Do you know who your ideal customer is? Do you know what they are looking for online and where they are going to find it? If the answer is no then you should really consider building out a buyer persona for your business.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that is suited for your business. It’s very similar to your target audience but rather than focusing on demographics and geographic a buyer persona focuses on challenges your ideal customer is looking to solve for. Many companies can have more than one buyer persona as their product/services may cater for a number of different buyers.
Why You Need One
Buyer personas are the heart of any inbound marketing strategy as they provide the foundations on which a content strategy is built. Content is tailored around specific buyer personas with the aim of providing relevant, informative and engaging information to them. With each buyer persona we should be thinking about what challenges they are facing on a day to day basis and what solutions they may be looking for to make their life easier.
Here's an example - Imagine HR SaaS company that provides an all in one solution for managing the daily needs of human resources including admin, payroll, annual leave etc. Their ideal buyer persona may be a HR Director or HR Manager who faces the burden of having to commit hours every week for basic administration, submit payroll and manually log annual leave for employees. The HR Director or Manager is looking for solutions to automate these processes or ways to decrease the amount of time spent doing it so they can spend time on more important tasks and chances are that they will take to Google to begin looking up solutions for this. Because the HR SaaS company is producing content that helps solves for this problem there is a high chance that they will be found by the HR Director or Manager which will result in a potential lead for the SaaS company.
What Makes a Buyer Persona?
Buyer Persona’s are crucial for B2B SaaS companies marketing because the vast majority of SaaS companies are providing a solution that is solving for a problem that a buyer or business will be facing. With this in mind, a business needs to develop a content strategy tailored towards that particular persona with the aim of driving them to a website pushing them down the marketing funnel.
A buyer persona should consist of basic demographics such as age, sex, job, location etc. Other more detailed information such as lifestyle and hobbies are also good things to collect. For example, finding out what type of newspaper your buyer persona reads will allow you to determine what's the best style of content and language to use to really relate with them.
Buyer personas should also consist of what challenges they are facing on a daily basis, what sources they are using for information, what personal and professional goals/gains are they trying to make for themselves. Finding out what pain they are facing as well as finding out what motivates them are also crucial pieces of information when it comes to content marketing. What influences their purchasing decisions? Is it price, function, reputation, looks or support?