With the emergence of social media, the traditional form of advertising has been flipped on its head. In the past advertisers would essentially try and reach as many people as they possibly could. We’ve come to understand that this form of “shouting” is no longer very effective. The days of broadcasting our sales pitches and shoving countless forms of information down our customer’s throats are behind us. We now live in a time where we must first and foremost LISTEN and then ENGAGE with our customers – and more specifically, to the right ones. Defining your buyer personas is crucial when constructing an effective social selling strategy.
Socialized selling isn’t about mass email blasts, or sending out a ton of weekly coupons on Twitter – today’s consumer is smarter, savvier, and more selective than that. Instead, it’s about finding out what makes your customer tick and what they’re passionate about. By mapping out your perfect customer’s buyer persona, you can naturally and organically produce a discussion of how you can solve a problem, add value, or improve their lives, and most importantly, why your company is the right choice to help them.
Not knowing exactly who you’re trying to attract with your content and marketing messages is a common mistake amongst businesses. The companies that try to reach everyone with the idea that they don’t want to miss any potential customers often result in mixed messages and confusion.
Finding Your Buyer Personas
A Buyer persona is a hypothetical profile of your perfect customer. Identifying your buyer personas will help you relate to your customers needs, goals and challenges. Profiling your buyer persona may include:
- Gender
- Age
- Profession
- Income
- Interests
- Challenges:
- Goals
- Education
- Shopping habits
Identifying your buyer personas help guide both content creation and distribution for the customers who are most likely to purchase what you offer. The more refined your buyer personas are, the easier to focus your efforts to the right people. This will enable you to better target marketing time and money.
Integrating your buyer personas
When you integrate the buyer personas into your content, you will be able to determine:
- The topics you should focus on
- How you can solve their problems
- The format, tone and style you should use
- What keywords to use
- What social channels you should utilize for distribution and engagement
It’s important to point out that you may have more than one buyer persona. If you find yourself struggling to find commonalities with your buyer personas don’t try to force them into one. It’s perfectly fine to segment them — in fact, it’s encouraged. For example: A company that designs boat shoes may have two personas — one being the younger crowd who enjoys the preppy look and may wear the shoes out at parties where another, older persona may enjoy time at their beach house and more upscale things.
Have you created your buyer personas? If so, tell us how it’s working for you. We would love to hear your feedback!