Three Keys to Building Buyer Personas

Three Keys to Building Buyer Personas:from Business 2 Community by Kasim Aslam
I’ll begin with what you already know: Content is King.
While this has become the relative anthem of SEOs worldwide its true importance is often lost in the fervor with which it’s delivered. Why is content king?
Writing a host of blogs, articles and press releases chock full of relevant key phrases might have been enough to appease Lord Google in days of yore, sadly this is no longer the case. Now more than ever, with the recent updates to Google’s ever elusive and constantly changing algorithm, it’s important that your content actually converts. Meaning users are reading, sharing and subscribing with each new piece of content you release.
The most important question when writing and the first to be skipped by the overly stressed writer whose goal is to simply pump out as much content as possible in order to keep up with the competition, is: “who are you writing for?” Who is your target market? Identify your ideal reader and then custom tailor your content for them. Content is fine. “Good” content is great. Good content that is specifically targeted to reach the target market most likely to purchase your product or service is what internet legends are made of. Begin by building a buyer persona which Hubspot defines as “fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.”
Tightly honed buyer personas will equip you (and any outsourced writer) with the knowledge necessary to write content specifically targeted for the readers that are most valuable to your initiative. Here are three keys to building effective buyer personas.

1. Identify who your buyer really is and how you get to them
While the person who approves the proposal is more often than not a high ranking executive, often times the task of determining which vendors and service providers to engage is left to department heads, analysts, or administrative assistance whose job it is to research available options, distribute RFPs and compile the information and proposals necessary for “the boss” to make a decision. Make sure you’re not writing yourself out of consideration by reaching for visibility from a persona type who is unlikely to be on the front line of defense. This is especially true for higher level service offerings where the dangerous assumption is that anyone shopping for the service will have at least a basic foundation of understanding. While this needs to be true for the final decision maker, the gate keepers aren’t always as well versed in the tasks set before them and considerations should be made for this fact. Make sure you’re not skipping steps by leaving important foundational elements unsaid or poorly explained.

2. Identify your buyer’s key concerns
It’s easy for a business person to forget (or never know) what is truly important to their end user. A hosting company might put massive amounts of emphasis on “up time” while their buyers take this facet of the business as granted and are more concerned with pricing or security. Make sure you’re fully aware of where your perspective customer assigns value in terms of your offering. Because you’re heavily entrenched in your own industry and have a well rounded knowledge of the “ins and outs” it’s easy to get distracted by the minutia that many organizations mistake as differentiators. To use our earlier example of a hosting company – you might try to sell the fact that your control panel is the most intuitive on the market only to find that your key buyers don’t care since they outsource their development and will never be directly affected one way or the other. A great first step in establishing relevant concerns is conducting surveys of past, present and potential buyers. Come right out and ask! “What’s important to you?”
3. Determine behavioral patterns and how they should be addressed
People behave differently depending upon their position, industry and specific needs. Your buyer persona should reflect this with details on how your perspective buyers will interact with your media, interpret your information and, ultimately, engage your organization.

• When does your buyer make their buying decisions? Large, enterprise level purchases might be made at specific fiscal periods due to cash flow concerns. For non-profit and government entities the end of the year represents the vast majority of their buying decisions in order to ensure they make adequate use of their fixed budgets.
• Does your buyer require a custom solution? If so, how are the specifics of this solution determined and what can you do to empower your buyer to approach you with the information you’ll need already available?
• How much information does your buyer need to make a well informed decision?
• At what points in the day / week does your buyer have time to read emails, newsletters and other relevant information? A stock broker will probably catch up on his/her reading in the evening after the markets close while business consultants may tend to their “maintenance measures” before the day starts and they have to attend to their Clients.

Understanding who your key buyers are and how to speak directly to them is absolutely key in creating quality content that converts.