Pinfluence Academy for Authors

Pinfluence Academy for Authors

Module 1, Worksheet 1

Defining Your Buyer Persona

Smart authors define their “ideal reader” -- a detailed profile of an example book buyer that represents a real customer. You can think of it as an archetype or avatar of your target customer.

The more specifically you define your ideal reader, the easier (and more effective) your Pinterest marketing efforts will be.

David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly” gives this explanation of what he calls a “buyer persona” (which is just another name for an ideal reader or customer archetype):

“...if we break the buyers into distinct groups and then catalog everything we know about each one, we make it easier to create content targeted to each important demographic. For example, a college Web site usually has the goal of keeping alumni happy so they donate money to their alma mater on a regular basis. So perhaps a college would have two buyer personas for alumni: young alumni (those who graduated within the past 10 or 15 years) and older alumni. Universities also have a goal of recruiting students by driving them into the application process. So the effective college site might have a buyer persona for the high school student who is considering college. But the parents of the prospective student have very different informational needs, so the site designers might build another buyer persona for parents. And a college also has to keep its existing customers (current students) happy. In sum, that means a well-executed college site might target five distinct buyer personas....By truly understanding the needs and the mindset of the five buyer personas, the college will be able to create appropriate content. Once you understand the audience very well, then....you should set out to satisfy their informational needs by focusing on your buyer’s problems and create and deliver content accordingly.”

In this worksheet, your job is to define your own ideal reader.

You may discover, upon trying to develop your ideal reader profile, that you actually have several different profiles (as in the college website example above). If that’s the case, then you need to define each of them as clearly as you can.

You can make this exercise fun as you brainstorm ideas.

Make a game of it! Name your ideal reader, draw pictures, whatever makes it more light-hearted (and potentially more real) to you. I once heard about a company that actually created life-sized cardboard cutouts of each of their ideal customers, which made it easy to keep their key customers in mind when they were create marketing campaigns.

Once you define your ideal reader(s) then you’ll have someone to pin for, which makes the whole Pinterest game a lot more fun and interesting for you as a marketer.

Print out this worksheet, and use the spaces below to write down some notes about your ideal reader(s). Write down everything you currently know, and add to this document as you continue on your Pinterest marketing journey.

Stuck for ideas? If you’re a business owner, think about one of your very favorite clients. It needs to be someone you really enjoy working with – something you think of as one of your best clients.

Or if you know some of your readers, picture someone you think is an ideal buyer for your book. If you don’t have a real human being to picture, then imagine what your perfect reader will look like.

Then describe that person in that worksheet area below.

Ideal Reader Profile #1

Nickname (i.e. Joe the Plumber, Sally the Working Mom, etc.):

Approximate age:

Demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, geography):

What kinds of problems is this person facing (what might you help with?)

What kind of words does this person use to describe this problem?

What kind of content will be useful, helpful, interesting or entertaining for this person?

Other notes and thoughts about this buyer persona: