The easy way to define client personas and pain points

Imagine sitting down at your computer first thing in the morning. While your computer boots up you take a relaxing sip of your coffee (or morning beverage of choice). You open your email and right there at the top of your inbox, is an email notification of a new sale or a contact form submission from someone ready to sign-on as a client right now!

If this isn’t happening to you consistently today, that’s ok. I’m going to share some secrets to making this happen. If I’m being honest, it’s going to take a bit of work, but once you have an effective way to plan and execute this plan, it’ll become an easy habit for you.

New clients and customers will start falling into your lap faster when you have a content marketing plan that is effective and easy to carry out.

But, before we can talk about your content marketing plan, you need to define two things:

Clearly describe your target personas

We could execute a robust content marketing program, but if we’re not writing for the right people, in the right places, at the right time, our hard work will be pointless. We need to first clearly define our target customer.

I’m probably not the first person to suggest this to you. But I have a somewhat unique exercise you can do to help you define your target customer(s). Once you know who this is, you can tailor content specifically to them.

Here is an easy and fun exercise you can do to “create” your target personas for your business. If you have a few different demographics that your business targets, repeat this exercise for each one:

Step 1 – Picture them

First, go to a stock photo website and look for a picture of someone who you imagine could be your target customer. Save a copy of this picture on your computer or print it out.

Step 2 – Name them

Make them more real by giving them a name. Any name you want. I named mine “Angela Anderson” (I know it’s not the most original name…but I like it). Next to their picture, write their name and maybe their profession or a key distinguishing demographic about this person.

Step 3 – Describe them

Now I want you to brainstorm specific attributes about this person that makes them your ideal customer. Write these descriptions and attributes next to their picture.

Some things you could think about are:

• Age
• Gender
• Nationality
• Education
• Annual salary
• Budget for your products/services
• Where they live
• Wants and needs
• Pain points (we’ll get to this in more detail if you keep reading)

To make them even more real, include other things about this person, even if it’s not directly related to your business. Like family structure, favourite beverage, hobbies, mottos, and where they like to go on vacation.

The goal is to be as specific as possible with this. The more detail you can write down, the better you’ll be able to picture this person in your head and know what they really need from you and your business.

Step 4 – Print it out

If you did all this digitally until now, print out the picture and your descriptors. Post it at your desk and refer to it often if you need to be reminded who you are writing and creating content for.

The next step is to go a little deeper to understand your target customer.

Understand their pain points

To make sure you are creating products and services that best serve your target customer you need to know what they need from you. You need to be perfectly clear on what their pain points are.

Here are some questions to ask to get specific on their struggles:

• Where do they want to be in their life/business?
• What is stopping them from moving forward with _____?
• Do they have any real or perceived financial barriers?
• What do they know they need to do, but don’t want to do?
• What do they absolutely hate doing?
• What are they truly passionate about?
• How much time to they currently spend doing _____ in their life/business?
• Where do they feel “behind” compared to their competitors or peers?
• Are they doing something now, but it’s inconvenient or time-consuming?
• Do they know the solution to any of these problems is your product/service?

Ask yourself (or do customer research or surveys) to answer these questions. Once you know where they struggle, you can create content in words that speaks directly to them and answers their questions. When they feel you understand their struggles, you can start building rapport, which after nurturing with some other great content from your content marketing plan, will one day turn into a sale.

I encourage you to create your target personas and include their main pain points. This is the first step to creating content that will actually be read, watched, or heard.

In my next post, I’m going to build upon this and share 4 ways to easily brainstorm content based on these personas you’ve just built.

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