No one needs more irrelevant marketing messages in their life. To stand out amidst the noise in an era where marketers are creating custom content, it’s critical to invest in relevant information. In fact, a recent eMarketer study cited targeting content as a top priority for 47% of savvy companies. Developing a deep knowledge of your ideal customer, a concept known in the marketing realm as buyer persona profiling, is critical to increasing the relevance of your efforts.

“Cutting through the clutter of information that is presented to consumer and business buyers requires us to hone in on the exact customer that we are looking to serve.” 

What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona (a.k.a customer avatar or customer persona) is the single most important factor for effective marketing. A buyer persona is a vibrant profile of your company’s ideal customer. This should capture the type of person with an incredible need for your product and a love for your company; who will remain a loyal client for years, and tell all of their friends about how remarkable you are. A buyer persona can help you identify the forms of messaging which will convert the right website visitors into leads, and leads into customers.

Great marketers rely on demographics and consumer insights to target their marketing. Major companies may leverage focus groups to determine consumer reactions to their marketing messages, and spend significant time and budget compiling demographic insights. A buyer persona profile is the great equalizer, because it allows companies of all sizes to improve their targeting. The following elements should make an appearance in your persona profile:

• Demographics or Firmographics. What are the basic facts about your ideal customer, including age, gender, and geographic location? If you’re a B2B company, how big are the companies you’re trying to acquire? What industries are they in?
• Pain Points. Why does your buyer persona need your solution in the first place? A pain point is exactly what it sounds like: a problem or need that’s causes a customer to search for branded products or services and spend money in order to solve it. Whether customers are driven to your company by a major life event or a need to prove a point to their peers, you should know how your company is used to solve problems.
• Priorities. Do your customers tend to be budget shoppers, or do they worry about impressing their social circle? Do you sell to executive assistants with a need to please a particularly choosy boss? Priorities allow you to create marketing materials that cut to the chase.
• Values. Are your ideal customers environmentally-conscious? Do they aspire to grow their company quickly? It’s critical to address values separately from priorities, because they affect how your company should define the bigger picture. Being able to clearly define how your company will help your consumers achieve their wants, whether that’s saving money on their monthly grocery budget or performing their job more efficiently, should guide your company’s presentation.
• Research Habits. Are your customers engaged with the web every waking moment, or are they just starting to warm up to the idea of social media and search engines? The best way to determine research habits is through quantitative website metrics, specifically referral traffic sources and the keywords driving the highest volume of search to your website. Ideally, this research should be performed with the help of closed-loop analytics, which track how website visitors who become customers find your website, and the pages they engage with during their prospect stage.
• Identifying Factors. What makes your buyer persona different from any other 26 year-old public relations manager who aspires to own her own PR firm? It’s probably difficult to tell why some customers who fit your demographics profiles purchase, and other’s don’t, but one of the best ways to determine this factor is likely through interviews with your sales team. Inquire about the factors they used to distinguish hot leads, which could include anything from the questions asked during the research stage to a company’s organizational chart.
• Psychographic Characteristics. Would your ideal customers rather spend their weekend camping, or exploring urban coffee shops? Do they identify primarily as an early-adopter, or are they apathetic toward technology? Psychographic characteristics are the collision of psychology and advertising, formally “attitudes, opinions, and personality traits.” By developing an understanding of how your product fits into the larger identity of your buyer persona, your content marketing can become significantly more vibrant.