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Who is your ideal customer? What do you know about them? Hopefully a lot! To help you better target your marketing efforts, it's a good idea to create "personas" for your ideal customers using the common attributes and needs they all share. Doing so will allow your marketing team to better focus content creation and lead generation efforts on a specific target. No more throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. If you know that your ideal customer, Dreamy Diana as we'll call her, loves educational material around use-cases at the top of the funnel and craves pricing guides and demos after that, then that's what she'll get!
But don't stop there. As important as it is to understand who your dream customer is, knowing your customer's evil twin is equally important. For each persona you come up with, also think about all the traits opposite of what makes him or her perfect. Who can't your sales reps stand? Who leaves their sales funnels bone dry? Chances are, the better you know your worst customer, who we'll call Evil Ernie, the easier it will be to build strategies to attract a continuous stream of Dianas. Here are three additional ways building your dream customer's evil twin (or marketing persona non grata, if you will), will help you improve your sales and marketing efforts.
1. It Will You Help Test Potential New Campaigns
Are you thinking about compiling a large industry report (or something equally as labor intensive) for lead generation on your site? Consider something easier on the billable hours (but still true to the topic) before you do. Maybe put something thinner together, like a stat sheet or a 30-minute webinar highlighting several trends you're seeing. Then pay close attention to who downloads or signs up. Are they Dianas or Ernies? If Diana dominates, then you've probably justified the time and effort creating your report will take. If Ernie dominates the downloads, it might be time for plan B.
2. It Will Help You Tune Your Lead Scoring & Prospecting Processes
Use what you know about the worst case scenario to inform how you think about the best case scenario. Mark fields in your CRM to carry more value if the lead drops a title that Diana usually lists. Also, what irritates you most about Ernie? Call out these characteristics. Craft screener questions for the front end of your sales process so Sales will know Ernie when they see him and can disqualify him early. Making sure people know Ernie as well as Diana will save time and make your marketing-to-sales handoff smooth and efficient.
3. It Will Help You Identify Future Opportunities
Creating an evil twin persona will put Ernie on an island alone. We hope. But he'll still need things. The by-product of all this "exclusion" will most likely be a healthy list of adjectives and need states. You will likely know as much about him and what he wants as you will know about Diana. Put what you've learned to good use. Ernies are usually made distinct by an outlying characteristic or two. Feed those outliers to the folks in product or business development. Get them thinking about what a solution for him would look like and if it would be worth building into your product or service offering. Avoid him, yes, but don't ignore him. His wants, needs, and peculiarities could lead to business opportunities in the future.
How do you use your marketing personas? In what other ways can you use your marketing personas non gratas to improve your sales and marketing efforts?
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