Buyer Persona

How is a Buyer Persona created?

Personas are fictional representations of ideal customers based upon real data of demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations and concerns.

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or as many as 10 or 20. (Note: If you’re new to personas, start small! You can always develop more personas later if needed.)

Here is a template of Buyer Persona of a CIO:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

		Enterprise	Mid-Market
Key Titles	• Chief Information Officer • SVP of IT, VP of IT (highest level IT executive in a company /division) • CTO (some common interests with CIO)	•       SVP of Technology •        SVP Business Technology	•  VP of Technology •  IT Director (as highest IT role)
Role of Buyer	The most senior decision maker for the IT organization; final approver for majority of IT expenditures. Control 65% of company’s IT spend (CIO Magazine’s “State of the CIO 2014”).
Challenges	• Create business value • Provide agility and drive innovation with IT • Reduce IT costs and improve business efficiency • Deliver “IT as a Service” - position internal IT as preferred service provider; rapid delivery of IT as a consumable, optimized service • Attract, retain and develop IT talent	•       Maintaining/ transforming legacy apps	•  Reduce costs focus; greater % report to CFO • Trend to move faster to cloud/outsource IT staff
Buying Center	Corporate (44% of CIOs report to the CEO) and Finance (18% report to the CFO) per CIO Magazine’s “State of the CIO 2014 “report	ü	ü
Daily Responsibilities	• Drive innovation - identify opportunities for competitive differentiation and develop a culture of innovation within IT and the business • Align IT initiatives with business goals; cultivate partnerships between IT and business • Improve IT operations/control costs; manage system/architecture decisions, manage crises • Technology Coherence – make sure new technologies, applications, and other assets fit. Understand with business architectures and infrastructures • Business Continuity – establish predictable, high service levels and always-on IT services • Provide and validate technology vision and direction to the IT  organization, business stakeholders, end-users, customers, partners and vendors	ü	ü
Content Preference	•        Business Publications (e.g., WSJ, Economist, Forbes); Peer Research, (CIO/CXO assoc and events); Executive Summary Reports; increasing exposure to multi-media/social networking	•       Social media use by staff	•       More likely to use social media
Watering Holes	Industry Groups; Analyst Summits; Partner/Vendor/3rd party CIO events	ü	ü

Ten Pointers to Write and Market your Blog

The word blog comes out of the words- web log. But that alone doesn’t really define blog at all. In a layman’s language, a blog is a website with content that is written frequently and added in a chronological order.

Idea is the pillar:

The most important part of blog writing is the idea.The content and writing style supplements the idea which is like a formula.It should captivate and intrigue the readers.Unfortunately, lot of bloggers take keywords as a base of writing content.Keywords might  generate traffic but can never make it popular.

Be honest and loud:

Speak out with your heart.Don’t be afraid of a little controversy.A blog which is honest and of a strong opinion makes the strongest impact.

Goldilocks Title:

Keep your title short and simple.The Goldilocks rule can be applied to a perfect T here.Keep your title to no more than120 characters so that it is easily tweetable.

The perfect time :

The right thing at the right time to the right people.The timing of post is quite important to reach out to as many readers.Ideally you should post on weekdays when there is maximum visibility.

Capture senses with visuals:

Make your blog visually interesting.Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is non-verbal.Visual storytelling is poised to be a breakout marketing trend in 2014.If “content is king” then visual is the emperor.

Make a brand of you:

Last but which should come first, is to brand yourself. What do you want people to know about you? Create your story by sharing how you can help others & identify what problems you solve for them first. Share the real you, be vulnerable, honest and don’t try too hard to project perfection

Image Credits: (http://wellfedfamily.net/,http://www.welbanks.com/)

Are you struggling to write meaningful content

Diogenes, a Greek philosopher, said “He has the most who is most content with the least”. How truly this has come of age in these times. The one with the most original content in the least words will have the most advantage. 

Content marketing plan has been ranked consistently as one of the top three priorities of marketers for several wars. So how do you differentiate your two cents from the sea of content flooding the minds of your customers? Here is my take on few things you cannot ignore while creating content.

Research what readers want

Research about what questions people are asking. Place yourselves in the shoes of your readers and find out what answers they require. Create a persona of the reader and jump over to his side of the fence. There are several sites as Yahoo Answers which can give you a fair idea. Make a list of these and make sure you cover these when you pen your content. Listen socially!

Find out trends

Find out history trends of particular terms or keywords. With the help of google and other sites get an idea of how the subject has been treated over a period of time.This will help you to understand if your ideas are relevant at today’s times.

Distribute and format content

Do not cramp all of your ideas at one place. Distribute them evenly over the entire write up. At the same time, keep the formatting clear with headings and sub headings .Only one out of five readers go beyond your title.So work on it. Make it easy for everyone to find quickly if the subject is relevant to them. Avoid THDR(Too Hard Didn’t Read).It is an important part of content strategy.

A story with pictures

Now that you have made it clear and simple, put in some pictures and weave a story around it. It will be engrossing and pleasing to the eyes of the reader. Not to mention, images tell a thousand words as well as help in your SEO! Plan your content in advance.

Think original

Original is originality which means ideas should be original. This is something which should be on top of your mind to make your content top class. Nothing ever beats original. Do not agree? Just try once.The foundations of content marketing is laid on this.

Apply Pareto's principle

Pareto’s principle or 80/20 rule now applies to almost everything in life. So what does it mean for content. We can safely decipher that 20% of our content will be viewed 80% of the time. Find out those critical inputs (the "critical few") that you should pay a lot of attention to, and many unimportant inputs (the "trivial many") that you can ignore.

 

Suggest not direct

Make your audience apply your thoughts. Never direct them to do things. Application will make them understand and they will find your content compelling. It will make more sense to your audience if you can justify why they need to read and apply those.

Content creation is an art and science as well. So next time you set out to write some content, keep the above things in mind and let me know the results! Happy Writing!