The current market landscape has created a paradigm shift in customer behaviour across various business industries. It has indeed been an unpredictable time – and that is putting it lightly. With the chaos that comes with it, customers are changing drastically.
How are you keeping up?
What worked a few years back might not work anymore. Times are changing, and so are the customers. As leaders, we may need to unlearn what we have done in the past to keep up with the changes.
Your customer persona should adapt as your business continues to grow. It should reflect your new market, your customers evolving needs, your developing business and changing landscape.
No specific off-the-shelf strategy tells businesses how they should develop customer personas. You may be continuing to deal and communicate with your customers the same way, but the chances are they have already shifted. Therefore you need to revisit and re-evaluate your strategy and customer personas.
Why should you update your customer personas?
Your business is evolving.
You need to align your business goals, objectives, and marketing strategy to match your evolving business. With new competitors entering the market, you should differentiate yourself from them and target customers differently. As your business continuously evolves, the same old thinking might not work anymore. Ask yourself if the current personas are still relevant to the future path your company wants to take.
You want to explore a new market.
As your business grows, you may want to tap into a new market and therefore, you will need to add to new segmented audiences and personas. With that, you need to pivot your GTM strategy to fit the new market you want to explore – and you should profile your customers before reaching out to them.
You need to adapt to your changing market.
How your customers are interacting with business is drastically changing. How are you keeping up with the growing needs of your customers and their changing behaviours? You need good insights on your target customers to adapt to the changing market (such as their needs, challenges, and motivations). Use this data to create opportunities for your business and address their complex needs.
You’re driving less traffic and leads.
Your very own data and analytics might be sending you signals on lower engagement on your marketing and sales campaigns and are less interaction with your brand. Data can often point where you might be missing something, but sometimes it is how you communicate with your customers that needs to change.
To drive more leads, you need to adapt to their language and communicate with them the way they want to. If you are still doing it the same way and the market is not responding, you may need to evaluate your overall strategy.
Customer personas make up one of the essential parts of your strategy – so you should spend time evaluating if they still suit your market on a regular basis. They are crucial in the overall customer journey, and they enable you to create a personalised strategy for each stage of it.
Your customers do not stay the same – so why should your personas?
What can you do to keep up?
Updating your customer personas gives you a clearer picture of what strengths, pain points, and challenges you need to address in your business.
Remember that your personas are essential in creating success in your organisation because they enable you to tailor your product offering, brand, and strategy to suit your ideal customer and amplify your messaging.
Times are changing, and so are your customers. Give your personas an update similar to what we do at Ellivate. We use DISC profiling to identify typical traits of different personas. This allows us to profile target customers and create tailored messaging in our marketing and sales conversations that is appropriate to each persona – and we think you should also do the same.
You can read more about DISC here.
We can also help you ensure that you tap the right market with the right strategy. Book a meeting, and let’s have a conversation to see how we can help. For more information, visit our website at www.ellivateconsulting.com.
About Ellivate
Ellivate is the expert partner helping organisations and their go-to-market team’s scale.
Our powerhouse team of industry experts – with a combined 60 years of experience across the fintech, corporate and technology spaces – will work alongside your business to achieve your goals.
We have a shared passion for working with businesses to achieve rapid growth and apply an authentic, human layer of expertise that addresses the real challenges and concerns at the heart of your business.
We will work alongside you as a trusted and expert partner. We get in the trenches and ensure every solution is embedded within your business.
