Five Inbound Marketing Resources Every Marketer Should Know

How can you keep up with the future of inbound marketing?

July 20, 2022/in Articles, Email Marketing, Emails, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Running a business is difficult, no matter how big or small it is. To successfully maintain and grow a business, you need to retain existing customers as well as reach new ones. As such, a good marketing strategy is essential to the success of any business. Marketing helps you communicate with your target audience, build relationships, and generate leads. But how you market your business will make all the difference in the world. learning the future of inbound marketing is important for a good marketing strategy.

In this day and age, almost every business has an inbound marketing strategy. Inbound marketing is extremely cost-effective, making it an ideal strategy for startups and smaller businesses. However, inbound marketing is constantly evolving. What worked today may not work tomorrow.

As such, to ensure that your inbound marketing strategy remains effective, it’s wise to stay on top of the latest trends. This way, you can adjust your marketing efforts as needed.

What is Inbound Marketing?

When it comes to marketing, there are two primary methodologies: outbound marketing and inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is the more traditional approach that involves actively reaching out to customers. Common outbound strategies include TV and radio advertising, cold calling, and email blasts.

In contrast, inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on attracting visitors or customers to your company through organic channels. Basically, instead of finding new customers, you’re putting your business in a position to be found by them instead.

The Future of Inbound Marketing

The landscape of inbound marketing is always changing. As new platforms and technologies emerge, new ways of reaching and engaging with customers have to be developed. With that in mind, the following are some of the current inbound marketing trends you should know about:

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing involves building relationships with people who have a large following on social media. These influencers can help you reach a much bigger audience. Although new social media platforms are constantly popping up, there will always be influencers on every channel.

To be successful with influencer marketing, you need to choose the right influencers to work with. Look for influencers who have a genuine interest in your brand and who have an engaged following. If your business focuses on a niche industry, consider building relationships with micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are individuals with smaller followings who typically have more engaged audiences.

Customer data

Data is essential in the world of marketing. The more data you have, the better insights you can gain into your target audience. This, in turn, allows you to create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

To collect data, you need to have some sort of tracking system in place. This could be something as simple as using Google Analytics to track website visitors. Or it could be using a CRM system to track leads.

Analyze your data regularly and look for patterns and trends that can help you better understand your customers. Additionally, the insights you gain from your data can help you make more informed marketing decisions.

Check out: Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

A more personalized buyer journey

Customers expect a personalized experience from businesses. As such, you need to focus on creating a smooth buyer journey. It should be a seamless experience from the moment they learn about your company to the moment they make a purchase.

One way to improve the customer experience is to create more targeted content. Segment your audience and create content that appeals to their specific needs. Doing so can make the buyer journey more relevant and enjoyable for them.

Another way to improve the customer experience is to make sure your website is easy to use and navigate. Build a well-designed website that is mobile-friendly and user-friendly. You should also consider implementing chatbots or live chat features so customers can easily get in touch with you.

Content clusters

Content is the backbone of any successful inbound marketing strategy. However, simply producing great content is not enough. You also need to make sure that your content is properly structured and organized by using content clusters.

A content cluster is a group of related pieces of content focused around a specific topic. Content clusters are designed to help improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). They also make it easier for your audience to find the information they’re looking for.

To create a content cluster, start by identifying a topic that you want to write about. Then, create your pillar content (such as an article or blog post) that covers this topic in depth. Once you have your pillar content, develop supporting content that all relate back to the pillar content.

Content clusters will improve your SEO and make it easier for your audience to read or view your content. Not to mention, it will make it easier for your audience to understand your message.

Interactive content

This is a type of content that requires the audience to participate in some way. Interactive content can include anything from quizzes and polls to games and augmented reality (AR) experiences.

There are two main benefits to creating interactive content. First, it helps keep your audience engaged and interested in your content. Second, it allows you to collect data about your audience’s preferences and interests. This data can be extremely valuable in helping you better understand your audience. Not to mention that this data can be used to create even more targeted content.

