Have you heard the latest? It’s not about you anymore. I know that hurts and it may be a little bit shocking, but marketing is no longer about you, your products or services, or even your company. It’s about what your buyer needs and wants. If you fit that profile, then you (may) be in the game.
You’ve probably heard us say this before and we’ll say it again – you are no longer in control of the buying process. Your potential customer has control by the very nature of the Internet, which gives them access to vast amounts of information.
So, it's time to update your IT company's sales and marketing methods to revolve around your buyers by determining what they truly want. To do this you can break down “buyer personas” in three different areas: personal motivations, pain points, and personality / overall receptiveness.
Personal Motivations
With personal motivations, you create a persona based on career goals, family elements and any other problems indirectly related to an issue that your service or product can resolve. For example, you can market your IT services to people who work from home by focusing on faster processing speeds that mimic being in an office environment and sell enhanced virus protection to keep systems available and operating efficiently.
Family safety is another way to market IT services based on the personal motivations persona. Today's technology can connect a home's exterior camera system with the homeowner's smartphone or tablet device, allowing them to have more control over the safety of their family and their home.
Along with determining the personal motivations of your IT customers for individualized marketing campaigns, be sure to consider demographics and how they affect the way a person makes purchasing decisions. Examples of buyer personas with demographics include:
- Female student, aged 18 to 26, income at around $27,000 a year
- Male mid-level executive, aged 30 to 42, in charge of a team of customer service representatives
- Widowed retiree, aged 67 to 90, fixed income, planning to downsize into a smaller home
Demographics are a major factor because they help you customize your marketing and sales campaigns around the personal motivation of your customers and their underlying demographics. The motivation of a widowed retiree will be different from the female student, which is different from the mid-level executive. So you need to personalize individual marketing campaigns to speak to each persona instead of using one overarching campaign that tries to be everything to everyone.
It’s the difference of having a conversation with your potential customer as opposed to just talking at them. Connect with them on a personal level.
Pain Points
Pain points refer to particular customer problems that can be resolved with your IT service. For example, reliable service is a major IT-specific pain point. In the IT world, system outages and slow speeds constantly plague the industry. Market to your potential customers by sharing your low outage numbers, providing specifics regarding your speed, uptime, and unwavering reliability. Don’t be vague or general - use real numbers in a manner in which they can understand. Don’t forget, they want to know enough from you that will assure them your service is reliable without making them learn quantum math equations.
For some customers, the need to continually upgrade their IT service can be a major pain point. While this is unlikely to be eliminated in the near future, it is also a process that your company can make less painful. Make sure that updates occur quickly and give your customers a choice as to when they occur.
To market around the pain point persona, conduct short surveys with a number of your customers.This step will give you a way to develop an outline for your inbound marketing strategy. And be sure to select buyers that represent your customer base when conducting the survey.
Personality and Overall Receptiveness
Personality and overall receptiveness refer to a customer's openness to marketing techniques and sales proposals. For instance, some customers respond well to an urgent sales approach that offers an immediate discount for IT services while others are put off by this tactic. Particular personas react positively to hard selling methods, but others resist this kind of sales technique.
When it comes to persona content marketing in this area, assess your IT company's sales data. This step will give you insight as to how and when your company's past marketing efforts were successful. Start inbound marketing email nurturing campaigns that allow potential customers who need more time to think through their buying decision to gather more information. Have pertinent calls-to-action at each touch point for those who are ready to make a decision, but allow those who are not ready to continue to read your articles, eBooks, social media posts, and attend webinars.
Embracing Inbound Marketing
A well-rounded inbound marketing campaign supplies you with data about your buyer personas to create personalized marketing strategies. It also helps your company organize its sales teams while helping your marketing department pinpoint gaps in the advertising campaigns of competitors. Use the three persona breakdowns above to make your marketing and advertising campaigns targeted to your audience.
The Benefits of Personalized Marketing
Customers are unique, so the way your IT company sells services to them must be unique as well. Just make sure you alter the buying process for your customer based on personas to attract those who are already searching for your IT services. This method also encourages repeat business to keep your company profitable.
When you formulate buyer personas as a part of your inbound marketing campaign, you'll be making your marketing and advertising dollars work smarter.
Xcellimark takes inbound marketing to the next level by creating persona-based campaigns according to the services that your IT company provides. These techniques consist of developing new website designs and content marketing campaigns that are optimized for search engines, along with managing your company's social media presence.
To learn more about how to boost the success of your campaign through digital marketing, download the free eBook “8 Critical Ingredients of a Digital Marketing Plan.”
