How to Create Buyer Personas for Your Business

And Why You Need Them to Grow Sales and Leads

In order to successfully sell to your customers, you need to know who your customers are. We recently talked about the importance of the buyer’s journey, or the progression of a potential customer through a framework that ends with, ideally, a sale.

But to get the buyer through this journey and purchasing your product, you need to understand who they are and what’s important to them. The more you know about your ideal buyer and what kind of information they need to make a purchase, the more personalized your content can be.

WHY YOU WANT TO CREATE BUYER PERSONAS

As an example, Small Business Trends reports that 74 percent of millennials find video helpful when comparison-shopping. So, if your buyer is from younger generations, you should include videos of your product, showing it from all angles and in use, since younger buyers are more likely to buy a product they can see.

The more you know about your buyer, the more tailored your content can be. And for businesses that work in a local region, like the Roanoke Valley, this is exceptionally important. Buyers from different geographies will move through their journey different. You wouldn’t expect a buyer in New York City to make their purchases the same way a buyer from Blacksburg, Virginia would, right? Of course not. You want to make sure that you know what buyers from your region want to know about or need to see in order to make a purchase from you, their local vendor.

Not sold on the idea? What if I told you that data management company NetProspex was able to increase visit duration by 900% and increase marketing-generated revenue by 171% - all by basing it’s website on buyer personas.

Interested now?

HOW TO CREATE YOUR BUYER PERSONA

Creating a buyer persona takes time and research, but it’s well worth your effort if you want to increase sales and leads.

STEP ONE: LOOK INTO YOUR OWN DATA

The first place you should look for information about your customers is your own data. Your analytic tools, on your website and your social media sites, can give you insight into where you buyers are from, their age, their gender, their occupation, their interests, language, income, buying behavior and life stage. You can find this information through Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights.

Compile all the data you have into a spreadsheet and start looking for patterns. If you find holes in some of your data, say occupations or interests, then move on to step two.

STEP TWO: CONDUCT SURVEYS

If you can’t find the data you need on your customers, why not just ask them?

Offer a discount or coupon code or small free gift to customers who are willing to take a 15 or 30 minute survey, depending on how much information you need. You can print the survey link at the bottom of every receipt or, if you have customers who order product online, you can add it in the confirmation email they get after they order.

STEP THREE: CHECK OUT THE COMPETITION

Once you get all the data you can about your customers, you should check out who is following, buying from and interacting with your competition. Are they customers you want to have as well? Then you need to get information about them. Why do they like your competition? What pain points are your competition solving for them? Get all the information you can about this buyer group too.

STEP FOUR: PUT IT TOGETHER

Now you need to compile everything together. Look at all the data you’ve found and split it into several different personas. Create a persona by writing down:

• Age
• Occupation
• Family dynamics (Do they have a spouse? Kids? Elderly parents? Pets?)
• Annual income
• Level of education
• Location (Where do they live? Where do they work? Do they commute?)
• Interests
• Personality type (Social butterfly? Homebody? Somewhere in-between?)
• Political leanings
• Motivations (Why do they do the things they do? For recognition? Reward? Out of fear?)
• Social media inclinations (Do they prefer Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Pinterest? LinkedIn?)
• Words to describe them (Organized? Hardworking? Practical? Flighty? Severe? Daydreamer?)

Then you need to work on the biggest parts of their persona:

• What are their goals in life?
• What are their values?
• What are the challenges they face?
• What are their pain points?

You should also write a short bio about the persona that distills everything you’ve compiled above. You should pick a name and maybe even find a picture. You want this to feel like a real person.

And then you do this for each of your personas that you categorized from your data.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR BUYER PERSONAS

Now you have several very detailed personas of the audience you are trying to market to. What do you do with them?

You use these personas to create all of your content, from your ads to your website to your blogs to your social media posts. Every time you write something for your business, you need to imagine you are writing it specifically for these select people.

This will make your marketing more targeted, more streamlined. It’ll get rid of the fluff and the parts that don’t speak to your audience. Instead of just throwing facts into the void, you’ll be speaking directly to a friend in a way they understand and appreciate. You’ll be telling them a story they can interact with, instead of monologuing at them from a stage.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Creating quality, robust buyer personas is no small task. It takes a lot of time and a lot of research. But if you get it right, and then use them to influence the rest of your content strategy, your ROI will be outstanding. They’ll help you write more targeted content, find content topics more easily and ensure your marketing strategy speaks directly to the people you want buying from you.

If you want to learn more about how content marketing can help you grow and thrive, check out my other articles on Medium.

Anastasia Voll is a content marketing strategist who specializes in helping women entrepreneurs find their voice and attract their ideal clients.

You can learn more about her and how to work with her at www.vollcontentmarketing.com.