The 8-Step Marketing Exercise you Can’t Afford to Ignore

Before you start spending resources on creating killer content, you’re going to want to know who is going to be absorbing it. This way, your marketing team and your sales team can work together to develop a strategy that attracts and sells to the right people. For example, it’s not quite as simple as saying that your demographic is males aged 20-50. In order to create truly effective marketing content, you’re going to want to pinpoint those key people that you want to attract.

Jennifer Aniston might be a little too specific.

Enter the buyer persona. Crafting your buyer personas is essentially identifying the profiles of the people you want as your dream customers. In order to develop these personas, you’ll want to ask yourself these 8 questions. You may not be able to answer all of them right away and that’s okay, but as long as your final buyer personas can answer these questions, you’ll be able to filter all of your content through them and make solid marketing and sales decisions.

1. What is their demographic information?

Are your customers male or female? What is their age, marital and family status? Where do they live? Gathering this basic demographic information will help paint a picture of who your personas really are.

2. What is their job and level of seniority?

For B2C companies, this information can help you understand certain distinctions in your persona’s day to day life. For B2B companies, this information becomes hugely important as it will help you understand what level your company needs target. Is it lower level employees, management or executives for example.

3. What does a day in their life look like?

Now that you’ve identified some personal characteristics, try to assemble a day in their life. What trends do they follow? What do they drive? What do they do for fun? What matters most to them? Once you’ve completed this exercise, try going through some imagery and finding a picture of the person this represents. This image will become a sort of mascot for your persona that everyone in your company can associate with when creating marketing content.

I'll get the t-shirt cannon.

4. What are their pain points and what do you help them solve?

How does your product or service solve a problem for your persona? How does that problem affect them and how do they feel about it? This will help you identify the methods to present them with a helpful solution.

5. What do they value most? What are their goals?

Now that you know what problems they are facing, you can understand what they value most. For example, a seasonal operation that has a limited window to generate revenue may value time. Someone who is moving to a new country and needs to learn a new language may value a product that educates. What is it about your product or service that will excite these people?

6. Where do they go for information?

In order to properly market and sell to your new personas, you need to know how they absorb their information. Are they the type of person that is always online or do they prefer the in-person experience? Do they read magazines or visit social networks? Are they constantly on mobile devices? Know these trusted sources of information helps you pinpoint the places where you need to establish credibility.

7. What experience are they looking for when seeking out your products or services?

If you’re going to solve a problem for this person, what is their expectation? This extends from the features of your product or service to even the sales experience. Do they expect an in person meeting or contact through email? Playing to their expectations will help develop your business personality and coordinate the sales process.

8. What are their most common objections to your product or service?

On what basis would your company be rejected by the persona? Is it price? Reliabilty? Trust? By anticipating any common objections that you persona may have for your company, you can use them as a tactic to educate further and arm yourself for the sales process.

Now that you’re able to recognize what your personas are all about, you’ll be able to craft your marketing and sales communications to work in your favor. Once you’ve completed this exercise, your marketing and sales teams will be able to keep a consistent directive with each and every contact.





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