Are you targeting Buyer Personas?
If yes, therein lies the problem.
Last post, we discussed the importance of your Brand. Your brand narrative allows you to understand your messaging to the world. Or more directly, to your ideal customers.
Now that we discussed the brand, let’s talk about those ideal customers, or as I like to call them, your Heroes.
Hero building develops an understanding of your ideal customer’s perspective and how you align with that perspective. How your brand and your products, services, knowledge, experiences, and relationships align to add value for your Hero’s goals.
It is important to understand what motivates your Hero so that you can communicate how you can best support them on their Missions in order for them to fulfill their purpose.
You can read a little bit about my thoughts on General Purpose and Missions for more context.
Why is hero-building important?
Hero building is important because it helps you to adapt your marketing, sales an service efforts to align with the people who are most likely to be interested in your products and services. Notice, I am not talking about targeting, but aligning.
You want to be viewed as a partner to your heroes, not a predator.
Hero Building also helps you to develop a deeper understanding of your customers’ needs and wants, so that you can create products and services that are truly valuable to them.
How to build a hero
To select the hero you need to build, start by understanding your brand. What are your brand values? What makes your brand unique? What are you trying to achieve with your brand?
Once you understand your brand, you can start to think about your ideal customer.
What is their general purpose? If you can create your heroes around their ultimate purpose rather than their job title, you will have a better developed Hero.
Who are they? What are their needs and wants? What are their motivations?
Once you have a good understanding of your ideal customer, you can start to build your Hero. What are they trying to achieve? What obstacles do they face? What are their missions? (Tip: We have many many missions)
Once you understand your Hero, you can start to think about how you can help them. How can your products and services help them to achieve a specific Mission? How can you support them on their journey?
Remember, we are more than products and services. Leverage our expertise and relationships as well to truly help our Heroes succeed.
Use your tribal knowledge to get started
Your tribal knowledge is the collective wisdom of your company. It includes the insights and experiences of your employees from the marketing teams to the sales and service teams. Oftentimes, this knowledge is gated and never makes it from one person to the next, let alone from department to department.
Tribal knowledge can be a valuable resource for hero-building if shared.
Voice of the Customer & Voice of the Market
Customer or market feedback is ideal for Hero Building. It helps you to validate and continue the development of your understanding of your ideal customer.
It allows you to identify areas where your Hero profile may be incomplete or inaccurate. It may also indicate there are enough nuances that you are actually looking at two separate heroes.
Why do all this?
We do this to understand how we can help our customers succeed. If you have belief in your products and services. If you believe you can legitimately help your customers be successful, it’s our responsibility as a product or service provider to understand them.
The PIC Growth Roadmap
