Maximize Your ROI Through Persona-Based Marketing

Have you already nailed it as far as creating buyer personas go, but still struggle to translate those buyer insights into a truly impactful customer-centric marketing program? You’re not alone. We hear from marketers all the time who are struggling to utilize their personas to achieve the greatest impact. But it’s worth the effort! According to SiriusDecisions, organizations that use customized, persona-based messaging are seeing 2x the pipeline increase vs. those that don’t! If you’re thinking 2x the pipeline is sounding good, then here are five tips to consider to maximize your ROI when it comes to persona-based marketing.

1. Begin with the end in mind. Hopefully you set aside some budget ahead of time, but if not, you’ll need to start now. Make sure to get buy-in for the time and resources to follow through on the customer insights you’ve developed. Often, this means carving out a budget for new content creation that will respond to customer needs. But you should also plan on the time you’ll need to address sales and marketing processes that may need adjustments based on the buyer’s journey.
2. Make a plan. Once your personas are complete, you need an action plan. Start by doing a content audit and gap analysis to identify all of the areas you’ll need to improve to adjust to a persona-based approach. Then, lay out a realistic plan for what you’ll address in the months ahead based on the resources you have available.
3. Prioritize your efforts. When resources are limited, it can feel too overwhelming to tackle all of the opportunities that arose from your persona research. Don’t try to do it all at once. Instead, start by prioritizing the buyer persona that has the most influence over the purchase decision. This might be the final decision-maker, or it might be a champion who is actually more involved throughout the full buy cycle.
4. Tackle the low-hanging fruit. Don’t get caught up in analysis paralysis. It’s easy to debate what to prioritize, and get lost in planning for bigger content initiatives. But you want to make sure to get some quick wins fresh off the momentum of your persona rollout. Identify some easier adjustments you can make quickly. Leverage your content audit to identify assets that could benefit from a quick adjustment or format change. For example, do you have a great white paper that answers a key question in your buyer’s journey, but you found out they prefer webinars? Start by adapting what you already have.
5. Refine and adjust over time. Once your persona-based marketing is “out in the wild,” don’t set it and forget it. Use data and analytics to measure the impact of this customer-centric approach vs. previous generic efforts. Make sure you understand where applying persona-based tactics, like on your website, has the most impact and where you have room to improve.

Want more ideas on how to implement persona-based marketing for more effective demand generation? Check out our recent webinar with Cheri Keith from SiriusDecisions, “Marketing to Customer Needs: The Power of Personas.”