Your buyer personas are the closest representation to your actual clientele you can get. However, if you don’t frequently update them, they may fall behind the curve. Technology changes rapidly, as does your customer base. As a result, it’s smart to revamp your avatars at least every year.
Buyer personas allow you to segment your audience into different groups and send content that speaks directly to each type. Before you revamp your marketing personas for 2020, discover six essential updates.
1. Follow the Buyer Journey
To develop relevant marketing personas, you must walk through each step of the buyer’s journey. Become the persona and start on the landing page, clicking on any links and pictures that look interesting from your new perspective.
Do you want a better indication of how your segmented audiences perform? Then use A/B and multivariate testing to see the response to different changes.
Think about small considerations, such as how a person most likely accesses your site — mobile or desktop? Are they young and tech-savvy? Perhaps they require straightforward navigation and step-by-step directions.
2. Consider Psychographics
When you first made your buyer personalities, you likely looked at their age, where they lived, and their income level. However, to reach as many buyers as possible, you need to look deeper into the psychology and behaviors of your audience.
What drives them to respond in the way they do? Why do they decide to convert? If you’ve been in business for a while, you should have considerable data on your audience. You can also interview members in your target audience to gather more insight.
3. Name Your Persona
You might not have thought of naming your persona, but it helps to humanize the mock person and makes them seem more realistic. The better you understand the outline of your typical customer is, the better you’ll market to them. Figuring out what makes Mary tick may be easier than deciding how fake person number one thinks.
4. Create a Non-Persona
At the top of your marketing personas 2020 list should be creating a negative persona. Rather than looking at behaviors of the buyers you want to attract, spend some time considering the people you prefer to avoid.
For example, include users who take up lots of time but don’t wind up converting into customers. List out all the traits of your non-personas to ensure you know who to avoid when marketing and don’t inadvertently attract the wrong people, wasting advertising dollars and effort.
5. Update Stats to Current Data
In the course of business, it’s natural for your internal data to change. Perhaps you began offering a new service or started marketing to your audience online. Reviewing the information on your current customer base is a vital part of creating usable personas.
You may find you simply need to tweak what you already have. In other cases, you may need to create an entirely new set of personalities. Identify the personality traits of your buyers. For instance, someone with a competitive personality may want to know why you’re the best company to meet their needs.
One example of a company that turned things around using buyer personas is the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). They were losing money before Jan Carlzon took over leadership. According to her, every airline knows it has to chase business travelers to be profitable. What was new, however, was their investment strategy, which she designed to meet their customers’ needs. Carlzon implemented buyer personas and a customer-centric approach.
6. Look at Company Changes
The final step in revamping your buyer persona for the coming year is to look at changes within your company and how they match up to the needs of your buyers. Look at internal structure shifts, how your product or service offerings have evolved and new policies you’ve adopted, such as a customer-first approach.
Now, compare those changes to your current personas and ensure they’re still a good fit. Your company leadership may have defined a different target audience than you originally had, necessitating changes.
Revisit Your Personas Frequently
Do you want to supply your target audience with highly relevant content? Then focus on the six buyer persona changes above. Consider the buyer’s journey from beginning to end, including who’s on the other side of the screen. Give your avatars names, and don’t forget to think about the people you don’t want to attract. Plus, remember to look at current data and company changes that could affect your marketing targets.
You should revisit and update your buyer personas frequently, preferably once or twice a year. You should also consider optimizing if you make changes to your business approach or grow rapidly. Up-to-date personas make marketing easier and pay off in the form of more conversions and satisfied clients.
The post 6 Buyer Persona Updates to Make in 2020 appeared first on Torque.
