James: Welcome back to Behind the Madness where we talk about business
growth, ways to work smarter and the fundamentals of business, all geared to
unlocking your brand's peak performance.
I'm your host James Roberts owner and founder of Method and today we're talking
about the FAQ's of buyer personas.
We've already had a previous episode about buyer personas, but this time
we're going to try and unlock a few questions that we've been asked and
really kind of get into the nuts and bolts, with some simple answers to
kind of help you guys get on your way.
We've had a load of questions from clients and we've had a few questions come in
over our email which I'll get into in a minute and really we're just going to try
and answer those questions and make it a little bit simpler to understand uh, your
buyer personas and get going with them.
But before I jump in, I wanted to do a bit of admin and ways
you can contact the show.
We've got some great content going out over Instagram, where
you can find us at hello_method.
And we also have a dedicated email address, which is
podcast@hellomethod.co.uk.
You can give us any feedback, ask any questions and we'll try and answer
them on future episodes like this one.
So without any more delays, let's jump into today's episode
FAQ's on buyer personas.
Afternoon, Marcus, how are you doing?
I'm very well I'm very well.
So Marcus is going to jump on the pod today to probably throw a few questions
my way and I'm going to try and answer them without the use of Google.
So really what we're trying to do today, Marcus is I guess just kind of
get some basics around buyer personas.
Get the, kind of the questions that we've had, obviously have come in,
get them answered and really just kind of help people along the way
around buyer personas, correct?.
Marcus: Yeah, no, no, that sounds perfect.
We've got these questions here.
There's some good ones oh, I see, there's some good ones.
I Really.
I'll be checking to make sure that you really aren't using Google on these.
So be prepared.
James: Excellent.
So buyer personas a quick overview and then should we just go over that to start
off with buyer personas are really where every marketing, sales, business should
should start without them you're really just pissing in the wind I'd imagine
Marcus: Absolutely.
James: yeah?
So we love buyer personas.
We love talking about buyer personas, mainly because so many people still
don't have them, still struggling to get them sorted, which then just hampers
really how they go about doing all of their marketing and all of their sales.
But, I'm going to put a few things out there, it's better to have something
in place, the nothing at all and it doesn't have to be set in stone.
Buyer personas can be changed, they can be reviewed, they should be reviewed.
Marcus: Absolutely.
James: And it's not rocket science.
We've looked at them before, and we've had them come in here, which are you I
think I said on the last part that it was almost like we've a binder we've got
before was about a hundred pages in it.
I didn't even read it, put it straight in the bin, I even asked the client,
you know, who is your buyer persona and they couldn't tell me, they said,
we've had loads of research done, but they had no idea who it was.
It was somewhere within this hundred pages.
So that isn't a buyer persona, a buyer persona for me, is
something that everybody can understand within the business.
I like to name them so it's very simple to understand and talk
about it within conversations.
So we have Mike Marketing, for example, which is really easy to
drop in, is this going to suit Mike?
Is this going to attract Mike?
All of that kind of stuff and we all have a good idea of who
Mike is within the business.
So with the groundwork done do you want to start me off and
I'll get typing away on Google.
Marcus: But Mike sounds wonderful but how would you go about creating him?
James: So, good question.
Hold on, how quick am I searching Google?
No, look, it's the easiest way for me is to think about your current customers.
So you can have more than one persona as well, but, let's focus on Mike for
example, we realized that we solve a lot of problems for a lot of marketing
managers that is who Mike is, Mike is a traditional marketing manager now, we
realized who Mike was by looking at our current clients, looking and understanding
who the majority of them were and who would kind of our perfect clients.
And this applies to every business if you can look at your current customer
base, there will be some similarities.
It's a lovely place to start.
With that, you can, then look, there are going to be people who are
outside that, they were going to, you know, we don't only work with with
marketing managers and we're not going to only attract marketing managers.
But it gives us a really good platform for everything we do to relate to Mike.
So we started looking at our, our own customers, our own clients, and realizing
that with the marketing manager, we solve a lot of their problems.
I would imagine the majority of the people listening to this podcast
are Mikes because this is who we're targeting the content with them.
They get a lot of shit that lands on their desk Sorry, Paul, that's another expletive
that you're gonna have to put on the pod.
And all of this crap lands on their desk and they've got to solve it.
What we do is we solve pretty much everything in the lands on the desk,
so they can focus on the higher stuff.
