Are you a Joomla developer turned agency owner looking to set your business apart?

Read on to learn about the #1 secret ingredient that your agency's strategy needs to try out -  today!

Joomla: it's a big world. 

Accross the globe, companies and organizations of all sizes use Joomla to create websites that tell their story and engage their audience. In fact, Joomla has now been downloaded over 35 million times!

As Joomla has risen in popularity since it's inception nine years ago, developers have honed their talents and opened the doors to agencies that create powerful websites for diverse clients.

All of this progress has been incredible to watch, and it's pretty incredible to see how far the Joomla community has come. But, with popularity comes saturation.

Any Joomla conference you attend is swarming with agencies. A Google search for the phrase "Joomla Agency" yields six million results:

Needless to say, you've got some competition. In fact, you've got a lot of highly skilled, extensively experienced, marketing savvy competition.

In this highly competitive market, it's essential to leverage any and all opportunities to set your Joomla agency ahead of the pack. 

Selling points like years of experience or low price are great, but they're not truly unique. With enough time and volume of clients, any agency owner can offer the same level of expertise or competitive pricing as you. 

So how can you set yourself apart? Is there a "secret sauce" you can throw in the mix to druly differentiate your agency in the selling process, and bolster the quality of site you deliver?

Of course there is, otherwise this article wouldn't exist! But before we get to it, let me make one more point...

Hold Your Horses

This technique is not a huge time saver. It's not a shiny button you can place on your site to get fast attention. And it's definitely not the latest and greatest, quickly fading trend.

This is a practice that will require you to rethink both your internal marketing strategy, and the process of planning client sites. While it's a big time investment, the payoffs are incredible.

Are you ready to get started? Let's hop to it (or gallop, as horses do):

The Buyer Persona

Have you heard of buyer personas? As an agency owner who spends countless hours pursuing and negotiating with leads, this is one concept you literally cannot afford to overlook. 

If you're in need of a refresher, here's how a buyer persona looks:

In short, a buyer persona is an indepth look at your ideal client. This includes common sense lead information such as:

• Job title
• Size of company
• Industry
• Job resonsibilities, direct reports, etc.

But unlike your traditional target audience concept, the buyer persona dives deeper and details this buyer on a more personal level with points like:

• Age
• Hobbies
• Family
• Pain points
• Personal and professional goals, and their intersection
• Information seeking habits

The purpose of taking this deeper look at the persona is to understand them not only on a professional, but also more friendly level. When we have a better look at who our ideal client is overall, we're infinitely better equipped to effectively market to them and meet their needs in a Joomla site.

How Do I Use a Buyer Persona for My Joomla Agency?

At this point, you may be thinking that the buyer persona seems like a great idea - but you're a little confused on how to implement it. You also may be wondering how a nifty little powerpoint with a few bullets is going to be the catalyst to your agency's big time success.

Stay with me reader, we're getting to the good stuff.

For Joomla agencies, buyer personas present the distinct ability to transform both internal marketing, and client relationships and deliverables. Here's how:

Buyer Personas for Joomla Agency Marketing

In the same way that the Joomla world is saturated with agencies, it's also practically overflowing with potential clients. From local businesses to big enterprises, there is no shortage of sites to build. 

The challenge for the Joomla agency owner lies not in the volume of opportunities, but rather in closing the right opportunities for their team's abilities. Enter buyer personas.

The persona profile allows you to paint a detailed picture of exactly who you're marketing to (demographic/psychographic info), what they want in a partner like you (goals), and how to best reach them (information seeking habits). 

Armed with this wealth of information, you're better equipped to invest in the marketing channels that attract your audience. Furthermore, you can identify an ideal lead when they come along and allocate your energy to the prospects that best fit your abilities. 

Personas are all about working smarter, not harder.

Buyer Personas for Client Work

Once you've leveraged personas as a tool to identify, attract, and convert your ideal customers, it's time to share the wealth! 

Pretty much ever client who comes your way will be able to tell you (on a surface level) who they want their site to reach. A carwash may want great local exposure to parents looking for the best wash at a value; a watch retailer may want to communicate the elegance of their design to a sophisticated bachelor.

Whether they know a lot or a little about their target audience, you can set your agency apart by introducing them to the concept of personas.

Generally, this starts with a discovery interview where you walk them through the benefits and logistics of implementing a site strategy based on buyer personas. Then, you would help them to construct their personas.

If you stumble across something they can't answer ("How would I know which social networks my customers use?!") it's your job to help educate them. If you can't arrive at a factually driven answer between the two of you, simply help them look out for the next time that information might be available (perhaps via customer survey).

Once the client's personas are complete, you utilize them to dictate all areas of building their new site. From navigation to design to launch promotion, each aspect is based on effectively reaching their ideal customer. 

When you have this kind of unique skillset, your agency becomes desirable among the masses of seeminly identical service providers. It's not just years of practice, it's not just a great price - it's a truly unique methodology where you get to holistically know both your customer and their buyers.

Buyer personas help you create sites that don't just look nice, they help your clients smash their goals. You become the kind of agency that people talk about, that rises above, that delivers exceptional results. 

As you can see, there is a lot to love about incorporating buyer personas into your Joomla agency's strategy and client work. Truthfully, this article only scratches the surface of all that can be accomplished with personas and smarter marketing. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about personas, check out this post. 

To learn more insightful tips about running a renowned Joomla agency, check out the free eBook below!