Optimize your Content Marketing using Personas

The main thing when writing an article is not the subject, the platform on which you will distribute it or even SEO optimization. Your strategy Content marketing is also a key point, however, while all of these things are obviously important, the priority is who you are writing for. AS, the priority of content marketing is not so much the content itself but the reader. The most suitable tool to precisely target your content is the use of personas.

Who are you writing for? Thinking about this carefully could help guide you with more clarity on the type of content and tone of the articles you share. In fact, you can share excellent quality content, if it does not meet the needs of your target, your content marketing strategy will be reduced to a blog that will be read but will not convert. Remember, the metric we want to see skyrocket is the number of conversions, not so much the number of visitors!

Define the characters

THE personages they are fictitious people, figments of your imagination, used in the development of your marketing strategy or software development. These are the user or customer archetypes. The Persona method was created by Alan Cooper, a pioneering developer in thinking about designing software with the end user in mind.

They can be defined as different, with different needs, distinct characters, ages and social situations. To design them, ask yourself the following question: who are your ideal clients, the ones you would really like to work with? You can design them through research, surveys and interviews. At this point, ask your clients (the ones you like working with of course!), your potential clients, your friends, etc. You can also draw inspiration from profiles on social networks, Linkedin is a perfect tool for this.

Ask them what they appreciate in your products, in your company’s image, what place the Internet and social networks occupy in their purchasing actions, what information they look for and what types of content they prefer to consume (blogs, videos, user reviews, etc.), how do they find this content (search engines, social networks, forums, etc.)?

Ideally, here is the information you might need to shape your characters in the best way possible:

Personal identity:

• Personal information: how old, married, children, where do you live?
• Which studies: level, which schools?
• Career: how did you get there?

Commercial activity:

• What is your business sector and its size?

Role in the company:

• What is your position? Your role?
• What are your working days like?
• What skills does your position require?
• What knowledge and tools do you use on a daily basis?
• Who do you depend on and who depends on you?

Goals :

• What are you responsible for?
• What is expected of you in terms of success?
• What is your biggest challenge?

Professional Monitoring:

• How do you get new insights into your work?
• What publications or blogs do you read regularly?

Purchase cycle:

• How to contact traders, suppliers and sellers? Telephone, physical contact, email?
• Do you use the Internet to search for new suppliers or partners? What channels do you use?
• During your last purchase, what was the trigger for your choice, how did you evaluate the solution and how did you decide to purchase this product or service?

Now you have information and data about your customers and potential customers at your fingertips. Group this information together, cross-reference it, try to find commonalities, be it behaviors or types of people. For example, your ideal customer could be an SME or, conversely, a very large company.

Perhaps he is very dependent on social networks, perhaps he does not give them any consideration in his professional act. Your customers might be very industry specific, you might only reach a particular industry. That’s all you’ll need to digest to subsequently create personas with needs, behaviors, lifestyles, and personalities close to those of your favorite customers. It’s psychology and you’ll get inside your customers’ heads (imaginary)!

Create your own characters

Do you have clearer ideas? Now create some imaginary people. How much ? This is a complicated question that depends on your company, its customers, its market (international, national, local, etc.), etc. However, in the beginning, try to keep it simple and limit yourself to two, three, four people maximum. Give them a name, an age, even a photo. The idea is that you can feel empathy for these people so that you know how to meet their needs and expectations, you have to put yourself in their shoes…

Below is an example of a person to give you an idea of ​​the work to be done. You also need to define some sort of small scenario in which you can intervene. Finally, when designing your personas, take care to place them at different stages of the purchase funnel. This way, you will know how to create content for your contacts, prospects and customers.

The purchase funnel to contextualize your content

If you are engaged in an inbound marketing process, the creation of your content must take into account the context in which your customer finds himself. Your personas should therefore represent consumers at different stages of the purchase funnel.

Surely you know the phases of inbound marketing: Attract – Convert – Conclude – Delight. Through this process, a stranger to your business becomes a visitor, then a lead, a customer, and finally an ambassador. When we talk about the purchase funnel, the journey of a buyer, we find the following phases:

The purchase funnel therefore represents the phase in which your website visitor is. A visitor can arrive on your website for the first time and already be in the decision-making phase, because they are well informed. Others will become aware of their concerns for the first time without really knowing how to name them.

How to manage personas from the first stage of the funnel?

When you create content for your characters who are in the awareness stage, you will need to put yourself in their shoes. That’s the point of personas.

Concrete case: imagine Jean, 45 years old. He is a printer and has taken over the business of his former boss, with whom he had started as an apprentice. The shop is very well known in its city, it enjoys a good reputation, its customers have been loyal for many years, but little by little it is losing them. The people he has been in contact with are getting older or changing jobs, some businesses are closing, etc. It also competes with pure player sites that often offer cheaper printing (even if the quality is not the same, nor the flexibility and relationship with customers). His business seems to be getting old and Jean is a little lost, losing confidence.

He doesn’t know much about communication and marketing and his printing company’s website is already almost 10 years old and no longer meets current standards. It has about ten visitors a day. He is well aware that he needs the Internet but doesn’t know where to start.

If I have to write content for Jean, I will have to adapt. Remember, it is in the awareness stage. He realizes he needs the Internet, but doesn’t know where to start. What does John need? Here is a list:

• a new responsive website
• of SEO and geolocalization, this site must be able to be referenced in the first results for its city
• of Content Marketing of a blog to improve its SEO and make its prospects understand its work philosophy, its quality charter and the advantages of a local company compared to a pure player
• their SMO and SMA.

Once I identify his needs, I create a list of keywords he would likely type into Google. So I could write the following articles:

• Responsive Design, an absolute necessity in 2016!
• How to improve your website’s SEO locally?
• Content Marketing, the best ally of small businesses
• How to set up an SMA campaign

However, Jean is a printer and is new to web marketing. He doesn’t even know that word. As it stands, you will never come across these items! SMO, SEO, Content Marketing and responsive design are concepts he is completely unaware of. We will have to work around this and work on our titles and content so that they can appeal to our typography. In other words, put yourself in the shoes of a novice, how would he ask himself these questions, what terms would he use?

Google offers you alternative keywords when you start a search, this can inspire you. I use other tools to help me with this task:

From then on, I refine my titles and tailor my content so Jean can find it. The strength of personas is that you write for someone, you direct your article so that it answers their real questions. The items above might look something like this:

• How to ensure the success of your website in 2019?
• 10 tips for being visible locally on Google!
• How can small businesses stand out online?
• Increase your turnover thanks to social networks!

In the same way I conceptualized personas for the first stage of the funnel, I will continue the experiment with the other two stages, keeping the inbound marketing stages in mind. Your priority is to “think like…”. Empathy is not a widely recognized value among marketers, yet you will need to adapt, understand, analyze, and put yourself in the shoes of your customers and prospects to be successful in your content marketing strategy.

This takes time and isn’t the most obvious exercise, but it’s the price you have to pay for your content to reach its audience. Content Marketing without personas is like archery blindfolded! You may be lucky, but in 99% of cases you will aim far! Then you can return to this or that character and so as not to forget them, why not take advantage of the Mailchimp idea by creating posters with the image of your characters?

One final tip: keep in mind that you’re writing for your prospects and customers, not your competitors. I often say that writing a blog allows you to highlight your skills. One of the flaws is that the search for expertise often involves writing in-depth articles and they are no longer aimed at your clients but at your colleagues. The most important thing is that you are an expert for your clients and that they enjoy working with you. Recognition in your sector is another thing and above all: what really differentiates you from a flattered ego?