So, we built our buyer personas around those assumptions and started creating content to appeal to that audience. Step 1: Develop your buyer personas. So, while standard buyer-persona generation strategies won't uncover all possible audiences -- those recruiters we missed being a case in point --- they're still a helpful starting point. For more on this tiopic, I'll just recommend the following Entrepreneur resources: Step 2: Build content for your established buyer personas. Talk to your customers and survey them about what they're looking for and how they're using your product or service. Step 4: Refine your buyer personas. Take the data you gathered in Step 3 and add to your understanding of your buyer personas, creating "sub-personas" as needed. The need for a new buyer persona. Sometimes, the data you gather through content creation and promotion helps you identify misconceptions you've made about your audience. Step 5: Create hyper-targeted content for your new personas Following your analysis in Step 4, drill down into your new personas to create content that's hyper-targeted to their needs.
When my team and I built the corporate email look-up service Voila Norbert, we expected sales and marketing professionals would be the ones most interested in using its capabilities for prospecting and lead generation.
So, we built our buyer personas around those assumptions and started creating content to appeal to that audience.
But then a funny thing happened. When we were talking to customers, we found a surprising number of people using the platform coming from another group we hadn’t expected at all: recruiters. Turns out recruiters were using the service to get in touch with potential job candidates.
Once we knew those users existed, we were able to support their needs — and bring in more of them — by drilling down and creating hyper-targeted content. Here’s how we did it.
Step 1: Develop your buyer personas.
You can’t drill down into your buyer personas until you have them in the first place. So, while standard buyer-persona generation strategies won’t uncover all possible audiences — those recruiters we missed being a case in point — they’re still a helpful starting point.
For more on this tiopic, I’ll just recommend the following Entrepreneur resources:
Step 2: Build content for your established buyer personas.
Once you have your general buyer personas established, start building content to support their needs. This might include content that:
- Addresses their pain points
- Supports different stages in their buyer journeys
- Answers important questions they have
At this point, don’t worry about hitting all possible audiences or buyer personas. Your goal for now is just to start gathering information about who you’re reaching with content.
Step 3: Look for indicators that your buyer personas’ needs aren’t being met.
As you publish content, you generate a significant volume of engagement and conversion data. If you’re thoughtful about this information, you’ll be able to pick up on signs that you aren’t meeting the needs of all possible audiences with your content, including:
- Regularly getting the same questions posed to customer service
- A high churn or low engagement…
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