Is it a surprise to you that your customers are having a hard time finding your brand? This is a very common problem with today’s marketing, especially since there are millions of marketing messages floating around everywhere a person exists. There are many reasons why your prospective customers are not finding your brand. Since personas are rather important, let’s start there.

What Are Personas?

They are highly specific representations of your ideal customer or customers. Your business may have one persona or ten. That is up to you to decide who they are and how to segment them. My suggestion is to create a list of as many attributes you can think of as well as do your research with your sales team, research with existing customers and also use social monitoring to help provide important insight.

Why Are Personas Important?

The more you know about your prospective customer, the easier it will be to create targeted marketing content. Below are 15 persona profile topics that need to be clearly vetted in order for your marketing team to create content so that your prospective customers can find your brand.

  1. Demographic info: Age, Gender, HHI, Ethnicity, Professional / personal status, general background information
  2. Professional / personal aspirations / goals
  3. How can you identify them in a crowd? – identifiers
  4. What are their challenges?
  5. What are their common objections?
  6. What are their common questions?
  7. Describe their problems and pain points
  8. What are their motivations for buying?
  9. What are some real quotes from prospective customers?
  10. What are their communication preferences?
  11. What do they value?
  12. Where do they go for information?
  13. Why do they consider or like your brand?
  14. Why would they NOT consider or not like your brand?
  15. What other competing brands are being mentioned in their conversations & social posts?

These are only 15 topics to cover in creating a persona narrative. Marketers need to know exactly who we are creating content for in order to expose our brand so prospects can find us. We also need to connect with prospects with relevant content so that we can lead them into the sales funnel easily. Lastly, marketers need to create content that converts prospects successfully and allows them to become customers without difficulty.

Coffee Lover Example

In my humble opinion, prospective customers have a hard time finding specific brands and their products because the content that is created and placed online is not specific to the prospective customer’s needs and motivations. Here’s an example. I am a bold coffee enthusiast and I really enjoy the many flavors that surround just about any bold coffee brew. I am also a working professional with little time on my hands. With that in mind, if you were a retail coffee shop would you send me marketing messages telling me about your new green tea blend and your new soft seating areas so I can come in and enjoy some time to relax and take a break during the workday?

You probably would not do that. So take the persona exercise above and fully complete your persona profiles. Then once you have them completed start creating content based on the profile attributes and traits you decided best fit them. You just might be surprised at how much more effective your marketing is once it is launched and specifically targeted at your personas.

Yourbrandexposed.com is designed to look at digital with an eye into the future using a creative, innovative marketing perspective. We’re a consultative and tactical resource for companies looking to leverage the power of digital, social and content marketing strategies.

Scott MacFarland

Web: www.Yourbrandexposed.com

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmacfarland

Twitter: @scmacfarland

Share This

Share this post with your friends!