The Power of Personas: How to Create Effective Buyer Personas for Your Marketing Strategy

So LinkedIn recently released a whole bunch of new B2B targeting options on its advertising platforms. And what this does is it serves as a really good reminder of why it’s so important for you to understand and market to your direct customer persona. So what are the new LinkedIn targeting features, and why and how should you be reviewing your customer personas to build a better marketing strategy?

Hi, my name is Jordan McFadyen from the Marketing Mindset podcast, brought to you by donebynine.com. And on this podcast, we challenge you to become the smartest marketer in the room. We talk about ways that you can move away from random acts of marketing and start helping you build a more long-term marketing strategy.

So as I said in the intro there, interest-based targeting and some changes have come to LinkedIn, which is really interesting. And what it did was, as I was reading through the article, reading through the changes, it really started to make me think that obviously LinkedIn’s taking interest-based targeting really seriously. And as marketers and as marketing teams and as business owners and founders, we need to do the same as well.

So firstly, let’s take a step back really quickly for the uninitiated. What is interest-based targeting? Obviously, it’s targeting that’s allowing you to reach potential B2B buyers or B2C buyers that are going to be more interested in your product and your service. So it’s really getting really targeted about who we are talking to.

So before we go into your buyer persona, let’s just have a look at LinkedIn firstly, and some of the changes they’ve made. So with the new LinkedIn interest-based targeting, what’s happened is they’ve broadened out their interest targeting offering. So they’re now including over 20 new service interest attributes and 120 new product interest attributes as well. So why does this matter? Well, what it does is it’s giving us as marketers and as business owners and as marketing teams more room on how we can actually reach target buyers. And as I go through each of these three new options, you’ll get a bit of an understanding as to why.

So let’s run through them, the three new kind of subsections that LinkedIn have added. First one is general interest. And this is pretty standard across Facebook and LinkedIn. There’s interest-based targeting now. But what the general interest has done now on LinkedIn is it’s added a whole new range of categories. So I implore you to go have a bit of a look and just see if there’s one of these general interests that would fit your buyer persona. It gets really niche: things like science and environment, technology, people interested in technology, and health, and things like that. So it really is going to give us greater precision to be able to drill down to specific interests within broader categories, to be able to target these people with greater precision.

The second one I wanted to share was around product interest. This one’s interesting as well, because what we can do now is we can actually target members by the product that they’re searching for or asking questions about on LinkedIn. So that could be software. So let’s say there’s targeting there like business strategy software or revenue management software. There’s all these type of product-based targeting that you can now do on LinkedIn, which again is really good, especially if you’re in that SaaS mindset. But also, if you are trying to drill down as to some of the pain points and problems that your clients and your customers are having, potentially they are looking for some of these pieces of software that your product and service can then kind of latch onto as well, to be able to provide more support.

And then the third one, which is really interesting for service-based businesses like myself, for example, is around creating more tailored campaigns and reaching members interested in the services that you provide. So this includes people who are searching for or interested in things like real estate, business consulting; marketing’s on there, for agencies like myself. And it gets really niche as well. There’s some ones on there like career development coaching services. So there are some really interesting service-based targeting that you can also do on there as well.

So again, three main core updates: general interest, product interest, and service interest. And what I’d suggest is, if you are in charge of your LinkedIn campaigns, or if you’ve got a marketing team that is in charge of any of those campaigns, just implore them to go through, have a bit of a look, and see whether the current targeting is as good as what it could be, and whether there are some of these new attributes that we’ve gone through here today that you could add to your current campaigns to make them even better.

And this whole news around these new LinkedIn targeting, what it does is it really just reiterates the importance of buyer personas, and the importance of creating a clear persona for your business. And the thing is, if LinkedIn is putting a lot of resource into building these new targeting options for us as marketers, then we need to take this thing seriously. And we need to be able to see how we can use the tools that LinkedIn and Facebook and all those platforms are actually giving us.

So having a clear buyer persona is one of those key things, and it’s one of the core bits of marketing as well. So I just think it’s a really good reminder for us to go back and to have a bit of a think about those buyer personas that we currently have. So here’s why I believe that buyer personas are so important. And if you don’t have this clear with your marketing strategy, I think you need to go back and have a bit of a look. Here’s some of the reasons why.

