In marketing terms, a persona is a fictional person that represents your ideal buyer. At what size company does he work? Where does she live? What type of software does his company use? Where is she in the buying cycle? What are his purchasing motivations and/or pain points? These are examples of questions you should ask yourself when considering your target customer and an important first step in developing a successful content marketing strategy. After all, if you want to catch the big fish prospects with content marketing, you have to know what kind of bait to use.
Keep in mind that it’s possible that you may have several different ideal buyers, especially at different stages of the buying process. By defining these personas, you can consider them when creating your content – Will this piece of content be relevant to my buyer? Will it bring them value?
While you may already have an idea of what your typical customer looks like, tools like Google Analytics can help you discover specific details about where your audience is coming from and what their interests are. What pages do your web visitors view when they get to your site? What are the demographics of your audience? Where are they located?
Dynamics CRM is also extremely helpful in completing this task. You have an extremely powerful slicing and dicing platform to divide your audience into manageable groups. You can use the power of advanced finds, views and dynamic marketing lists to dive through the opportunities that you’ve closed to determine what your best customers have in common. By doing this, you create segments and personas that will help you seek out more of these same buyers.
Perhaps take a look at the industries of your opportunities and/or active customer accounts. In this example, sales are strong in the high-tech and professional services industries, as well as with nonprofits and educational institutions. However, sales are not performing as well in the government sector.
So when we develop our marketing pieces, we should focus on content that will appeal to “Jeff” who works for a software company or “Betty” who works for a leading university. Or, we could create a content piece directed at “Larry” who works for the Department of Labor, hoping to stimulate that sluggish market segment.
The point is, in order to decide what bait to use, you have to understand the reason behind why that bait works or not. You need to know more about your audience than you think you know. Identifying your customer is not just setting a target, it is the first step in positioning your value and essential to creating successful content.
This post is an excerpt from the ClickDimensions eBook “Hooked on Content: Developing a Successful Content Marketing Strategy with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.” Download your complimentary copy here.
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