Most big businesses, and medium ones, know who their customer is. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, who have been struggling just tokeep afloat, may have an idea, but they probably don’t have as good of an idea as the bigger guys. If you are a digital marketing agency owner or employee reading this blog article, you may be wondering how and why companies spend so much money researching their customers, and why this topic even merits a blog post.
But marketing to a person does matter and here’s why: all the big successful companies are doing it.
What is a Persona?
A persona is a detailed customer profile. Different companies collect different information, but the information collected basically tells you exactly who your customer is. Types of information collected may include:
A detailed profile of the customer’s attitudes Number of years they have been in businessService needsWhat the typical career looks likeWhat business value they are looking forHow old they areWhat education level they possess
What does it Have to do with SEO Copywriting?
When you are marketing to a very well-researched customer profile, you experience much greater conversion rates. This explains why companies with higher revenues are doing it. And, it helps explain why they were able to grow larger than other businesses.
What this has to do with SEO copywriting is that your content writer should be writing all of his or her work with the customer persona in mind. In the real world, this doesn’t happen all that often, and here’s why:
Most businesses served by SEO companies are small, very small. They have less than five employees or less in most cases. When you are that small, who in the heck is concerned with marketing to a persona when you’re not sure if you can survive until next month? Others may be happy with their business the size that it is.
What do you do if You are the Type of Company with no Budget Available for Market Research?
Small business owners typically already know their clients well. No, their knowledge doesn’t compare to a customer persona with millions of dollars and thousands of man hours behind it, but it does help narrow the field a little. That’s much better than writing to any old generic audience.
In most cases, a short conversation with the small business owner will reveal much about the target audience. How old are they? What income level do they appear to have? What would you guess their education levels to be? How many children do they have? What value are you providing them that they seem to most appreciate? When you seriously crunch the answers to these questions and others, you can kind of create an informal customer persona document.
Be sure to also actively listen to your customers. When they raise objections to making a purchase, what are they really objecting to? When they light up and quickly hand over their credit card, what seemed to be the clincher? Write these things down as soon as you experience them.
That’s how you conduct your market research with virtually no budget but time available.
SEO Copywriting Becomes much more Effective when Marketed at a Researched Audience
When you know people’s objections, pain points, and primary reasons for purchasing, then you can develop conent explicity geared at their needs and wants. When they read the content, certain things will “jump out at them” or “strike them.” When the connection is made, then the odds of a sale grow dramatically.
That’s how and why you want to create the best customer persona document you can, even if it is an informal one.
SEO Firm Wise Swans
