Do you know why buyers choose your products, solutions and services? Or why they don’t?
If your answers resemble this:
“Meh.”
“Ummm, kinda. I hope.’
“Yeah, I think so. Maybe.”
… it’s a good bet that your marketing content is missing the bull’s-eye and you’re leaving money on the table.
Is it possible to deliver content that is not only persuasive and compelling to potential buyers – but also leads them to take the next step of engagement?
Adele Revella answers that question in “How Just 5 Buying Insights Ensure Engagement with Your Content,” an Act-On on-demand webinar.
Revella – well-known as president of the Buyer Persona Institute and author of “The Buyer Persona Manifesto” – simplifies this complex topic, distilling it into a core set of items that help marketers not only uncover the types of buyers who will – and won’t – be receptive … but WHY.
Here’s a glimpse into just a few of the valuable, actionable insights you’ll learn in less than 60 minutes.
The 5 things you need to know about your buyer
First things first: Most companies have too many buyer personas.
In fact, creating lots of segmented personas often backfires because it uses a lot of time and resources but does nothing to generate more revenue. Says Revella, “There’s a limit to how many different versions of your story you can have. Don’t build more buyer personas than you can afford to market to. There’s no value in that.”
To find out precisely how many buyer types you have – and how many personas you effectively need – there are five specific insights you must uncover, which Revella explains and provides a road map for in the webinar:
- Priority Initiatives. Uncovering what an organization actually needs at the moment they begin assessing your products and services.
- Success Factors. Your benefits statement on steroids.
- Perceived Barriers. The “bad news” insight … and the one you should never avoid.
- Buyer’s Journey. A topic that gets lots of buzz and lots of air cover, but is actually only 1/5 of the equation.
- Decision Criteria. What attributes your buyers value as they look at you in comparison with alternative solutions.
These insights give you the information necessary to create content that’s persuasive and relevant, that helps buyers trust your company and believe you can solve their problem.
Buyer Personas are NOT your goal
This one definitely upsets the apple cart, but according to Revella, creating buyer personas – though very important – is not the ultimate end game.
Instead, buyer personas are simply deliverables … merely artifacts of your actual goal, which is to become a buyer-expert marketer. That is, to gain the core insight, knowledge and understanding about why your buyers choose the products and services you’re marketing.
She takes this topic further by illustrating how most marketers mistake buyer profiles for buyer personas, explains the difference, and articulates why profiles (rather than personas) are insufficient for creating effective content that helps buyers choose you over the competition.
Your website probably stinks
Or at least it doesn’t stand out from your competitors.
That, says Revella, is one of the three most common complaints most frequently stated by buyers when asked about a company’s marketing content. (Watch the webinar to discover the other two.)
I can personally attest to this phenomenon. As a long-time technology writer, I’ve had countless interviews wherein companies – when asked about how they’re different – all say the exact same thing. Industry to industry, product to product, service to service, they all seem to read from the same playbook when it comes to their differentiators.
Thus, they don’t seem different at all.
The takeaway: If your website doesn’t tell buyers why they should care, they won’t.
Stop focusing on your ideal buyer
Instead, focus on the buyer who’s just not that into you.
Here’s why:
Your ideal buyer will most likely always buy from you. So working that angle is like preaching to the choir because they like you, they really like you. You had them at “hello.”
Far more valuable is to understand the buyers who DON’T buy from you … the barriers and reasons that prevent them from doing business with you.
Does that mean you should create personas for these buyers? Not necessarily. But by understanding WHY they shun you, you can make an informed decision about whether or not it makes sense to target them.
Intrigued?
Watch the webinar, which includes much more information than I’ve mentioned in this blog and delivers it all in a mere 30 minutes (about 58 minutes if you listen the Q&A, which is pretty good).
Bam!