You often hear about how having buyer personas is important for business. It helps you get to know your market better, they say. If you’re a start-up—or even if you’re not—creating a buyer persona for your business is one of the first things you’ll want to do.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona represents the profile of your ideal customer. It’s also called audience persona, customer persona, or marketing persona.
It is not the same as your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Buyer Persona is more detailed, outlining everything from demographics to needs, interests, buying behaviors, goals, motivations, aspirations, values, and even frustrations. You can even assign a name and a photo to your buyer persona.
Think of your buyer persona as a real person, not a statistical figure.
Here is a legitimate question: “But I have more than one kind of customer. How can I make a buyer persona if I have a lot of different kinds of buyers?”
The key thing to remember is you are profiling your ideal or your best customers. Focus on them. Why? You want to prioritize these ideal customers and focus a big chunk of your sales and marketing efforts on them.
Why is Buyer Persona Important?
- You gain a deeper understanding of what motivates your customer
It’s true what they say: having a buyer persona helps you get to know your audience/customers better. But why do you need to really know your customer? As a seller, you’ll want to know two things: what does your customer need? And what will motivate them to move and buy your product/service?
Knowing how old they are or where they live matters, but it’s not enough to understand what would motivate them to actually purchase what you’re selling.
- You will be able to maximize your marketing strategies
You now know your buyer’s needs, interests, buying behaviors, goals, motivations, aspirations, values, and even frustrations. Can you imagine all the many ideas for content and campaigns that you can generate based on these data? And more importantly: you will be able to create a stronger, targeted, and more effective marketing plan.
This will help you not waste time, money, and resources on weak and ineffective strategies.
- You get more high-quality leads
The more targeted your marketing efforts, the more targeted the audience that you will attract. This means one thing: you will get more qualified leads.
Main photo by Donn Strain from Unsplash
How/Where Do You Gather Information for Buyer Persona?
- Look at your existing and target audience. Ask yourself these questions:
- Who is already buying from you?
- Who is visiting your site? Reading your blogs? Following you on social media?
- Who are your competitors’ buyers?
Your web and social media analytics will help you determine the first two. The third will require more digging: look at competitors’ own website, social media, and campaigns. Have your sales reps do some investigative work too.
- Capture data on your site. When your site visitors opt in to your lead magnets, make sure the form they fill up will have fields that will give you insight on who they are, their occupation/position, their industry, what they do, and what they’re looking for. (Take note: do not bombard them with a 20-point questionnaire!)
- Conduct interviews. You can gather a group of people to interview. These can be existing customers (ideal and even the not so ideal), past customers (again, the good and the bad ones), referrals (from people who know your business), and prospects.
- Ask your sales team. Your sales reps are the ones out there. They would know who the best customers are.
How Do You Create Buyer Persona?
These are the variables you need to identify for your buyer personas:
1. Demographics
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Family Situation
2. Professional Role
- Position / Occupation
- Company
- Industry
- Company Size
- Education
- Responsibilities
- Skills / Knowledge
- Tools used
- Superior(s) and Subordinate(s)
3. Identifiers
- What’s his personality like?
- What’s his communication / interaction style (in-person, email, phone call, etc.)?
- Any other unique identifiers?
4. Buying Behavior and Decisions
- Does he decide on the purchase? (If not, who?)
- Where does he usually buy?
- How does he usually buy?
- How long before he makes a decision to buy?
5. Sources and/or Influences
- What/who does he read and follow?
- What organizations or networks is he affiliated with?
6. Values and Goals
- What does he believe in?
- What does he want to achieve?
7. Challenges
- What are his pain points?
- What are his problems / challenges?
8. Common Objections
- What’s stopping him from purchasing our product / service?
- What are his complaints?
9. Solutions We Can Offer
- What can we do to help him achieve goals?
- What can we do to solve his problems / challenges?
10. Your Value Proposition
Once you’ve identified these variables, you can then sell/market to your buyer persona. Craft your value proposition. This is your message to the buyer to motivate him to purchase. In one or two sentences, your marketing message should address all the data you’ve captured about this buyer persona… and win him over.
Main photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash
