“Defining your target market is one of a marketer’s most important tasks.”
One tool that has become essential to defining a target market is the buyer persona, especially with the rise of social media and video. Video is one of the fastest-growing types of marketing content and with good reason; 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name it as the medium with the best return on investment (ROI).
For many marketers, buyer personas are the key to making better video content, but what are they?
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of a business’s ideal customer, based on existing data and market research. There are several reasons why you should use them.
Understanding customer needs
Buyer personas help you easily imagine your customers’ needs and wants. With a good, well-rounded buyer persona, you should be able to visualize your customer and understand what they’re interested in and what they’re looking for. This will help you to craft marketing campaigns which are entirely focused on your customers.
Knowing where the customer spends their time
The most useful buyer personas include details of where the customer spends their time; what websites they visit; what technology they engage with; and which social networks they use to connect with family, friends and colleagues. This information is invaluable to any marketer. Once you have it, you’ll know exactly where to target your campaigns and which platforms you should use to launch them.
Creating consistency across your business
Buyer personas enable a business to concentrate on consistent goals and messaging. They help to create a closer alignment between sales and marketing, with both teams working to service the same groups of customers. This alignment will lead to your company developing a strong, unified brand voice.
How buyer personas can help you make better videos
By 2021, Cisco predicts that video will account for a whopping 82% of all Internet traffic. With that in mind, it’s no surprise video has grown to become a vital part of marketing. Businesses in all sectors have started to realize the tremendous potential that video has, and the enormous impact it’s likely to have in the future.
These are just some of the benefits of adopting video as part of your company’s marketing strategy:
Adding video to email can increase click-through rates by 200 to 300%.
Video has been shown to triple response rates and increase meetings booked by 500%.
Video improves connections with customers and prospects— by making it possible to see who’s talking, video becomes more personal and human than an email or a telephone call.
Even these impressive stats can be improved on if you use buyer personas to make better video content. How can you do this? For starters, buyer personas allow you to identify different segments of your target audience. If you’re just starting out with video, it’s advisable to create content geared towards the decision makers first.
Never go out of style (by using buyer personas)
Buyer personas also help direct the style and tone of your videos. For instance, if your buyer persona targets CEOs working for enterprise companies, then you may want to ensure your video has a more formal tone and style. But if your persona is aimed at the directors of tech or SaaS startups, then that audience may appreciate a more light-hearted, colourful video.
Don’t be afraid (to make it personal)
Other elements of a buyer persona can help you make better videos. If your audience is based in one specific geographic region (say London, England), then you know that you should bring that location into your videos. If your ideal customer works in a specific industry, then why not reach out to well-known figures and thought leaders, to see if they would like to be included in your video content? These are good ways of making videos that will add value to your customers.
Sharing is caring (about your customers)
Just as important as knowing what to put in your videos is knowing where to post them. Again, buyer personas can assist you with this. What social media channels do your ideal customers use? For instance, if your ideal customers are LinkedIn users, then that is the platform for you to prioritize.
Here are some more tips for sharing your videos online:
Direct prospects to your company website by including clickable calls-to-action in your videos.
Remember to check search keywords for each social network. Insert the most popular relevant terms into your video titles and descriptions to increase the chances of your videos being discovered.
Timing is important. Check which times are busiest for people to post, comment, and share. Schedule your videos at the times when they’re most likely to be seen.
Pay attention to how the pros do it
A great example of a successful marketing video is “So Yeah, We Tried Slack…” by Sandwich Video. Sandwich was invited by Slack to try out their team messaging app and make a video about the process.
The result works for two reasons.
First of all, the video is aimed at the buyer persona of a typical Slack customer. It’s fun and upbeat, with good use of humour throughout. The Sandwich employees featured in the video are the types of workers that Slack would appeal to tech-based, software, or startup workers.
Secondly, the video adds a great deal of value to the customer. The many features and integrations of the Slack app are clearly defined and listed one-by-one. The benefits of each feature are explained.
“So Yeah, We Tried Slack…” also shows that a company doesn’t need a huge budget to make a well-presented, impactful video. It’s filmed entirely within Sandwich’s office and stars only Sandwich employees.
So long as your video is geared towards your buyer persona and adds value to your customer, it has a great chance of succeeding.
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