[October 07, 2022]
Before you market your products or services and sometimes before you even create them, you have to intimately know your prospects and customers. All of their likes, dislikes, what their typical day entails, their salary, their thoughts, their goals, their frustrations—these are the details that will make them come alive in your mind as you market your products and services to them. This is known as creating a “buyer persona.”
What’s the purpose of a buyer persona? To help you more accurately identify with your prospect.
Think back—have you ever designed a product or service without anyone ever saying they wanted or needed it? The customers’ reception to the product was probably lukewarm and you anxiously watched sales trickle in.
This is the “build it and they will come” approach that a lot of businesses take. Unfortunately, it rarely works outside the Field of Dreams.
Creating a buyer persona helps you identify the problems that your prospect need solved. This is critical in the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey because at this point, the prospect may not even know they have a problem or if they do, they are just beginning to explore it.
So marketing to these folks in the Awareness Stage isn’t blathering on about your products.
The key to marketing that generates more sales is to know your customer and their problems even better than they know themselves. As humans, we love hearing about ourselves, a powerful tool for grabbing your prospects attention.
If you’re thinking— I’ll just develop a survey or cold-call prospects to ask them what they want instead of trying to get to know my customer—Stop. It won’t work. Many people don’t even know what they want or will have trouble articulating it when directly asked. Don’t believe it? Ask your spouse what sounds good for dinner.
Instead, you’ve got to look at a prospect or customer’s behavior to determine what they DON’T want. What they’re trying to avoid or get relief from is what’s going to push them towards your product.
Knowing how to help a prospect in the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey can be tricky.
Here are some ways you can find and solve your target audience’s problems, i.e. the whole reason you’re in business.
Help them troubleshoot an issue by answering questions
You can find out what those frequently asked questions are by speaking to your sales reps or pulling questions that get submitted through a contact form on your website. Then use those questions, directly from the prospects’ mouths, in your marketing. Your target audience will be immediately drawn to your business.
Get them unstuck from their current situation
Think about people who don’t have your product or service, what’s keeping them from getting to that next level? What can you say to them in your marketing that gives them clues on how they can break out of their rut?
Show them how to improve their results
Everyone wants to make more, do more, be more…how do the problems you solve help them double, triple, even 10X their results in half the time? Again, it’s not about jumping right to your product, but instead asking if they’re satisfied with their results or if they’d like to 10X them with less effort.
Tell them how to prevent an issue they’ve been having
Prospects who continually bump up against the same barriers are looking for answers. What are the problems that frustrate your prospects and how can you help them finally achieve a breakthrough?
Marketing should be about helping people and if that means giving out some free information, it will be worth it down the line. The right prospects for your business will remember how you solved this nagging problem for them–for free. They’ll start to imagine what more you could do if they bought your product or service.
Offer a better way of doing something
A lot of people are guilty of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Show a client how what your business does is smarter, easier, more effectively than the status quo. The important point to remember though is to focus on the problem. Although people do want to do better, they’re moved to action by avoiding the negative or escaping pain. Be their aspirin.
People are out there who don’t know your business exists, struggling to solve their problems and need your solutions. But you have to meet them where they are. Show them you have answers to their persistent problems. They’ll vote for your solution with their dollars.
Struggling to figure out the problems plaguing your prospects and creating a buyer persona in the Awareness Stage?
AKC Marketing has you covered. Reach out to us today!