So, yeah, look at your current customers, look at your current
clients, look at the similarities that are there and start there really,
and, and use that as your base plate.
Marcus: That sounds great, so I mean now that you've built Mike
and you know who he is, how do you then use him to his best effect?
James: So again, work out within the buyer persona, keep it really simple,
you know, ours is pretty much an A4 page anything more than that people aren't
going to bother nobody's going to read it, nobody's going to understand it,
so with Mike or with any buyer persona have, have their goals to start off with
how'd their goals, what are they trying to achieve, what are they trying to
do within their business, within their role, and really this is probably where
your product or your solution will fit.
This is hopefully or you've probably got the wrong buyer persona.
This is where your solution, your offering is going to help them achieve those goals.
But also not only that have their, their pain points.
So, if you can fix some of those pain points, either with your solution
or with the content that you're putting out they're going to stand
up and they're going to listen.
So understand who they are, then understand that their goals and their
challenges or their pain points.
If you can get a nice list and ours are just bullet pointed around,
these are the challenges they're having, and these are what they want
to achieve, these are the goals.
You will then have loads of content that you can attract these
people with and put out and you can go off on different tangents.
And there's always one of the questions we often get asked around
content is, oh, you're going to run out of content at some point.
You will never run out of content if you've got that list of their
pain points and their challenges, you won't run out of content.
There's always going to be content.
Things are changing, things are moving, and you're always going to be able to
find content to put out to these people that they are going to find interesting.
If you are putting stuff out and it's not hitting the mark, then it's probably
the pain points or the challenges wrong.
It's probably going to relate to that person.
So really really start to get those done and to start off with, you know, they,
they might be slightly wrong, they might be slightly off, but then you might put
out a post which is solving something and all of a sudden you're getting a lot of
engagement on it, then go back to your buyer persona and, and keep that, that
cycle going of updating your buyer persona based on the content that we're putting
out, that's working, but yeah really focus on those two lists don't have to
be huge, but understand them and really understand what they mean as well and then
you can start to put out some content.
And content could be anything, you know, it could be podcasts, it could
be downloadable brochures it could be video content, it could be short form
video, it could be blog stories, this goes on and on and the list so find
what, what relates to these people as well and get that content out.
So, yeah, that's where I'd start.
Marcus: That sounds great I mean, as you mentioned before times change with that
people change I mean, Mike eventually might want to be called Michael instead.
James: Oh yeah,
Marcus: So how often.
James: Michelle.
Marcus: Potentially.
How often would you want update your persona to, I guess, cater to Michelle.
James: So, this, this kind of comes back to it, that this is the
really, really good point that.
It's a semi-fictional character, it's based on your perfect customer
but it doesn't have to be exact.
We want to know as a, kind of, as much about this person to help us do
the job that we need to do, which is essentially selling to this person.
So if ours happens to be Mike, it could be Michelle.
And we just, because we're aiming at Mike doesn't mean that we're not going
to get any women marketing managers.
That's not what it's about right but it's a good idea within the industry.
It's probably, it's probably actually a good 50, 50 split now between between
males and females within that role.
So we just have a Mike and it's just always been that way.
But through all the content we're putting out, we know that we are not
putting off the Michelle's right.
So that's the first kind of point to put out there, but in terms of change
absolutely right, there is so many different things that can change mike's
opinion or any buyer personas opinion.
Our product offering might change.
We might all of a sudden be doing something else, which doesn't
actually apply to Mike at all.
So we're going to look at a completely new sector, we're going to look at a
completely different buyer persona or things might change within the industry
and might change that you know, Mike, for all of a sudden has got this bigger
problem that's come about, which, you know, let's let's take a really good
example, which is at the moment, all of your email tracking that we're so used
to doing with marketing emails, if it lands in an apple mailbox, we're not
getting any of that feedback anymore.
So all of a sudden, all of these stats that a lot of marketing
managers were relying have all of a sudden gone out the window.
So something's changed within the industry, which may now
apply to that buyer persona.
So we might have to tweak a buyer persona, all of a sudden they've got a
new challenge, they've got a new pain point and how can we solve that for them.
All of a sudden that's a new pain point so our buyer persona is going to change.
There's so many things within different industries or within internal, it
could be, it could be within your own company, it could be external
within industries, within vertical or so many different effects that
could change your buyer persona.
And I think for me, if you understand your buyer persona, you understand
what you're selling you should recognize when that change happens.
If not again, you're probably missing the person you're trying to hit.
