Before we get any further into this blog post, let’s address the obvious question: What is a buyer persona?
According to HubSpot, persona development and inbound marketing experts, “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.” In most cases, a single business will have multiple buyer personas that are unique from one another.
Developing buyer personas is a tactic that companies use to better understand existing customers and, as a result, better target future customers.
Now that we’re clear on what a buyer persona is, we can focus on why personas are important for direct mail marketing:
They help you acquire more qualified leads
The main goal in developing buyer personas is to understand how your buyers make their purchasing decisions. With that knowledge in hand, you can focus your messaging and direct marketing tactics on acquiring more of these types of customers. This is especially important when it comes to paid acquisition efforts, such as purchasing a qualified mailing list.
They allow you to develop more engaging creative
In developing different buyer personas, you’re able to segment your overall audience based not just on demographic information, but also on the kind of marketing they will respond to. For example, if your team is creating a re-engagement postcard campaign for past customers, the images you select for one buyer persona (female, 50 and older, primary income earner for household) might be very different from those you would select for another persona (male, mid-20s, student loan debt). Targeting your personas in your creative using variable data can lead to higher engagements rates.
They help inspire future marketing campaigns
Often the research that’s needed to create buyer personas can lead to inspiration for future marketing campaigns. A common method for crafting buyer personas is to send out a survey to existing customers to collect both quantitative and qualitative data about their buying habits and interests. If as a result you learn that customer service is more important to your prospects than cost, you may wish to create a campaign focused on your employees. Or maybe you’ll learn that colloquialisms resonate with your audience, e.g. they may refer to you as “Best Burgs” when your company name is “Best Burgers,” inspiring you to use that nickname on social media.
They help with business prioritization
One of the biggest benefits of developing buyer personas is that it can help you prioritize certain marketing campaigns over others. While we’d all like to have an unlimited marketing budget, the reality is that most businesses must make tough choices when it comes to deciding which audience or customer type they will target. However, in having several different buyer personas to consider, you can choose to target one or two of them specifically based on certain factors like what type of product is being promoted or which is expected to yield the greatest ROI.
Ready to start targeting your business’s buyer personas via direct mail? Contact us today!
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