3min read

Why Fictional Characters Should Be Your Business Valentine

by Article by Remington Begg Remington Begg | February 5, 2015 at 9:00 AM

Valentines-BusinessNo, I haven't lost my mind, fictional characters are vitally important to your business. They are so important that they function as the foundation for your entire Inbound Marketing success. These fictional characters are what we in Inbound Marketing lovingly call Buyer Personas. Lovingly being a key phrase, your business should be in LOVE with these personas!

Who are your customers? What are their motives for buying your products and services? Why do they do what they do? Buyer Personas are more than just your customer demographics. Demographics are the what, Buyer Personas are the why. Find out their motives and you'll find a way to their hearts.

Research

Research might not sound exciting but remember, we LOVE our customers! Chance are you have different types of people buying your products, we need to figure out who those people are. Let's say you sell cars, you probably have buyers that are only interested in used cars, buyers that just want new, people who just want to lease, and then commercial buyers that want to buy several cars at once for their business. All these people have different motives and respond to different types of messaging. Research will tell us how and why we communicate differently to them.

Interviews, online surveys, social media comments will all help us figure out their purchasing motives and form a picture of who these people are. It's like questions you might ask on a first date! This picture that's created from this research or "dating process" is our Buyer Persona.

Leasing Larry and Pre-Owned Paddy

After surveying dozens of customers we were able to spot some trends. We spotted common behavior patterns, shared pain-points, similar goals and wishes, general demographic and biographic information. We pulled out all the common traits of the car leasing people and named that Buyer Persona Leasing Larry. Then we did the same thing for the used car buyers and named that persona Pre-Owned Paddy.

Using Leasing Larry as an example, we found out that he was a person that worked in a professional job who was generally a manager or executive. Larry likes getting a new car every two years so leasing is the best avenue for him. He is always on the go and uses his car for work and shuttling clients around. Larry likes luxury cars and the image it gives him. His pain points are time and stress.

Research showed that Pre-Owned Paddy is quite different than Leasing Larry. Pre-Owned Paddy is looking for a comfortable and affordable car. Price and safety are a big concern for her. She will be using the car primarily for family purposes and would like to pay-off the car in four years. Her pain points deal with budgeting her money and getting her kids to all their activities. Our research also told us that this person prefers the verbage "pre-owned" over "used-cars." All tools we can use when creating content for this persona.

We love our Larry and Paddy personas, but would we try to WOO them the same way? No. Our flirtations need to be tailored to their needs, their interests, their pain-points.

Now What?

Now that we have Buyer Personas what do we do with them? If Buyer Personas are the foundation of Inbound Marketing, content creation is the juice that makes it go. Your job now is to craft remarkable content that speaks to each persona.

A blog post titled, "5 Ways to Save 10 minute When Driving to Work" would attract Leasing Larry and bring awareness to your dealership. Another post titled, "How Soccer Moms Rule the Roadways" would bring you awareness from Pre-Owned Paddy.

These fictional characters give you a picture of who your ideal customers are. You should ask them out on date, find out their likes and interests, even fall in love with them, they are your customers after all. Solve their problems and they will fall in love with you, too.