Stay Informed About The Future of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a constantly changing field. With that in mind, these are some of the trends that are shaping the future of inbound marketing. By keeping up with the latest trends, you can stay one step ahead of the competition.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

Using the Buyer’s Journey to Create Great Content

May 10, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Today, great content is so important because it is the actual message you are delivering to potential customers. It should capture the attention of your target audience and stand out within the huge sea of content that surrounds us every day. This can be very difficult to do because marketing content is everywhere you look. But using the right techniques will help make sure the target is reached in the best way.

Inbound Marketing is about offering the right content to the right audience based on where they are within the Buyer’s Journey and developing buyer personas to help target the correct people in the most effective way possible. What makes good, even great content? Constantly thinking about the mind of your buyer and where they are at in their decision process. This way all of your choices center around their needs and you will create content of value.

Using Your Audience

The content you create should help your reader solve their problems and help with whatever it is they are trying to accomplish. Be sure that the content you produce is something that your audience will want to read, share with their friends, and return to your company for further information. The ultimate goal is to be helpful to the consumer!

The best way to understand which format to use for your content is through your buyer personas. A buyer persona is a theoretical person within your target audience that is comprised of analyzed research. Buyer personas are the key to creating ideal content because through them you are able to understand what they want to see, and when they want to see it. Thinking in this way, in the mind of your buyer personas, is extremely helpful in reaching your target because now you have entirely put yourself in their shoes.

Why Are Buyer Persona’s So Important

Using The Buyer’s Journey To Create Great Content

Another aspect of your buyer persona is how they will be moving through the Buyer’s Journey. Not only do we need to understand how to help our audience with their goals and challenges, but also what the buyer persona is looking for in each stage of their journey. Creating content for each stage in the Buyer’s Journey will help your visitors find the resources they need in order to solve their problems. The Buyer’s Journey has 3 stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.

The Buyers Journey Explained Stage By Stage

The content made for the awareness stage of the journey must help the buyer persona define their problem and learn about it. This means simply educating the consumer about the problem they have. When the buyer persona is in the consideration stage, the content should help them discover possible solutions to their problem. Hold off on discussing your own products and services be discussed, the focus is still on providing useful information regarding what steps they can take next. Finally, in the decision stage you help the buyer persona choose the best solution to their problem, and therefore offer your services.

Focus on tailoring content to your buyer personas and where they are within the Buyer’s Journey to ensure that it will capture your audience’s attention, help your target with what they are searching for, and fuel your campaign.

How To Use Buyer Personas For Senior Living Marketing

May 9, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

The number of seniors continues to grow every year as the Baby Boomers are hitting their golden years. This demographic shift has put more emphasis on businesses serving older adults, including senior living facilities. Your business should know about senior living marketing to help present itself to potential clients.

Buyer personas can help you when it comes to senior living marketing.

What Buyer Personas Do You Need for Your Senior Living Business?

On the surface of it, the buyer persona for a senior living business seems obvious. The older adult. However, individual seniors have different needs. And senior living communities provide different levels of service depending on those needs.

Seniors who want to maintain their independence without the worry of home maintenance have different needs than seniors who have advanced medical needs which require 24-hour-nursing care. Facilities which offer different levels of care need to have personas for each level offered.

Another persona to consider is the spouse of an ailing senior. The spouse may no longer be able to handle the advancing medical needs of his or her partner. The healthy spouse’s concerns must be considered along with the needs of the ailing senior.

Adult children also play a significant role in many older adults’ lives. Seniors often need assistance with financial and living decisions. Effective marketing in the senior living industry must consider the needs and desires of these adult children.

Find Out: How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business

How To Use Buyer Personas for Your Senior Living Business

Effective marketing to the senior living market means building trust. That is where you start leveraging your buyer personas. Here is how you do it:

Create content that addresses each persona’s needs or questions. For example, do a series of blog posts addressing common questions asked by adult children looking for information on senior living options.
Provide longer content which offers more detailed information. An eBook focused on helping adult children assist parents with housing decisions is an example of this. This is the point where you can gather their contact information.
Send personalized emails. Once you have a contact’s name, it is important to address them in a personal way. If you have more information, like what level of care the adult child’s parent needs, you can focus the marketing even more.
Use the persona’s personal communication preference to your advantage. One detail you should capture for each persona is the preferred method of communication. Many older adults know how to use email, but prefer phone calls.
Remember to track each of your marketing efforts closely. Some of your senior living marketing efforts will not be successful. When you see something is not working, stop and move to the next.

