What is a Buyer Persona? [+ Buyer Persona Template]
Living in an ad-heavy world, establishing your Buyer Persona allows you to effectively position your products and services to meet the needs of your customers. Without getting to know them first, how will you know what they want?
In this blog post you will learn:
- What is a Buyer Persona and why is it important?
- What should your Buyer Persona (or customer persona, audience persona, or marketing persona) include?
- How do you gather accurate customer data for your Buyer Personas?
- Get your free Buyer Persona template to better position your business.
Get your free Buyer Persona template to better position your business.
What is a Buyer Persona and why is it important?
Buyer Personas describe the type of person you’re trying to market your business to based on primary and secondary research. They represent your ideal customer.
You might be wondering, “Do I really need a Buyer Persona?” Short answer, YES.
Buyer Persona’s are important as they should reveal insights about your buyers’ behavior. This can include motivations, goals, and of course, buying behavior.
Your Buyer Persona can also help shape your messaging as it is part of your “WHY” in marketing.
- Why are we sharing this piece of content?
- Why do we offer this product and/or service?
- Why are we changing this product and/or service?
Why are you utilizing Instagram and Facebook? Because you know your Buyer Persona hangs out there.
Or vice versa, why are you using Instagram and Facebook if your customer favors a different platform?
What should your Buyer Persona (or customer persona, audience persona, or marketing persona) include?
When creating Buyer Personas, make them human; give them a name. Heck, give their spouse a name.
If you’re struggling to develop Buyer Personas, start with describing yourself for products and services you regularly consume.
The bare bones of your Buyer Persona should include:
Demographics – Who is your buyer?
Ex: Age, gender, job title, salary (disposable and discretionary income), family size, etc.
Geographics – Physical and digital locations.
Ex: Midwest (MN mainly), social media (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn), etc.
Psychographics – Why does this person buy?
Ex: Interests, attitudes, aspirations, goals, motivations, values, hobbies, etc.
Picture your ideal customer and make sure to also include elements like:
What does their typical day look like?
What are their objectives when it comes to purchasing?
What problems do they face when purchasing in your businesses’ industry?
How far along is your customer in their consideration process or purchasing process? Where do they land on the sales funnel?
Are they the decision-maker? Or, do they need to run things up the chain of command?
How do they talk? What keywords and phrases do they use?
What are their content preferences? How do they prefer to access information?
How do you gather accurate customer data for your Buyer Personas?
A good place to start is by asking your customer.
Primary Market Research – Original research conducted first-hand to collect data specifically for your own objective.
- One-on-one interviews
- Surveys
https://surveyplanet.com/ - Focus Groups
- Observations
- Experiments
PRO TIP: Your front line sales team is a great resource for developing Buyer Personas (or any other customer facing in-house department).
Secondary Market Research – The act of searching for existing data.
- Statista
https://www.statista.com/ - Knoema
https://knoema.com/ - Google Public Data – Two words, “Google it.”
https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory - USA.gove Reference Center
https://www.usa.gov/statistics
CONCLUSION:
Buyer Persona’s provide insight to help make better business and marketing decisions (not to mention they also serve as great tools for the sales team). Without them, you would only be guessing what your customers want.
With a clear understanding of who you are targeting, your company can position your products and services to the best of its ability while gaining and retaining happy customers.