Targeted marketing. Knowing about who your buyers and your customers are, their needs, their preferences, their interests, their behaviours, all those things, it’s going to allow you to create marketing campaigns that are actually going to resonate with them as an audience. It means that you’re going to be able to actually craft messages that speak directly to those people. It’s going to speak directly to their pain points, directly to their motivations. And it’s all going to help you increase your engagement and your conversions.

It means you’re going to be able to get content on your website, your advertising campaigns, that is meant for a specific audience. And it’s really going to talk to them about a specific pain point that they are currently having as well. So targeted marketing is obviously one of those first things we need to be thinking about, why we have got a buyer persona.

And the second one is personalisation. Having a buyer persona means it’s going to be so much easier for you to be able to provide a really detailed, personalised journey for your customers and your clients, from the moment they first see your brand through until they become a customer of yours, and even past that as well. It’s going to mean that you’re going to be able to give them such an incredible service, because you’ve been able to personalise that entire journey for them. And it goes past just adding their first name to the top of an email. Those days are well gone.

What we need to do now is we need to understand personas, and it’s going to enable us as marketers to really personalise the entire marketing journey that customers are going on. It’s going to enhance that customer experience. And ultimately, like I say, it’s going to lead to more customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and everything really. It’s just really going to add that real personal touch to your entire journey.

The other good reason of focusing on your buyer persona is it actually helps with product and service development within your own business as well. It gives you an understanding on your customer personas, and what it does is, as marketers, we can then develop our products and services around that, to meet the specific needs and their preferences at the end of the day. And what this can actually do is it can actually result in higher customer satisfaction. It’s going to result in repeat purchases. It’s going to result in more positive word of mouth as well.

So it’s going to mean that you’re going to be able to provide a better service to your actual customer, the type of clients that you actually want to see coming through your doors, or coming into your business, or onto your website. And it’s going to help you pivot and change and adapt and tweak your product and your service, so that you’re constantly growing and constantly getting better.

The other one is it’s going to ultimately help you achieve a better ROI. Having that buyer persona is going to help you get a better return on your investment. This is what your board, and this is what your leadership team, and as a business owner and a founder, this is what you’re going to want to look at: your higher and your better return on investment. And ultimately, creating a targeted marketing and personalised experience is going to result in high conversion rates, which is going to internally lead into better return on your investment with your leads, and better return on investment with your marketing campaigns in general. Because you’re speaking to a direct audience, and you’re providing them specific content, which is valid to their needs. It’s pretty simple.

But the question now is how do we actually create these buyer personas? Some of the steps. And I just want to run through just a bit of a basic start, a basic kind of thought starter. If you don’t have a buyer persona, this is some ideas of how you can start to build one up. And if you do have one, maybe just go back and check and make sure that your buyer persona is aligned against your actual marketing strategy as well.

So the first one, real basic, having a look at their demographics. What is their age? What is their marital status? Their income? Their education levels? And just remember that all these things are things that platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook and Google, they’re going to ask you this as you’re building up campaigns. So that’s why we need to have it really clear about who we’re actually talking to for a specific product or service, so that you can actually plug this in and help guide LinkedIn or Facebook to be able to target your campaigns better.

The next thing is having a look at their values. What do they actually care about at the end of the day? Do they have strong feelings on anything? Do they have strong feelings on current issues, political, anything like that? What do they value in life? Think about their daily life as well. And both daily life and the values is going to help you not only with your interest-based targeting of your ad campaigns, but also thinking about the copy that you’re writing, the content that you’re actually providing these people as well.

So think about their daily life. What does the day in their life look like? What’s the most rewarding moment of their day? What’s the most frustrating part of their day? What changes do they wish they could make to their day? And that’s going to help you not only craft the content, but when you’re actually going to get this content in front of them. When should emails be going to these people? When should the ads be appearing on their feeds? When are they more likely to engage and react and comment on all the work and the social posts that you’re doing as well?

And also the big one: problems. What are their problems? What are they facing in their life, in their work life? What are they facing at work? What are the issues that they’re trying to deal with? And how are they trying to deal with that problem as well? And this is going to help you craft that problem. And again, it goes back to creating that picture in the mind of your target persona of what their problem is, and showing them that before, and showing them that after, of when they actually deal with your product and service, and what their life could look like after that as well.

