Why Define? Persona-Based Content Marketing Personalization

There are a variety of different ways to personalize the web experience for the user. So far, we’ve explored only one—channel based personalization. In this post we’ll take a look at persona based personalization. The goal of your website is to attract visitors to convert into leads and eventually customers. However, when people visit your website, the first thing they are going to wonder is, “What can this website offer me? How can I benefit?” This is why you must make it clear to the user how they will benefit from interacting with your website. Otherwise, you risk losing their interest and with that, a potential customer.Personalizing your content based on personas means tailoring towards the buyers’ stories to help them through their journey towards making a purchase. The goal is to create a personalized experience for the user, to attract better prospects, and to convert more leads into customers. But what makes persona-based personalization effective? For one thing, it focuses on helping customers making various decisions throughout their buying journey instead of just during the final decision phase.

Buyer personas are first determined by segmenting your audience into different groups of people. Personas are essentially fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on real data about customer demographics.

The Importance of Defining Personas

Demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns,” according to Hubspot. The precision of your buyer personas correlates directly with how much data you’ve collected about your customers.

Related Article: What Are Buyer Personas & Why Do They Matter?

Defining personas allows everyone on your team to have an understanding of a “real” customer in regard to their goals, capabilities, and contexts. It is a helpful process because it helps marketers avoid projecting their own schemas and personas onto website or content design. Personas also help designers and writers focus on producing content for people they are most likely to encounter, rather than design for outliers who are unlikely to be interested in your services. Lastly, personas provide a human face to the buyer and help to create empathy, according to Alan Cooper, a pioneer software developer who helped coin persona theory. By thinking about the needs of a fictionalized persona, we can better determine what a real person needs.

To successfully develop buyer personas, Hubspot lists three critical steps:

Segment by Demographics: The first thing you need to do is research your customer base and determine who your most common buyers are. You’ll also want to record detailed information for each buyer including name, job title, industry or company info, and demographic info.

Identify Buyers’ Needs: This is straightforward. Determine what your buyers’ pain points are and how your website solves them. Ask yourself: What do my buyers need? What are they looking to get out of their experience on my website? What might influence their decisions?

Develop Behavior-Based Profiles: Find out deeper information about your buyers such as what they spend their time doing online, whether or not they engage in social media frequently, or what search terms they typically use. Armed with this valuable data, you can position your website for maximum functionality and benefit from the buyer’s perspective.

Ask Questions about Your Customer

When defining personas, you should ask various questions about your customer base. As you collect information about your customers, you’ll have the ability to develop very granular personas for them. In turn, this allows you to develop marketing content that is extremely targeted and personalized. For example, you might ask some of the following questions about your customer or business: What type of information does this particular type of customer prefer? In general, how do we communicate with prospective buyers and customers? How do our typical customers make buying decisions? Why are our products or services important to them? When are our customers most likely to buy?

Using data to identify your company’s buyer personas allows you to personalize your website for individual users in a deeper way than simply personalizing based on channel. However, to maximize effectiveness, one should combine different styles of web personalization, rather than sticking to just one.

Websites hoping to be successful must employ personalization techniques. The one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is now obsolete because today’s users expect a personalized experience. When that is denied to them, they become frustrated, confused, and annoyed. Frustrated users are likely to leave your website and bring their business to in search of an experience that is more immediately relevant and useful to them. To accelerate your demand, displaying personalized and relevant information is essential.

This article was originally published by SyneCore