Senior living marketing is more effective if you have detailed buyer personas in place. It helps you be more conscientious of the needs your clients have. That helps you build trust and makes your marketing speak in ways it did not before.

The Importance of Hiring an Integrated Marketing Agency

February 17, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

There are hundreds of tactics you can use to advertise your business, whether you’re using inbound or outbound marketing. As a result, it can take a long time and a lot of effort to create and execute a successful marketing strategy — especially if you want long-term results. It’s why many companies will work with a marketing agency instead of trying to do it themselves.

However, you’ll find that most marketing agencies focus on specific types of advertising. For example, some agencies focus on direct marketing, while others focus on building websites. If you want to work with a single agency that can handle all of your marketing needs, then you should consider working with an integrated marketing agency.

What is Integrated Marketing?

Integrated marketing is the practice of making sure all of your marketing efforts are aligned to deliver the same core message. It’s an overarching strategy that uses various channels to reach people at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Integrated marketing allows businesses to deliver a consistent message across different mediums, including print and digital media.

For example, a company might use a TV commercial to draw attention to its new website. For this to work, the message conveyed on the TV ad must be consistent with the messaging on the website. If the tagline or logo on the commercial is even slightly different than what’s on your website, it will confuse people.

What is an Integrated Marketing Agency?

Integrated marketing agencies use a holistic approach to marketing. They can address all the advertising needs that a company might have. Basically, it means that they can do everything you need as far as marketing goes so that you don’t have to hire multiple agencies. For example, they can help:

Build your brand and design branding elements.
Develop a traditional outbound marketing strategy.
Develop an inbound marketing strategy.
Create your inbound and outbound marketing materials (from print ads to your website)
Develop a public relations (PR) strategy to engage with your target audience across many channels.

What are the Benefits of an Integrated Marketing Agency?

There are many benefits to working with an integrated marketing agency instead of an agency that has more specific focuses (such as an agency that only produces commercial videos). The following are a few of the primary benefits of using an integrated marketing agency:

1. A more cost-effective marketing solution

Hiring multiple agencies to address different parts of your marketing strategy can be expensive. An integrated marketing agency can take care of all your marketing needs, making it a more cost-effective option.

2. A more cohesive long-term marketing plan

Because an integrated marketing agency is experienced in every facet of marketing, they can audit your existing strategy. Additionally, they will consider your company’s needs and audience to develop a more unified long-term marketing strategy.

3. More personalized services

Most agencies use a general blueprint to implement their solutions. As such, their marketing efforts follow a guideline or template for every one of their clients. Integrated marketing agencies customize their marketing solutions to the specific needs of the clients they’re working with. Futhermore they will take a unified approach that will result in a comprehensive and unique marketing strategy.

4. Branding consistency across all channels

If you lack branding consistency (for example, if your messaging and tone is different from one channel to the next), it will hurt your brand identity. Consequently, people will get confused about who you are and what you offer.

An integrated marketing agency can help develop a unique branding strategy so that your business will have a consistent message across all channels. By using integrated marketing, you’ll ensure that your brand identity remains consistent.

5. A better understanding of the buyer’s journey

Integrated marketing agencies are experienced with both traditional and digital marketing. As a result, they have a greater understanding of the buyer’s journey and how to reach customers at every stage of their journey.

6. More effective cross-channel marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns that function separately won’t be nearly as effective as if they were designed to work together. Integrated marketing agencies are more capable of creating cross-channel marketing campaigns designed to achieve a shared goal.

Our Integrated Marketing Solutions

Here at Stevens & Tate, we offer integrated marketing solutions tailor-made to your company’s needs. Not only do we take into account your business and your customers, but we also take into account your budget. With that in mind, the following are some of the integrated marketing solutions that we offer:

Storybranding:

We can help develop your brand and brand story by identifying competitive advantages and mission statement. We can also create a slogan and tagline, identify your value propositions, and develop your message and story.

Marketing strategy:

We develop a comprehensive marketing strategy by implementing a meticulous process. This process includes a thorough consultation, SWOT analysis, budget evaluation, marketing plan development and execution, communications strategy, and messaging approach.

