You may be familiar with the term persona mapping, ideal client avatars etc. You know…
“Mary is a 35 year old working mum, living in the suburbs, with a high income and tons of disposable cash… blah blah”.
Persona mapping is a method used by businesses and entrepreneurs to understand their ideal client and customers and better market to them. It’s a technique that goes back decades in the marketing and advertising world. But how can we use persona mapping as entrepreneurs and coaches to help us stand out and attract more ideal clients and customers?
Something I’ve noticed in the industry is that there is a lot of top-level persona mapping going on and that’s just not going to cut it anymore. As coaches, we need to stand out from the crowd, which means we need powerful marketing messaging. And how do we produce powerful marketing messaging? Well, the first and most important step is persona mapping… but persona mapping with a difference… persona mapping with depth!
Persona mapping is more than just knowing your potential clients’ demographic, spending behaviours and goals. It’s way more than that! To successfully attract your ideal client, you must go deeper and this is something I work on with ALL my clients, whether they’re trying to attract their first paying client or have a £100k business already. I like to take persona mapping to deeper levels. I try to really get into the thoughts, feelings & views of my ideal client. I imagine them in scenarios or reflecting on certain challenges/situations & it helps me connect with them. It helps me understand their motivations further, which in turn, strengthens my message.
So what’s the strategy to nail your persona mapping with depth?
I have many techniques that I use with my clients to build powerful persona-mapping skills and one of the most effective strategies is the “So what?” strategy.
It’s super simple but incredibly effective to going way deeper and strengthening your marketing message within minutes!
You start with your regular persona mapping points – things like: demographic info (if relevant), their goals, their fears etc. I like to literally map these out on paper like a big brainstorm or mind-map…
…then you tackle each of these points one-by-one and ask ourself “So what?”
Then keep asking yourself this until you can’t answer it anymore.
Eg. “My ideal client struggles with her marketing”
“So what?”
“Well, it means she’s not making enough sales”
“So what?”
“That makes her feel like a failure & like all her hard work is going to waste”
“So what?”
“She’s on the brink of giving up & going back to corporate (which she hated!)”
I could probably carry on, but I’m sure you get my drift…
Can you see how by going deeper into that top-line persona point, gives me so much to play with when it comes to my marketing message & content?! So your generic top-line message that might be falling flat with your audience, suddenly becomes much more powerful and your potential ideal clients feel seen!
So what do you think to this notion of persona mapping with depth? Will you give it a go?
If you’d like more strategies to make this exercise even more powerful, I have a free download of journal prompts you can use to get way more connected to your ideal client and make your messaging way more powerful and effective. You can download it here.