Healthcare vendors need to know their customers backwards and forwards, which is why customer personas are so useful. Yet, although they are easy to create from voice-of-customer research, I find many companies don’t make the most of them. So here are 7 ways to use customer personas.
1) Onboard new employees.
What could be more important for a new employee than understanding your customer? Whether they are in support, implementation, or marketing, they can only benefit from learning more about the people who buy your solution.
That’s why I suggest giving new employees your customer personas during their orientation period. The quicker they understand your customer, the more successful they will be in their role.
2) Train your sales team.
While I firmly believe that knowing more about your customer will yield positive results for any employee, that goes double for your sales team. The very first thing your sales team needs to understand is your customer.
Details like their daily routine, top concerns, and goals are critical pieces of information your sales team needs to close deals. Make sure your customer personas include all these points – and make them available to your sales team.
3) Create messaging that hits home.
You cannot create successful campaigns if you don’t know how to speak to your customer. Luckily, that’s another way your personas can come in handy. They will make it easy to be relevant when you speak with your customer.
With solid customer personas, there is no guesswork involved in creating your messaging. You’ll know what points to emphasize and what issues will attract their attention because all of that is compiled in your personas.
4) Use customer phrases as email subject lines.
One thing I find especially useful when using personas is customer phrasing. I want to know precisely how they talk about the problem. That means the exact words they use when discussing it.
Those words are gold because they are familiar to the customer. And when used in a campaign, they are more likely to resonate and attract attention. That’s why they are great to use as email subject lines.
5) Use customer pain points as basis for blog posts.
Personas include detailed information about customer pain points. They give you a deep-dive into what is on your customer’s mind and what is troubling them.
Once you know your customer’s pain points, you can easily address them in your blog posts. Craft posts around a single pain point or do a series. This gives you an opportunity to address fears your customer hasn’t yet voiced. Plus, you can write multiple posts to tackle those concerns from multiple angles.
6) Use top customer concerns for webinars.
When you compile your customer’s pain points, you will usually discern one or two that are their main concern. These are perfect topics for an in-depth exploration, and webinars are a great way to do that.
7) Use customer goals to show your results.
Customer personas should always include information on what constitutes a win to your customer. You want to know how they define success and what their goals are.
From there, it’s easy to show how your solution helps them. Just show the results you get and how they relate to your customer’s goals. Tell them exactly how you can help them get those wins.
Dust off your customer personas.
Customer personas are an incredibly useful part of your marketing toolkit. Make sure you are getting the most out of yours.
Photo by Lyle Hastie on Unsplash.