Return on Energy: Understanding Buyer Persona

Rule One: Know who you’re talking to

In online marketing it’s the single most important key to driving marketing return on investment. We can write about creating effective offers, converting leads, and effective keyword strategies all day long. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, it’s all for nothing. So let’s start at square one. Let’s talk about buyer persona.

What is The Buyer Persona?

Understanding buyer persona is getting inside the mind of your customer. You have to understand how they think, what they want from you, and their fundamental personality type. We’re not talking understanding relevant search terms—we’re talking about communicating in a targeted way that appeals directly to the expectations of those you want to do business with. It’s called Return on Energy.

Mojo Media Labs is powered by Return on Energy. There’s even a little button in the footer that says so. Developed and written by our CEO Mike, It’s our secret sauce it when it comes to delivering results to our clients, because we’re uniquely equipped to understand buyer persona in a way that other agencies aren’t.

We break ourselves and our target prospects into three personality categories:

Applying Buyer Persona to Marketing

The archetypal CEO would be a Way One, the manager a Way Two, and the engineer a Way Three. Idea, plan, action. For us, it allows us understand how to communicate optimally internally and get everyone in the right seat. Applied to buyers, it makes us realize that each method of thinking is going to have unique information and keywords they're looking for when they're trying to learn about the benefits of your product or service. You have to account for multiple Ways of appeal.

This is incredibly effective when planning offers and writing copy. If you're generating online content that's technical and tactical, geared towards the Way 3 thinker, but the decision makers that you want to market to are high-level Way 1 thinkers concerned with results, your material won't be effective. Likewise, if you're marketing productivity software or tools with a high-level overview Way 1 approach, when your direct buyer is a Way 3, then you won't be communicating effectively. That's the challenge when trying to provide marketing results, and it's why many online marketing strategies are designed to fail.

Our Case Study A is an example of results achieved when Mojo started fully using Return on Energy methodology for our clients. We work more efficient with each other and our clients because we understand how to talk to each other effectively, and we drive results by applying the same principles to the way we attract and nurture leads. This unique synergy is what truly sets Mojo apart from other agencies. It's what lets us focus on results, and not get caught up generating one-size-fits-all campaigns.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you communicating in the right Way to your buyer?
• Are you using ROE to communicate efficiently internally?
• Do you understand the expectations and needs of your prospects?

Take a moment to think about your target market, and really consider who is going to be seeing your content, what Way of thinking they represent, and what they're looking for. Use that to determine if you want your marketing collateral to focus on tactical results, strategic results, or business results. That's how you achieve marketing ROI.

Even better, read Return on Energy. Seriously. You'll thank me when it transforms the way you approach business and communication.