A Buyer Persona is one of those marketing things that everyone says is important, but no one ever explains why, or how you can make one. Buyer Personas are especially valuable in a digital age where you can’t see your customers. They can help make your digital presence and marketing more personal and more effective.
It’s a lot easier to appeal to one person than to a crowd. We’ve talked in the past about how social media (and email) feels like a personal, one-on-one conversation between brand and consumer. Building a buyer persona stems from this fact. Therefore, having a buyer persona helps you to hone in on who you are reaching and who you want to reach.
What are Buyer Personas?
In the simplest terms, a buyer persona is an imaginary person representing all of your customers. This person possesses the most common demographics and interests of your current customer base.
To create a buyer persona, ask yourself: What are your customers’ common denominators? What do they want? What are their pain points? Once you have this information, it can be consolidated into one “person”, and marketing to them makes it easier to connect with the crowd they characterize. You can even name your buyer persona to make them more real and to make the process more fun.
Jim Edwards from Funnel Scripts explains buyer personas as the main character in the story of your company’s customer journey. The narrative your company is telling has to focus on what the customer wants and needs. You are there to help them get where they want to go.
What information do you need to create a buyer persona?
Like any good main character, your buyer persona needs to be well-rounded. They need to have a purpose, interests, goals, and struggles. It’s especially important to know what motivates them so that you can help them to achieve what they desire.
Here are some essential traits for your buyer persona:
- What are their basic demographics? What’s their gender? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their relationship status? Are they educated?
- What do they do for work? What’s their job title and description? More than that, are they a decision-maker? What influence do they have at work?
- What are their interests? Do they have hobbies? What do they do in their free time? Are they part of a community?
- What do they want and why can’t they have? This a big item for figuring out what you can do to help them! What are their goals and dreams? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night?
- Why wouldn’t they buy from you? What’s stopping them from buying from you? What objections might they have?
- How would they prefer to interact with you? Do they use social media? Do they like a particular social media? Is a phone call the best way to reach them?
Once you have all this information, you will have a much clearer image of who your ideal customer is, and you can begin marketing to your audience as though they were that one customer!
A Vital Tip…
Your audience is not made up of only one type of buyer. Different people do business with you for different reasons, so you need to market to them in different ways. Successful companies create multiple buyer personas, one for each segment of their customer base. They can then effectively advertise to each of their buyer types.
Do you already have a buyer persona for your business? If not, it’s time to get started!
