Are you speaking to the right person at the right time?

Imagine the following scenario: a great majority of your customers happen to be small business owners. Yet your content fails to speak directly to them. Instead, you write in generalities.

In trying to speak to every customer, you could be diluting your sales message. It is much wiser to address the particular needs of one type of customer and allow your products or services to provide specific solutions.

So how do you ensure you are communicating your sales message in the most effective way possible? Through developing buyer personas and understanding the buyers journey.

A Guide To Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are key to inbound marketing strategy. They are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer. Buyer personas are modelled on real data, as well as some educated speculation. A detailed buyer persona will align your marketing and sales teams, boosting your efficiency.

Asking The Right Questions

You begin creating your buyer personas by asking questions. Enquire about your customer's job role, organisation and industry. Also focus on the particularities: detail is key. So keep in mind demographics, behaviour patterns, challenges, motivations, and goals.

Next determine a method of research. It could be interviewing or surveying, or asking questions on social media. You can use HubSpot and SurveyMonkey integration to collate responses.

Data show that at least 50% of your leads will not be ready to buy immediately.

New To Business?

Don't fear if you don't have customers just yet. Be creative and pull information from social media, online searches, even comment sections on industry blogs. Reach out to your wider network for interviews—you might get some high quality responses.

Once you have your buyer personas created, it is time to map out the buyers journey.

Understanding The Buyer's Journey

It is not enough to only speak to the right person. You must connect with them. You do this by understanding where they are in the sales cycle. The buyers journey has a three-part structure: the awareness, consideration, and decision stage. Each stage requires a specific type of content. Content inspires people to take action, and you are driving the decision making process.

Growing Your Sales Fast

By understanding the buyers journey, you understand that each lead might not be ready to buy. You allow your marketing and sales teams time to build trust and showcase thought-leadership. When your buyer persona has reached the decision stage, you can offer solutions. This will effectively convert leads to customers, and grow your sales fast.

The Changing Marketing Landscape

The internet has changed the way consumers shop for products and services. The customer is more informed than ever before. Thus the marketing process also needs to keep up pace.

Businesses that establish relationships with their customers are flourishing. By coalescing the buyer persona and buyers journey, you engage with your leads meaningfully. This will ultimately grow your customer base.

At The Kingdom, we're experts in inbound marketing. We're HubSpot's International Partner of the Year and we’d love to share our knowledge with you.