Marketing Personas - Who is Your Ideal Client?
by Dave Maloney
The focus of traditional marketing has always been all about your company: your brand, your reputation, all about you. By contrast, inbound marketing is consumer focused: what they want and what they're interested in, all about them. So who are "They?"
Create Marketing Personas for your Business
It would help to know who your ideal client is to figure out what they want and what they're interested in. A "Marketing Persona" is a character created to represent your average user or customer (see Wikipedia's definition). Depending on what products you sell or services you offer, you may have one marketing persona or several. Start your brainstorming with:
- Who is likely to buy your product or services, and what are they interested in - or not interested in?
- Are they an individual, a business or both?
- Is your company's reach local, national, worldwide? Industry specific?
Visualize your ideal client in detail; knowing who they are and what motivates them will help you figure out what they're searching for. Get specific:
- Are they male or female? Approximate age?
- Income or education level?
- Job title? Hobbies on weekends?
Often overlooked, identifying your marketing personas is the foundation of all the next steps in your Inbound Marketing Plan! When choosing keywords, think about who is searching for them - forget about what you think you'd look for! Write your content to appeal to them; you don't want to write on an advanced doctorate level if your target audience is children. Even your website design, layout and colors should all be geared toward appealing to your ideal client.
Creating a marketing persona for your business will help paint a good picture in your head of who matters most in your online marketing; just keep reminding yourself it's all about them and not you!