The key to a successful digital marketing campaign is planning. One of the most important aspects of planning is the creation of buyer personas. Buyer personas are sometimes referred to as ‘customer avatars’. They are based on personal profiles that represent your customers. They are used to help develop a digital marketing campaign that targets specific customer groups within your overall market base.
Buyer Personas help maximise return on digital marketing spend
The creation of buyer personas helps you to maximise:
- The return on your digital marketing spend;
- Develop your online business model; and
- Develop your marketing model.
But, it must be done right. You cannot gloss over this step in your initial planning without significant risk – this is where in-depth and insightful market research comes into play.
In-depth market research will help you create valuable buyer personas
Remember when people came to your door with questionnaires and samples of products? Market research predates the internet. But the internet has made market research substantially easier and more useful:
- You can canvas your potential customers more easily;
- You can canvas your potential customers in infinitely greater numbers;
- You are now able to obtain far more in-depth information…and the more in-depth the better;
- Some things can be asked outright and others can be deduced;
- You can learn far more about your potential customers through unprecedented access;
- You can utilise online data and your demographics’ interaction with social media through tools such as Facebook’s Audience Insights.
Create a market research template
- Identify: Demographics
- Direct Ask: Hobbies and Interests
- Direct Ask / Deduce: Goals and Challenges
- Direct Ask / Deduce: Values and Fears
Create primary and secondary buyer personas
With that information, you can create: Primary Pete, Secondary Sue, Sheila and Sandra. Even third-level avatars can be created to represent the outer rim of your customer base: those you may never have reached with a one-size-fits-all campaign. Once that is done effectively, they will be at the boardroom table helping you design and develop your multi-channel digital marketing campaign. They will be advising on and influencing your social media marketing, your content marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation). Even your website design and link building campaigns: all crucial arms of successful digital marketing and solid and sustainable, long-term online business growth.
Contact us today for more information on how the creation of highly researched and carefully designed buyer personas will help you engage your customers, make the most of your digital marketing campaign and take your online business or business arm to the next level.