Revisiting Your Marketing Personas
Creating your buyer personas is the foundation of an effective inbound marketing strategy. You (or your marketing team) worked out your ideal customers back when you first created your marketing strategy using market research, sales analytics, and business goals. You researched their priorities and created content that resonated with their needs. This was an integral piece of your strategy because buyer personas (aka marketing, donor, or customer personas) guide you to personalize and target segmented audiences. Knowing that content development, social media strategy, paid advertising, sales and more are all directly influenced by buyer personas, setting them up was very important to you.
Great, so I’ve established that buyer personas are essential and you have probably put a lot of effort into the initial personas. But that doesn’t mean you can pack it up. Creating personas isn’t something you can do one time and then forget about. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s a continual process that needs to be revisited regularly.
Five tell-tale signs you need to look at your buyer personas again and make revisions:
How do you know if it’s time to revisit your buyer personas? Glad you asked. If you can’t recall what your personas consist of, then the answer is “NOW!” Hopefully that’s not the case but perhaps some of the following signs apply to you and your company:
Your business has changed.
There is no way your business is the exact same as it was when you first started. Business models change, companies get bought out or merge, and a new direction is taken. Maybe there has been a complete change in your product or service offerings. Have things changed but your marketing strategies haven’t been updated to meet the new changes? Then it is time to revisit your buyer personas.
It’s been a really long time.
Even if there haven’t been or aren’t any major events for your company, it is still important to revisit your original personas yearly. A good time to revisit those buyer personas is at the end of your fiscal year, when you’re wrapping up the current year and looking to the twelve months ahead. As you develop goals for the upcoming year, review your personas to see if the goals will meet the needs of your prospects/personas. You want to be sure you are up-to-date on the latest trends and have incorporated new business information into the personas your teams use. Review your personas regularly to help you create content that generates quality leads. Which leads me to the next sign that it might be time to revisit your marketing personas…
You’re getting unqualified leads.
Do you feel like something isn’t quite working with your current marketing strategy? Do you keep getting customers who aren’t the best fit for your company? Or maybe folks keep canceling on you! If you’re using your personas to guide your marketing efforts, they might be the root of the issue. Go review your personas and make some changes.
You’re experiencing lower conversion rates.
It is quite possible that you’re simply not seeing a high enough rate of conversion. This might indicate you’re not targeting the right people or you’re not putting the right content in front of them. Again, it is time to revisit those marketing personas to ensure they are accurate and that your content is effectively reaching those who need it.
You see a drop in organic traffic.
If you notice traffic dipping, blog posts not getting much engagement, or your offers going unnoticed then you’re likely targeting the wrong people and creating the wrong type of content. By reviewing and revising your personas, you’ll be able to fix your content and boost your website traffic.
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These are reasons enough to regularly revisit your customer personas. Ensure you’re keeping them updated and reflecting your business as you want it to be because buyer personas are only effective if they’re accurate. Updating your marketing personas also helps your team stay informed. When everyone is on the same page, you’ll avoid problems and have cohesive messaging.
Your personas should be seen as a living document that, in order to remain effective, need to be continually updated to account for changes in your business or reflect things you’ve learned along the way. Revisiting them regularly will help you to create content that’s more effective in generating quality leads. Plus, your audience will feel that you understand their needs!
If you find that you need to create new personas, check out our guide below or get in contact with us!
Related material from the Dowitcher Designs blog:
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