Did you know there’s a step between creating your buyer personas and jumping into the content-making process? Most people miss it. But you definitely shouldn’t. Find out what it is in this video:
We’ve written a transcript of the video, too, which you can find below. (But seriously, who reads when they could watch?)
If you’ve already finished your buyer personas, the next big step that you need to take is called a “buyer question matrix.” It sounds very cool and space-age, but really, it’s a very practical thing that I’m going to walk you through—how to create the questions that are on the mind of your buyer.
If you’ve downloaded our Inbound Marketing Workbook (which I recommend you do if you haven’t), you’ll see that there are a few tabs at the bottom: Persona 1, 2, and 3. Creatively named but still very effective, right?
If you scroll down on one of those tabs, you’ll see a section called “Buyer Questions.” This is simply getting into the mind of a persona and saying, “What problems are they trying to solve at the top of funnel (or the awareness stage), the middle of funnel (or the consideration stage), and finally, the third part, the bottom of funnel (the decision-making phase)? What problems are they trying to solve?”
So, if you’re going to get up in the top of funnel section, here’s what you need to ask your team or whoever you’re working with to develop these questions. You want to say, “OK, guys, in this persona’s role, what are some of the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis that sort of tangentially (that’s a fun word) relate to what our company offers?”
By the way, I’m going to put a little aside here: Our company, Nectafy, works with B2B companies, typically very complex companies who maybe sell to nontechnical people, or people who are technical in a different field. A lot of the comments that I’m going to make really relate to B2B in those spaces, but I think you can apply it to other areas as well.
Ask yourself, “What problems are they trying to solve?” So let’s just make up some illustrations. If your persona, for instance, is an office administrator, maybe some of the issues that they’re trying to solve are organizational. Maybe it’s “a better way for filing these documents” and maybe your company sells some sort of online filing system. There are all of these questions: “How do I file multiple things?” Or, “How do I do paper files around dates, and clients, and cases, and products?” Maybe there are all these sorts of questions that are going through their mind—that goes in the top of funnel section, because these are questions they’re trying to solve.
Now, granted, your team may not have all the answers to that, but chances are, if you’re smart and you’re in your industry, you already have ideas of how those should be organized. That’s why you guys built the software you did, right?
Then you have the middle of funnel, which is all about comparing one option to another. So it’s “Is there a better way to file?” You have search phrases like, “What’s the best?” And “[something] vs. [something else].” Or, “Should I do this myself, or should I hire it done?” Or, “Should I do this myself or is there some software?” That’s all middle of funnel stuff. Those are questions that are on the buyer’s mind in that middle of funnel.
In the bottom of funnel are all the questions about why the persona should choose your company and not your competitor. Now, to be honest, a lot of the content that is going to be generated from that bottom of funnel will live on the main pages of your website, because the point of your website is why you and not somebody else.
But we don’t have to worry about that right now—just focus on completing that matrix: top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. Get about 20 questions in there, and then you’re ready for the next step of development of your inbound marketing process.
Hopefully this has been helpful and not too overwhelming. If you’ve got some questions about how to actually administrate this, throw it in the comments below. I’ll ask Henry, our director of marketing, to jump right in. He’s also created some really helpful videos in our Inbound Marketing Workbook that’ll explain the process of how to make that happen. Have a great day. Keep going with your buyer personas!
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Are you using this step in your marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments section below, or tweet us @nectafy. We’d love to talk!
