Buyer Personas, Buyer Profiles & How to Get In Front Of Your Ideal Buyer

There is plenty of evidence that shows the ineffectiveness of digital marketing, but at the core of this supposed evidence is businesses having a poor understanding of their ideal buyers. This poor understanding results in poorly crafted and presented messaging or content which literally makes your prospective ideal buyer switch off on you and all your marketing.

The most powerful key to an effective marketing campaign is to understand the buyer, whether it’s an individual, a business or even the government.

To do this, B2B and B2C business owners need to develop distinct buyer profiles and buyer personas.

A buyer profile provides a better understanding of buyer segments, while buyer personas help you understand the deeper goals, personal values and challenges of the buyers and how these factors influence their purchasing decisions.

The two terms are often used interchangeably, however, they are not the same thing.

As they say in Vietnam….

Same same, but different!

Now, let’s dig a little deeper!

I would say the primary difference is a function of the level of contact; the buyer’s persona is a personal representation of a prospect, while the buyer’s profile focuses on a prospect’s company and is used to describe a prospect’s actual business.

Here are some definitions that may help…keep reading…I’ve got examples too.

BUYER PERSONAS

A buyer persona is a quasi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. Should you not have any existing customers yet, a buyer persona would be based on your best fit demographic.

Your unique selling proposition lies in the detail, so try to be as detailed as possible.

When done well, buyer personas help you hone your messaging, find gaps in your offerings, and provide the ability to strategically approach pain points your customers struggle with in your message delivery.

Here’s an example of an ideal buyer persona:

• Age — Between 30–50 years old
• Family — Kids under 18
• Lives in a metropolitan city
• Family first values
• Business Owner
• College Educated
• Owns a smartphone
• Enjoys networking
• Has an active lifestyle
• Uses online resources for every aspect of their life from grocery shopping to choice of schools for the kids.

BUYER PROFILES

A buyer profile is a more precise description and usually describes the actual company that you would like to do business with. It represents the type of company that would be a good fit for your product or services. Features to consider include company size, industry and budget.

Here’s an example of an ideal buyer profile:

• Companies with at least 50 and no more than 1,000 employees
• Annual revenue of at least N100m
• Businesses that are not technically proficient but current phase of business requires efficient technology solutions
• They need to be able to scale quickly and cost-effectively as their needs arise
• Having headquarters in Lagos or other metropolitan cities in Nigeria
• Our clients’ customers are consumers, not other businesses

I am sure you are pretty confused at this point — well that’s normal. I guess I would be confused too if I didn’t do this for a living…

…so here are quick examples of how basic background information for buyer personas and buyer profiles should look.

Buyer Persona: Aida is a 31 year old CEO, who founded her cosmetics company four years ago. She would like to scale her business in 2018 using digital marketing but doesn’t know how to go about it or the kind of results that she can achieve.

Buyer Profile: AIDA Cosmetics is a Lagos based manufacturing company that specializes in premium beauty products. The company employs 140 workers and is available in beauty stores nationwide, with current annual revenue of between N100m- N180m.

WHAT NEXT?

We now know that B2C businesses absolutely need to develop buyer personas, but should B2B businesses do both buyer persona development and buyer profiling? Of course! This is crucial to understanding how each marketing approach should be designed to achieve each distinct purpose of your prospect’s business.

So get cracking and create your buyer personas and profiles.

Once done make sure that your business model and marketing strategies fit the ideal buyer personas and buyer profiles and then you can pretty much sit back and watch as high-quality and precisely-targeted leads pour in.