The Power of Personas Part 4: Putting Them To Work To Build Your Business 

To help you grow your business, we’re bringing you a four-part series on personas — fictionalized representations of your real-life customers. Learn how using personas generates more leads, sells more products and increases your bottom line. Links to the rest of the series are below this blog.

When you use personas to guide your decisions, you move beyond guesswork, reacting to trends or relying on assumptions. Instead, you make informed choices based on research about real people. Your messaging becomes more relevant and your products more intentional. When you share your knowledge with others you work with, you can partner to better meet the needs, priorities and expectations of those you serve.

As we wrap up our series, we explore how personas improve every area of business. As you read the list below, consider how doing the following with your personas could increase your bottom line.

12 Ways Personas Increase Your Bottom Line

Sales, Marketing and Messaging

1. Write specific sales pitches.
Customer personas help you tailor sales conversations based on a prospect’s priorities, challenges and decision-making style, resulting in more deals closed.

2. Create marketing campaigns.
Knowing where your customers spend their time and what motivates them allows you to choose the right channels, timing and messaging for each campaign.

3. Know which product features resonate with which audiences.
Personas clarify what matters most to different customer types, which helps you highlight the benefits that meet their needs and motivate them.

4. Use visuals your customers identify with.
From imagery to design style, personas help you ensure your visuals reflect your audiences’ preferences and relate to the things they care about. Your target audience should be able to see themselves using your company to move their belongings.

5. Review your current campaigns against persona insights.
Personas provide a benchmark for evaluating whether your existing campaigns align with your customers’ needs and whether adjustments are necessary.

Product, Pricing and Customer Experience

6. Develop products your audiences want to use.
By understanding customer needs and pain points, you can create offerings that solve real problems, rather than relying on assumptions or internal preferences.

7. Price your products competitively and attractively.
Personas reveal how different customers perceive value, allowing you to price your offerings in a way that your customers find fair, justified and align with their expectations.

8. Determine what information your clients want to find and read on your website.
The persona-development process reveals what each audience is interested in. You can use that insight to highlight specific offerings that attract the right customers to take action.

9. Map out the customer journey.
When you understand how your specific audiences move from awareness to decision-making, you can create more intentional and supportive experiences at every stage of the customer journey.

Strategy, Teams and Decision-Making

10. Train those you work with about your customers.
When everyone has access to your customer personas, you have a shared understanding of your audience, which improves how you work together to communicate with, support and serve customers.

11. Guide your business plans.
Personas inform larger strategic decisions by keeping customer behaviors and preferences at the center of making plans and evaluating long-term goals.

12. Make wiser decisions in the moment.
When you understand your customers through personas, you can confidently make quick, timely decisions based on facts, knowing you are meeting your audience’s needs.

Personas are a powerful marketing tool for your business. As you consider creating profiles that reflect your real-life customers, ponder the following.

• Why is it that the most successful businesses in the world do so well?

•  Is there something your competition knows that you don’t?

•  How can knowing your customers in depth move your business forward in the new year?

From free resources and blogs to our ground-breaking NationalExpress Move (NEX) program, National Van Lines supports you so you can grow your business and successfully serve your customers on the move.

Power of Persona Series

Part 1: How Fictionalized Characters Improve Business Outcomes
How creating fictional representations of your customers can positively impact the outcome of your efforts 

Part 2: Who Is Your Customer — Really?
And how do you know you’re marketing to the right ones or giving them what they want?

Part 3: Making Customer Data Easy To Share and Use
Turn your customer data into a shareable tool that helps everyone make better business decisions.