The Who and Who are you of your Marketing Plan

So, you’ve decided to go ahead and start that small business that you’ve dreamed of for years. It’s scary, for sure! To be successful as entrepreneurs, we can help ourselves by knowing ourselves and knowing who our business is intended to serve. Knowing ourselves, knowing our target market, and knowing how to market can put us on the road to success.

One step on this road to success is to understand buyer personas and brand archetypes. This knowledge will be one of the most important elements of your successful marketing strategy.

So, what is a buyer persona and a brand archetype? One of these has to do with you. The other one has to do with with who you want to buy into your business, literally.

First of all, a brand archetype has to do with you and your business. It is the personality, the Who and the Why and the What of your business. The answers to some simple questions will lead to your brand archetype:

What is the purpose of your business?
Why did you want to start this business?
What need does your business fulfill?
Who needs the services of your business?

The answer to all of these questions will give you the information you need to find your brand archetype. Are you a creator, a lover, or a hero saving the day? Answer the above questions, then visit the helpful websites listed below to learn what archetype defines your specific brand.

https://www.psychologistworld.com/tests/jung-archetype-quiz

https://www.archetypes.com/quiz

https://www.kayeputnam.com/brandality-quiz

Once you know your brand archetype, you’re ready to move on to creating your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a made-up individual who characterizes your ideal customer.

For example, for this article, my buyer persona is Cara. Cara is a 30ish entrepreneur who is starting up her own small business. She desires to be self-employed to have more control over her schedule and more time at home with family. Flexibility is important to her. Family is important to her. Starting her own business where she is the boss will give her this flexibility and time home with family that she desires.

If you’re reading this and are not a 30ish female entrepreneur, that’s okay. You can still benefit from the information. However, I wrote for Cara. Having Cara as my buyer persona gave me someone to picture as I wrote. It gave me certain needs that she wants satisfied in order to write content to help her fulfill those needs. In your business, big or small, understanding your buyer and picturing that person as a real person gives you a target audience which you will then market to specifically.

Knowing your brand archetype helps you understand yourself and your target audience.

In your business, big or small, understanding your buyer and picturing that person as a real person gives you a target audience which you will then market to specifically. In short, a clear understanding of who your buyer is and who your brand is gives you focus in marketing to get the most benefit for your effort and dollar.

By imagining your potential customer through a fictional characterization, you give yourself insight into what motivates someone to buy a product - more importantly, your product.

This then merges with your knowledge of your brand archetype and how your brand meets your buyer’s needs and wants.

For example, Cara needs to market her new business start-up but doesn’t know where to begin. She stumbles across this blog post and is interested to learn about a marketing plan that is guaranteed to bring marketing success. This article is easy to read, provides simple explanations of concepts that she has never heard of before. She reads the blog post, visits the linked websites, discovers her brand archetype and then creates a buyer persona for her new marketing focus. Her first few marketing attempts are successful and she notes a profit for the first quarter of her business year.

Cara needed help with marketing and found it because of a blog post marketed specifically to her. It engaged her, acknowledged her needs and provided information to meet those needs. As a result, her business marketing is working.

By understanding your buyer persona and brand archetype, you will gain insight into your business and buyer, you will gain focus for your marketing efforts, and you will get results through those efforts. In the end, you will have achieved business success.

The statement that knowledge is power holds true in how successful a marketing plan will be. The knowledge of buyer personas and brand archetypes gives power to your marketing plan.