Who is your ideal customer?

When you started your business, you probably went into it with an idea of the kind of person you or your products could help. Without even recognizing it, you began creating a buyer persona. But, to attract prospects and win with lead engagement, you need to go a step further.

The ideal customer isn’t necessarily the customers that buy the most of your product, but the kind you can serve the best. Investing your time and energy into engaging with only the customers who buy the most product is a shortcoming. In the long run, focusing on customers who are the best fit for your business provides golden opportunities for growth. Opposed to customers only responsible for a one-time surge in sales, these customers are more likely to stick with you and to refer others to you down the line.

In a previous blog post, we’ve discussed why you need to engage your leads where, when and how they want to be engaged. The best strategies for lead engagement rely on you knowing your audience inside and out – that’s where they buyer persona comes in. 

What Are Buyer Personas and Why Are They Crucial to Lead Engagement?

A buyer persona is a written snapshot of who your customers are. You can think of them as short biographies for each of your targeted customers. An insightful buyer persona will crystallize every significant piece of information you know about a specific segment of your customer base. 

Creating a buyer persona means laying bare all the assumptions that go into your lead generation process. These assumptions will help you form your message to these buyers, make informed decisions about where, when, and why to contact them, and ultimately engage with them more effectively. 

A buyer persona should tell you exactly:

  • Who your customer is – background, location, profession, interests, and education.
  • What their pain points are – what specific problems they need help with right now.
  • How they think – what are their motivations and which influencers shape their decisions?

By writing out a buyer persona, you take your knowledge ans assumptions of your ideal customers and lay them out on paper. Creating these personas also aids you in giving yourself a bit of a reality check: What do you know about your customers and what do you need to find out? Are there any assumptions you’re unsure about? Asking yourself these questions while creating a buyer persona is an essential first step to successful lead engagement. 

The Benefits of Creating Personas

Regardless of the type of business you have, you can use buyer personas to kick-start & bring your lead engagement to the next level. Buyer personas work to humanize your anonymous visitors and leads, giving you insight into how you should address them to keep them coming back. This is truly helpful because no one can afford to market to everybody – you want leads who have an interest in your offer, a motivation to learn more, and the budget to move forward. The buyer persona helps your to qualify your buyers with these points in mind, and helps you  to find them.

How Buyer Personas Clear the Way for Lead Engagement: Two Examples

When you write a buyer persona, you might start with dozens of ideas about what makes your customers tick. After brainstorming, it’s best to narrow these down into a short story about one person.

Let’s dive into some examples of a buyer persona:

Achy Andy:

Andy is an entrepreneur in his mid-40s who runs a small plumbing business. He brings home about $100,000 a year and is married with two kids. He attended a two-year trade school and loves fishing and camping. These days, he mostly manages his team – but he’s noticing plenty of aches and pains lingering from his days at customer homes.

Imagine you’re a chiropractor and you want to engage Andy on your site.

Though it may seem interesting to you, you probably don’t want to go on and on about how the spine works, dietary supplements, or energy meridians. Andy could understand those things, but he’s not interested in them – he wants to know how you can help with his pain points. Literally.

Andy’s not someone you should overlook. He has a clear need, and he has the budget to be a customer for the long haul. But your lead engagement strategy needs to meet him where he is. The buyer persona you’ve created can help you step into Andy’s shoes and consider, “If I was Andy, how would I best be targeted, communicated to, and engaged with?” 

Consider another buyer persona the same chiropractic business may have:

Painful Pam:

Pam is a college graduate in her late 20’s, Pam lives with her grandmother, younger brother, and mother in a rental home. She makes $30,000 a year from her retail job, but her family often pools money for health expenses. Despite her young age, Pam has back pain from long shifts on her feet. She’s open to chiropractic, but weary of falling prey to someone who’ll be dishonest about what treatment can do for her.

Pam is a lead with staying power, like Andy – but appealing to her is different. She considers it a mark of transparency and trust when a vendor goes into deep detail about how a treatment works and why. Targeting and communicating with Pam will be different than Andy. Because each of your buyer personas have unique challenges, interests, and personalities, your lead generation and engagement strategies for each buyer may shift. 

Automating Lead Engagement with Buyer Personas

Once you’ve developed buyer personas, they can be used to:
  • Determine the best places to acquire qualified traffic for your website.
  • Customize offers and landing pages to appeal to different consumers.
  • Tailor your messaging and tone to buyers based on their comfort level.

One of the easiest ways to do all of this is by using AI chat bots your website visitors can interact with. Bots can be programmed to answer nearly any question someone asks in an instant. Plus, they recognize what website or search query led a visitor to you, so you can personalize interactions from the start.  At Focused Engagement, we are major advocated for automated lead generation, and chat bots help us serve each of our clients’ buyer personas in the best and most efficient manor. 

With AI chat bots always ready for your guests, you can stay focused on what you do best.

To learn more about lead engagement with buyer personas, contact us.