In the world of marketing, buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer or target audience. By leveraging consumer data and analytics, you can build these out to get a better sense of who you’re marketing to, and then create marketing campaigns that are tailored to them.
But how do you craft effective buyer personas?
Here’s what you need to know.
It Starts with Internal Research
High-quality buyer personas are rooted in data. Your existing customer base can act as the foundations for these fictitious, generalized profiles. According to Ralph Burns, Founder of Tier 11:
[Buyer personas] provide you with the audience information you need to target the right groups of people online… personas also give you and your team a better idea of who your customers are, what makes them tick and why they buy. And the better you understand your customers, the more equipped you’ll be to market to them effectively.
By looking through your sales information, you can start to flesh out your average customer according to various categories, like:
- Background – Where do they live? What drives them?
- Demographics – What is their age? Education level? Sex? Race? Marital status?
- Socioeconomic status – What is their income level? Their job status?
- Challenges – What are their biggest issues and their pain points (specifically those that you can solve)?
- Identifiers – What platforms do they use? How do they shop?
The more detailed you make this, the better. Done right, you’ll be able to focus your marketing efforts and drive your product development pipeline.
Speak to Stakeholders
After you have mined your internal data, you can then flesh out these personas by speaking with various stakeholders. Two notable parties worth investigating are:
- Customer-facing employees who interact with customers on a regular basis
- Existing clients who have remained loyal
By sending out quick surveys and polls or conducting interviews, you can ask questions that help you get a better sense of who the target persona should be.
Share Your Findings
The point of persona research is to understand what motivates that specific demographic to make a purchase. Ideally, your research will help you identify:
- The challenges they face
- Their goals and motivations
- Their personality traits
- The channels that they utilize
Once you know who they are and what makes them tick, you need to share that with the rest of your internal teams—whether that’s sales, marketing, or R&D. That way, everyone is aligned.
Develop Content and Messaging That’s Tailored to Personas
By the end of the process, you’ll have a few fleshed out personas to leverage, each one representing a different customer segment. Armed with that, you can then start customizing content that speaks to that specific persona.
The type of content, and even the place they receive it, will vary greatly from one persona to another. Therefore, it’s essential to meet them where they are and speak to them in the manner they’re most likely to respond positively to.
Semgeeks—Persona Builders
If you’re new to persona building, you don’t have to handle it alone. Instead, savvy businesses like yours can rely on content creation services experts who know exactly how to build out and market to buyer personas.
Enter Semgeeks. We’ve successfully worked with several different clients to customize and then leverage buyer personas. If you’re looking to take your marketing and sales to the next level, we can do the same for you.
How does our process work? Let’s talk.
Sources:
Forbes. Why Buyer Personas Are More Important Than Ever For Facebook Advertisers. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/12/02/why-buyer-personas-are-more-important-than-ever-for-facebook-advertisers/?sh=162513b2423c
