man on phone with shopping bags
This is part one of a two-part blog series about how to engage buyers in the middle of their journey.

Once upon a time I was an architecture student. My first year at university I was accepted into the architecture program. It was everything I hoped it would be. Then came the second year. You see, I also happen to be color-blind. During the second year, there was a class that required me to paint watercolor elevations of homes. I couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter if I knew the names of the colors, I didn’t understand the levels and hues of the colors I was applying.

Enter Dr. Jimenez. To this day, I am thankful for the advice he gave me. In his office, among the little models, blueprints, and trinkets, he taught me an important lesson. “I always wanted to be a doctor,” he said. “But, I am an architect.” Then he looked at me and smiled. I understood. He told me what I already knew.

It may seem harsh, but sometimes the truth is the truth. I wasn’t going to be able to solve the riddle of watercolors. I had been trying so hard to be something I was never going to be.

What are buyer personas?

The truth is this: you need to know what your business does well and what buyer you are targeting. The market is too crowded to waste precious resources on things that won’t work. Use buyer personas to avoid two major missteps:
  1. Targeting the wrong buyer, and
  2. Using wrong methods to engage the right buyer.
If most of your buyers use LinkedIn and email, then creating a Facebook-focused campaign won’t do you a lot of good.

Buyer personas are where fiction meet fact. They are extrapolated depictions of your ideal customers developed from interviews and surveys. They represent real needs your company can meet and gives you a goal. The better you understand your buyer personas the better you understand your customers. This makes it easier to create content, emails, products, and services that your customers need.

Use personas to focus marketing around buyer needs

With personas, you can personalize your marketing and target where they are in the sales funnel. When you create content for an ideal buyer in the evaluation stage, it makes it more likely that your audience will move from stranger to customer.

If you create a persona called Software Manager Sophie and understand her buyer’s journey, you’ll have the tools to know when, where, and how she will engage with you to make it easier to effectively target your messaging for her. You’ll know what it takes to move her through the funnel to a sale, and you’ll have the right content ready and waiting for her every step of the way.

Ready to understand your buyer’s journey better? We can help you create buyer personas, evaluate your market spending based off your buyers’ needs, educate and empower your marketing team with SEO focused strategies to target these personas, and create a website that focuses on your buyer’s needs.
Let’s start talking

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