People see and hear marketing messages all day long. It gets wearisome and as often as not, people are tuning out the steady stream of ads, trying to avoid even seeing them. People see popup ads on their computers as irritations, even when it is something they might be interested in.

Too often advertising, or marketing, sends out a broad message. It is a huge billboard on the landscape, or a huge megaphone, broadcasting a message louder and louder. This is what people are tuning out. How do you compete with that, especially when the ones doing it are national companies with unlimited budgets? The answer is, you don't. There is no need in competing with something that is not really working.

When you want to sell to someone, you need to sell to them as an individual, just as you would if they walked into your store looking for a good or service. When you do your marketing, you need to talk to an individual person, as opposed to sending out a message to the masses.

When you do that, you are talking to a persona - which is a representation of your customer. People want to be talked to as individuals. The new "rule" in marketing is, you don't want to interrupt people to tell them your message. You need to be what they are interested in, so they will want to pay attention to you.

Creating a persona then, is getting to know your customer. It is essential that you speak to people individually and that you reach them in their area of interest. To do that, you have to know who they are. In selling your good or service, you should not be trying to reach every single person in the world because not everyone is going to want your product. There are certain people who do, and the more you know about those people, the more effective you can be in getting the message to them and connecting with them in a more personalized way.

One way to start the process is by conducting surveys on your website. Surveys are a great way to learn about people, and make it fun so they will do it. Encourage customers, and visitors to your website, to give feedback. If you can establish a forum of some kind, you will get valuable information about who your customers are. Also try to find out why people bought your product, so you will know who the people are that want what you are selling. Asking for feedback when someone makes a purchase is also a good idea.

Consider customer interviews or focus groups to dig deep into customer perceptions and opinions. Hubspot offers an excellent tool to build personas. Check it out here…

If you take the information you have gained, you an create a profile of the typical customer who bought your good or service. This is a persona. It can be simple or complex, but once you have a persona, then you can market to that person. Talk to that person as an individual. If you have more than one product, or if you have categories of products, you can do the same thing with each one. If you can speak to them as an individual in an area of their interest, they will want to listen to what you have to say.

You could do this yourself, or hire me to help you.

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