MAKE YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY PERSONAL:

Particularly in B2B digital marketing, it's easy for leaders and managers to forget the ultimate purpose of their marketing strategies. That is, they often forget the "who" behind their marketing strategy.

Inbound marketers live in a world of analytics that track open rates and social shares, hits and visits, clicks and conversions, but in the midst of all those metrics, it's easy to forget that each one of these online interactions (with rare exception) is actually another human: a human with tasks, worries, distractions, fears, hopes, pains and passions.

Of course, no modern marketer can concern herself with the distractions and fears of every single site visitor - but there's something to be said for empathy.

And that empathy is critical to your marketing strategy in the form of buyer personas. We've already covered the basics of buyer personas in a human-to-human (or H2H) marketing strategy, but now it's time to dive deeper into what makes personas tick - not only in connecting you to your prospects and customers, but also in driving new business to your door.

You might have the best marketing strategy in the world, but without accurately targeting the right persona, your strategy is useless.

A well-defined persona narrows your target to the precise buyer your business is looking for, and more importantly, it eliminates and repels the buyers who are less than ideal.

Many companies stick to the outdated outbound advertising formula that requires you get your message out to as many people as possible, as frequently as possible and as loud as possible. This model simply doesn't work anymore - whether you're selling cars, business software solutions or frozen yogurt.

Instead, by counter intuitively excluding large numbers of people from your marketing strategy, you realize more success because your message connects with your ideal buyer on a more personal, pain-solving level. This personal connection isn't just heartwarming, either - it's also profitable.

So, when crafting a buyer persona for your marketing strategy, don't just toss some vague demographic data and a stock photo onto a PowerPoint slide. Instead, narrow your persona further: Define his or her pains, passions and distractions; create a story about his or her background, education and career development; interview past clients or current customers to further flesh out the details of your persona.

Rarely has a business excessively narrowed its buyer persona. Conversely, companies often choose a target that's far too wide - and end up achieving far too little.

Personas also help you avoid a common marketing strategy mistake: marketing to yourself. Just because the website design, social media campaign or e-book offer looks enticing to you doesn't mean your prospects or customers agree. Having a well-defined buyer persona to measure your messaging against helps you avoid this mistake and produce only content that connects with your intended persona.

The ultimate power of buyer personas lies in their storytelling capacity. Even the fictional or narrative aspects of your personas should inform your efforts by helping you develop empathy with your prospects. Then, with your ideal buyer defined, all your marketing strategy has to do is connect that persona's story with the narrative of your product or solution.

And, when your marketing strategy makes that human-to-human connection, you'll be glad you invested the effort.