We live in an era where the competition for people’s attention has never been more intense. If you’re seen as a helpful trusted advisor with remarkable content, you’ll rise above the noise. If not, it will be as if you don’t exist. Invisible and irrelevant.

Understand the Full Competitive Landscape of Those Vying for Your Ideal Clients’ Attention

So if your colocation data center is trying to create helpful, remarkable content to attract your ideal clients, you need to be very realistic about the intense competition that you face from a variety of fronts:

• Direct competitors – the most obvious issue that most think of when considering competitive threats
• Indirect competitors – typically data center companies that are either much larger or much smaller than yours -- or are located in a region that’s anywhere from a short drive away to a long plane ride away
• Topic competitors – all of the trade publications, channel programs, conferences, and associations that create content on topics of interest to your buyer personas
• Distractions – other websites, apps, events, platforms, work-related challenges, and personal problems that could potentially distract away and prevent those ideal buyers from consuming your helpful, educational content

So how can a buyer persona help you address these challenges?

Buyer Personas Defined

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of one of your ideal buyers that’s developed based on research and educated speculation.

It’s not a real person and buyer personas are way beyond just basic demographic information.

To gather the research needed to create one or more buyer personas, you’ll dive into common goals, plans, challenges, motivations, preferences, and fears.

• What kinds of challenges if overcome could lead to recognition, prestige, or a promotion?
• What kinds of challenges if failed at could lead to someone getting fired?
• What kind of experience is that persona looking for when evaluating a colocation data center like yours?
• Where does that persona hang out online and offline?
• What does that persona look up on search engines and talk about on social media?

Just fair warning: Many that build buyer personas often sabotage themselves by substituting their own beliefs – and personal industry experiences – and stifling or ignoring the more relevant ideal buyers that you need a plan for attracting, converting, closing, and delighting.

 “In God we trust. All others must bring data.” - W. Edwards Deming, American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant (1900-1993)

The Bottom Line

So if your marketing and sales goals depend on attracting the right kinds visitors to your website, at the right time and in the right context, converting those visitors into leads, closing those leads into clients, and delighting those clients into promoters, you cannot afford to just guess about their content wants and needs.

Done right, buyer personas shape nearly all of your marketing and sales priorities going forward.

In many cases, the insight uncovered from the research also leads to refinement in your product management plans and overall business strategy.

Is your company currently developing buyer personas for each category of ideal buyer it wants to build a business around? What’s been especially helpful about the process? Let us know about your experiences in the Comments box below.

And if you need to connect the dots between SMART goals, buyer personas, leads, sales opportunities, and revenue growth, be sure to download your copy of our free eBook on “Inbound Marketing for Colocation Data Centers.”