what is a buyer persona?
I’ve blogged before on how small business owners aren’t lovers of creating a marketing strategy - and yet having one is fundamental for every business, large or small. A marketing strategy should include detail of your target market and audience.
But is this enough? Is there value in going deeper than this to really understand your customers?
By exploring what your audience looks like in detail, and understanding them better, you can:
hone your offering to meet their needs
tailor your communication and content marketing
offer bespoke support at every stage of the ‘customer journey’.
As a result, you attract the right customers, provide a positive customer experience and retain clients over time.
This is where buyer personas come in - strap yourselves in, this is a long blogpost.
defining a ‘buyer persona’
Hubspot provides a good definition. I’ve tweaked it a bit:
“A semi-fictional representation of your ideal buyer – based on interviews/research, evidence/data and some good old guess work…”
Personas can be used by:
Sales/new business
- to better connect with potential customers and easily qualify leads. They can use personas to:
identify the challenges and pain points faced by a potential customer
develop a deeper understanding of target markets
nurture leads based on what is already known.
Marketing
- to personalise or target their marketing for different segments of their audience. Personas help:
proactively develop marketing efforts
personalise and tailor communication
create content that connects.
Customer services and account management
- to improve client satisfaction and retention. Establishing personas can:
increase customer satisfaction by understanding more about who you’re supporting
retain clients by pre-empting their needs as well as being reactive
improve the client experience.
Personas also support the business by providing internal alignment and an improved understanding of who everyone is providing a service to and why.
Building buyer personas: top-level
It’s worth conducting an initial session (Zoom, probably) with someone from each of the three functions above to lay the foundations. Insight and understanding from each area of the business is needed and where the alignment starts.
Ultimately, you’re trying to get to a place where you think about your target audience and consider:
What is their background?
What are their demographics?
What do they want to achieve?
What are their challenges?
What do they need?
You can then start to reflect on how you help your clients and potential customers and how your service/product solves their challenges and/or presents them with what they’re looking for, why etc.
Building buyer personas: The actual work involved
Creating a buyer persona is based on interviews/research and evidence/data, as well as some educated guesses.
Interviews/research
Yes, it’ll take time but don’t underestimate the value in conducting research to better understand your customers.
Survey your client base (or a good chunk of it). Interviewing your clients can help you understand their:
demographics – age, gender, location
background – career path, the sectors they’ve worked in previously
character/demeanour, communication style
goals they and their team are facing in their organisations
challenges (day-to-day and longer term).
Evidence/data
Consider your CRM (customer relationship management system) and what you can query to better understand your clients:
What trends can you uncover about our contacts and clients?
What do you know about them?
What do they have in common?
What differentiates them?
This can be done in parallel to the interviewing.
Also consider what other pockets of data you have and how they may prove useful:
What insight do you have within Google Analytics?
What data is shared via online forms?
What do you know from the webinars you run?
Insight/guesswork
Marketing, Sales and Customer Service/Account Management can provide a lot of insight. But what other teams across the business have touchpoints with your clients (and potential customers)? How can their insight help you better understand why your product/service is needed?
Interviewing your internal teams can be as insightful as talking directly to your customers. What other members of staff know what challenges your clients facing? How can this information help you build a better picture? Who else would benefit from being involved? Brand? Graphic Design? Product?
Creating your buyer personas
With all the information you have, you’re aiming to build quality personas; quantity isn’t the driver – you may have two personas, you may end up with ten.
Give each of your personas a name - find a stock image to help identify them. (Retail stores do this a lot to help them know what clothes to design and how to dress their shop windows; “Fred”, “Carla” and their son “Tom”. They each have a style based on their persona and what the retail store knows about their customers…)
Consider how you can expand on the information you have so you can be proactive with what you know:
What quotes could you pin to each persona, as if they were talking about their goals and challenges?
What would be your key marketing messaging for that persona?
How can you help that persona with your product/service?
What would be your elevator pitch?
Buyer personas and marketing
From a marketing perspective, personas are gold dust, especially if content marketing is identified as key marketing strategy for the business.
Content marketing, campaigns and communication
Personas help you create marketing content to meet your customers’ needs, goals and challenges. You can also ensure the content you’re creating is made available at the right time – from attracting potential customers to converting them into a client (and every step along their journey).
This is where the alignment with Sales kicks in (and should do with content marketing in mind – think collateral pre- and post-demo, case studies etc.) Don’t forget Customer Service/Account Management as they build ongoing relationships and create trust with clients, from conversion to retention and advocacy.
Knowing your customers’ challenges, goals and needs means you can devise and deliver campaigns that reflect your offering and resonate with each persona.
Combine your personas, campaigns and content marketing strategy with effective segmentation and targeting and you can communicate in a more personalised way. You provide value and ongoing support at every stage of the buying journey – generating demand for your offering and increasing client retention.
Get in touch if you’d like help in getting started. (I can point you in the direction of some good persona templates to record the information you collate etc.)