Buyer Persona: The Most Powerful Tool You Can Use In Your Content Strategy

An essential first step for compelling content

A crucial step in developing compelling content and a cohesive business story is knowing your buyer persona.

This essential step is often missed by busy small biz owners. I know I have been guilty of it too!

You get so excited about your business and jump straight in, without taking the time to really understand WHO you’re developing your content and business for. You throw up a website and social media accounts, post a heap of content and…..crickets 🦗. Nothing. Na da. 🙅‍♀️

So, dial it back a step and spend the time developing your buyer persona.

A buyer persona helps you create targeted content that appeals to your intended audience and will take them from stranger to a loyal, repeat customer.

Knowing your buyer persona underpins every single piece of content you create and is an essential key to content marketing and strategies.

(You can grab my handy Buyer Persona Template + Guide to help here).

What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a fictional depiction of your ideal customer.

Using a combination of market and competitor research, existing customer profiles and your own insights you form an in-depth character profile of your ideal customer. This helps you to make the best decisions about your marketing efforts and focuses your content creation.

I think of it like this. I picture sitting down to have a cuppa with someone who is interested in my business. It may be the first time we have met, so what does that conversation look like? That initial meet and greet, get to know each other, the conversation we would have to get to know each other a little more. This is the starting point for developing a buyer persona.

Now take it a step further. What questions do you need to ask to get to know them better? How do you take that surface level relationship and dive deeper to really form a solid foundation and great understanding of them, of their wants, needs, goals, desires, pain points and roadblocks?

Why are buyer personas so important to your small biz?

Essentially, knowing your buyer persona provides you with clarity and focus. Buyer persona’s help small biz owners decide:

• What kind of content to create
• The best services and products to offer
• What freebies or opt-ins to create
• How and where to deliver your business messaging for maximum results

Because when you know WHO you are talking to, you know HOW to talk to them, WHAT they need and WHERE they are hanging out online to deliver your message.

How knowing your Buyer Persona helps you create compelling content (that your target audience will want to read)

The goal of developing a buyer persona is to imagine you are talking to a real person. Someone with a dynamic personality, someone with likes, dislikes, problems and goals.

Having this in-depth insight into your intended customer helps you create compelling content that supports your overall marketing strategy and will reach your target audience. You can tailor your content to your customer through each stage of their buyer’s journey, ensuring you can step them through from complete stranger to a loyal and repeat customer.

What are your intended customers biggest challenges?

To best understand your target audience you need to know where their pain points lie.

What problems are they trying to solve?

What is holding them back from achieving their goals? (and what are those goals?)

What other barriers do they face.

What questions do they need answering?

Have a look around social media, such as relevant Facebook groups, and find out what sort of questions your target audience are asking. This helps guide your content strategy and ensures you are answering your intended customers questions.

To help, you should be really clear on what solution you provide. HOW does your product or service solve the problem and answer questions?

Where are they searching for their information?

Knowing where your intended audience is searching for answers and solutions helps with your small biz marketing.

Think about it, if your potential customer was searching Pinterest for information about how to care for their indoor plants isn’t that where you want to focus your efforts? You don’t want to waste time on Twitter or Facebook if that is not where your target audience is.

What types of content will best address their needs?

Again, if your target audience is looking at Pinterest you need to use Pins and graphics to draw them in. Where your intended customers are hanging out will help guide what type of content you spend your time and effort producing.

If they are mainly on Instagram, create photos, graphics, reels and stories.

On the other hand, if they are on LinkedIn spend time crafting longer posts and other content that does well on LinkedIn.

Buyers Persona and the Customers Journey.

At each stage of the buyers journey you will find the needs and challenges of your buyers persona changes. Their overarching goal stays the same, however the depth of their knowledge changes.

Mapping your buyer personas to each stage of the buyer journey — Awareness, Consideration and Decision — will help you create the best content to guide your intended customer from a complete stranger right through to a loyal buyer.

When you know what they need at each stage you can create compelling content that converts!

Do you know what your intended customer needs?

Do you know who your buyer persona is? Have you mapped a persona to each stage of the buyers journey?

PS. You can grab my handy Buyer Persona and Journey Map help here).

Originally published at https://rmwriting.com.au on September 21, 2021.

Rachel Maree is a content specialist helping small biz owners master their content marketing strategies, content writing and more! You can learn more or hire her here.

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