Generate more leads by updating your marketing personas

Blurred crowd of people in a crosswalk

In these virtual times, do you ever feel like you’re producing dozens of pieces of content, throwing them out there but getting nothing in return? If you’re not seeing a return on the time you’re investing, it’s possible you need to refine your digital marketing strategy.

Consider hitting the pause button on your inbound content marketing strategy and starting back at Step 1: revisiting your marketing personas.

What are personas?

Marketing or buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on general demographic and biographic information, behaviors, motivations, goals and pain points. Good marketing personas have an image, a name (like Richmond Ryan or Supervisor Sally), and basically, they have a life story.

Why are personas so important?

Establishing personas helps ground your digital marketing approach because you’re writing for someone in particular. Understanding buyer personas will focus your marketing efforts and help create more effective content. The right content not only brings people to your website, but also converts them to leads and customers.

Personas & content creation

From website copy and blog posts to e-books and videos, your personas should be a guiding light for any and all marketing materials. What content is most helpful, informative and useful to them? What are some of their emotional triggers? What are they searching for online, and how can you meet them where they are by providing that information on your company’s website or blog?

How do I figure out who my personas are?

You could always hire Hodges to do a research and insights project, and we’ll figure it out for you! 😉 All kidding aside, it takes time and energy to research and develop your buyer personas: interviewing and surveying current customers, talking with co-workers and gathering secondary and industry research and benchmarks.

Personas help avoid the “everyone is our customer” plight, because not everyone is your ideal customer. That said, you may have 1-3 personas that are buttoned up for your marketing efforts.

So before you start willy-nilly throwing posts out on social, then getting frustrated when none of those clicks are turning into conversions, make sure you’re thinking about which persona that social post was written for and whether you’re driving them to a page on your website that meets their needs.

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Casey Prentice

A self-proclaimed organizational junkie and data geek who confesses to a secret desire to be a professional organizer, Casey enjoys account management, writing, editing and digital content strategy. Her agency work has helped clients like Virginia’s Community Colleges, VCUarts and Swedish Match.

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