When creating branded content, it’s important that you, the marketer, have a solid understanding of the different groups making up your brand’s audience and what appeals to them. Segmentation, the act of splitting up your audience into smaller groups with similar characteristics, helps you do just that. Although it’s easier said than done.
Before you can build content that’s specific to segmented groups, you need to create buyer personas, semi-fictional representation of your ideal customers. These personas are based on different buyers that you’ll likely encounter in your marketing and sales efforts. They are defined by certain demographics like: location, behavioral patterns, goals, industry, etc. Depending on the company or brand, certain defining characteristics hold more or less importance.
Once you’ve clearly defined the different buyer personas most prevalent in your audience, you can do a number of things to tailor content specifically to their wants and needs. On any of your website forms, you should include a section for potential leads to classify themselves. Do your buyer personas differ by job title? Industry? Location? Whichever the differentiating factors are, use them on your forms to discover what pieces of content perform best with different buyer personas.
With that information in mind, you can tailor your content based on the wants, needs, goals and challenges of your different buyer personas. Are they uninformed about the solutions to their problems? Do they even realize they have a problem? When you understand how your audience thinks, you can better serve them content that meets their specific needs.
Want to learn more about segmentation? Stay tuned for another post on how to segment content by lifecycle stage!
Photo Credit: alex roberts
