In the last video we outlined the idea that buyer personas are not static beings, but they are moving somewhere and it’s your job, as a brand, to steer that movement to the bottom of your sales funnel.
To do that, we combined buyer personas with a buyer’s journey.
The next piece of this puzzle is to realize what you have to offer in each of those stages.
So here’s what we gonna do. We will approach every sale funnel stage and outline which message we should focus on to hit the goals of the buyer personas we created.
But before we get into it…
Let’s dive in.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 1: Unaware.
- Self Awareness: People in this stage don’t know they have a problem. They need to know themselves. They need to understand that there’s an optimal version of themselves beyond their current status.
- Brand Awareness: Give the opportunity to those people to learn all that self-awareness from you. There’s no sales pitch at this stage. Only service. You might think that serving instead of pitching is not profitable, but we also covered that in previous episodes when we talked about the low-pitch sales formula. So, in the long-term, your brand will benefit from reciprocity and make more sales.
- Motivation: Knowing is not acting. Acting is not enough. Taking the right action is what’s necessary. To take the right action people need to either flee from something terrible or pursue something valuable and transformational. By bringing self-awareness and brand awareness, you must add call-to-actions along the way that makes sense with that message.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 2: Problem Aware.
- Pain points realization: People need to know that you know how they feel. There’s a psychophysiological reason for that, but for now, I’ll ask you to trust me on that one. If you show them you know them better than themselves, they will trust you to guide them through the storm. Show that by bringing awareness and urgency to specific pain points.
- Small wins: Realizing pain points is, well, painful and useless for your brand if you don’t provide transformation. The quickest way between a pain point and a transformational experience is what we can call a small win. It’s like a pain killer which it’s easier than surgery. Break down possible solutions until the edge of meaning and distribute them along the way as breadcrumbs to treasure island.
- Service, gratitude, and reciprocity: By offering a way out. A small win. You gain something more valuable than a sale. What can be more valuable than a sale? Multiple sales. One of the most valuable compliments people can give you is money. Money is sincere. If people are willing to buy from you multiple times, they trust you. That’s achieved by service, gratitude, and reciprocity.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 3: Solution Aware.
- Curiosity: What your buyer persona’s life can become by going through the next corner of your message? The one that’s behind the curtains of what you have already shown for free? That’s the core message here. What is their gain? What is their transformation? How better their lives can become? Make it clear that the answer lies with your products and services as a natural next step in their transformational journey.
- Guidance: Now that we covered the what, it’s time to show them the how. How can your product guide them through all the transformation they are seeking? How will their lives be on the other side of that purchase? Which guarantees do you provide? How can you make it easier? How can you provide security? Do you offer guarantees? Your buyer personas are the heroes in a journey to find a better version of themselves, not your products. You are only a guide.
- Solutions: Money is an energy that flows through a problem-solving stream. If you’re not solving problems, you are not making money. That might seems obvious but I see people establishing money-making goals all the time instead of problem-solving goals. So keep in mind that to make more money, you nee to solve more problems. You solve more problems using multiple streams of solutions.
What to offer Buyer Personas in Stage 4: Product Aware.
- Identity: People on stage might be your customers already, fi not, they are at least, ready to buy. How you serve them to find their own purpose is what will take them to the next stage, which is brand advocacy. The best way to do that is to provide people a better way of expressing themselves through your products and services, instead of just selling things they arguably need.
- Reciprocity: Write this down. People don’t pay. They repay. What does that mean? It means that people will be ready to invest money in your business when they feel you earned that by serving them before. And that is not only fair. That’s good business. The best customers are the thankful ones. The deal here is to think about customer service, post-sales, follow-ups, and the next nurture cycle service.
- Transformation: This is a tough one. Going from point A to point B is not a straight line. Why? Because to go from a good place to a better one, people need to go to a worse place first. That requires a big deal of motivation and trust. Your customers will keep going back if you not only show them the peak of the mountain, but also the equipment and shortcuts along the way. It’s really important that you make sure that your promise is fulfilled by your products and services. You do that by aligning your promise to what you will deliver. Don’t say you are rock’n roll if your products sound reggae.
What o offer Buyer Personas in Stage 5: Most Aware
- Loyalty Loop: People in this stage are your brand advocates. They need to know The next steps in their journey. They already trusted you before, and know what’s in there for them? You have 2 options: 1) guide them to the next level of that same service thread or 2) guide them to a new service thread. The first option will lead to a vertical move to a higher ticket and the second option will lead to a horizontal move to the same ticket range sales. That’s what we call the loyalty loop.
- Additional Offers and Prizes: Gifts, bundles, extra services, and promotions are positive surprises you can deliver in a post-sales communication. If people trust your brand enough to make a purchase, they will love to know that you have more for them than you initially promised.
- Long-Term Value: Making sure you deliver what you have promised in your sales proposition is mandatory, but that’s not enough to increase the value of your brand in the long term. People are paying to have what you promised. The value comes from the “more-than-I-paid-for” effect. You can easily do that by leaving valuable aspects of your products and services as a secret sauce they will only know after buying. Additional services, bundles, special packages delivered to their home addresses, and more. You got the picture, right?
These are powerful offers that will only land to the specific buyer personas we created before.
You are now able to create the most profitable Buyer Persona Template for your brand, which is the proper representation of everything we covered so far.
So, the next step of our conversation is to learn what a Buyer Persona Template looks like.
We’re covering from basic demographics to advance psychological profiling in 5 stages. Are you with me?
Let’s cover this next.
Conclusion
To master communication that lands on people’s hearts, we need to talk specifically to where they are in their psychological journey.
In other words, pitching sales to people that just met you often doesn’t land well. On the other hand, spending time convincing people that are ready to buy can be annoying for them.
In the next video, we will create samples of buyer persona templates using case studies to put all these concepts into practice and give you the proper means to create the most profitable buyer personas possible.