And also have a think about their aspirations. What do they actually aspire to be? What are their hopes and dreams for their job, their career, their family? What’s their aspirations for the company that they’re working for? Maybe they’re trying to climb the career ladder. Maybe they’re trying to become a business owner. Think about all those different aspirations that they have, and think about how you can craft your content to actually fit that as well. So that’s some of those kind of thought starters of how you can actually start to create that buyer persona, some of those questions that you need to be asking yourself to kind of build that picture as to who you’re actually talking to and targeting.

So then we ask the question of how do you actually do that? How do you get some of those thought starters and get moving on this? There’s a few things you can do, especially if you have been in business for a while. You’ve obviously got a lot of data available to you, and I implore you to try and use it as much as possible. Analyse your existing customer data. Use analytic tools. Google Analytics is a great one. You’re going to be able to see their demographics, their behaviour. You’re going to be able to see their purchase history if you’re working in e-commerce. The time spent on your website. Their location, where they’re actually located. Are they based in a city? Are they based more rural? Are they based in a region? Is it North or South Island of New Zealand? Or what state are they based in, in Australia? And it’s really going to help you analyse exactly where those people actually are. And you’ll get a really good indication of how they’re actually interacting with your content.

The other one is even having a look at social media analytics. Facebook, LinkedIn, they all give us really good data. And Instagram, for example, they give you really good data on who’s actually engaging with your content and what that person looks like. Especially if you’re in the B2B space, with LinkedIn you can go through and find their job function, their seniority within their company, the type of company that they work for, the industry they work for, sometimes even the company that they work for. So you can actually really start to get a bit of a picture as to who is resonating with your content so far. So use that data as much as you can as well.

And also the other one that we do when we’re building up marketing strategies for clients is really having a look at your competitor analysis. Conducting competitor analysis can actually provide you really valuable insights into who that target audience is. Having a look at some of your competitors’ customers, for example. What type of companies are they working with? What type of clients are leaving testimonials on their website? What type of keywords are they ranking for on Google? And you’ll be able to find some similarities, some differences.

For example, if you use a tool like Semrush, they actually have a keyword gap tool, where you can put in your website and your competitor’s website. And then they’ll kind of see where there’s a bit of a gap between the content you’ve got on your website versus your competitors. And you’re actually able to try even out that gap as well. So it allows you to really see what the big key differences are between your customers and theirs at the end of the day.

And then that final one, which is sometimes the easiest, but also sometimes the hardest, is actually just conducting customer interviews and surveys with the people that are dealing with you now. If you’re dealing with customers face-to-face, talk to them, ask them, collect info about who they are. You’ll get a good picture about some of those clients if you’re in a service-based business like myself. We get a really good picture about the type of person that they are, the role that they have in their organisation, their age. The more you get to know these people as well, you can kind of start to find out more about how they like to live their life, and some of the things they do in their spare time. And it really starts to build up that customer persona.

And if you’re really in the early stages of business, just go out and start building out some customer surveys. Put that on your social media and actually say, we’re trying to find our ideal customer, and do this quick Google survey or Google Form survey or whatever, to be able to find more details about who your potential customer or who your potential audience as well.

But the big thing that I always like to remind myself when thinking about buyer personas as well is I always try and think about my top clients or my top customers. And then I really focus on how can I get more of them? How can I clone that client to be able to help grow my business? Because those are the customers. Those are the clients that I enjoy working with. They know my product. They’ve got the problems that we solve, and they really get value out of things that we do.

And so what I do is I have a look at them and I go, how can I clone that client to be able to come into my business? Because we know that if we can get more of those clients and more of those customers, they’re going to be able to come into our business. They’re going to love our product and service. They’re going to love the onboarding process we’ve created, because we’ve been able to do it for the people that love us now. So think about that top client, that top customer, and think, what is it about them that we can clone to be able to find more of them?

But if you need any other assistance in deciphering your existing personas, or you’re trying to research or find your new personas, or you’re trying to match your persona to your marketing strategy from scratch, or whether you’re working to something existing, please go to our website, donebynine.com. You can chat with myself or a member of the team, book a discovery call. We can see if we’re the right fit to work with you, and to be able to help define who that buyer persona is for you.

So feel free to go along to the website, donebynine.com. On there as well, we’ve got all our blogs and all our podcasts, all our resources, and you can learn a bit more about what we do and how we build marketing strategies for businesses all across New Zealand and Australia. But I really do thank you for joining us again for another podcast with the Marketing Mindset podcast. And hopefully you’ve been able to take away a few ideas around how you can build your buyer personas. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.