Seriously. Do you even know who your customers are? Are they 20…? 30…? 40…? Male or female? Do they live in the suburbs or downtown in the city? Do they have a family of their own? Do they like to shop in person, or do they prefer the convenience of ecommerce? Knowing the answers to these questions (or other types of questions relevant to your business), is absolutely necessary for an effective marketing strategy. One of the keys to successful marketing is the ability to connect with people, and you can only do this well once you’ve implemented the use of buyer personas.

As we’ve discussed in other posts on the topic, buyer personas are designed to model who your buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, how they buy, where they buy, and what challenges or goals drive their behavior and choices.

Creating your personas requires a mix of real-life data from existing customers and market research to tell a detailed story of your customer’s buying journey and buying decisions. It’s not just about creating profiles of your buyers, it’s about truly understanding who your customers are, and the pain points that drive them to make decisions.

Once you’ve used our Wizard to help build your personas, you need to know how to use them. Here’s a list of 6 smart and savvy ways to put your freshly designed personas to work, and maximize your marketing efforts.

1. Website Refresh

Your buyer personas will help guide you in a website refresh or re-design to improve the overall user experience. The personas will also help you to know what problem your buyers are trying to solve and what they are looking to buy in order to solve it, and so you can re-word the content on your landing pages and within your CTAs to convince them that your product or service is the best option.

2. Website Positioning

Buyer personas will make you understand who your customers are and where and how they want to “shop”. So you want to make sure you put your website where they will find it. For example, if you are an interior designer, you can work to have a link or an advertisement placed on a home decor store or kitchen store website. Or enlist the use of remarketing to “follow” your website’s visitors around the web, and show them your ads wherever they go. This is an excellent way to stay front of mind with your potential customers, and be “available” when they are ready to make their purchase decision.

3. Offers & Promos

Since you know what each buyer is looking for, you’ll be able to create tailored offers, promotions and campaigns that they will actually care about and be interested in. To stick with the interior design example, if you know that most home re-designs tend to happen in January, offer a “New Year Promotion” of 15% off services for all new consultations.

Also look into creating enticing and relevant content like ebooks, webinars or other downloads. Not only are these offers easily shareable, but they are a reason for your potential buyers to exchange their contact information in exchange for a download, which gets you even further along the road of the buyer’s journey.

4. Interact with your Buyers on Social Media

Once you know what your buyers are interested in, you can probably make some pretty accurate assumptions as to where they spend their time. Join groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, follow trending topics on Twitter, and join in the discussion with your buyers. Retweet their posts, comment on or share their content or link to them directly in content of your own. It’s a great and easy way to expand your exposure, your influence, and to interact directly with your potential buyers.

5. Create Content they will Consume

In the buyer persona creation process, you should have mapped out how your customers consume information. Do they read the local newspaper, a gossip magazine, an online news blog, or just scroll through recent posts on Facebook? Once you know this information, you can use it to your advantage: take a look at trending topics on the relevant channel and repurpose it for your own content. For example, a movie theatre could take advantage of this #brangelina split to promote a special viewing of Mr. & Mrs. Smith all over Facebook!

6. Customize your SEO

Not everyone uses the same terminology to describe something. What one person may call a “potayto”, the other may call a “potahto”. Customize your SEO to match the way your buyers will refer to something: a cell phone vs. a mobile phone vs. a smart phone vs. an iPhone. Be sure to optimize your site content and PPC ad keywords based on the terminology your buyers speak, and, ultimately, search.

How else do you use buyer personas in your marketing strategy? Is there a method that we’ve missed? Please comment below and add to the conversation!

In the meantime, for more information on the buyer persona process and how you can build the most accurate personas for your marketing strategy, download a free copy of our ebook: