Using buyer personas to boost sales

Most of us would agree that understanding who your customers are is critical to be able to sell to them effectively. Consumers today are bombarded with marketing messages, the majority of which they have learnt to filter out. This is especially so when what they’re being served has no pertinence to the information they seek.

To make your message heard requires the creation of buyer (marketing) personas and customer journey maps. To be effective, these must be based on market research and actual data derived from existing customers. Using this data will help you market to the right people in the right place, boosting lead conversion and sales, regardless of industry.

Not convinced?

Let’s check out some of the stats on conversions by marketer Stephen Zoeller:

  • Persona based content increased customer engagement almost 6x when targeting cold leads.
  • Email open rates increased by 2-5 times using personas.
  • Click-Through-Rate (CTR) increased by 14% using personalized emails.
  • 10% improvement in email conversion rates using personas.
  • Marketing Sherpa found using personas increased website traffic by 210%, website generated leads by 97% and website generated sales by 124%.

Ultimately, a buyer persona provides you with critical insights needed to create relevant content that generates leads and improves sales. It helps your sales team make better use of their time and resources to close deals. It also assists you in improving the customer experience and leads to better customer retention.

So, what are the steps one can take to create buyer personas relevant to your industry, your business and your product or service offering? This is what we’ll examine in today’s blog.

Table of Contents

  1. Humanise the persona
  2. Make use of demographics
  3. Identify what their job entails
  4. Establish commonalities
  5. Create relevant content
  6. Establish where your personas are online

1. Humanise the buyer persona

By this we mean allocate the persona a name and link that name to an industry. In this way, you begin thinking of the persona as an actual person which turns the interaction into an emotive human experience.

2. Make use of demographics

Making use of all information about your customer will enable you to personalise their persona. For instance, age and education provides you with some insights as to the type of marketing message you need to create that will resonate. Knowing the type of work they do, and their level of seniority helps you better understand their worries and puts you in a more informed position to provide them with content solutions that cater to their pain points.

3. Identify what their job entails

Identify what challenges your persona faces on a day-to-day basis, as well as their daily responsibilities and their short and long-term goals. This information will help you create the type of content that addresses and solves the obstacles they face.

4. Establish commonalities

Investigate the type of tools that your buyer personas use to carry out their tasks and then identify whether any commonalities exist with the product or service that you are offering. In this way, you are better informed to highlight and promote the advantages and benefits of your offering over your competitors.

5. Create relevant content

Once you define your personas, you can create content that speaks to the target audience you have defined. For each persona, serve content that resonates, and which helps them meet their goals. The same logic applies to social advertising. Create ads that target exactly the right people (personas) where they’re at. As Hootsuite says, “this advanced level of targeting increases conversion rates and improves social ad campaigns”.

In terms of content creation, SEMRUSH also rightly points out that, “it is often said that content marketing is a conversation, though this may be somewhat misleading. Yes, some buyers will want to read something that is conversational in tone — but others are looking for instruction, clear dictation on what to do or how to do it. Let your buyer persona guide you.”

6. Establish where your personas are online

You need to know where your buyer personas are online and how they consume content there. Establish whether they are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc, so you know where to have active presence and what type of content to create for those channels of communication.

Further, ensure the content you produce is suited to the channel through which it is consumed. This is especially relevant on social media. What one is compelled to engage with on Facebook, may not be necessarily what they’re looking for on Instagram or LinkedIn. Be mindful not only of the persona but also the platform on which they seek information.

Conclusion

An intelligent CRM system like Qobrix provides you with the ability to input and centralise the necessary customer data you need to be able to build buyer personas, segment them into groups where commonalities arise, and serve them content that is pertinent to and will solve their pain points. Schedule your DEMO of the Qobrix Real Estate CRM system today.