Research:

We perform thorough market research to help build your marketing strategy. This research includes competitive market analysis, brand audits, target audience segmentation, website analytics, customer experience research, and more.

SEO and social:

We can develop comprehensive social media and SEO strategies to increase brand awareness and authority. We use various tactics, including blogging, content creation, social media campaigns, PPC ads, engagement strategies, and organic search marketing.

Public relations:

We offer a wide variety of reputation management services integrated with your overall marketing strategy. These services include press release writing, product launch advertising, online syndication, and marketing promotions. We can also improve your reputation via thought leadership, content marketing, media relations, and more.

Customer experience:

We develop various strategies to help improve your customer experience. We can help with package design, brand development, contests, promotions, pricing structures, and more.

Digital marketing tactics:

We can plan and execute digital marketing efforts as part of your ongoing marketing strategy. These efforts may include SEO, video production, PPC advertising, social media advertising, mobile and web app implementation, content creation, and more.

Traditional Advertising:

In addition to digital marketing, we can also help develop a traditional advertising campaign integrated with the rest of your marketing efforts. Some of the traditional advertising services we offer include print ad design, radio scripts and audio production, photography, logo development, video production, sales brochures, and more.

Improve Your Long-Term Marketing Using Integrated Marketing Solutions

To create an effective cross-channel marketing campaign, you need integrated marketing solutions. Moreover, integrated marketing is the best way to strengthen your brand, grow your business, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry over the long term.

Find out more about the integrated marketing solutions we offer by contacting us to request a free marketing consultation at Stevens & Tate today.

The Importance of Understanding and Mapping the Consumer Journey

January 31, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Every consumer will go through different steps of consideration and purchase throughout the life cycle of a brand or service. In the past, the consumer buying cycle was explained by four stages: awareness, interest, evaluation, and purchase.

Modern marketing strategies put more emphasis on the emotional relationship brands have with their customers and how this relationship is developed throughout time. This new approach raises the importance of understanding how consumers move through different stages that will influence their behavior. As such, consumer journey mapping is a vital part of your marketing strategy.

Why is Consumer Journey Mapping Important?

Journey Mapping is a technique used to map out the journey of an average consumer throughout their buying cycle. It can help you uncover your UX gaps, identify weaknesses in your strategy, or even find ways of improving customer retention.

Journey mapping is an opportunity to think critically about how your customers discover, experience, and interact with your brand. Consumer journey maps can be complex, but the basic premise behind them is simple: visualize the entire customer journey through each user touchpoint (channel) imaginable.

What are the Stages of the Consumer Journey?

The following are the five stages of the consumer journey and the strategies you should implement to engage and nurture consumers through each stage:

1. Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is where consumers learn of your existence. There are multiple strategies that you can employ to generate awareness of your brand. Running TV commercials, publishing print ads, maintaining a social media presence, optimizing your website for SEO, and building relationships with influencers can all help to generate awareness.

The entire point of the awareness stage is to introduce your brand and what you do to those who aren’t familiar with it, whether they’re looking for a specific solution right now or not. Either way, it helps set consumers up for the next stage.

2. Interest Stage

It’s during the interest stage that consumers begin doing research into the problems or challenges that they have. At this point, they are simply looking to educate themselves. They may not be aware of what the solution to their problem looks like. In fact, they may not be completely clear about the challenge that they have.

To address consumers in this stage of their journey, you need to have information available that can help educate them. It’s why many businesses host a website blog and regularly publish content that educates and advises potential leads. By creating such content, you not only help nurture consumers through this stage, but you also help establish your brand authority, thereby building trust in your business.

3. Evaluation Stage

During the evaluation stage, the consumer will start thinking about what solution best fits their needs. The decision at this point is still up in the air and they’re weighing their options. At this stage, consumers may be more open to hearing about your products and services, which they may be comparing with those of your competitors.

To reach consumers during the evaluation stage of their journey, you need to showcase your unique value proposition. You can do this through content creation (by publishing white papers and ebooks, or by filming product demonstrations) or through offers (such as free trials or discounts on products).

