A buyer persona can be created with the help of demographic information, challenges, goals and objectives of your target customers. Your target audience can be your existing customers and prospective customers. This can be done by interviews, surveys and research. Here are some practical ways of creating your buyer persona:
Uncover trends, by looking into your database, about how your leads find you and how they consume your content.
When creating forms for your website, use fields that record important information. For example, if your personas vary based on geography, make sure to ask each lead about their geographic location in the form.
Speak to your sales team and consider what they have to say about the leads they are speaking to the most. Are there are observations they have made about the leads?
Get feedback from your current and prospective customers. Analyze what they have to say about your products and services.
There is no definitive number of people you should interview. But once you can accurately predict what your interviewee is going to say, we’d say it’s time to stop.
How to use your information to create a persona
Fill in your personas demographic information.
Share what you have learned about your personas motivations. Tie it all together to show how your company can help them.
Prepare your sales team for conversations with the personas. Create a list of concerns your customers had and prepare the team to answer these questions if they come up.
Choose The Right Platform
Social Media
Whatever social platform you choose; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ your social presence and engagement is responsible for creating a good brand. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself, to find the right platform for your business.
Who are the present users?
For example, Pinterest is dominated by the female demographic. Of its estimated 10.4 million users, 80 percent are female. Nearly 30% are between the ages of 25 and 34, with the average user spending nearly 98 minutes a day perusing the site. Ask yourself if this audience is a relevant target for your business. Do not try to fit your business model to suit a social platform.
What type of content do they like to share?
Are your products and services popular with the trending topics on a particular site? Do they have similar interests? Facebook and Twitter are on top when it comes to sharing content. But for business audiences, LinkedIn or any such industry specific social sites might be a better choice. It provides wonderful networking opportunities with others in your industry.
Understanding the difference in social sites will help you choose the right one for your business.
How much time do you require to participate in a social site?
You need to make sure you do not have too much on your plate. You will get better ROI if you choose a few key networks and put the required effort to utilize its full power. Leading social sites have made sharing fairly easy. But the key is to have quality content ready to be shared on these sites.
Designing a Successful Campaign
successful online campaign
Marketing campaigns aren’t just for product launches. You need to treat every single marketing activity as a marketing campaign. Here is how you go about doing that:
Start by identifying your audience. The demographics, values, challenges, objectives etc.
Set attainable goals. You should know where you want to reach before you start. For example, generate 5000 leads who are interested in search engine marketing by December 2015.
Zero-in on the keywords you want to rank for as a result of the campaign. Use them across your headlines and your content. Do not stuff your content with keywords. Be consistent in keywords you use to optimize for search.
Create landing space and offers. Create offers to attract prospective customers and landing pages to convert those visitors. Make sure you include the keywords that you decided to rank for.
Get the word out. Send an email. Write related blogs. Share content on social media.
Marketing Automation
marketing automation
Once you have leads, it becomes very important to nurture these leads. Marketing automation helps in doing so. Here is how:
Set specific targets. Targeting a group of buyers with relevant messages increases the likelihood of purchase. Do not limit yourself to their job titles and demographics. Hone in on how they responded the previous campaigns or what they do when they visit your site. Jupiter Research compared untargeted campaigns with targeted campaigns finding that conversion rates can be up to 400% higher for the latter.
Nurture leads till they are ready to make a purchase. This is the biggest advantage of marketing automation. When people first visit your site they are not ready to make a purchase. But eventually, they will be. Marketing automation lets you set up a series of communication designed for different stages of the marketing funnel.
Get personal with your customers. Having access to a high level of data about your customers and prospects, it will be easier to personalize communications and services to your customers.