Greater Reading Hug - Buyer Personas (7-9-14)

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At HubSpot, we like to say buyer personas are relevant to B to H industries, which stands for Business to Human. That's because regardless of our business model, our product, or our services, buyer personas are one of, if not the most important components of a successful inbound strategy. They represent who we are trying to create content for, who we are trying to reach, and ultimately, who we are looking to sell to and delight. This talk will cover why it is so critical to create excellent buyer personas, regardless of which industry we are in.

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USING BUYER PERSONAS TO POWER INBOUND SUCCESS

1Welcome and introductions

2Personas and their importance

3Workshop

4Networking and Q&A

AGENDA

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS1

Isaac Moche@Isaacmoche

Enough about me.What about you?

Find someone in the room that you don’t

already know, and learn their name, and what

they do for work.

TODAY’S GOAL:Learn how to create buyer personas – and walk away with at least one in hand!

PERSONAS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE2

Your buyer personas are who you’re trying to reach. Instead trying to attract, convert, close, and delight all 3 billion people on the internet, focus on those most likely to become promoters.

What is buyer persona?

Semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about

customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.

They’re NOT: target markets, job titles, or specific real people.

They ARE: common motivations, shared pain points, universal goals, wishes, and dreams, general biographic/demographic

information.

BUYER PERSONAS

Personas help you create the right content.

The right content will most effectively attract your ideal visitors,

convert them into leads, and close them into customers.

Content to attract visitors

Content to close

customersContent to

convert leads

FLICKR USER INPRAISEOFSARDINES

How to create buyer personas.

Identify questions to ask to develop your persona (use the Persona Profile Checklist in the class resources below for information about what to ask—and paraphrase them as necessary).

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STEPS TO CREATE BUYER PERSONAS

Determine how you’ll research your personas and how you’re going to get those persona-building questions answered.

Print out a Buyer Persona Development Worksheet (see resources below) for each persona you might have. This worksheet acts as a framework for your persona & can guide your research.

Compile research and answers to your paraphrased version of questions on the Persona Profile Checklist. Look for trends in the responses you get and add these to the Persona Development Worksheet.

Use the buyer persona-building best practices to transform your worksheet into a complete persona.Tell your persona’s story using the 5-chapter format and following best practices.

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Do research

HOW TO CREATE BUYER PERSONAS: QUICK START VERSION

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Identify trends

Create persona profile stories

DO RESEARCH1

Buyer personas must be based off of research, not assumptions.

FLICKR USER SEEMINGLEE

CONDUCTING PERSONA RESEARCHAsk questions. When you’ve asked all your questions, ask some more.

Persona Detail Questions to Ask

Role What is your job role/role in life? Your title?How is your job/role measured?What is a typical day?What skills are required?What knowledge and tools do you use?Who do you report to? Who reports to you?

Company/Organization What industry or industries does your company work/is your role in?What is the size of your company/organization (revenue, employees)?

Goals What are you responsible for?What does it mean to be successful in your role?

Challenges What are your biggest challenges?

Watering Holes How do you learn about new information for your job?What publications or blogs do you read?What associations and social networks do you belong?

Personal Background Age, Family (married, children), Education

Shopping Preferences How do you prefer to interact with vendors? (email, phone, in person)Do you use the internet to research vendors or products? If yes, how do you search for information?

PERSONA RESEARCH: Questions to Answer

1 Interview current customers2 ?3 ?4 ?5 ?

PERSONA RESEARCH: How to answer the questions

What are some ways you could do persona research?

1 Interview current customers

2 Survey

3 Use HubSpot lead intelligence

4 Talk to Sales/Services

PERSONA RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

.

Always focus on the ‘why’..

FLICKR USER E-MAGIC

Motives, not actions.

IDENTIFY TRENDS2

Bucket research findings.

FLICKR USER SHEEP R US

As you do your research, collecting all data in one place reveals trends and

similarities in the types of responses people give.

These trends or common responses are what should

make their way into your Persona Development

Worksheet.

Persona Development

Worksheetdownload in the resources section below

Sneak preview

CREATE COMPLETE PERSONA PROFILES3

Focus on motives behind behaviors: pay attention to not just what someone is doing, but why they’re doing it.

BEST PRACTICES FOR BUILDING BUYER PERSONAS

Keep personas fictional, but still realistic. No one has a one-size fits all customer; don’t define your persona by describing just one real person.

Tell your persona’s story. Don’t just list facts about them; weave those facts into a detailed representation of who this persona is as a person.

5 CHAPTERS TO BUILDING BUYER PERSONA STORIES

1 Job and demographic information

2 What does a day in their life look like?

3 What are their goals, challenges and pain

points?

4 Where do they go for information?

5 Common objections to products and

services

Mary is 42 years old and has a Bachelor of Communications from Syracuse and an MBA from Babson. She is married, has 2 kids, and runs the marketing department at her company. She is an expert at outbound and traditional marketing, with 5-15 years of experience. She worries about her "brand presence" and hired a firm to redesign her website. She outsources a fair amount of activity because she has an easier time getting budget than headcount. Mary craves education; she wants to know the latest in what works in marketing and why she should invest in one area over another.

A lot of Mary's job is "keeping things running" - supporting sales, updating the website, generating "more" leads (rarely with a concrete goal in mind). Mary needs a simple, integrated tool that will help her do her job more effectively and also make it easier. If she screws that up, she risks getting yelled at by the sales team and her boss, the CEO.

Mary dresses “business casual” and does most of her shopping at Ann Taylor. She uses the web for sharing photos with friends, email communication, and is starting to play around with social media accounts for her company. She uses LinkedIn, Facebook (for family photos), and Twitter (recently got a company account with <100 followers).

Your persona story and HubSpot’s Personas Tool

Your 5-chapter persona story What goes in the Persona tool

WHY USE THEPERSONAS TOOL?

• Helps you define who your buyer personas are and gives you an example that you can share with others in your company.

• Ties the personas you create on paper to your business actions within your HubSpot portal.

• Sets up a field you can use on your forms to ask your leads which persona they fall into.

• Builds lists of those personas that you can use to segment and market to your leads, divided logically by persona (this one is BIG).

QUESTIONS?

THANK YOU.Rachel Goodman Moore@goodmanre#HubSpotting

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