How to Identify the Target Audience and Create Buyer Personas for Your Business?

Today successful companies have one thing in common: They are strongly customer-focused and heavily committed to marketing. What is marketing? Many people think and believe marketing is selling and advertising of products and services. Indeed, selling and advertising is only the tip of the marketing iceberg. The twofold goal of marketing is to attract new customers by promising superior value and to keep and grow the current customers by delivering satisfaction.

Marketing term has many definitions and the one stands out is: Creating values for customers and building customer relationships in order to attain value from customers in return. Marketing is the satisfying customer needs.

Marketing model is based on the five-step marketing process. In the first four steps, marketers understand customers, create customer value, and build strong customer relationships. In the fifth step, companies get the reward of creating customer value. The reward in turn is sales, profits, and long-term customer equity.

The Five-Step Marketing Process are:

1. Understand the Marketplace and customer needs and wants
2. Design a Customer-Drive Marketing strategy
3. Construct an Integrated marketing program that delivers superior values
4. Build profitable relationships and create customer delight
5. Capture Value from customers in return

So, the marketing model is unable to reap the reward if it doesn’t have the identified target audience in first four steps.
Defining a target audience might feel constraining but it enables you spend your time and money on potential customers. The identification of target audience saves your money, energy, resources, and time on unprofitable audience. Here’s an example of how identifying the potential audience had made the Best Buy $10 billion more in sales.

Electronics retailer Best Buy had generated a “Customer-Centric” strategy that distinguishes its best customers (they call angels) and less profitable customers (called demons). The aim was engaging more with the angels and ditching the demons.

Best Buy analysed its data and identified the customers who fit in angels and demons group. Even Best Buy identified its angels group into further five segments: “Barrys,” high-income group, suburban moms; “Buzzes,” male technology enthusiasts; “Ray,” young family men on a budget; and small business owners. They aligned they retail stores based on these customer-centric segments. Best Buy then trained store clerks in the art of serving the angels and exorcising the demons. So, all this happened with the right audience identification and targeting.

Audience targeting help in identifying their problems and how do they feel that will enable you communicate and engage with the segment more deeply.

Do the Following to Identify the Target Audience:

1. Research: Start with competitors analysis and current clients. You can use various online competition research tools like semrush, spyfu, keywordspy etc.
2. Geographic: Identify the location of your potential customers. Try segmenting them on the best applicable location criteria like the following:

• Continent
• Country
• State
• City
• Town

1. Demographics
2. Positions: Identify the job titles and positions of your potential customers. Below is the list of various positions of a corporations:

• Administrative Services Manager
• Advertising Manager
• Assistant Director
• Chief Executive Office
• Chief Financial Officer
• Chief Information Officer
• Chief Marketing Officer
• Chief Operations Office
• Chief Resources Officer
• Chief Security Officer
• Chief Technology Officer
• Chief communications Officer
• Compensation & Benefits Manager
• Construction manager
• Director
• Distribution manager
• Engineering Manager
• Executive Director
• Executive Vice President
• Financial Manager
• Food Service Manager
• Gaming Manager
• General Counsel
• General Manage

1. Married and Parental Status

• Married
• Unmarried
• Other
• Father
• Mother
• Childs

1. Age: Identify the age group of your target audience. It’ll help in tailoring offers and promotional messages.

• 20–30
• 30–40
• 40–50
• And so on.

1. Use Survey Forms: Use survey forms on your business website and third party platforms like Facebook to gather the information about your target audience. Survey forms and tools:

• Surveymonkey
• Google forms
• Quarloo

1. Sales Team Feedback: This is one of the most important sources of getting potential audience information. Ask your sales team about clients queries, concerns, quotes, time period before conversion , etc.

What is the information you need to gather to build a targeted and successful buyer personas. Below is the list of questions you can ask from your potential customers as per your business need:

• Role

1. Your Job Title
2. Your Skills
3. What Tools and Resources you use at this job role?
4. Do you report to someone and to whom?
5. How do you feel about your company culture?
6. What are the day to day basis responsibilities of your job?

• Company

1. Size (staff strength, turnover, fortune list, etc)
2. Industries in which your company work?
3. Competitors of your company?

• Goals

1. Who define the goals for you?
2. What are the goals for this job role?
3. What are the coincidences of not being fulfilling the goals?

• Challenges

1. What are biggest threats of this job?
2. How challenging is this job role?
3. What do you overcome with the challenges?

• Learning:

1. How do you keep your informative about industry insights, trends, competition etc?
2. To whom you follow for blogs, publications, and read.

• Social:

1. Do you use any social networking site?
2. What are your social associations?
3. How do you hangout on weekends?
4. Have you joined any social club?

• Education:

1. Your Highest Education?
2. Your school and college name?
3. Do you read books?

• Shopping Preferences

1. Do you prefer to interact with agents and how (e.g. email, in person, call)?
2. Do you research vendors online?
3. How do you evaluate vendors?
4. Have you done any recent purchase and how did you end up with that vendor?

Make a template in the spreadsheet and use that for building your customer profiles. You can download the template of “Buyer Personas” from the following link:

Download Free Buyer Persona Template Here

Originally published at roiminds.com on July 24, 2016.