How NOT Knowing Your Buyer Impacts Your Bottom Line
The mantra of the marketing world: know your buyer.
If you had a dollar for every time you’ve heard this advice, you’d probably be able to run your business without knowing your buyer at all. Well, we’re sorry to break it to you, but it looks like you’re going to have to earn those dollars another way.
Understanding your buyer is a complex process; it might seem intimidating and vague, and overall unnecessary when you have so many other business-related things on your plate.
But please don’t sweep the marketing mantra under the rug—read on to find out how not knowing your buyer will impact your bottom line.
Going for Growth
You are the owner of a small- to medium-sized business and you’ve been researching effective marketing tools for the last few weeks, months, or even years.
Perhaps your troubles don’t even end with research. Perhaps you’ve actually blindly spent your valuable time and money on different marketing methods, without being able to find one that was successful.
You’re trying to make changes to your company—changes that will spark further growth and opportunities. You’re looking to develop a marketing plan that will attract more of the right people to your company’s solution.
Your heart is in the right place—with the goals you have for your company’s growth—but your head is not. Your head should be in a place where everything you do, especially your marketing strategy, revolves around your buyer.
A Fresh Take on the Bottom Line
Still skeptical about spending the time to really get to know your buyer? Doubtful about whether you’d benefit from the extra effort you’d have to give toward this complicated task? We could go on and on about the important advantages of knowing your buyer, but let’s try a different approach. Here’s how not knowing your buyer will impact your bottom line.
#1: You’ll waste time and money.
Chances are, you’ve already done it. And news flash! If you don’t make any changes, this wastefulness is not going to end any time soon.
Let’s look at an example. Perhaps you’ve made the assumption that a presence at networking events is the best way to market your company. You’ve spent money to get yourselves to these events, and you’ve given up time and manpower to try and find some buyers. But, when you analyze the number of prospects and sales you’ve obtained from these networking events, you’re left with next to nothing. Isn’t that frustrating? Maybe, with some research about your buyers, you’d find that they don’t go to networking events to find what they’re looking for—and neither should you!
Without an understanding of where your ideal buyers spend their time and how they make their purchasing decisions, you’ll be spending your time ineffectively and making your financial decisions poorly.
#2: Your sales will remain stagnant or decrease.
You’ve probably been there are some point: you keep trying new marketing methods, throwing away the ones that are not immediately successful, and frantically searching for one that will finally work. “Success” in your situation is defined by growth—an increase in exposure, an increase in sales, and an increase in your company’s overall profit.
Your company can only achieve its growth goals if it adopts an effective marketing strategy, and you know that. But here’s the part you don’t know: a marketing strategy can only be effective if it is based on the needs of your buyers.
Understand your buyers first, then create a marketing plan, and watch your company’s number of sales skyrocket before your eyes.
#3: You’ll succumb to a guessing game.
Would you ever play golf without aiming for the hole? Would you ever play basketball without knowing where the basket is? Would you ever play soccer without—okay, you get the idea.
Without a goal or a target to reach, how can you measure success? Marketing is the same way. Without knowing what your buyers want, how can you give it to them? Without knowing where your buyers are, how can you deliver to them?
If you don’t have a specific type of buyer to target through your marketing efforts, you’ll succumb to a guessing game. It’s like playing tennis blindfolded—it just doesn’t work.
Score the Winning Goal
Don’t continue wasting time and money. Stop watching your company’s sales department suffer. There is a time and a place for guessing games, but your company’s future is too important to leave to chance.
Now is the time to make a major change to the way your business approaches marketing. This change starts with the development of a buyer persona.
Imagine knowing these things about your buyers:
- Their priorities and needs
- How they qualify and define success
- Their doubts and obstacles on the way to achieving success
- The exact processes they use in preparing to make a purchasing decision
- How and why they make their final decision to purchase a product, service, or solution
If you create a buyer persona, you’ll have an in-depth understanding of all of these qualities and more. You’ll have a “fictional” character to dictate your marketing story—one with all of the same goals, needs, and pain points as the real-life buyers that your company should be targeting through marketing.
Buyer personas are usually crafted after a series of in-depth, objective client/customer interviews conducted by someone with buyer persona experience. If you feel that your company doesn’t have the resources or the expertise necessary to develop a successful and thorough buyer persona, you may want to consider contracting with a third party, such as Hello Marketing.
For more information on buyer personas and how Hello Marketing can help you achieve your growth goals, take a look at our free Buyer Persona Guide.
