WHAT ARE THE FUNDAMENTALS OF INBOUND SUCCESS? [VIDEO - PART 1]

Remember! Consumers don't want you to sell to them; they want to be educated so they can learn more about what they are buying, and Inbound techniques can deliver the information your prospects need to help them make smarter, better-informed decisions.

You can start by keeping in mind the

INBOUND BEST PRACTICES.

1. Using BUYER PERSONAS, or Buyer Profiles.

2. Using the BUYER’S JOURNEY, or Purchase Journey.

3. Creating VALUABLE CONTENT.

4. LEVERAGING IT

Let's start by taking a look at how to use Buyer Personas, or Buyer Profiles.

Both Inbound Sales and Inbound Marketing focus on the Buyer, so it is essential to know who you are trying to reach.

You don't want just any traffic to your site; you want to get the right traffic.

You want your site to be visited by people who can become prospects and, ultimately, happy customers.

Who are those “right” people?

The right people are your ideal customers, and we call them your Buyer Personas.

Buyer Personas

Buyer Personas are semi-fictional representations of an ideal customer, based on real data and some educated speculation about demographics, behavior, motivation and goals.

Buyer Personas are created through research, analysis and a closer look at who is already buying from you.

They can help you get inside the heads of your potential buyers and create the right content.

When you create the right content, you will effectively attract your ideal visitor so you can convert them into a prospect and close the sale so they become your customer.

They are the glue that holds every aspect of Inbound Marketing together.

So? You could say they are very important, but.....

How do you create Buyer Personas?

There are 3 things we need to keep in mind: Research, Identify Trends and Create buyer profile stories.

First, research.

Buyer Personas should be based on real research, not on assumptions.

Yes, research takes time, but if any of those assumptions are inaccurate, your Buyer Personas will be too.

When you are doing your research, there are some questions you can ask to better develop the Buyer Profile.

One way to start is by asking your current customers different questions, for example about their demographics, goals and challenges.

Ask questions such as:

• What role do you play in the company? What is your title?
• What industries or market niches does your company belong to?
• What are you trying to achieve?
• What is your biggest challenge?
• How do you acquire new information for your role?
• Do you use the internet to search for products or services?

You don't have to ask these questions word for word, but do tailor them to your industry so you get specific answers.

Always focus on the Why? or the motives of your Buyer Personas, not on their actions.

The next question after every question should always be Why?

Through these interviews, you are trying to understand the goals, behaviors and motivations of your buyer personas.

What is it that actually leads them to make a purchase?

People are not very good at describing themselves, so it is important that you dig deeper.

Uncovering their motives can lead you to a truly successful content strategy.

So, how do you do the research?

Start by interviewing your current customers, your former customers, prospects, and even your coworkers.

Your current customer base is the perfect place to start your interviews, because they have already bought from you and have even made a commitment to your company.

At least a few of them can serve as examples of your Target Persona.

Look for both “good” and “bad” customers.

Once you have talked to a few people, it's time to start looking for trends.

Patterns and similarities in the answers will let you know who your Buyer Personas really are.

How much research do you need to do to create the Profiles?

As much as necessary to be able to identify trends.

By now, you must be thinking,

How many Buyer Personas should I have?

As many as you need; as long as you can identify trends in the answers, that will help you build your Buyer Personas.

All right, you have done your research and identified those trends.

The final step is to finish the research and create the Persona profile stories.

You want these stories to contain information about who your Persona is, using details about their background, demographics, goals and challenges.

You should also include the plan to help them.

Include common objections they may have about your product or service, and use real quotes from the interviews.

What better way to represent your Persona than with their own words?

Let's look at an example of what a Buyer Profile would actually look like.

In this example, we are looking at a persona named María a Secas.

María a Secas is an example created by a Human Resources Software company; let's call it Poder RH.

They have done their research and identified some trends.

Here is what they came up with:

María a Secas tends to be the HR Director. She is married, has 2 children and has been at the same company for a few years. She is usually a woman between 30 and 45 years old. She has a calm attitude, and her assistant usually takes her calls. Her goals are to keep the staff happy and keep turnover low. She is also in charge of the legal and finance teams. Some of her common challenges are getting everything done on time with a small team without involving major changes to the company.

And what about solutions?

Well, Poder RH can help María a Secas by putting all employee information in one place and integrating it with the legal and financial systems. The company should be prepared for the common objections she usually has, such as worrying about losing information when moving to a new system, and not wanting to have to train the entire company on how to use it. After interviewing some customers, they were able to pull some real quotes to use for María a Secas, such as:

• “Implementing new technologies across the entire company has been difficult in the past.” and
• “I have had to deal with painful, tedious implementations with other departments' databases and software.”

These quotes can help a company employee identify whether they should talk to María a Secas or just send her an email.

These personas give you an exact idea of who your potential customers are, what they are interested in, what they are up against and what they are trying to solve.

But when it comes to creating a good Inbound strategy, it is not enough to just know who we are trying to reach; you also need to know what they are trying to see.

And what kind of business are Buyer Personas right for? B2B, B2C, or nonprofit organizations?

Buyer Personas are necessary for every type of business.

This brings us to the BUYER’S JOURNEY, or Consumer Journey. Every interaction your persona has with your company should be mapped to the stage of the buyer’s journey they are in.

And we will cover this in our next post.

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