What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona describes your company’s ideal customer using analytics from market research and existing customer profiles.

Having one means that your company can be more accurate with who they are speaking to, whether that’s through ads on social media like Facebook, or Instagram, job adverts on Indeed, or just the copy on your website.

Think of it like a person’s bio or profile but with much deeper and more relevant information that really paints a picture of who your perfect customer would be. Beyond which foods they like or their favourite movie.

Where It Fits In

An effective buyer persona is one of the many cogs in your overall business strategy.

It helps define your target audience and with that, allows your company to determine the answers to these common questions:

• What kind of content should I create?
• How can I attract more, better-suited customers?
• What info do I need to better qualify my leads?
• How can I use market research to improve customer retention?

So, in essence, a buyer persona will help your company to attract new business, convert them and help to keep them too. At least that’s the idea.

BusinessBrainz detail some fascinating results for buyer personas in 2021 that look a little like this —

• 2x email open rates and 5x click-through rates

• Website traffic up by 210%

• Organic search traffic boosted by 55%

What Else?

Buyer personas help us in tons of ways but the main benefits can be put down to these three things:

1. Strategy – insights from personas are used to create more effective strategies for content (like keyword research) and copy.
2. Development – when you’re developing a product or a service, buyer personas give personal insights, like pain points, so you now what elements you need to focus on.
3. Sales/Aftersales – the data extracted from customer profiles helps sales teams better understand the issues your customers face and therefore which product/service will overcome them. The same knowledge can be used to train customer service teams and enhance the service.

Cool, How Do I Make One?

Well at this point I urge you to stop what you’re doing, head to the Contact Page and pay me to do all of this for you.

I’m not kidding, please go and do that.

Okay seriously why are you still here?!

Fine. If you insist, I’ll share some tips for creating your very own buyer persona, for free.

Here’s what you’ll need to know:

Demographic

This serves as the entry point for building a persona.

• Age/ Gender – the more accurate the better. This helps writers use the appropriate language for their audience.
• Income – helps to determine buying habits and lifestyle choices.
• Location – again, good for using correct language and lifestyle insights.
• Family – kids, married, widowed, divorced — all important data.
• Education level – useful for language.

Professional status

• Job title and level (manager, owner, specialist etc)
• Industry – helps target the right people.

Psychographics

This relates to a person’s central beliefs, values, principles and goals.

Information like this helps connect with your audience on a deeper level. Rather than just solving a problem you’re actually enhancing their life in some way and aligning your values as a company and consumer.

• Beliefs and values (religion, political allegiance, principles etc)
• Personal and professional goals – what they aspire to and desire.

Pain points

Use these to assess a problem and offer a solution.

• Biggest challenge and pain point
• Obstacles preventing progress
• Rational/ irrational fears

Influences and info

Who do they admire and trust? Where do they get their information?

• Preferred social networks, blogs and websites
• Public figures they admire
• Favourite events and organisations

Purchase process

How do they buy stuff? These questions help to figure out your customer buying journey and relevant trigger moments.

• Are they the key decision-maker?
• How often do they buy the product or service?
• What prevents them from making a purchase?

Now Get Digging!

So now that you know what you’re looking for in terms of how to build a customer persona, now is the time to go and find some answers!

Without getting into the nitty-gritty of it all, you can find this information in a number of ways.

The first place to start (if you’re already established) is to interview/ask for feedback from your existing customer base.

There’s a whole wealth of data to be extracted right there and it’s credible, personal and highly accurate given that they are already customers in the first place.

Outside of speaking to your own customers, you can dive into some market research online.

This can be time-intensive work if you go to the lengths of sifting through blogs, white papers, case studies and even forum threads. But it’s rewarding too and gives a wider representation of the global market.

Once you’ve gathered all of the data it’s time to analyse it and make a plan. Use your findings to create a customer buying journey that reflects your perfect buyer persona.

Who Will Your Persona Be?

There we have it. The basics of understanding what information you’ll need to create a buyer persona and how to go about it.

Thanks for reading and as always feel free to Share, Like and Comment with your thoughts.

Oh, and remember to name your persona! What did you come up with?

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