When you’re creating marketing messages, it’s easy to lose sight of exactly who the target audience is. You know they’re out there, but without being able to see them directly, you feel as if you’re writing for the benefit of the wall across the room.
The problem is the message reflects that vague, impersonal feeling, and thus, it fails to resonate. To ensure it hits home, your IT marketing team must create buyer personas.
What Exactly is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is an archetype of your ideal client based on a combination of market research and information about your existing clients. A persona gives you insights into what prospective clients are thinking and doing as they seek to solve a problem that your company could help them with.
Contrary to popular belief, buyer personas are not one-dimensional profiles. Those that are truly actionable are a combination of the specific goals, concerns, and attitudes that drive prospective customers to choose particular IT companies.
Once you have these insights into how your ideal customers make buying decisions, you can align your content marketing and sales approach with their expectations.
A buyer persona can help you serve your audience in the following ways:
- Address their problems and pain points
- Answer their questions
- Explain how your services can help them
- Give them what they need when they need it, sparing them the time and effort of unsuccessful searching
When you understand your target customer better, you’ll be able to engage more effectively with them and see improved returns on your marketing efforts.
Tailoring Your Message
Now that you have a stronger idea of who you speaking to, you can shape content accordingly. Make sure that whatever you create- blog posts, eBooks, white papers, even single-line tweets- address their needs and that any calls to action are relevant to their particular stage in the buyer's journey.
Does the content provide them with information or instructions that move them further through the sales funnel? Each piece should ideally trigger specific actions in the reader.
Personas can do more than help direct your content marketing strategy. They can be valuable resources for training new employees, especially those who work directly with clients like sales professionals, account managers, and customer service agents.
The Bottom Line
Once you create buyer personas for your IT company, you’ll truly understand who you are addressing with your content marketing efforts and be able to give them exactly what they need to progress from one stage to the next.
For maximum effect, be sure to revisit your buyer personas as markets shift and consumer needs change. Keeping track of audience needs and accommodating them is recommended to remain relevant, no matter what market shifts await.
Does your IT company use buyer personas to guide its content creation and marketing strategies? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments box below.
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