buyer personas and the qualified lead

Fluidity Partners tel.: 323.212.6020, www.fluiditypartners.com twitter: @fluiditypartner

Using Buyer Personas to Boost Your Qualified Leads

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http://www.fluiditypartners.com



Table of Contents

Why Are Buyer Personas Important? …………………………………………………… Slide 3

What Are Buyer Personas? ...……………………………………………………………. Slide 4

Why Do We Use Buyer Personas? ........................................................................... Slide 5

What Are Negative Buyer Personas? …………………………………………………… Slide 6

How Can You Use Buyer Personas? …………………………………………………… Slide 7-8

How Do You Create Buyer Personas? ………………………………..……………….… Slide 9-10

Buyer Persona Checklist …………………………………………………………………… Slide 11-12

Sample Buyer Persona …………………………………………………………………….. Slide 13-15

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Why Are Buyer Personas Important?

Buyer Personas are important for the foundation of any Inbound or Content Marketing strategy.

✓ 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content (Custom Content Council).

✓ 78% of consumers believe that companies who deliver custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.

✓ 90% of consumers find custom content useful.

✓ Accurate Buyer Personas can increase qualified leads IF used to create custom content that addresses the buyer’s needs throughout the Buyer’s Journey.

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What Are Buyer Personas?

Buyer Personas represent the customer base that you are trying to reach. They are universally useful across all industries and the personas are based on real life research.

The Buyer Persona is a fictitious character that represents your ideal customer. It gives you a bird’s eye view as to their needs, their goals and what it is that keeps them up at night. You may also have several Buyer Personas. If you do, that is perfectly fine…just remember to segment!

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Why Do We Use Buyer Personas?

Finding the qualified buyer can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Using Buyer Personas will:

1. Create a TRUE representation of who you need to reach.

2. Establish your research base to solidify your marketing understanding.

3. Support your content mapping for the entire Buyer’s Journey.

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What Are Negative Buyer Personas?

Whereas a Buyer Persona is a representation of an ideal customer, a negative -- or “exclusionary” -- persona is a representation of who you don’t want as a customer.

This could include, for example, professionals who are too advanced for your product or service, students who are only engaging with your content for research or educational purposes, or potential customers who are just too expensive to acquire (because of a low average sale price, their propensity to churn, or their unlikeliness to purchase from your company again).

Another type of negative persona falls into the “cultural fit” categorization. Not every potential customer brings the right “cultural fit” to mesh with your business values.

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How Can You Use Buyer Personas?

When combined with the lifecycle stage (i.e. how far along someone is in your sales cycle), Buyer Personas allow you to map out and create highly targeted content.

Consider the creation of your Buyer Personas, as the roadmap you will use to create successful direct marketing campaigns.

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http://offers.hubspot.com/content-mapping-template


How Can You Use Buyer Personas?

There are several ways to use Buyer Personas to boost qualified leads:

✓ Create buyer specific content, as they move through the different stages of their Buyer’s Journey.

✓ Segment your email marketing list, to increase the relevancy of content your buyers receive.

✓ Use the Buyer Personas as part of your lead qualification toolkit.

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(continued)




How Do You Create Buyer Personas?

Buyer Personas are created through research, surveys, and interviews of your target audience. This includes a mix of customers, prospects, and those outside of your contact database, who might align with your target audience.

Here are some practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop personas:

✓Interview customers either in person or over the phone, to discover what they like about your product or service.

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How Do You Create Buyer Personas?

✓Look through your contact database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.

✓When creating forms to use on your website, use form fields that capture important persona information. (For example, if all of your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms. You could also gather information on what types of social media your leads use, by asking questions about social media accounts.)

✓Take into consideration, the feedback of your sales team; What leads are they interacting with the most? (What types of sales cycles does your sales team work with? What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?)

(continued)

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Buyer Persona Checklist

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1. Job and Career Path

2. Family

3. Education

Background

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1. Male or Female

2. Age

3. Income

4. Geographic Location

Demographics

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1. Primary Professional Goals

2. Secondary Goals

Goals

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1. Demeanor

2. Communication Preference

3. Decision Making Style

Identifiers




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1. Major Challenges

2. Minor Challenges

Challenges

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1. What plans can we create to help achieve their goals?

2. What solutions can we design to help address their challenges?

How We Help

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1. “Our email marketing list is shrinking at 25% each year.”

2. “For every 10 website leads we get, 9 are unqualified.”

Real Quotes

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1. Email marketing does not work anymore.

2. Inbound marketing is hard to track with analytics and ROI.

Common Objections

(continued)Buyer Persona Checklist

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Sample Steve – Buyer Persona

Director of Marketing

Married with kids Looking to continue toward a C level role

Both male and female Ages 30-45

Personal Income Average $75K

Background

Demographics

Identifiers

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Always looking for new information and best practices

Needs to justify Marketing Spend and ROI Creative mindset





Increase Qualified Leads

Improve Marketing ROI Improve Lead Segmentation

Unsure of how to create Buyer Personas

Challenged with Content Road Mapping Needs to do a better job at providing Content + Context

Goals

Challenges

What Can We Offer

(continued)

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Content Road Mapping

Editorial Strategy and Content Creation

Lead Segmenting





“Our Marketing feels Fragmented.” “We need the resources to develop Custom Content based on

the Buyer’s Journey.”

We have trouble determining our ROI on Inbound and Content Marketing efforts.

Outside teams often don’t understand our business.

Real Quotes

Objections

(continued)

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Now it’s your turn! Build your Buyer Personas to guide your Content Creation.

Expand your list of questions over time:

✓ Expand on the background.

✓ Understand their Total Educational Experience.

✓ Create a category for Thoughts, Feelings and Motivations.

✓ Dive deeper into Business Insight.

✓ Anything else you feel is relevant to your business!

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Build your Buyer Personas




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