When it comes to inbound marketing, you need to have a successful set of buyer personas. But where do you even start? Check out this video for the five things you must do in order to set the stage for your buyer persona process.
If you’d rather read than watch the video, the complete transcript is below. (But why read when you can watch?)
Today, I want to tell you how to have “the talk” with your marketing director.
Not that talk—the talk about creating your buyer personas. So there are five things you’ve got to tell whoever is doing your buyer personas… they’ve got to do this if you want to have a successful set of personas to work with when it comes to inbound marketing.
#1: Keep The Big Picture In Mind
As marketing people, we tend to get lost in the details. “Lost in the woods,” if you will. Keep the idea in mind that this is a big picture thing. You’re not trying to write a biography on the people who are going to buy your stuff. You’re trying to get a sense of what the problems are that your company can solve.
#2: Explain, Excite, & Encourage
What do I mean by this (other than the cool alliteration)? It’s this: When your person is going to lead a buyer persona effort, they’re going to have to explain when they sit down to talk to somebody else, “Here’s why this is beneficial and here’s why this will help you sell more things, Mr. Salesperson.” Or, “Mr. CEO, this is why it’s really critical that I have these 10 minutes with you to figure out the direction of our company.” You’re going to have to explain.
The second piece is you’re going to have to excite. Now when you sit down to talk to somebody about buyer personas, most likely if you’re the person leading this whole thing, you’re fired up about it. The people that you’re sitting down to talk with in your company? Probably not so much. So it’s important to excite them about the potential of what would happen with inbound marketing if we understand who we’re trying to talk to.
The third piece is encourage. So we said “explain, excite, encourage.” Because when you talk to someone—let’s say somebody on your sales team—hat person is going to say, “I don’t have the answers to these questions. You should talk to Bill over in customer support.” And you’re going to sit down across from Bill in customer support and he’s going to say, “You need to talk to Sally over in sales.” You’ve got to say, “No, listen, you can do this! I need information only you have, and I need to understand what the problems are that our buyer persona is facing. What are the things that they’re trying to solve?”
#3: Get Your Hands Dirty
Now this is the part where you dive in. You probably have to interview some customers and you’re probably going to have to have other people get involved—and you’re going to end up with so much data that you’re going to have to dig in and sort it all out.
You’re going to have to be willing to put the work in. It’s easy to get fired up about buyer personas and then kind of like, “Ahh, let’s just create something and move on!” Instead, take the time to get it right.
#4: Make It Simple & Clear
Alright, on the flip side, number four: After you’ve done all the work, you’ve put in all this time, you’ve interviewed all these people, and you have these whole lists of questions and lists of ideas about your buyer personas, it’s the person’s job who does this buyer persona process—who leads the buyer persona process—to boil it all down and make it simple and clear. Because if your buyer persona is not simple and clear, it’s absolutely worthless. Big, fat zero. So take the time to make it simple and clear.
#5: Take The Next Step
And the fifth thing is take the next step with your buyer personas. What do I mean by that? If you watch most of the inbound marketing videos that are around the internet or read articles about it, they say, “Create buyer personas, start creating content.” There’s a huge missing step there.
I’m going to tell you about it in the next video that we shoot. Make sure you know you’ve got to have simple and clear buyer personas and then we’re going to do this huge next step before we start creating content.
Make sure you take the time to set the stage for this buyer persona process. It will make all the difference to your company.
I’d love to hear what tips you’ve found useful when creating buyer personas. Let me know in the comment section below or on Twitter @nectafy!