It’s crucial that you establish a stellar reputation at this stage as well since consumers will be looking at reviews. As such, encourage past customers to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, and other review sites. Additionally, set up a testimonial page on your site.

4. Purchase Stage

At this stage, the consumer is close to buying your product. You’ll want to make it as easy for them as possible to make a purchasing decision. If you have an e-commerce page, make the checkout process as easy and streamlined as possible. Use an online chat feature that allows them to get in touch with a salesperson as soon as possible. Send automated email reminders to consumers who have abandoned their carts without checking out.

You should make it as easy as possible for consumers to make a purchase — and remove any roadblocks that can prevent the purchase.

5. Post-Purchase Stage

The consumer journey doesn’t end with a purchase. In fact, it will never end. You’ll want to make sure that they become long-term customers, which is why you’ll want to continue to nurture them using an email marketing campaign to build brand loyalty. You can even set up a brand ambassador program to help strengthen your relationship with consumers post-purchase.

Mapping the Consumer Journey is Crucial to Your Success

Mapping the consumer journey is important because it gives you a better understanding of how consumers act and how you can help nurture them towards a purchasing decision. By mapping out your consumer journey, you’ll be able to personalize your engagement with them more effectively and identify vital touchpoints that can help improve your conversions.

Why Your Website Redesign Would Benefit From An Inbound Marketing Strategy

October 22, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Website Growth Driven Design /by Nicole Wagner

A website redesign is the perfect time to integrate your inbound marketing strategy into the site’s very fabric. In fact, your entire website needs to be optimized and focused on furthering your inbound marketing efforts. It is an investment that will pay off in higher conversions and increased sales.

Is Your Current Website Giving You What You Need?

You are in business to make money. Your website exists to market your business. Its design needs to further your need to make money. If your current website design is not doing that, it isn’t giving you what you need.

Here are some things to expect from your website:

The design should remain up to date.
You should be able to measure ROI easily.
You should have updated metrics available at all time.
The website should totally support your marketing efforts.
The website should drive conversions and build your lead database.

If your current design isn’t giving you these benefits, it’s time to invest in a new design, one that will give you these benefits and many more.

20 Tips To Improve Your Website Redesign Process

Every aspect of your website redesign should feed into your inbound marketing strategy. The strategy and marketing funnel needs to be integrated into the site’s very fabric. To make this type of design work, you need a platform that is growth-driven and you need a web team that can make updates on a regular basis.

What are the Advantages of an Inbound Marketing Website?

Your business will benefit in many ways when your inbound marketing strategy becomes what drives your website design.

The website will be the basis of your 24/7 marketing funnel. Your website is where you drive traffic to, host your content, convert visitors to leads, and gather marketing data. That is why your inbound marketing strategy must drive your website design.
Your website will educate leads early in their buyer’s journey. Buyers these days do a lot of research before making purchases. You want your website to be a rich source of information so the buyer will continuously visit during their journey.
You will see every increasing improvement in design and performance. Why wait for your next website redesign to update your website? It should happen at least once a month as you make changes to meet marketing goals and fix problems.
You can prove ROI with incremental improvements. Website updates cannot just involve aesthetics. They must include and revolve around marketing changes. With each change, you can measure your ROI quite easily.
Your website can help nurture leads. The more you educate a lead, the more likely that person is to make a purchase. Your website must offer clear pathways through the buyer’s journey to help him or her reach a decision point.

If you want to take your marketing to the next level, it is time to integrate your inbound marketing strategy with your website design. Once you have the basics in place, you will see steady improvements in your marketing efforts. And that makes it all worth it.

This article is on Data Captive as well.

Want more resources on how to redesign your website? Click here!

How To Assess Your Inbound Marketing Plan

September 21, 2021/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Inbound marketing has become one of the most efficient ways for marketers to sell online. It is based on developing high-quality content to relevant to the prospective buyers who you can turn into buyers. This kind of marketing allows the user to determine whether the inbound marketing plan is productive or not. Marketing metrics is a part of attraction marketing and your inbound marketing plan is a part of marketing metrics.

For most business firms actual and quantifiable results are more beneficial for better business decision. By using real-time metrics it is easy to identify the best content and customize the conversion tactics for more sales. The following are factors to be considered when measuring the effectiveness of your inbound marketing plan.

