When developing a demand generation program, you may have the best intentions in mind but often skip building a solid foundation for lack of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defining your target audience is THE primary element of your planning and design phase and considered critical to your success because it will impact downstream the messaging, content and tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key foundation elements to an effective program<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To get started, you might want to describe the various goals and observed behaviour patterns among your potential users and customers. Understanding your buyer persona is critical to driving anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is a buyer persona?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A buyer persona is a fictional and broad portrait of your ideal customer. Creating buyer personas will help you get a better understanding of your customers and prospects. This will facilitate tailoring content to their specific needs, behaviors, and concerns. The buyer persona profile will symbolize who the buyers are, what they are trying to achieve, what goals influence their behavior, how they think, when they decide to buy, why they make buying decisions and how and where they buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Defining the buyer persona<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Your solution needs to fit the needs, motivations and ultimately, resolve your customer\u2019s challenges; therefore it\u2019s important that your messaging addresses these considerations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you know how your customers prefer to be approached? How do they like to consume information and what are their favourite channels? You can increase your program\u2019s traction with a bit of research to choose your buyer persona\u2019s preferred content format and put some thought into the best way for them to process the information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your topics need to be engaging and include features that will position your offer in a positive light and be persuasive in order to influence their decision. This exercise requires a thorough analysis of your audience, what attracts their attention, what makes them click and ultimately what motivates them to shortlist solutions or vendors. Each buyer persona\u2019s profile should include information and behaviours surrounding their role, goals, challenges, preferred watering holes, demographics, company, industry, and buying cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why defining your buyer persona is such an important foundation element that must be included in your strategy and why the effort will pay off if you provide the right content and message to the right audience, at the right time in their buyer\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are just a few benefits:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n