If you sell products or services, even online, you must develop a detailed customer persona.
“But, why?” you may ask. “Our products and services are self-explanatory, we serve a niche industry, and we cultivate all our sales through networking anyway. We already know our customers.”
Developing a customer persona helps you cement yourself as a brand. When you codify your customers with detailed avatars, you create a foundation for improving your marketing and expanding your reach. This is even if your niche is already laser-focused.
The digital marketing team at Romain Berg are masters at creating customer personas, and we leverage that strength across all your marketing channels. We help you speak the language of your people at all levels of engagement.
Contact us today to customize a strategy that increases your traffic and conversions. We do results, not hype.
Why Create a Customer Persona?
Even if you have a clear idea in your mind of whom you serve in your business, writing it down gives your organization a concrete basis.
In other words, your entire company must know the persons or organizations that your products target in-depth.
Though you may want to cast a wide net, inviting EVERYONE to purchase from you, this tactic does not work on any marketing channel. Your ideal customers want to hear you speaking directly to them. Predicting their needs and directing them on how to engage with you.
A thoughtful customer persona helps you do that.
Elements of a Strong Customer Persona
Creating your customer avatar is simple when you answer the right questions. Here are a few common queries many businesses address in their customer personas:
Who are your ideal customers and clients?
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- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Industry
- Job
- Income
- Culture
- Leisure activities
What is it about your products and services that interest them?
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- What problems do you solve for your customers?
- How do your services make them feel?
- How will their business, visibility, revenue, security, influence, job, life, mobility, efficiency, cleanliness, health, or relationships improve when they purchase from you? (Of course, you can add to this list with anything else your products enable for your customers.)
Where do your ideal clients spend their time online and offline?
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- Social media channels
- Local searches
- Shopping channels like Amazon or Shopify
- When are your ideal customers likely to look for you?
- How do they engage with products they love?
- What are their “pain points?” (The top five challenges they face.)
Answering the last six questions with as much detail as possible can help you create a customer persona.
Tell Your Customer’s Story
The next step in developing your customer persona is to tell their story. Walk yourself through your customer’s descriptors. Then, create a story about your customer whereby they happen upon your product, and you engage them in the selling process. The story can contain as much or as little drama as you like. But, it’s usually more than merely search-choose-buy.
Let’s take a Controller at a small manufacturing firm, for example. They have some challenges with organizing information and need software solutions. These software solutions will make information accessible and readable to a variety of stakeholders.
The Controller asks the IT specialist to check around for a few recommendations. She goes to her favorite IT message boards online to see what’s trending and get feedback from users.
Based on what she hears and sees, she selects a few products for the Controller to vet for a final decision.
In this example, you can “tell the stories” of frustrated Controllers. These Controllers are looking for the precise software solutions you offer as one of your customer personas.
You’ll tend to speak in a relevant language for Controllers and their staff people. You’ll reach directly into the psyches of the people most poised to say “yes” to your marketing. When the Controller visits your website, your content will address every concern, goal, and challenge they have.
Client Personas Help Your Customers Self-Select
Why make purchasing your products difficult for people? When you can state clearly who your ideal clients are and what is important to them, you give your audience a way to identify with your company.
When audience members identify with you, they literally see themselves using your products and services. If they “try you on” digitally and you fit their values, preferences, and specific needs, they click the “buy” button.
Your customers have a unique view of themselves, and they want the products they purchase to reflect that view. Taking that self-view into account in your marketing, you help your customers enforce the things they like about themselves.
For a person who identifies as an explorer, risk-taker, or “outlaw,” your motorcycle may help that person feel even more like a rebel spirit. See where we’re going with this? The same principle applies to people who see themselves as caring, compassionate, scholarly, pragmatic, inclusive, or community-minded.
You won’t know how your products truly affect your customers until you embrace developing detailed customer personas.
Ultimately, consumers and businesses look for things that will make their lives easier. They will also look for things that gel with their values, or increase essential business metrics like revenue or efficiency. Telling your audience precisely who you serve cuts through the fog of the endless choices available in e-commerce.
Hire a Pro to Craft the Customer Persona That Connects
Digging into your existing audience can help produce the most relevant personas. Mining the market for new audience members takes research, innovation, and patience.
Professionals like the team at Romain Berg excel at cutting through the noise of niching. We drill into the details of your fan base. We will help you discover new rocks under which more of your “soulmate” customers may hide.
We help you build your customer personas based on who you currently serve, and where you want to grow. Increasing customer loyalty and exposure to new users is how you expand your impact, influence, and bottom line in your sector.
Contact us today to schedule a meeting. We’ll help you craft customer personas that enhance our comprehensive, customized digital marketing strategy.
