing once referred to these as customer segments. Unfortunately, these segments only represented a high-level view of a given market. They outlined a specific portion of the market, but didn't do nearly enough to define who the main decision makers were and what motivated them to purchase.

You must come to know each of your buyer personas.

In a world where marketing is dominated by digital strategies, customer buyer personas have taken customer segmentation to a whole new level. Your personas provide that all-important road-map to generating high-quality leads online and they make reaching your target audience more scientific and more repeatable. So, what can you expect once you determine who your buyer personas are?

1. Clarity of Message

It doesn't matter what market you service or the type customer you sell to; buyer personas can be used to better target Baby Boomers, Generation X, millennials, Gen Z, and business professionals. When you know the typical fears, concerns, likes, dislikes and preferences of each of your buyer personas, then you're better able to deliver a more focused message. You can then improve that message as you improve the results of your digital advertising campaigns.

2. Improved Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service Performance

The ultimate goal is for everyone in your organization to have a clear understanding of how to interact, sell and service your customers. For marketing, it means generating better leads online and reducing the costs of lead generation. For sales, it means closing more opportunities, and for customer service, it means providing better after sales service and support.

Perhaps the best example of the importance of understanding buyer personas comes from the Cintell's 2016 Benchmark Study. As true today as it was then, the report found that companies that surpassed their lead and sales goals were twice as likely to have outlined their buyer personas, and three times more likely to have an internal resource devoted to managing those personas.

In the end, profit is key.

3. Increased Marketing Return on Investment (ROI)

It's all about improving your digital marketing strategies and generating more leads online. With buyer personas, you'll have a ready-made template on how to generate high-quality leads for every type of customer you service. Here are just some of the ways that your personas will increase your marketing ROI.

• Content: Great content tells a story, summarizes a common problem and ends with a unique solution. Buyer personas allow you to tell different stories for different problems, while also allowing you to offer customized solutions.
• Digital Advertising: Understanding your buyer personas will help your marketing team with keyword research. This will reduce costs by making your digital advertising more precise. You'll also be able to drive different buyer personas to different landing pages.
• Video Advertising and Videos: Video advertising will be more focused on what your personas need and value. In fact, you'll be able to tailor different videos for different personas.
• Images, Infographics and Free Downloads: Everything you use to complement your content will be improved. Customized free downloads, like eBooks and whitepapers, will mean a higher click-through rate (CTR) on your content's calls-to-action (CTA).
• Email Marketing: Your email campaigns will be tailored to each of your personas, allowing you to launch special offers at the right time and for the right audience. Over time, you'll increase your CTR on your campaigns while also improving your conversion rates on incoming traffic.
• Marketing Automation: Clearly understanding your buyer personas means you're providing the right content and the right advertisements to the right customer at the right time. Marketing automation works because it brings customers back into your sales process. Buyer personas improve this performance because you'll know exactly what incentivizes them to act and why.

Knowing exactly who you're targeting means you'll improve your marketing accuracy and reduce your costs. However, more important than that, you'll be pursuing more revenue-generating activities that have a higher percentage of success.

Contact us. We can help you identify and develop your buyer personas and in turn, increase your leads online.