How well do you know your customers? What are their greatest business challenges? What drives them? What challenges do they face on a daily basis?

If you do not know the answers to these questions, it is time you did some research.

The buyer personas you use as the foundation of your marketing efforts – i.e. the fictionalised representations of your ideal customers – should answer all of these questions, and you should know your customer inside out before they have even initiated contact with you.

Using your personas allows you a deeper level of insight into your customers which you could use to target your marketing to directly address them, creating messages that resonate with them and meet specific needs and pains in order to help them realise their business objectives.

Buyer personas are an absolutely crucial element of any successful B2B inbound marketing strategy. Here are 5 ways you can make use of your personas to help you give your marketing the boost it needs.

CREATE OFFERS THAT SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS

What does your buyer need help with? What information are they after? What challenges and problems are they looking to overcome? If you have successfully defined your personas then you will know the answers to all of these questions and know exactly what offer you need to provide to attract their attention and draw them in. Create an offer such as an eBook or webinar containing the answers to their problems and everyone wins – your target buyer gets exactly the help they need and you generate some high-quality leads!

SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE

It may seem obvious but different people use different language and in order to relate to target buyers you should moderate the way you write and speak to them accordingly. This means you should think about the formality of your language, the level of complicated detail you go into and the terminology you use. Use words that your target buyers would use and don’t use terminology that is too complicated they won’t understand it or too basic it seems patronising. The language you use is one of the most valuable tools for making your brand relatable to your buyer.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is essential for any inbound marketing strategy, but different buyers use it for different purposes and you need to tap into the social networks your target buyers are using, what they use them for and how they use them. Once you have an understanding of how each of your personas makes use of social media, as well as their specific social media challenges and goals, you can align your social media strategy accordingly to focus your marketing efforts on your target buyers, and use the medium to successfully generate leads.

LANDING PAGES

Once you’ve got your prospect to visit your landing page, you’re just one step away from converting them to a lead. The content on the landing page should be designed to convince the page visitor that the content they about to download will provide specific and direct value to them. Optimise this content so that each of your personas can instantly see the value they are about to receive by submitting their details, making it both appealing and compelling as well as using keywords and terminology that will resonate with them.

SEO & KEYWORDS

Any marketing strategy requires a strategy for search engine optimisation, and a solid, well-defined buyer persona can be used to inform this. Fill your content with words that your target buyers would use and would specifically search for when looking for information to research the solution to a problem they face. If you know exactly what information they will be looking for, you are in a better position to anticipate the language they will use when undergoing their research so you can optimise your content to be situated right in their field of vision when they begin their search for information.

No inbound marketing strategy can be complete without detailed, accurate and humanised buyer personas. For more information on the best practices when researching and developing your personas, download our mindmap on Researching and developing buying personas.