The Desired Goals And Objectives

One way to measure the performance of your campaign is listing the organizational goals. Assessing available opportunities as compared to the current number of customers, allows you to ensure both marketing and sales efforts are productive. Some of the real-time metrics that can be used for this step include; the number of conversion produced, where your prospects are in your sales funnel and lastly the number of buyers in your marketing niche. By stacking the results from such a test against the organizational goals will help you know the results of your marketing campaign.

Read More: 5 Examples Of Goals For Business Development.

Competitive Benchmarking

At times comparing your inbound marketing techniques to your competitors will allow you to identify the best strategies. By selecting the tactics that your competitors are succeeding at and eliminating those that fail your competitors will help you stay ahead. The first people to use inbound marketing in their industry have the chance to create a benchmark for their competitors. For better access to the progress of your competition, online tools like Google analytics or website grader will give you more information. Some platforms like Hubspot allow the user to see traffic density and the domains linked to your site. Such data will allow you to select the best inbound campaigns.

Social Media

Social media offer a way to get maximum attention to your website. Researching carefully about the target market allows you to know what social media platform get to the best of your customers and prospects. After deciding the best social media platform, you should approach it strategically. You can start by developing a plan on how to release some posts or discussing some topics depending on the content calendar. The idea is to compare the number of conversions each post brings. If one type of content brings more conversions then you should focus on it and eliminate the ones with fewer reads. The concept behind this is to drive conversions to the website from social media community.

Financial Spending

For any inbound marketing campaign, there must be a budget that comes with it. The budget should be based on the organizational goals to be achieved and the time frame. This provides a chance to compare between the marketing campaigns that are currently running. If you have a part of the campaign that has more expenses with fewer leads yet there are other options that are more productive, it will be better to switch and focus on the productive ones. For those campaigns that use more money like free advertising and free samples, you can re-strategize and utilize inbound marketing that has more measurable ROI features.

Develop Your Nurturing Process

Though for most buyers if your products are amazing they will buy immediately but for some a relationship is important. Lead nurturing allows you to focus on the target market and depending on the buyer’s journey it is easy to make your sales funnel a metric. By carefully designing the sales funnel to provide the prospect with motivation to buy and include clear calls to action, this will provide a position of measurement and comparison. If there are certain goals to be achieved linking conversion rates with the number of new customers will give you a clear picture of the growth curve.

Conclusion

Every company has a unique business structure, meaning they have different inbound marketing approaches. The success of a marketing campaign will depend on the contributions of the company sales team, this means you should clearly state your inbound marketing plan and goals to be achieved for better measurements.

The Buyer’s Journey Explained Stage By Stage

August 16, 2021/in Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

As technology advances, the amount of research done prior to making a purchase increases. Because it is so convenient to search for questions and concerns on a smartphone, tablet, or computer, people are becoming more cautious in their purchase decisions and want to be absolutely sure that they make the right choice. That’s why it is a marketer’s job to help this consumer and lead them through the “Buyer’s Journey”.

The Buyer’s Journey is the 3 step process that someone goes through leading up to a purchase decision, comprised of an awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage. In simpler terms, the Buyer’s Journey is the consumer’s procedure before buying a product or service.

No matter what stage your audience is in, including perfect CTAs that lead to a relevant and beneficial content offering is essential. Also read 3 Helpful Tips To Improve Your CTAs.

How to create a buyer persona template for the homebuilder market

July 27, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Homebuilder Marketing, Inbound Marketing /by Mark Beebe

When it comes to marketing to your target audience, using basic demographics, such as age, married status, income, and geography is no longer enough. That kind of information, while helpful, is still too general. Your home building services are going to appeal to certain types of buyers, which means you’re going to need to pinpoint who those buyers are in order to market your brand effectively. To do this, you’ll want to develop a customer persona (also known as a buyer persona).

