Goals achieved and results enjoyed. This house gives us a heartwarming visual example of how a strong foundation can support a lifetime of growth and prosperity.
Ruined lifetime of work and dreams. This house give us a very dismal picture of how a weak and ill-prepared foundation can ruin a lifetime of work and dreams. It can be pretty catastrophic to say the least.
Developing content marketing strategies for your Bee Business without understanding who your customers are can be equally catastrophic.
Customers are your most important and basic foundational building blocks to a successful business life.
Customers provide either a sure foundation for your business or a weak temporary fix at best.
Your customers come to you with problems. They want and need solutions to their problems… and they want them now.
If they can’t find a solution with you they will move on… fast. In this world they don’t wait around.
To offer your customers what they need and want you need to know who they are.
What is the Swiss Army Knife of Content Marketing?
It is a description of who your customer is so you can give them exactly what they want and need… and give it to them now.
It is your Customer Persona.
It reveals and exposes areas that are important for you to know in order to meet your customers’ needs and desires.
The Customer Persona exposes…
- Fears
- Desires
- Pain Points
And reveals
- Demographics… age, income, education and location.
- Professional traits… title, company size, who they report to, tools, software and apps.
- Personal traits… interests & hobbies, favorite brands, and values.
- Information sources… books & magazines, blogs/podcasts, events, and associations.
- Goals and challenges
Sometimes you get so focused on what you are selling that you completely forget who you are selling to.
You can have the most amazing product on this planet but if you are trying to sell it to the wrong person you are never going to meet your goals.
Your customer persona worksheet helps you document everything about your customer.
Why the Swiss Army Knife of Content Marketing is important to you
Content Marketing is the creation of text, video, audio, and images that further your business goals.
Customer personas are the foundation of your content marketing efforts to achieve your business goals. Customers are the ones we create text, video, audio, and images for.
Customer personas open the doors to identify your customers’ various needs, wants and desires.
They reveal different intentions, motivations and purchasing habits.
They provide relevant and necessary information to target content to your most important customers at the right time and in the right way.
As a Bee Business owner you need and want…
- Increased awareness and engagement
- More leads
- More new customers
- To sell more to the customers you have
- More positive reviews
- More referrals
To satisfy these 6 needs and wants, you need content that speaks directly to your new, current and potential customers that satisfies their intent to buy. This is content marketing.
As their needs for solutions to their problems are satisfied, your needs and wants are also satisfied.
The Customer Persona provides you with the roadmap of who you need to write content for and what the content needs to be.
There are many types of content such as emails, newsletters, videos, blogs & web pages.
The Customer Persona influences everything
Most coompainies don’t know who their customers are. Maybe you are one of them.
If you don’t know who they are you can’t effectively give them what they need.
You need to solve their problems!
The Customer Persona is valuable to your bee business many times over. The value is really immeasurable and realized only after you see the results.
The Customer Persona influences everything…
From email subject lines… to the copy and creativity in your blog posts and ads.
You may have one or more customer personas.
Two of the most common ways to segment or separate personas are by problem or pain point.
The content shown here offers 3 different products/services that assist customers with solution.
Or you can segment by experience level.
This content offers tips for the beginner and experienced beekeepers.
6 Customer Persona points to remember
- It tells you who you are writing to and what kind of content to write.
- It reveals traits to dig deeper depending on the intent and content.
- It tells your content marketer about your customers.
- You may have several customer personas.
- The content marketer completes the written customer persona for you.
- Based on the customer persona and your business goals the content marketer prepares a proposal that addresses your business goals and the wants and needs of your customers.
Top 12 Customer Persona influencers for your business
- By design it furthers your business goals and objectives.
- It sets the stage for your business to prosper.
- It reveals your customers’ buying intent.
- It influences everything from blogs to email newsletters to web pages.
- It is a written description or representation of your customers.
- Your business may have several customer personas…
- That use the same product or service…
- But have different challenges or problems requiring solutions.
- It allows you to speak your customers’ language.
- It builds trust between you and your customers.
- The Customer Persona influences everything.
- Including YOU!
How to create your Customer Persona in 3 steps
The customer persona comes alive during a conversation (usually a discovery call or face to face meeting) with a content marketer and the business owner. It can include whoever else you, as the business owner choses.
Ever content marketer may have a slightly different process. The following one can be used as a good example that addresses critical areas of content marketing.
Step 1 – The Upfront Contract
Discovery call
Here’s how the discovery call generally works:
- After the business owner makes an initial contact with the content marketer, a mutually agreed upon time will be set for the discovery call or meeting.
- During the discovery call the content marketer will ask the business owner questions about their company and goals.
- It is the goal of the content marketer to determine whether or not they can add value to their company.
- The content marketer will initiate discussions around customers fitting the customer persona framework.
- If, at the end of the discussion, the content marketer thinks they can add value, they will agree to send a proposal outlining an initial project.
- The proposal will include fees and payment schedules.
- If the content marketer doesn’t think they are a good fit to help, they will most likely offer to point you to someone who can help you.
Step 2 – The 5 questions
During the discovery call or meeting, the content marketer will also ask the business owner a few questions about…
- Their business and the products that they sell.
- The business’s ideal customer
- Who the major competitors are.
- What goals and major initiatives the business is hoping to achieve with this project. (Awareness – Authority and Trust – Lead Generation – Sales – Retention?)
- What assets are in place now? (Content – People – Traffic – Other)
Step 3 – Agreeing on next steps
If the Content Marketer is confident that they can help, here’s what will most likely happen:
- The Content Marketer will send the business owner a proposal outlinig an initial project by and agreed upon date.
- The proposal may or may not include a written customer persona at this point.
- A date will be set within the following week that is good fr everyone to go over the proposal.
If the Content Marketer is not confident they are the best fit for you…
- They may be able to connect you with someone that can get you the results you need.
- If agreed upon, they may follow up with you in the future to see how your’re getting along and see if your goals have changed at all.
That’s the why and how of the Swiss Army Knife (aka “Customer Persona”) of Content Marketing grows your Bee Business and…
It’s your strong foundation that influences everything.
Cynde Jackson
P. S. Why bees?
Because they play a significant role in agricultural systems increasing crop values each year by more than $15 billion in the United States alone and pollinating more than 80 percent of all cultivated crops. https://thebeeconservancy.org/why-bees/
Why Content Marketing?
Because it answers customer’s questions, builds trust with customers, improves conversion rates, connects with customers, and generates leads.