Confused business owners don’t stress!
Feeling lost in the vast ocean of digital marketing? You’re not alone. Many small and medium businesses struggle to connect with their target audience online. But here’s the good news: it’s not about throwing random pebbles into the void. It’s about understanding your audience, speaking their language, and creating content that truly resonates.
Create your Ideal Customer
Firstly we need to define a buyer persona. So what is a buyer persona? Imagine you’re throwing a party, and you want to make sure everyone has a great time. To do this, you need to know your guests well – what music they like, what food they prefer, whether they enjoy dancing or prefer chatting in a cozy corner. Understanding these details helps you create the perfect party atmosphere for them.
A buyer persona is quite similar, but in the world of business. It’s like creating a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Think of it as a character in a story – this character represents the type of person who would love to buy your product or use your service. You give this character a name, an age, a job, and even hobbies. You think about what challenges they face in their daily life, what goals they have, and what might stop them from achieving those goals.
Get Inside your Customers Head
For example, if you sell eco-friendly gardening tools, your buyer persona might be ‘Eco-friendly Emma’, a 35-year-old environmental enthusiast who loves gardening but struggles to find sustainable tools and information on green gardening practices.
By knowing ‘Eco-friendly Emma’ inside and out, you can tailor your marketing messages, products, and services to meet her specific needs and preferences. It’s like planning that perfect party, but for your business – making sure every aspect of what you offer resonates with your ideal customer.
I know this might seem like a pointless exercise, you know your customer already right? The problem is when you are creating social media posts, by default, you still try and appeal to everyone that might see the post. By defining a type of person you can use this for inspiration, what not to include, and what style and format that would appeal to that person.
How do you create a persona, well it can be done in an app like Canva, you can use a word doc, or go old school and use a pen and paper.
Buyer personas are really important and you should definitely give it a go. It will refine the type of content you are trying to create, and give you a head start when it comes to coming up with ideas for content.
Do the research
A buyer persona is excellent, but you also need to know how to conduct research to create one. Don’t just assume, confirm.
There are a number of ways to conduct audience research, but here are four of my favourites.
Social media listening tools
A good social media listening tool scans all of the social media platforms for key phrases that relate to your industry. It enables you to simply research or even jump into the conversation to see what real people are talking about. Find out who your competitors are, what they dislike about a business and then use it to create content to show how you are different from the rest!
Customer Surveys and interviews
This one seems really obvious, but what always strikes me is the number of business owners that simply don’t do this. Ask your clients and customers what they think.
Website Analytics
Did you know that you can track exactly how your website visitors move around your website, what pages they leave, and how long they are on each page? Well you can with analytics tools. The most popular one is Google Analytics, but there are others on the market that will do a similar job. Some tools even track mouse movement to see if visitors are clicking on and how far they scroll down the page.
Industry reports and trends
Industry reports can be be found through libraries and universities and there are some third party companies that provide it as well. Trends can be found on Google Trends, to see how many people are actually looking for your horse sitting business.
Wrapping it all up
So there you have it, how to research and create a buyer persona. You have the power to turn your digital marketing from a challenge into a triumph. Have you created a persona in your business?
