More Online Traffic with Customer Profiles
July 4th, 2020 | Reading time: 6 minutes
Written by @Matthias Borch
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The attention of customers is highly competitive online. Companies compete with a lot of other content and have only a few seconds to arouse the interest of their potential customers. To attract new customers via digital channels, the communication of relevant content is therefore very important. By creating customer profiles, B2B companies can attract the attention of their customers. Here we explain you what so-called Buyer Personas are, what advantages they have for your company and how they can be easily implemented.
What is understood in marketing by customer profiles or Buyer Persona?
The term Buyer Persona refers to the creation of a customer profile that is made up of customer characteristics, attributes, and motives and thus represents the target group of a company as accurately as possible. The creation of Buyer Personas is based on various characteristics that can be categorized into hard and soft factors. The hard factors include demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and marital status. In addition, the size of the company, the company budget, and the target markets of the company are also taken into account. Since decisions are primarily based on profound motives, the focus of the Buyer Persona should be mainly on the soft factors. This is where the actual buying decision of customers are made. Referred to these factors, following questions should be answered: Why does the customer want to buy the product? What does the customer expect from the purchase?
“Buyer Personas give anonymous target groups a face. They are based on hard facts, data and personal customer experience and they are everything else than purely imagined assumptions!”
Source: Christian Temrink – netspirits
Extensive information give customer profiles a face
The characteristics that make up a buyer person show that a lot of customer information has to be taken into account in order to create a profile that is as realistic as possible. Firstly, it is useful to gather all internal data that is available. Mostly companies already have many databases, from which they can retrieve customer data. For example data from CRM and Web Analysis Systems can be consolidated. In addition to the internal data, further properties of the customer groups can be collected via online channels such as Facebook, Instagram and other Websites.
In order to inclusde the soft factors in the customer profiles, personal discussions with potential and existing customers are necessary. This can be done in various ways. For example, the customer can be asked about his personal motives in a personal conversation. In order to proceed systematically, it is suitable to prepare a questionnaire in order to gain more insights about the motives of customers in a structured way.
After extensive information about the customers has been obtained, the findings are to be processed into buyer personas. There are already many templates available, which can be accessed via online channels. These enable the companies to combine the most relevant characteristics of the customers and create a comprehensive overall picture. To give the customers a face and make the persona more tangible, a photo of an exemplary customer can be added to the profile.
Customer profiles are highly valuable for companies
A big disadvantage of digital media is the impersonality and anonymity. Buyer personas change this. The created customer profiles allow companies to communicate with their potential customers in a personal and direct way. With relevant content the customer’s interest is aroused and an emotional bond is created. Customers interact with the content and more online traffic is generated. The advantages show that companies benefit from customer profiles in many ways.
Gain more transparency about the customers and their characteristics
Building emotional and personal relationships with customers
Understanding customers' needs, wishes and motives
Create and communicate relevant content for the target group
Address customers specifically and directly via digital channels
Arousing interest and attention from
customers
Relevant properties when creating customer profiles for B2B
The creation and application of Buyer Personas is different for B2B. In contrast to private customers, a purchase decision at company level is made by several employees. The decision makers differ in their product requirements and their respective influence on the purchase decision. Therefore, several Buyer Personas must be created and addressed. Since the decision-makers are involved in the purchase process at different times, not only the adaptation of the content must be taken into account, but also the time at which the respective persons are contacted.
Matthias Borch
Matthias deals with the development of digital strategies, as well as other topics such as campaign and media management. Learn more
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