Remington Begg
Evan if you have a limited understanding of the inbound methodology, you probably know how important buyer personas are. They are the foundation on which every marketing and sales strategy you are developing for your company. Understanding what your prospects are looking for? Where are they searching for it? What kind of language are they using? All of these questions, and more, go into developing a successful buyer persona. To put it plainly, your buyer persona is who is looking for your company’s services, whether they know it or not yet.
But, like so many other aspects of inbound marketing, developing your buyer personas is not a one time event. A well-done buyer persona from three years ago, could be very off base now. Maybe your services have changed or a new social media platform has been gaining popularity. So how do you approach keeping your buyer personas fresh and relevant?
#1 Contact Your Original Interviewees
The best source of information about your potential customers is your current customers! As part of your initial buyer persona exercise, you probably interviewed select individuals that are living personifications of your buyer persona. Hopefully you didn’t toss these and can re-contact the people. If they were open to talking with you in the past, they are probably available to do it again.
If you can reach them, repeat the questions you initially asked to see if their opinions or mindsets have changed. If you weren’t able to track down your original respondents, try to find new individuals whose lives closely resembles theirs. Beyond the old questions, add new areas that relate to recent products and services or changes in the industry.
#2 Create a Smarketing Team
To keep your personas fresh, create a team of individuals that interact with customers and prospects on a regular, if not daily, basis. The Marketing and Sales Teams, of course, have this kind of knowledge, especially if they have been integrated to form a Smarketing Team. Encourage the Smarketing Team members to keep notes about problems and questions that come up on a regular basis, as they probably represent the pain points for your buyer personas. Ask them to pay close attention to the issues, objections and concerns they hear about during their regular interactions.
#3 Adhere to Regular Updates
Once your Smarketing Team has been tasked with redeveloping your buyer personas, schedule regular meetings to review and update your personas. If you’re in an industry that is changing rapidly or if your organization is growing and changing rapidly, meet monthly. If things aren’t changing as fast, schedule your meetings quarterly or semi-anually.
During these meetings, review each of your personas from beginning to end. Ask yourselves the same questions you did when the personas were initially established. Based on what you learn, modify your personas as necessary.
#4 Listen to Social Media
As part of your social media strategy, listen to what your target audience is saying. Identify and be an active participant in LinkedIn Groups, Twitter chats, or Facebook conversation threads where your buyer personas are actively telling you about themselves, albeit unconsciously. Pay attention to what they’re talking about. You may uncover something you didn’t realize was important or find out that they really don’t care about the topics where you’ve been focusing. Or worse of all, you may find out they aren’t even using the social media networks you thought they were!
#5 Use Data
Marketing automation and CRM platforms, like HubSpot, gather and contain a lot of information about both customers and potential customers, known as Leads. Don’t let it go to waste! When evaluating your personas, use this data. You’re probably already tracking what content is getting the most views, downloads, etc with your software so using this will help you determine popular blog topics, what formats work best and how your personas consume your information. Use that data to confirm or question what you believe about your personas and adjust appropriately.
Tip: If your gut-instincts go against what your data tells you about your buyers, trust your data!
Buyer personas are critically important to your inbound marketing efforts. They are not something that can be checked off the list. If you aren’t sure where to go from here, or need more information on developing a buyer person for the first time, download our free eBook The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing. It’s free!
