You know how sometimes you read an article and you go “wow, this person can really read my mind!”? This means that the author of the article had you in mind when he wrote that piece of content, and you are one of their buyer personas.
The quality of the content is most of the time (if not always) given by how well we can relate to the person we write the article for. Content marketing is not journalism, that’s why we use a buyer persona.
But what is a buyer persona, and why it’s important when you write content?
I really like the definition HubSpot has come up with, so I will quote it here: “Personas are 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”.
Even if you can’t afford doing a market research, you can still imagine what is the profile of your buyer personas. Include in it as many details as you can, like demographics, hobbies, what goals they have, what are their passions, and behavioral information.
Ultimately, the profile of a buyer persona is what will guide you to creating the right strategy that will make them become your customer. Also, you will target your content towards those who are really interested in that particular subject.
How to make the profile of your buyer persona
If you don’t know where to start profiling your buyer personas, you can start by interviewing your current customers.
You can start with demographics, by finding out what their gender is, what age they are, where they live, what they do for a living, and what is their financial situation.
Also, it helps to see what is their educational background, what are your buyer personas doing in their free time, what do they usually buy. In the end, you want to find out why they buy a certain product, and what would make them buy yours.
What I like to do is to give a name to a buyer persona. It feels more personal, and it also makes it so much easier for me to imagine the person I’m writing for.
Writing quality content is tricky if you don’t have buyer personas
If you have a blog, or you have a website that has a blog, and your content is too general, then your readers will be confused and won’t know whether the articles are targeted towards them, or not.
When I read articles, I like to learn something new, or discover a new idea I never thought of. Language is also important when you write an article. Dentists have their own medical terms they use, and marketers have their own.
The language you use is strongly related to stories. There’s nothing more engaging in this world then content that has a story (or more). You can extract a story from your life, insert it into an article, and extract something valuable out of it. Even though at first the story may seem to have nothing to do with your article, the conclusion can prove to be mind blowing. And this is exactly the stuff I love to read, and people in general.
How we do it
When clients contact us to write content for them, we ask them several questions. The most important is referring to what kind of profile does the buyer persona have.
In most cases, clients have no idea what that is, or who their customers really are, and that’s OK, because we can help them to figure this out.
Creating the profile of a buyer persona is a really fun process. It’s a matter of imagination, while also having a strong sense of reality. Only after we create the profile, we can start working on the pitches for the articles.
If I don’t know who is the person I’m addressing to, I don’t know how and what to write. I wouldn’t know what be interesting for them to read, and to learn.
Each and every one of us is in someone’s buyer persona profile. There’s someone out there that is writing a piece of content and is thinking about us. Isn’t this more thoughtful than to write a random piece of content no one will read? I think it is.
Squirrly, at your (content) service
Squirrly believes that storytelling can definitely engage your clients and customers, and create a much more valuable relationship with them. Creating buyer personas is just one step of this process.
In the last year, we managed to help our clients reach their goals through content marketing. If you want to increase your traffic, and get more customers, contact us. We can do this together! What you’re waiting for?
