Crystal Clear Communications Blog

How should content marketers address different personas? Two roads can be taken:

1.) Some content marketers prepare separate message documents for each buyer persona. But, in effect, they create the ongoing chore of coordinating all these separate messages later on.

2.) Others create one overall umbrella message, then deliver different facets of that message to each of the multiple buyer personas.

I believe it’s essential to take the second approach — create one consistent message with multiple facets. Otherwise you risk confusing buyers about what the benefits really are, particularly if there’s any overlap between buyer personas.

Make sure your content marketing always delivers a relevant message to each persona. So how can you address multiple buyer personas, yet keep the message consistent?

Make message maps the linchpin of your content marketing program. Here’s a blog on how to create a message map for your content marketing.

With an agreed message map in hand, the next step for content marketers is to color-code it by buyer persona. Why?

Economic buyers often don’t care about technical benefits and vice-versa. Don’t waste buyers’ time by telling them the irrelevant facets of your value proposition!

A set of color-coded message maps enables you to deliver only the relevant portions of one consistent message to each buyer persona. A set of message maps helps content marketing and sales stay consistent, no matter who they’re talking to.

Here are some examples of message maps that are color-coded by buyer persona from Tellabs. For its Optical LAN solution, Tellabs color-coded its message maps to separately address:

• economic buyers
• green buyers
• technical buyers.

While some buyer personas have overlapping needs and concerns, others do not. The reason you’ll need one consistent message is that sometimes the technical buyer and the green buyer turn out to be the same person. In a smaller organization, the same buyer may address all 3 sets of needs.

And you should expect the buyers to compare notes about what you’ve promised to each of them.

This blog addresses a question raised in my Content Marketing World presentation, How to Speed the Journey from Content to Cash. Other content marketing questions addressed in this series include:

• How to find the right clients ready for a content marketing journey?
• How does a B2B company start content marketing?
• How to deliver consistent content marketing messages to all buyer personas?
• How to keep content marketing always on message?
• How to link specific content marketing activities to sales?
• How to speed the buyers’ journey to a purchase?
• How to help buyers take the first step in the buying journey?
• How to measure meaningful web traffic and give content marketing the credit for it?
• What content marketing appeals to customers?  What brings them back?

For more information about delivering consistent content marketing via multiple buyer personas, subscribe to our blog.