90. Supercharge Customer Connections - Create Buyer Profiles

The most important asset your business has is your customer. And if you want to capture their attention you need to know them inside and out.

On this episode of The High Performance Marketing podcast, we'll outline the process of creating a buyer persona as an indispensable strategy for creating a genuine connection between you and your ideal client.

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Crafting irresistible connections through buyer personas and targeted marketed.

Transcript 

Welcome to The High Performance Marketing Podcast, a show for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to create meaningful customer connections, using simple marketing and quality content. I’m your marketing guide, Ali Garbero. 

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If I were to ask you what the most valuable asset of your business is, your mind might instantly gravitate towards your dedicated team of talented employees, your exceptional service, or perhaps your cutting-edge patented technology. While these are vital contributors to the success of any business. Take a moment to think about this: without a customer, how substantial would the impact of these assets truly be?

For me, everything starts with the customer - as a certified Story Brand Marketing guide, I teach the story brand 7 part framework to my clients, and always lead the discussion by starting with the character of the story - which in business marketing is our client. 

Customers are the heartbeat of any business that hopes to thrive. And on this episode of the podcast I want you to reconnect with your ideal customers by building out buyer personas. 

Buyer personas are a well-known term for the ideal customer you want to attract and ideally work with over and over again. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on market research and real data about your existing customers. 

It’s important to create and re-create or re-evaluate buyer personas because markets shift all the time, and industries change.

And if you’re not crystal clear about your ideal client, then how do you know how to speak when you write emails, or shoot video content? 

One perfect example of this is looking at the Stanley drink wear and gear brand. Right now, Stanley cups are all the rage! But years ago the Stanley brand catered to most blue collared men. Stanley could run a campaign that said “hey Joe, we know that come lunch time, you want to sit back and enjoy a warm lunch.”

Today, Stanley continues to speak to Joe, but also speaks to Jane. “Hi Jane, you don’t want a boring life. After yoga, running the kids around, or heading into a long day of meetings you want to be sure you stay hydrated with our super cute Barbie pink colored stanley cup, that holds 40 ozs and keeps your drinks cold!”

Now that Stanley knows, they’re talking to Jane their marketing message becomes more targeted and on point.

So, when thinking about buyer personas, start by creating an ideal customer profile. 

Write out a detailed description of the characteristics and traits that define your most valuable customers. 

And because I also understand who my ideal customer is, I know that you are entrepreneurs and busy business leaders and that you don’t have time to sit and pontificate on marketing - so I’ve created a simple Ideal Customer Profile sheet you can download at writebrandmarketing.com/ICP

By developing a detailed and accurate ideal customer profile, you can tailor your emails, social media content, graphics, blogs, videos and customer interactions to better meet the needs and preferences of your most valuable audience. 

The goal of buyer persona profiles are to humanize your target market.

Key components to understanding your customers better includes an understanding of their values and motivations. 

Do you know what values are important to those who hire you? What motivates their decision-making process? Is it status, attention, security? 

What about their pain points? This one’s my favorite because I believe that people buy solutions to their problems. During my client workshops, I take time to help you identify the problems, obstacles, or frustrations your potential clients experience in their journey as a customer. 

For example if you’re a real estate agent, a pain point in selling your home is having to pack up and store things, clean up and show your home. When you’re clear about that pain point, it’s easy for you to create content and communicate that you have a simple solution to ease the stress of packing and selling.

A final point to consider when creating your buyer personas is to take some time to reflect on your potential customer’s communication preferences. How do they want to hear from you? Email, social media, in - person? If your ideal customer is never on email but loves spending time on tik-tok then meet them there.

Finally, I’d invite you to think about buyer buying patterns: 

• How does your typical client buy the service you sell? 
• What’s the buying journey they go on? Meaning, the process they go through as they discover, evaluate, and purchase a service like yours? 

How can you research the process, and decision-making criteria of your ideal client? Ask them? Use social listening. Go onto sites like quora, answer the public, or even join facebook groups where you customers hang out.

Equally important is to consider any potential objections that would keep your potential clients from engaging and paying for your services. I’m a strong advocate for creating content that not only answers those objections but serves to help them overcome it.

When you know the answer to these questions, it guides your marketing message and the positioning your services hold in the mind of your potential customers.

A detailed and spot-on ideal customer profile allows you to make customer interactions more on point with what your audience loves. It sets the stage for super-effective and laser-focused marketing that hits to the heart of solving the problems your customers need solutions too.
Thanks for joining me today. If you’d like to schedule a messaging workshop to get clear about your ideal customer, their problems and position your services as the solution, schedule a call with me at writebrandmarketing.com

I’m Ali Garbero, Copywriting is what I do, Content Marketing is what I create, more customers is what you get.