Knowing your audience is the main prerequisite for a thriving business. Buyer personas, ideal customers, and target groups are only few of the frameworks a company uses to profile potential prospects. In this article, we’ll discuss the ways in which you can define your attendee personas to achieve better results from your brand events.
Whether you’re creating the copy for your new website, writing a lead magnet, or designing an email campaign, you’ll always want to focus your message on the end receiver or the prospect you want to connect with.
Tailoring your messages or your solutions to your leads’ wants and needs increases your chances of getting their attention and lays the foundation for building meaningful connections with them.
In other words, knowing who your buyer personas are is the first step to building an impactful business. The same thing works for your events. You shouldn’t just run events for anyone who wants to attend. On the contrary, you’ll want to know the exact profile of your ideal attendees and their expectations.
What’s the difference between a buyer persona and an attendee persona?
According to HubSpot, “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”
Personas will sustain your marketing efforts and give you the necessary framework and understanding you need to design critical a content strategy, a conversion funnel, a sales follow up, etc.
To create these buyer personas, you’ll want to focus on their backgrounds, demographic details, and main identifying characteristics.
Learn about:
- buyer persona’s age
- job
- living conditions
- salary
- communication preferences
- demeanor
- etc.
This information should give you enough data to craft a strong marketing strategy that speaks directly to those people whose attention you want to grab and maintain.
Your attendee persona, on the other hand, is the semi-fictional representation of your ideal event guest. You might be wondering if the buyer persona and the attendee persona can be the same.
They definitely can; however, there’s some specific information you’ll want to identify about your ideal attendees before planning the event or sending out email invitations.
Here’s a list of things you’ll want to know about your attendee persona for better results:
Content-related interests
Events are powerful knowledge hubs that gather people from all walks of life who are ready to learn. Having access to fresh industry insights and relevant information is one of the reasons people attend events.
The list of your speakers and event topics is a powerful incentive for people to actually register for and attend your event. So when profiling your audience persona, it’s crucial to understand your ideal attendee’s content-related interests.
What are the key topics your audience wants to talk about? What do your guests want to learn about? These are only few of the questions you’ll want to ask yourself.
To find the answers, you’ll have to analyze your content marketing strategy (if your company has one), talk to your existing clients, and scope out social media to identify topics that interest your potential attendees.
This should give you the necessary information to build an attractive agenda for your guests.
Specific challenges
When designing the content for your event, you’ll also have to identify your attendee personas’ specific issues and burning pains.
If you can provide solutions to those issues and pains during your events, you’ll strengthen your brand’s perceived value of and connect much better with your attendees.
The best way to find out your personas’ issues and burning pains is by going straight to the source. Go talk to your leads.
Have a few in-depth interviews and ask them questions such as: “What’s the hardest part about doing … (introduce here the specific action you’re interested in uncovering)?” “How do you feel about this problem?” “What would be the benefits of solving this challenge?” “What are the risks of not solving this issue?”
Their answers will help you design a value-packed event along with craft attractive copy for your event website.
Networking preference/style
How do your attendee personas like to interact with other people? According to the 2018 Global Meetings and Events Forecast, published by American Express, some attendees like to use an event mobile app to connect with other people during the events, while others are social butterflies who seek opportunities for interaction during the breakout sessions.
When designing your event, you’ll want to know how your attendee personas like to interact.
Do they prefer to connect with other guests during the coffee breaks, or do they prefer to have a more restricted networking experience, facilitated by a professional, or maybe they want to schedule their own meetings during using a B2B matchmaking platform? Find out the answers to these questions and then design your event accordingly.
Motivation to attend
Another important piece of information you’ll want to collect when profiling your attendee personas is their main reason for attending an event. Maybe they’re interested in the networking opportunities, or they simply just want to get to know your brand better.
For example, the brand fanatic will be interested in accessing unique brand-centric experiences and product information, while the inspiration seeker will want to attend events that provide highly motivational content, powerful keynote speakers, and 1:1 coaching sessions.
Knowing exactly why your attendee personas want to attend an event will help you design the right experiences for them.
Use of technology
Finally, you’ll want to identify if your attendee personas are tech-savvy or not, which will help you craft the right tech experience. For example, you can ask attendees to use an event mobile app to connect with other people or answer live poll questions.
You can also ask them to participate in a photography contest on Instagram and come up with the best hashtag for your event.
On the other hand, if you discover that your attendee personas aren’t tech-savvy, you’ll want to reduce their interaction with different digital tools and focus more on in-person experiences.
Final thoughts
Since your company operates based on different buyer personas, you know exactly who your events will be for. However, when it comes to designing a user conference or a roadshow, you’ll want to take one step forward and actually map the attendance characteristics of these buyer personas, profiling them as attendee personas. This will help you plan the ideal experiences for them and make your event appealing to attend.
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