How to Create Buyer Personas for Your Business

What do you know about your target market? This is an important question and one that some business owners struggle to answer. It’s good to have a basic knowledge of your ideal consumer, but it’s even better to create buyer personas. What are buyer personas? You’re going to learn everything you need to know in this guide!

What’s a Buyer Persona?

Using research and other data, a buyer persona is a general depiction of your ideal customer. Who is your ideal customer? How do they spend their time? How do they make decisions? What are their main pain points? If we have answers to these questions, it’s easier for us to appeal to our consumers in the right way.

Eventually, the idea is to create several different buyer personas because it’s not just one person who buys your products. In some cases, the end-user cannot make purchasing decisions without the approval of another party. In this case, both individuals involved will have a buyer persona because we need to convince them both that our products are the best option for their pain points.

Benefits of Creating Buyer Personas

Above all else, buyer personas help businesses of all sizes to better understand their customers. Whether you’ve been in business for 50 years or 50 days, you won’t find success if you don’t know the people spending money on your company. In fact, it’s even more important for experienced companies to create buyer personas because target markets evolve over time. Just because you had buyer personas five years ago, this doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same now.

With this in mind, the first benefit of creating buyer personas is that we remain relevant for the people buying our products. With a deep understanding of buyers, we can create resonating content, develop products, and meet customers at every touchpoint with the right voice and approach.

Another benefit is that buyer personas are based on data and research. Rather than subjective opinions, we let the data guide us towards the truth. Often, businesses realize that their target market is actually quite different from the one originally planned. As a business, we need to allow ourselves to be informed, maybe even surprised, by the data rather than using our preconceived opinions to skew the outcome.

In addition to data, buyer personas are drawn from interviews, surveys, and other research we generate. While small businesses have a couple of buyer personas, larger entities could have up to 15 or 20. The important thing is that you stop when a new buyer persona becomes unnecessary. If the last buyer persona was similar to others and didn’t break new ground, it seems you have everything covered within the existing personas.

Negative Buyer Personas

We’ve seen that buyer personas are the representation of our ideal customer, but what about the people who don’t have any commonality to your offering? Well, this is a growing part of marketing, and it’s called a negative buyer persona. Just like negative keywords, this describes people who you want to avoid because they have no interest in your products or services. While you might find that some customers are too expensive, others may be too advanced for what you have to offer. Either way, you don’t want to target them because the chance of conversion is little to none.

Types of Buyer Personas

Unfortunately, for those who like strict rules, with buyer personas they don’t really exist. Often, we see marketers and businesses looking for rules on how many personas they need (and what different types they need). In reality, you’ve probably heard it lots of times before, but every single business is different. What works for one business might not work for another. Rather than following another company, you need to choose a strategy designed for you, and this means determining the number of buyer personas specific for your business.

Despite all the benefits that come with buyer personas, the problem that most businesses have is that it’s difficult to get started. How exactly do you identify and then generate your buyer personas? If you’re worried, there’s no better way to overcome the concerns than by actually starting.

Creating Your Buyer Personas

Step 1: Gather Data

As mentioned, building buyer personas is all about using data. While some perform research, others conduct interviews, focus groups, and surveys. With a blend of primary and secondary research, you’ll have the information you need to identify patterns and trends (and a greater understanding of the target market).

Here’s a handful of starting points for this data collection:

• Use website forms to collect personal information
• Look for trends in contact databases (learn how customers not only find but also consume all content)
• Set up interviews for customers and prospects (learn what people enjoy and don’t enjoy about your brand)
• Talk to the sales team because these are the people that spend the most time with customers

Step 2: Collect Basic Demographic Details

We understand that it’s nervy getting ready to ask personal questions about customers whether online, on the phone, or directly in person. However, know two things:

• This is a great way to learn basic demographic details about customers
• Most are willing to help you

In our experience, it’s best to break the questions up into sections. Also, keep the conversations respectable in size (they have things to be doing with their day!). For example, you might want to learn about demographics and background. Although these are the two main areas, have a third section of your notes dedicated to key identifiers. Are they especially calm? Do they prefer printed, texted or emailed content?

When making notes, stick to pre-arranged buzzwords because these are terms you’ll use again and again. It’s much more difficult to spot patterns and trends when everybody gathering data uses different vocabulary. With the same buzzwords and mannerisms, the team can quickly pick up on themes.

If you’ve never performed research before, one of the best techniques to adopt is to focus on the question ‘why?’. It’s not enough to just scratch the surface, you need to know why. What are the main pain points for consumers and why is it so problematic? Why did they choose you as the solution to their biggest problems?

With marketing, the idea is to find people who have a problem that we can resolve. If you’re gathering research from prospective customers, make sure they know about your service and how you help.

Step 3: Prepare for Conversations

At this stage, it’s time to take everything you’ve learned and put it to use by drawing conclusions. Why is this important? Because the sales team needs to be ready to converse with prospective customers in a way that’s conducive to conversions. In fact, don’t be afraid to use quotes from the research itself. You can appeal to prospective customers and comfort them in the knowledge that others in their position have been helped by your service.

Don’t forget, it’s not all about selling to your ideal target market and talking about the benefits of your service. In some cases, you’ll need to ease the worries of prospective customers and counter objections. Therefore, we recommend thinking about potential objections before even talking with customers. Then, use the conversations with early customers to extend this list. In a perfect world, the sales team will have responses ready for the most common objections.

Step 4: Hone Your Message

In the final stage, it’s all about putting everything you’ve learned so far to craft the perfect message for your personas. How should you talk about products with your personas? What is the pitch that will transform a lead into a customer? In addition to the overall pitch, consider the vernacular and vocabulary used.

At the moment, every member of your sales team probably has their own approach to selling. While this can generate some positive results, the problem is the inconsistencies this brings. Instead, it’s time to use the selling approach most appropriate for the prospective customer. When the company speaks the same language, a language that should encourage conversions, this is when you can confidently say that the research has been put to good use.

Summary

A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer, and a negative buyer persona is a representation of somebody you wish to avoid with all advertising efforts. The reason you create buyer personas is to help shape your marketing approach. The more you know about your customers, the better you can target them and reach out in a way that resonates. With a tailored approach, you’re more likely to turn simple leads into conversions and remain relevant to your customers

By following the four-step process above, you’ve laid a solid foundation for developing a better understanding of your ideal buyer persona. In addition, you are limiting risks associated with making assumptions about prospective customers or allowing personal bias to affect marketing techniques. Once you have one buyer persona, look to another part of your audience for a second. Eventually, you’ll have one for each and will know how to deal with them properly.

See Related: Best Tools for Market Research: Nielsen vs Quollo.io by Trapica