You're probably missing your target, but also you could be selling to
the wrong person or think you're selling to the wrong person because
there is that disjointedness.
Yeah, so that makes some sense.
Marcus: That makes perfect sense
James: Good.
Marcus: Did a great I mean, so and in order to make sure that you're being
as accurate as possible and you're not missing your customer I mean, this
is a fictional character that you're creating but the data that you're filling
that's not fictional, that's not just something you plucked out of thin air.
Yeah.
Where do you get the data from that you populate the buyer persona with?
James: So talk to your team, we're not huge here by any stretch of imagination,
but we've got people in different roles.
Now, if you take most organizations, there will be sales divisions, there'll
be marketing divisions, um, and teams and also executives there might
also be you know, company directors.
These are all perfect people who can mold your buyer persona because they've
all got different touch points but they all are selling or marketing or
having communication with the same person, but at different points.
So, if you can bring in all of these people into one room and
start just spitballing, you know, what are these people's problems?
You will find that it will snowball, everybody will have a slightly
different view on it, everybody will have a slightly, well I'm
finding this dip tough, I'm hitting these challenges with these people.
When it gets to certain points within that whole lifecycle stage or that whole
customer journey, you will find that there'll be different challenges and
different things that we'll approach.
So getting those people into the room, you're going to quickly
identify what the buyer personas need what their wants are and also
what that what their pain points are.
And I think if you remove any of those people, for example, sales,
you know, they're at the front line, they're going to know what
questions they're coming up against.
And there's your pain point straight there, you know it's
too expensive, will it do?
This will it do that?
Can I do this with it?
Can I do that with it?
These are all the questions that all of a sudden are going to actually
really go into your buyer, persona.
Your company, directors, those people who have been maybe in the company longer or
understood the industry longer are going to have some really big pain points and
some really good success stories as well.
Why did that person sign up with us and why they stayed with us for 10 years?
Why have they continued to buy this product from us?
You know understanding them again, as you said, you know, it's a,
semi-fictional representation.
So looking at your current customers and current clients and needs and wants,
but also talking to the teams about what they're finding will just make it a much
better essentially a document that you can all relate to and all understand.
Marcus: That's fantastic I mean, I'm happy to report the James has not
touched his laptop once throughout this process so congratulations.
Well done there I would just, I guess I just would invite you to give
us maybe a final word on the buyer persona and what it means to you?
James: So I think don't be scared.
It's going to help your whole organization from front to back.
If you can all sing off the same hymn sheet and you are all giving the
same message then your company is all going to be stronger because of it.
So think about just getting going, if you haven't got one or if it's a thousand
pages, throw that out and just start again and just start, you know we've
got some great resources on the website.
I've got to give them a slight plug which really give you a template
of how to kind of get going.
It's it's a really simple Excel document where you just fill in a few blanks.
Perfect way to get going it's going to start your snowball effect if you like
to ask the right questions to kind of get something in something filled in.
As soon as you start there it's not something that you're going to
print out and put behind a piece of glass and hang up on the wall.
This is something which is going to keep on changing and you're going
to keep on having to review it.
So keeping it in a place that's maybe an active document, maybe it's a Google
Doc, maybe it's, you know something which everybody can have access to, but
everybody can change, within reason.
Is a great place to start because everybody then can have this feed into it.
So I think that's probably my main point is just get
started, don't be scared of it.
And don't be worried that this thing can't change it's better to have something
than nothing because it will just guide your thinking in terms of the marketing,
in terms of the sales, in terms of in fact to service everything around your
business is going to be better, even if it's, even if it's not quite right.
Because if it's not quite right, you can then understand why it's not
quite right and tweak it and make it a little bit better and improve it.
So yeah, just get started and download our resources.
That's where I'd start.
Marcus: That's a great one.
Thank you very much James.
James: No worries, thank you Marcus.
So that's it really for another week a nice little, a snippet of an episode,
I guess, where we are just hopefully giving you some places to start.
If you want any more information than use our use our email address,
you use podcast@hellomethod.co.uk.
We can do another episode if we want to, or we might even write you a
blog story of based on any of the questions that you guys may have.
So also jump on all of our socials.
I think we're on pretty much everything I might not be on all
of them I don't know some of the latest ones that keep popping up.
But we are across most of them.
So jump on there drop into our DMs and drop us some messages and we will
always jump back and give you a response on anything that you need to know.
Uh, That's it for this episode.
So thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time.