A customer persona is a representation of everything that makes up your ideal customer. This persona does include some of the information that businesses typically use, such as basic demographics. However, an effective customer persona needs to go beyond just age and geography. The following is a customer persona template to help you better identify who your target audience is:

1. Collect Customer Data

The best way to put together your customer personas is by turning to your actual customers for information. Speak with 5 to 10 of your previous and existing customers. Don’t just speak with customers for whom you built homes. Speak with customers who you may not have completed a deal with, but who you had a good relationship with despite that. In fact, it might be easier to just ask previous and existing customers if they would fill out a survey for you. This way, you can create a survey that asks questions that will provide you with the information you need. Some of the information you should ask these customers include:

How old they are
Why they are (or were) looking to build a new home
What kind of features they were looking for (such as an open floor plan or a garage) and why they needed those features
Whether they’ve owned homes in their past
What they do for a living
What income level they belong to
How often they use social media (and what platforms they typically use)
How they found out about your company (this allows you to identify what channels to target)

In addition to gathering information from your current and previous clients, you can also find a lot of helpful data through your social media channels by studying the behavior of your followers. What kind of questions are they asking? Who else are they following? What kind of content do they share?

2. Create a Personality for Your Customer Persona

Once you’ve collected your customer data, you’ll want to organize it, merging the information you have into distinctive personalities. While you’re going to find that some information is similar (for example, you could find out that the income levels of your customers happen to be very similar), some of it will be different. Because of this, you’ll need to create multiple customer personas.

With multiple customer personas, you’ll be able to personalize your marketing to more effectively target the different parts of your audience. Each customer persona that you create in essence represents a different group of people. Because they’ll potentially have different backgrounds, different goals and different needs, you’ll need to adjust your marketing strategy for each one. Give your buyer personas names to help shape their personality, thereby making a stronger customer persona template.

Some customer persona templates also recommend going beyond demographics and personal background to develop a personality for each persona. For example, some homebuyers may carefully think over every decision they make, while others make more impulsive decisions.

Last, but not least, you should give each persona a name, an age range and a picture. This helps make it easier to figure out ways to reach this persona since it will make you feel like you’re trying to reach an actual individual and not just targeting demographics. This alone should allow you to be more effective at personalizing your marketing efforts.

How does one use buyer persona’s in senior living marketing? Click here!

3. Define the Goals and Needs of Your Customer Persona

As a homebuilder, one of your main priorities should be to position yourself to meet the specific goals and needs of your customers. The goals and needs of your customers are a big part of your customer persona template. Different buyers are going to have different needs. For example, some buyers may be looking to build a home to raise a family in, while others may be looking at the home building process as a short-term investment.

What’s important to understand about your audience is that goals and needs are going to vary depending on certain factors. These factors are often found in the demographics of each customer. For example, different generations tend to have different goals and needs. Someone in their mid-30s that’s just starting a family is likely looking for a house that they can raise their children in. Someone in their 60’s is likely to look for a home that they can age in place in, meaning that it’s designed for convenience and accessibility.

4. Identify the Challenges of Your Customers

Knowing what the challenges of your audience are will allow you to more effectively present your services as a solution. This means understanding what customers didn’t like about previous homes they lived in, what changes they want to make and what their personal preferences are. For example, maybe their last home had a yard that was too big for them to maintain, but they still want to be able to spend time outside on their property. Or maybe the challenge is financial — they have a limited budget to work with, but are expecting to expand their family in the future when their careers are further along. Realizing what these challenges are will make it easier for you to craft a clear and concise brand message to your audience

Understand that a customer persona template isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution — it’s meant to help you better understand who your customers are so that you can identify the homebuyers that would benefit most from the types of services you can provide as a homebuilder. Real estate marketing, after all, is about connecting the right customer to the right property.

How To Nurture Your Leads With Email Marketing

July 16, 2021/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Direct Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Lead Nuturing /by Nicole Wagner

Despite some claims that email is dead, it is still a highly effective way for marketers to connect with consumers. It is an integral part of inbound marketing as well as attraction marketing, and is a great way to send nurture leads throughout the buying process. Here are a few email best practices that will help nurture your leads.

Segmentation

The segmentation of your contacts database will help define your audience into categories. If you are unfamiliar with buyer personas, read about them here, as they will be extremely useful in segmenting your contacts. Segmenting be done in terms of geographic location, company type, role within that company, behavior, marketing intelligence, or any other category that could be valuable to your company. Use segmenting to your advantage by targeting those different groups with useful content based on their specific needs.