How To Create A Buyer's Persona: Step-By-Step Guide
Do you ever come across a brand’s messaging on social media and think to yourself, “this was written for me.” or “they get me!”? Well, it’s because the brand in question has made an effort to understand who you are exactly and what would make you inclined towards engaging with their content.
The term “buyer persona” was coined in the ’90s and has been a crucial part of most business strategies since then. Yet, you’ll be surprised by how many people still don’t get it right.
In this article, I’ll walk you through how you can create effective buyer personas that can bring significant ROI into your marketing and sales operations.
What is a Buyer Persona & Why does it Matter?
A buyer persona is a detailed sketch of your company’s ideal customer. Companies create a fictional personality that depicts their target audience based on factors like demographics, age, interests, profession, gender, and more. Companies also deep dive into their ideal buyer’s pain points, needs, buying behavior, and goals.
A quick Google search will tell you that crafting a buyer persona is the very first step your business needs to take before kickstarting any inbound marketing campaigns. Above all, your marketing efforts need to be aligned towards targeting an audience that has higher chances of converting into your customers.
Moreover, having a proper buyer persona in place will guide all business activities that aim to achieve customer acquisition and retention goals. For example, to communicate effectively with a client, a sales rep must know exactly who they’re talking to. Similarly, your content creation team needs to understand their target audience before creating valuable content for them. Stats suggest that targeted content marketing initiatives increase website traffic by 210%.
It’s not possible to know each of your existing and prospective customers personally, but you can still create detailed personas that quite accurately mirror your target audience. Let’s see how...
Step-by-Step Guide on How to Create Buyer Personas
1. Conduct thorough Audience Research
If you have existing customers, it’s best to start with researching them first since people who are already buying from you are your ideal customers. You can request them to fill a survey wherein you can ask them to share their personal details, why they’re buying from you, what problems they’re facing, etc. Your CRM team can also find useful insights through one-on-one conversations with your customers.
You can also look into your website visitors using Google Analytics and find out their age group, gender, location, etc. Sign-up forms are a great way of capturing valuable visitor information. You can find out about a person’s profession, company size, job title, etc. Your sales team probably talks to prospective customers regularly, so you can ask them for traits/details/interests they observe in most people they interact with.
Another great option is to look into the audience that your competitors are targeting using tools like Buzzsumo, Hootsuite, SEMrush, etc. You can also assess your competition’s marketing efforts to determine who they’re targeting.
2. Fill in Buyer Persona Details
Once you’ve compiled all the required details, it’s time to create customer personalities. In order to draft accurate sketches, keep in mind that your ideal persona is someone who will find considerable value in purchasing products from you.
Make sure that your buyer persona includes:
- Age
- Language
- Gender
- Location
- Profession
- Company Size (if you’re a B2B company)
- Interests
- Financial situation
- Goals
- Pain points
- Challenges or roadblocks
Apart from these essential pointers, it is also beneficial to find out where your customers spend their time online so you know how to reach out to them. Find out their preferred social media platforms or any specific communities they actively engage in.
If you come up with multiple buyer personas, you can segment them based on industry, profession, company size, etc.
3. Give more Details to your Persona
The previous step is essentially about organizing the information you’ve gathered so far. For a more nuanced sketch of your ideal customer, you’ll need insight into their psychology. For example, you need to discern the barriers, challenges, and hassles your customers face regularly.
Say, for example, that you’re an app development service provider. When it comes to the services you offer, what are the procurement issues your customers encounter? What knowledge or awareness do they lack? Do they face any financial roadblocks?
More importantly, what are their goals or objectives in getting app development outsourced from a third-party vendor?
Finding answers to the above questions will bring you to the most important query: how can you help your customers? Answer this question in a clear and precise manner, and you should have a perfect buyer persona in your hands!
Are there any Types of Buyer Personas?
The fact that creating buyer personas is an intricate process is concerning for many businesses, especially if you’re a beginner. At times, you might also feel that there’s no need to get into such elaborate details about your customers. This is why it’s natural for you to search for a quick fix when creating personas.
Many marketers look for ready-made persona types online that they can somehow adjust into their business. Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to finding out who your ideal customer is. Every business is unique, and most small to medium-sized companies these days try to target very specific customer types in their industry to bump up their conversion rates.
However, I can give you multiple buyer persona examples to help you better understand what your final sketch can look like.
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