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Buyer personas are the single most important part of the Marketing plan. You could have the best strategy, millions of pounds to spend, the best creative agency to communicate your message – but if you don’t know who’s buying from you then you’re stuck!
QUESTION: What’s the aim of the Marketing plan?
ANSWER: To increase sales.
In one of our previous posts “What is a Successful Marketing Plan,” we talked about how the aims of the Marketing plan are intrinsically linked to the aims of the company. These should be financial goals.
So if the aim is to increase sales then we need to know about how the money is coming in. We need to study the monetary transactions.
If someone is buying from you then we can only assume that they have an interest in your products/services
OR
your company solves a problem they have.
Based on this information we need to study who is buying from you. We need to create a profile of your buyers/customers - ‘the buyer persona’.
Don’t be generic and say things like:
“We sell to anyone.”
“Our customers are everyone.”
“Basically, anyone who wants to buy”
We need to know as much detail as possible about our buyers. We want to know their age, their income bracket, what kind of house they live in, single, married, what kind of car they drive, spending habits etc.
The clearer you can be about this buyer persona the more focused your marketing efforts will be – which in turn gives a better chance of increasing sales.
Here are some questions to get you started:
WHO is buying?
WHERE are they buying?
WHAT they are buying
WHY they are buying
HOW they are buying
These questions will give you a great framework of a buyer persona. You can then start to build upon this and create a buyer persona for each product/service you provide.
You may have multiple buyer personas and would therefore need to segment each persona. You would then reach them using different marketing strategies.
Remember, the clearer you are about your buyer personas, the better chance you have of finding them, reaching them, attracting them to your company/website and converting those leads into sales.
Get specific!
Hi, I’m Haroon Rashid and I’m the author of this blog and the founder of Finisher Creative. If you are a small business or a charity/non-profit I would be more than happy to talk to you about your online marketing and social media needs. If you’re in the Yorkshire area (UK) I’ll even take you out for a coffee! You can email me on info@finishercreative.com, check me out on Facebook or follow me @FinisherCre8ive I look forward to hearing from you!
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[...] you answer number 1, then you should have a clear idea of who your customer is. A lot of the time small businesses make the mistake of thinking ‘everyone’ is their [...]