As marketers, we all know that defining who your prospects and customers are is imperative to the success of your marketing and content strategy. Through research, surveys and simply having conversations, you develop personas for your audience(s).
We will discuss the top three reasons persona development is key to a successful marketing and content strategy.
By anticipating your prospects and customers pain points, your content strategy will be positioned to answer those questions and concerns, sometimes before the reader even knows they are of concern! Persona development allows you to identify and understand the daily frustrations and questions a prospect has, so why not go ahead and provide a solution? Persona development is an extensive process but the benefits extend across many levels.
Understanding the perceptions, behaviors, and intuitive needs of your target audience enables you to develop better products, better strategies and better recommendations. All of those things add up to happier customers and a more profitable business. Your focus shifts from creating something that you think your clients want to anticipating and targeting their authentic needs and delivering that solution.
The purpose of content marketing and strategy is to position yourself as an industry expert, providing thoughtful, relevant and relatable content consistently. Persona development allows you an understanding of what types of content and topics your clients and prospects relate to the most. At FIVE19, we organize content in a matrix, listing out topics, publish dates, authors and the audience persona the content speaks to. This helps us avoid topic fatigue, by equally including all areas of our audience in what we offer.
You may not think that taking the time to develop audience personas is worthwhile, but trust us, it is.
The proof is in the analytics!