If you are trying to sell costume jewelry and organic smoothies, price and opportunity might motivate customers to purchase spontaneously or switch from a competitor. But if you sell higher-end or more complex products, it often takes a different approach.
Let’s say you are a pediatric dentist. Most of your patients are at least two years old, but the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) recommends that children see a dentist by age one. In line with these recommendations, you want to encourage families to bring in their children right after their first birthday. But how do you break into the lives of busy parents and motivate them to do what is the last thing most parents want to do—take their infant to the dentist?
The key is to speak to them using their language and according to their priorities. To do this, you can use customer personas.
Customer personas are models for communicating with specific types of buyers. Just as with real people, each persona has a set of demographic descriptors and other identifying characteristics. Take, for example, a “mother with an infant at home.” What other pain points does this persona have besides raising a newborn? How does she make buying decisions? Who and what are her social influencers? Her primary motivators for early intervention?
Once you have this information, you can craft messaging targeting this buyer type, identify the names in your list that match up, or purchase additional details if necessary. (We can help.)
