Using Buyer Personas to Inform Your Marketing Content

Content is meant to be read, which means it’s important to develop a deep understanding of your intended readers. Knowing your general target audience is a good place to start, but that alone isn’t enough to create marketing content that increases your business. 

Content directed to everyone is content directed to no one in particular. Taking the next step in personalizing and humanizing your content can help you garner more organic traffic that drives results. Personas containing the characteristics of real people in your target audience are a powerful way to inform the direction of your content. 

Content in the spotlight

Ninety-seven percent of marketers responding to a Semrush-sponsored survey about content marketing, said that content was a core part of their 2021 marketing strategy. The results from 1,500 content marketers across more than 20 industries and over 40 countries were published in March 2022 in the State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report. 

A few highlights of the Semrush global report include:

• The importance of content audits - 65% of brands that are successful reported conducting content audits twice or more each year while 46% who never conduct them failed
• Improving content quality - 55% claimed this effort contributed to 2021 content strategy success
• Updating and repurposing content - 28% reported successful implementation
• Adapting content to COVID-related change - 24% reported successful adaptation

Your competition is focused on keeping a formal content marketing strategy that includes continually improving content quality even if you’re currently not.

If you’ve gotten lax, you’re not alone. Forty-one percent of survey respondents admitted to struggling with creating content that resonates with their audience. Let's focus on that and then learn how to fix it.

A key takeaway from the State of Content Marketing 2022 Report stats, Semrush says, is to create content that is focused on personalization and humanization that is backed by strong research and understanding of the customer you’re targeting. 

You can start by gaining a better understanding of your audience by building audience personas and using them to inform your content marketing.  

The difference between a target audience and a persona

A target audience is a group of people with common characteristics whom you’ve identified as likely to purchase your product or service. A target persona is a niche group within the larger target audience that you’ve identified by drilling down into the larger audience with research into demographics, motivators, pain points, habits, characteristics and more. 

Say that you're writing content that promotes a makeup line. While you might generally gear it toward the larger makeup buying audience—currently, females—creating a piece of content geared to all females is an inadequate approach. It’s simply too broad to speak to the needs of individuals.

The members of any audience can vastly differ in their past and present experiences, what they want, and the stage they’re in the buyer journey. That makes it difficult to meaningfully address the needs of both women in this buyer persona example using a single piece of content. 

(An exception to that may be hub content that follows the hub and spoke model. That model also requires knowing your audience and its personas to gain organic search ground via highly targeted content that serves as spokes.) 

You’ll need to create different pieces of content that address the needs of both women in the makeup line example to garner their trust and further their purchasing interest. That is, if it has been determined through research that both archetypes represent strong prospective buyers of your brand. Then, you can build an audience persona to inform your content. 

What is a persona in marketing?

A persona is a realistic, composite representation of a typical, prospective buyer in your larger target audience. The character’s traits are determined by research that’s done to determine similarities among groups in your target audience. Similar characteristics might include factors such as demographics, familiarity with your brand, and much more. 

A built-out persona should have enough detail to resemble a real person. This makes it easier to know who you're addressing in your content. Each developed persona has been given a fictional name. For example, if your company sells motorcycles online, two of your personas might be named “Freedom-Seeking Bob” and “Fun-Loving Barb.” 

Fun-Loving Barb represents a group of women aged 45 to 60 in your target audience who have owned motorcycles, but not your motorcycle brand, who mostly ride on weekends for fun. Freedom-Seeking Bob represents men in your audience aged 30 to 45 who are looking to purchase their first motorcycle as a primary means of transportation. There’s likely more detail about each persona, but you get the general idea. These personas are based on real research into your existing customer base and website visitors, as well as industry research.

Both Barb and Bob will be searching online for different information about motorcycles. You can use what you know about them through their personas and where they are in the buyer journey to personalize and humanize your content directed at each. 

The buyer journey

Each of your personas will move through different stages of the buyer journey or sales funnel. They also will be looking for different information at different stages. Knowing which stage a persona is in can help you position your content for them. The four stages are: 

1. Awareness 

Buyers in the awareness state don’t know your brand or what it has to offer as the solution to what they’re seeking. Let this content serve as your introduction and means for building trust in your brand. It’s important not to hard-sell at this point and come off as pushy, gimmicky or insincere. Instead, focus on showing what needs your products or services can solve for them. 

2. Consideration

Your content reached them and they’re comparing you to similar solutions to determine which is best for them. Focus content on answering lingering questions you anticipate they may have and continue to build trust. Tell them why your solution is the best. Include details that will help them make a decision in favor of your brand.

3. Decision

You’ve laid out your offer in clear terms and they’re deciding whether to bite on your offer. Keep the buying process simple. Over-complicated, pushy selling can turn prospects away. Don’t overwhelm them with popup discounts, testimonials or other clutter. Focus content on answering any lingering questions they may have about your offer.

4. Advocacy

Your current, satisfied customers are one of the best ways to promote your brand. Make sure your strategy includes content that is geared to collecting reviews and testimonials from your satisfied customers. People love to spread the good word to others about great products and services. Sometimes you just have to ask.

Types of personas

Personas shed light on what drives them to take action, why they take it and how they take action. They can help you target the things that most matter to your current and prospective customers. Personas, says Nielsen Norman Group, should be

• Memorable
• Actionable
• Distinct from others

They should encapsulate the needs of different segments of your target audience in a way that allows you to recall and empathize with them in your content, NNG adds.

The description for a persona may include:

• Goals
• Needs
• Behaviors
• Occupation
• Background information
• Age
• Gender
• Concerns
• Pain points
• Motivators

What personas shouldn’t be is an “exhaustive, scientific taxonomy of every possible user type,” NNG cautions. A persona can include a photograph of the fictional person. Knowing this information can help you relate and empathize with that “person” when you create content for them.

There are several types of personas, depending on your business, brand, product or service, customer base and perspective. It is important that you determine the scope of your persona. 

Here are a few persona types. 

Audience Persona

A target audience is a group of people with common characteristics whom you’ve identified as likely to purchase your product or service. 

Broad-Scope Persona

Broad-scope personas encompass a set of personas that you have identified as having impact in several areas of your business if it has multiple products or services, according to NNG.

Narrow-Scope Persona

Narrow-scope personas are a set of personas that you’ve determined are limited to influencing only one angle of your business, NNG says. 

Buyer Persona

What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is a conceptualized character that has characteristics of your ideal buyer. 

User Persona

A user persona can determine how people use things such as products, websites, software or products. It typically also includes information such as users’ needs and motivations. That information is applied to designing and building out things that correspond with the business type, to make it easy and understandable for those who use them.   

Brand Persona

A brand persona, also known as a brand personality, sums up the identity of your brand as if it were a person with human characteristics. Use it to determine the voice of your brand. Knowing your brand persona is important. It can help you introduce and promote your brand as if it’s one person speaking to another.

A brand’s persona can sometimes be further developed to include a brand mascot. Think Mr. Peanut for the Planters® Peanut brand. Is your brand edgy and quick-paced or precise and methodological? Put yourself in the shoes of your brand’s persona when you're creating content for your target audiences and personas. 

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