Do you really know who your customers are?

Who are your customers…really?

I’ve been reading a truly eye-opening book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, which I highly recommend.

In the book, he introduces the concept of buyer personas. This is the second time I’ve heard about this idea and realized, I need to pay close attention.

David says that a buyer persona, “is essentially a representative of a type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization or product or having a market problem that your product or service solves.”

He strongly advises making developing this profile the first step in your marketing and PR plan. In fact, he says that it is the most important thing that you will ever do as you plan.

Think about it…your product or service probably serves more than one population. For example, if you own a financial services business, you probably have clients who are just starting out in their careers, clients who are middle age and clients who are ready to retire or who are already retired. Each of these groups of people have different needs and what’s just as important…each of these groups speaks a different language. They describe their problems and their understanding of your service differently.

One size fits all doesn’t work when developing messages and website content. David recommends creating a specific page for each of your buyer personas. Using the same example, that means having links that may look like this…

•  Just starting Your career? It’s never too early to start planning for your future.
• Need to make sure you’re financially on course? Leave the planning to us.
• Uneasy about retirement? Let us help you create a plan that will help you relax and enjoy the work-free years to come.

The actual links on the navigation may even say…

• Right Out of College
• Looking forward to retirement

These are just examples to get you thinking differently. The idea is to provide content on your website that immediately speaks to your target audiences by helping them to quickly see that your company can meet their needs and answer their questions.

David gives an example of colleges, who do this exceptionally well. Inevitably, when you visit a college website, you see links for:

• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Alumni
• Faculty and Staff
• Parents and Family

Colleges and universities know that each of those groups has different questions and is at a different decision-making phase.

Check out the book! It’s a great read. And while you’re waiting for your book to arrive, start developing your customer personas by considering these questions:

1. What are their goals and aspirations?
2. What are their problems?
3. What media do they rely on for answers to problems?
4. How can you reach them?
5. What words and phrases do they use? 
6. What sort of images and multimedia appeal to each?

I’ll be writing along with you, so let me know how it goes in the comments.

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