Most leaders of successful B2B tech companies wake up in the morning thinking about buyer personas. The reality is that you can't sell your brand if you don't know who you're selling it to. This is why creating a buyer persona is one of the first steps startup marketers in the tech world need to take. How serious is the need for using a buyer persona? It could make the different between breaking into the market successfully or fading into oblivion.
What Is A Buyer Persona?
You should think of a buyer persona as a simulated version of the person you're selling your product or service to. You essentially need to think of the thousands or millions of potential clients you're speaking to as one person. This will help you to have a consistent, streamlined marketing approach that gets seen and experienced by your target audience.How A Buyer Persona Can Help Your Startup Thrive
A buyer persona is useful because it allows you to determine where your startup needs to focus its time in regards to product development and user experience. You can also use the persona you create to make a plan for aligning your startup's core values and practices across your organization. You can then use your very targeted and organized plan to attract valuable leads and customers instead of throwing marketing dollars at useless leads.Who Is Your Customer?
Do you have a picture in your mind when you think of the person you're carefully crafting all of your marketing content for? It really takes glimpsing into the soul of the fictionalized buyer persona your company creates to understand how to please the customers you want to serve. This will help you to relate to customers as real humans. The reality is that customers react positively to being treated with a personal touch. Here are the details that should be combined to form the core identify of your buyer persona:
- Customer demographics
- Behavior patterns
- Motivations
- Problems
- Goals
- Ideals
Finding Your Customers
Identifying who you want to target is essential for knowing where to reach out to. Different buyer personas will be found spending their time in different places. For instance, you may want to go heavy on creating share-worthy social media content if your goal is to attract younger, media-savvy buyers. Here are some questions to ask:- Do our target leads rely heavily on email?
- Do our target leads look for troubleshooting advice and solutions on forums?
- Do our target leads prefer to communicate online or via telephone?
- Do our target leads subscribe to industry publications?
- Do our target leads find industry peers influential when making business decisions?
There's A Good Chance You're Using Your Buyer Persona Incorrectly
Research from ITSMA reveals that a whopping 85 percent of B2B organizations aren’t using buyer personas effectively. Some of the reasons why include:- Not creating content that's effective for a specific persona
- Not delivering content in ways that targets can get it
- Not following up after content is delivered
- Lack of communication between departments when crafting persona-focused marketing initiatives
Creating Content To Attract Your Buyer Persona
It's important never to put your buyer persona in a position to play a guessing game with you. All of the content you deliver via marketing campaigns needs to be straightforward and clear. Some key tips to keep in mind when crafting content are:- Speak your target's language
- Share specific information instead of broad topics
- Present solutions to problems
- Speak directly and personally
What's On The Line When You Don't Use A Buyer Persona?
Smart, creative marketing campaigns fail all too frequently because the right people don't see them. In fact, going too big can be one of the biggest mistakes a tech startup can make. The reality is that you probably aren't ready at this stage in the game to create stunning and expensive commercials like major tech giants are. There's absolutely nothing wrong with starting small and keeping your efforts very targeted. In fact, targeted a few hundred people can be way more effective than reaching thousands of eyes if those few hundred people are the right people. Failing to use a buyer persona can leave your startup dead in the water for the following reasons:- You'll spend too much money on too many ad platforms
- Customers won't know what you do or what you offer
- Your marketing staff will become fatigued by managing too many disjointed ad campaigns
- You'll spend money sending your message to people who aren't interested
- Subscribers and followers will grow bored of content that doesn't speak to them or address their needs
Can A Buyer Persona Rescue Your Marketing Plan?
Are you about to invest a lot of money and time into launching a marketing plan to get your startup noticed and start attracting leads? You might be feeling uneasy about the thought of making such a huge financial commitment before your startup has a share of the market. The good news is that you can do less with more by formulating a buyer persona because you'll be able to do the following:- Eliminate arbitrary marketing missions
- Create focused content
- Choose the format that elevates engagement
- Observe where results are gained
- Get to know your customers better than the competition
Let Your Buyer Persona Help You Speak To Your Targets
The reality is that you can't create content for each individual person you're trying to attract to your brand. The good news is that you can come pretty close by creating a buyer persona that reflects the needs, desires, values and wants of the leads you're trying to attract. Your startup stands to make some genuine connections and earn the trust of your audience if you can successfully craft your online presence and your future marketing campaigns to speak directly to a buyer persona that accurately represents your target audience.
