How to target your ideal customer
When you started social selling on LinkedIn, you heard about “buyer personas”. Essential elements of a successful business strategy on LinkedIn , buyer personas will allow you to interact effectively with the right people, but also to know your target audience perfectly. So what is it all about? How to define them? Is it so important? To make your social selling strategy work, and your sales to take off thanks to your interactions on LinkedIn, discover today everything you need to know about your buyer persona.
1- Buyer persona: definition
You can translate the expression “buyer persona” as a target customer. In short, they are robot portraits of your model clients. Imagine your ideal client: he is your buyer persona! A great buyer persona is the person for whom your product or service meets a need. To be successful with your social selling, you need to know what kind of people to talk to. This is how and only how you will win qualified leads.
2- What are buyer personas used for?
The key to social selling is the relevance of your interactions with your audience. If your audience is interested in your products or services, you get qualified leads who will turn into customers as you connect with them. Likewise, if you know the habits and characteristics of your target customers, you will be able to adapt your entire strategy according to them.
If you are not addressing the right people, you are wasting time unnecessarily since your offers will not meet any specific need. In addition, by not addressing the right audiences, you risk losing professional credibility.
For example, you sell pet collars. If you’re only talking to people who don’t have one, you:
- Do not close any sale since your product does not meet any need;
- Risk to be seen as a professional who does not know about his hearing;
- You will be overtaken by the competition which it will have addressed to people with pets.
By perfectly defining your buyer personas, you put all the chances on your side by knowing your target customers: location, sex, age group, habits, behavior during the purchase, keywords typed on the internet to solve their problem, etc. This knowledge will allow you to adapt the entire process of your social selling on LinkedIn by adapting your content, your exchanges and your commercial proposals according to your audience.
This is why your buyer personas are so important to your social selling success on LinkedIn! To prospect effectively and improve your sales performance , you must know what type of people to contact.
3- How to define your buyer personas?
Essential, buyer personas will allow you to more easily target your audience thanks to information that you have chosen beforehand.
You must therefore carry out a meticulous research which will lead you to the elaboration of a typical portrait. To do this, ask yourself some relevant questions, which can help you define what kind of person can be considered an interesting (and interested!) Prospect:
- What age group is my model client in?
- Does my product meet a geographic need?
- Is my offer aimed at professionals, individuals or both?
- In which socio-professional category is my model client located?
- Does he have any particular lifestyle habits?
- What is his daily life?
- What is his problem to which my product / service provides a solution?
- What is her behavior when she has this problem?
- What keywords does she type on the internet when she has this problem?
- …
This list is to be adapted according to your product or service. Here are some ideas for additional questions in this regard: What type of car does my model customer drive? Is he a smoker? What sport does he play? Where does he eat for lunch? Etc.
By asking yourself as many questions as possible, really try to paint a complete picture of your typical client. If you offer more than one type of service or product, you can build more than one portrait.
4- How to find your buyer personas on LinkedIn?
Well done, you now have your buyer personas. You must now connect with them on LinkedIn in order to convert them into customers , by scrupulously following the steps of social selling. To find them, consult the profiles and cross-check the information you find there with the characteristics of your buyer personas. Research tools on LinkedIn will make it easier for you to find the profiles that correspond to your target customers. Even if you do not have a premium account, such as Sales Navigator , you will be able to build an effective network through your existing network and be able, as you go, to open new doors and be able to get in touch with many prospects .
5- Some tips
To help you, several tools and tips are available.
First, if you have a website or a blog, install the Google Analytics tool, which will analyze your visitors’ data. This will give you a better idea of what kind of audience is interested in your content.
You can also take a tour of customer review sites, and discussion forums, to get a feel for your industry and what your audience thinks.
Visit your competitors’ sites and LinkedIn pages! You will find a lot of information there that can be used to define your buyer personas.
Need help painting a portrait of your ideal client? This is the first step of the PROINFLUENT Method LinkedIn training to find professional clients .
Reserve a discussion time on my online agenda , we can talk about it together and identify many avenues to help you!
Buyer personas: to conclude
By knowing full well the psychology, habits and general characteristics of your target audience, you will be able to carry out your entire digital marketing strategy . Defining your buyer personas is an essential step in your business process. Without it, you won’t be able to reach the right people, and all your efforts will end in failure. You now know everything there is to know about buyer personas. Do not hesitate to tell me in the comments how you defined yours!
Buyer persona: to remember
- A buyer persona is a robot portrait of your ideal client, the one who perfectly matches what you offer.
- The definition of your buyer personas will allow you to reach your target precisely, and thus put all the chances on your side to disseminate your offers to the public who will be interested.
- Take the time to ask yourself many questions about your target market, to establish precise buyer personas, which you will know by heart.
Buyer persona: to sum up in 3 questions
Qu'est-ce qu'un buyer persona ?
A buyer persona is a robot portrait of your ideal client, the one who perfectly matches what you offer.
À quoi servent les buyer personas ?
Buyer personas are used to understand your target customers to better reach them commercially.
Comment trouver ses buyer personas ?
To find your buyer personas, it is essential to put yourself in your target’s shoes, to ask yourself questions about their behavior, their habits, who they are and how they work. For this there are frames.
