In my last blog I began a conversation about marketing personas – why you need one, what they are, how you might use a persona, and what the implications are for your content marketing. It’s all very well to talk about the theory of something but it occurred to me that it might be helpful to see what a persona actually might look like, so this I thought I would share with you the persona I’ve developed for the Crossman Communications ideal client.

I would like to introduce you to Jim, Our Ideal Content Marketing Client.

Demographics:

• He is a 57-year-old married man living in a large North American city
• He earns a comfortable living from a successful manufacturing business that he has either built from scratch or taken over from his father
• He has two children who are finished with their education and who have left home
• He is university educated, and he has a degree in Life
• Since graduating from university, he has never seriously worked anywhere other than in the business he has been building for the past 34 years

Day-to-Day

• A typical day starts around 6:00 am with a cup of good coffee, a run-down of the headlines and a review of any emails that have come in overnight
• Home is a comfortable residence in a nice neighbourhood that Jim shares with his wife, Laura (who works part-time as a nurse) and an aging dog, Hank, who has been with the family for 12 years
• Jim has two vehicles – a Ford pickup truck that is useful around the plant and a Cadillac CTS that is an absolute delight to drive on weekends
• Jim and Laura take two good holidays every year – once in the early spring and once in late fall
• Fun is about getting together with friends for a barbecue or poker night, seeing the kids when they come home, meals out, watching hockey
• Jim is intense about his work but he has a good sense of humour. He is not particularly interested in spiritual conversations and will go to church on occasion, although Sundays tend to be a day for sleeping in a little and getting some rest if possible, and maybe spending some time by the pool

Pain

• Jim has worked hard his whole life to build his company to where it is today. It’s been tough but he has created a good measure of success. Now he wants to break through to a new level of revenue. He wants to double earnings and he isn’t sure how to go about it. He knows it involves marketing, an area he hasn’t invested a lot of time and energy into developing. His team is great at sales, though
• His pain, therefore, is that he needs to get some marketing but he doesn’t understand how this brave new world of online marketing works – it seems very confusing
• He doesn’t know how to go about hiring someone to do the marketing for him, or how to assess if the person offering marketing services is going to do a good job
• He knows he has to start soon – in fact this should have been on the radar a year or more ago—but he’s so busy he is feeling overwhelmed right now
• He wants some help – but who should he trust?

Goals

• Set up a content marketing program that will tell his company’s story to the people who need what he’s selling
• Improve his company’s search engine rankings
• Reach a wider audience
• Generate more revenue

Other

• Jim’s company website was set up by a friend’s cousin three or four years ago
• He has a profile on LinkedIn for some reason
• He thinks Twitter and Facebook are silly
• His business has some videos up on YouTube that they shot in order to show the equipment and the plant

Because I know Jim, more or less personally, I think about him every time I write something for my business. I have given Jim’s information to the graphic designer who creates visual content for my business (including the new website I’m investing in), and anyone else who might create marketing materials for us. I don’t have to have a long drawn-out conversation with anyone I hire to service my business – I just hand them Jim’s persona details and they know immediately who I would like to have conversations with about the services my business provides. It is so simple. I like simple.

If you would like to connect with me to find out more about how Crossman Communications can help you tell your business story through your online content, please connect with me directly at susan@crossmancommunications.com. If you’re in a hurry, book yourself in right away for a free consultation at www.meetme.so/susancrossman.