Developing Personas for Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing means that you have developed content creation that will naturally attract the right kind of people to buy or use your product or service. Sounds easy enough, right? Except, how do you know who that right kind of person is?

In order for your ideal customer to be easily attracted to your content, you need to know who they are, and in detail. That is where marketing personas come into play. Developing a marketing persona for your business is key in order for your digital marketing strategy to be successful.

Here are few ways to get started on developing personas for your business from GoEpps:

Ways to Get Started Developing Inbound Marketing Personas

• Start Small
  Whether you have one or two ideal customers or whether it’s closer to twenty different customer types, it’s important to start small so that you do not become overwhelmed. Choose two general ideas for your ideal customer to start. If you are in the business of selling office desks, start out with the office manager as one persona and an individual employee as another.
  
• Background Information
  For each persona, you will need to develop background information and basic demographics. This is a good time to gather your sales and customer service reps in order to get their insights into the types of people they have encountered and those that have followed through with a purchase.
  
  Take some time to distribute surveys to your customers in order to get as much information as possible. You may already be able to answer many of these questions yourself. Some of the information that will be useful includes household income, educational background, and career.
  
• Personal
  Get a little more personal with your personas. How do they spend their free time? Do they have children, grandchildren? What are their hobbies? Which news sources do they follow? Do some investigating based on your social media followers. This can be an effective way to learn deeper information about your ideal customer in order to create your persona and effectively market to them.
  
  Interviewing current customers is the best way to get more personal information. Be sure to include happy customers as well as some that may not have had the best experience. It’s important to rule out certain types of people that may not fall into your ideal persona. Once you interview three to five people for a persona, you will probably begin to predict some of their answers. This is a good sign that you have enough information to develop that persona.
  
• How do you fit in?
  Lastly, what are your persona’s goals and challenges? How will your company fit into helping them achieve goals and overcome challenges? Your customer will be asking the question “What can you do for me?” and you want to have a good answer.

Answering these questions is a great start to developing inbound marketing personas in order to get the most out of your content marketing strategy. When you are ready for more information on how an online marketing strategy can help your business, let GoEpps help get you started.