What Is A Buyer Persona, and How Do You Create One For Your Business?

Okay, so let’s say you’ve finally figured out an exquisite product to sell or an outstanding service to offer. What then?

Selling a product or service is a bold move, indeed. Properly running a business, however, is a different thing. The marketing efforts you exert, as well as the resources you invest, could be extensive. This is specifically true since you must be consistent and committed — from acquiring hot leads to having them buy your products or services.

To succeed in your business goals, you need to tirelessly innovate your processes and endlessly expand your platforms. To stand out in your chosen industry, you need fresh ideas and ingenious approaches. Before all this begins, you must create a buyer persona.

Buyer Persona 101

“You just can’t please everybody” — as cliche as it may sound, this is unquestionably true in most instances, even in business. This is why if you’re a business owner, and you’re mindlessly trying to sell to everyone on social media, per se, you’re dragging your company into rubble.

There are tons of business niches because there are various types of customers. There are various customers because there are several human needs. There are many consumer needs because usually these are just disguised as wants. The cycle goes on, and it’s seemingly endless. The great news is that there’s an effective way to save your business from failing and getting lost in this chaos — the buyer persona.

Simply put, buyer personas are your ideal customers. These are visualizations and projections of your potential customers. These aren’t merely your desired or target audience though; buyer personas are identified through qualitative and quantitative data.

Then on the other side of the coin, there are the so-called “negative” personas. These are individuals who maximize your customer care service, utilize your free trial offers, or subscribe to your newsletters, and still end-up not purchasing from you.

The Power of Unraveling Buyer Persona

Mark W. Schaefer, a marketing strategist and keynote speaker, stated that 3–4 buyer personas usually account for over 90% of a company’s sales.

The key here is open-mindedly understanding your target customers. Like how detectives put it, to solve a crime, you have to think like a criminal. By trying to wear your customers’ shoes, you’re able to think and decide like them, making you capable of communicating with them more effectively.

Relevant Content

Knowing exactly what your buyer personas are could greatly improve your marketing messages and approaches. Since you’re well-aware of their mindsets, you could enhance and personalize your content marketing. After all, it’s not enough that you approach the right person at the right time, you also have to say the right words. Relevant and beneficial content makes your customers feel valued; hence, it could go a great length in nurturing and retaining them.

Efficient Marketing

By fully understanding your targets and goals, you get to tailor-fit your marketing strategies, making these more effective and cost-productive. While the initial stages of creating your business’s buyer personas may be time-consuming and tedious at first, it could help you save your resources in the long run. When done properly and consistently, efficient marketing through buyer persona could define your company’s future.

Innovative Products or Ingenious Services

Since you have a better understanding of your target market’s pain points and desires, you’re more likely to improve the product or service you’re offering. Your buyer persona could lead you to the right track in terms of process improvements and system enhancements. Hence, it could greatly help you to stand out and be remembered.

Define Clear Goals

Then, of course, running a customers-based business is more likely to succeed. Being crystal clear on your goals helps you plan the most ideal and practical strategies. This is why more likely than not, you get to achieve the results and outputs you desire. The more specific and details you go, the better.

Important Aspects to Consider

It can be both straightforward and tricky to understand your customers and create your buyer personas. Several sites and companies offer templates and streamlined programs to do so; however, since there are technically no global standards, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Plus, considering that each business, even those operating within the same niche, is unique, it could get quite challenging.

Nevertheless, to give you an overview, you could start with these basic and commonly used qualifiers.

The Who

You should start by building a list of high-quality leads or generating a list of your current customers. You should always start by determining who your target audiences are. If you could associate real and complete names, you could put greater weight on your raw data. The simplest way to identify the “who” is by using demographic data. Utilize personal identifiers such as age or age bracket, gender or gender preference, location or origin, education or academic qualifications, and occupation or job titles. From there, you can then dig deeper by learning about their backgrounds and preferences.

The What

After specifying the “who”, it’s time to further narrow down your list with the “what”. These are your audience’s wants and goals, as well as their pain points and challenges. You could start from scratch through interviews, surveys, and polls or you could approach your marketing and sales time to pull out some reports and records. The ultimate goal here is to identify and understand their desires and necessities. After all, you want to be their knight in shining armor — someone who can provide exactly what they’re looking for or someone who could cater to their demands. In this stage, you can take the extra mile by learning more about their preferences in terms of communication, payment method, delivery, and the like.

The Why

After figuring out who your target markets are and what you can do for them, it’s time to wrap up this tedious but delicate step-by-step process by establishing their, as well as your, whys. These reasons are vital as these could serve as your core, your backbone, your road map. You could use psychographic data, including personalities, beliefs, principles, and attitudes. Use these details as a drive to improve your products or services; in the same way, give them enough reasons why they should trust your brand. You want to understand their decision-making processes and patterns. Digest how they use your product/service, how they think, and how they buy.

There are several ways of acquiring the aforementioned relevant and beneficial data, including:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Quizzes
• Poll
• Research
• Subscriptions
• Feedback
• Cold call
• Google analytics
• Data and statistics (from your website, your email provider, your sales database, or the like)

Once everything’s settled, you’ve just accomplished the most challenging stages of understanding your business’s buyer persona. You’re now off to the fun part of combining these details to create a clear and sensical picture. Organizing and categorizing these segments have been made easier, thanks to the various readily available buyer persona templates in the virtual marketplace.

Be sure to revisit your ultimate goals when conducting the final processes. What are you specifically trying to achieve at the moment? Do you wish to drive more traffic to your site? Do you merely plan on introducing your brand to a broader market? Do you wish to boost subscriptions? Do you want to increase your sales?

By being clear on your short-term and long-term goals, you’ll know which of the personas you’ve just created should you focus on. The next key step to identifying your business’ buyer persona is determining which of these personas to prioritize.

Now you have a deeper understanding of the buyer persona. You have to bear in mind though, this isn’t just some sort of a business requirement. Do not start creating one only for the sake of having one. To succeed in this marketing persona strategy, you’ll need decisiveness and persuasiveness.

Taking this extra mile could bring your more miles closer to success, but only when done right.

Originally Published On Powerline Leads On December 24th, 2020.