It’s typically much easier to persuade a good friend of something than it is to persuade a stranger—right?

Well, this general concept applies to marketing, too. When you know exactly who you’re trying to sell to, you can create tailored content and offers that engage and persuade your audience. One tool to help with this is a buyer persona.

Let’s talk about what a buyer persona is, how buyer personas are helpful, and how you can create your own buyer personas to help your business thrive!

What Is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a detailed representation of your ideal customer. It can include demographics (age, gender, location, etc), career, interests, problems faced, and much more. Depending on your business and how many different products or brands you have, you may have just one or two buyer personas—or you may have many!

How Are Buyer Personas Helpful?

Buyer personas help you get to know your audience on a deeper, more detailed level. This helps you target the right customers, qualify the right leads, and create just the right content to help your audience move forward on every step of their customer journey. You’ll be able to improve the customer experience and ultimately make more sales. Your customers will feel more connected to your brand, fostering a sense of loyalty to your business.

How Do You Create Buyer Personas for Your Business?

So, with all the benefits we just covered, you might be eager to get started! Here are the basic steps you can follow:

Step 1: Make a list.

Before you start putting your buyer personas together, make a list of everything you might need to know. The details in each section may vary based on your business (i.e. customers’ special diets might affect restaurants but not clothing stores, so include that information only if it’s relevant).

·      Demographics: age, gender, location, income, employment, education, race, religion, marital status, household structure

·      In-person activities: favorite hobbies, where they socialize, how they commute to work

·      Online activities: favorite social media platforms, trusted news sources, preferred communication and information channels, favorite types of content

·      Buying behaviors: what they buy, when they buy it, how they choose a product, how they pay, what kind of customer service they expect

·      Goals and values: what factors (like sustainability or convenience) they care about, what their motivation is for a purchase  

·      Pain points: what frustrates them about other offerings, how you might help solve a problem for them

·      Real quotes and testimonials

Preparing this list helps to guide your next step: research!

Step 2: Do your research.

The strongest buyer personas are those based on real data from your existing and potential customer base. It’s time to do some research! You can start with:

·      Your own analytics: social media, website, ads, email campaigns

·      Data from your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system

·      Market research

·      Customer reviews and surveys

·      Social listening tools

·      Online forums

·      Focus groups

Gathering data from a variety of sources is key to creating accurate personas. Keep in mind: With the upcoming changes regarding the use of third-party cookies, you may have to get creative to collect all the information you need!

Step 3: Determine your personas.

Once you’ve done your research, you’ll need to decide how many distinct personas your business really has in your customer base. If you sell one product, you might have one or two personas. If you have a variety of brands and products, you might have many!

Figure out which information goes with each persona. You can give each persona a human name to be able to reference the personas more easily within your company. These personas should be an accurate representation of who your customers are, what they want, and what problems you can solve for them.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you’re ready to start putting these personas to use in your strategy and marketing!

Get Started Today

Buyer personas can give your marketing a huge boost. When they’re fully integrated into your marketing plan, you should see many of the benefits we talked about above!

Over time, your personas may change as your business, your products, and the market all shift. This means you should review and refresh your personas periodically.

Need help determining the perfect buyer personas to drive your business growth? 2XM is here! Contact us for a FREE 60 minute consultation today.