First, let's start with an introduction.
What are buyer personas?
Buyer personas are fictional profiles of your ideal customers that you can build using your customers and prospects’ feedback and data.
Each persona has specific demographics, interests, aspirations, challenges and buying preferences.
Why are buyer personas so important?
By creating personas your marketing team can better target your audience with tailor messages that relate to your personas’ preferences and characteristics.
Buyer personas are very important not only for your marketing team when creating content plan but also for your sales team when engaging with your customers and prospects.
Your company can identify several buyer personas, from fictional IT directors to heads of marketing or procurement - if you are operating in B2B - to uncle John or housewife Jane if your organisation is mainly focused on B2C.
Generally speaking, each company has a few key personas that account for the majority of sales, so start focusing your marketing efforts on these key ones.
What are the benefits?
We already mentioned a few key benefits of having buyer personas embedded in your marketing. Here are some clear advantages.
Effective messaging
Your brand can better connect with your customers if you know them well and develop more relevant messages for specific segments.
Internal alignment
Buyer personas are not only helpful for your marketing but also for other functions in your business.
Think about how effective it would be for your sales teams to interact with prospective customers if they already know their demographics, preferences, and the challenges that they have to overcome in their organisations. Or think about your product development teams and how they could improve your product design based on the characteristics of your key personas.
Content
Buyer personas will help your marketing team create more engaging digital content on your website, email or social in order to have a bigger impact on your customers attitudes towards your brand.
How can you create buyer personas?
To define the right personas for your organisation you will need to conduct a bit of market research, interviewing and surveying both your customers and prospects and collecting data online and offline.
It is important that you focus not only on demographics, webographics (for a definition of webographics watch our video here), location, job description, interests and challenges of your customers but also on the reasons behind your target audience’s actions.
It is good practice to engage both with customers who are happy about your products and services and those who are less satisfied. Constructive criticism can certainly provide helpful insights when building your organisation’s buyer personas.
Once you have identified your key buyer personas - the ones more likely to generate revenues for your business - start create relevant content for each persona. And don’t forget to connect on a human level by being direct, focused on your customers' needs and always aligned with your brand proposition.
If you need advice on your marketing strategy and how to build your buyer personas get in touch today.