How much do you know about your customers? How did you meet them? have you ever thought of how you could use the current customerprofilesyou have to find lookalikes of your best customers?
In fact, most modern-day businesses know who they are transacting business with; they can create content that is suitable for their audiences while meeting them at places they are likely to interact with them.
A business with a buyer persona has an advantage over its competitors as it sets the ground for you to deliver relevant and helpful content to your customers.
Say you have a study abroad business and you are looking to expand your reach; A buyer persona will help you identify who is more likely to interact with your brand or not.
What is a Buyer Persona?
Buyer personas are semi-fictional characteristics of your dream clients. It helps you identify thewho,what, andwhereof your ideal/dream customers.
It helps you focus your time on attractingqualifiedprospects who are more likely to interact with your brand. You are also able to create personalized contents that suits the needs of current customers.
What are some examples of a buyer persona?
Here is what a buyer persona looks like for B2B and B2C companies.
B2B Buyer Persona Example
A Real Estate Company Buyer Persona Example
B2C buyer persona Example
A Fashion Store Buyer Persona Example
How to create buyer personas for your business
Although buyer personas are semi-fictional, you can’t base your business’s personas on assumptions alone. You need to make an extra effort in gathering data of current / previous paying customers in your database.
Here is a step-by-step process to create a working buyer persona for your business.
Step 01: Conduct customer Research & Collect Data
Always start with who you know. You can do this by interviewing and organizing surveys for selected customers in your database.
When done properly you are going to uncover trends, traits, and similarities amongst customers. This will help you discover customer challenges and how to solve them.
During customer surveys/ interviews here are some questions you may want to ask:
What are their Demographics data:
- What are your gender, age, and education?
- What is your highest level of education?
- Where do you work?
- What is your job position?
- What is your company’s industry?
- What is the size of your company?
Their Personal Information:
- What are your goals?
- What is your salary?
- Who do you report to?
- What challenges do you have at work?
- What does success in mean to you?
Content consumption:
- What social networks do you spend time on?
- What subjects are you interested in?
- What content formats do you like?
- Where do you find information that is useful to your work?
- How do you learn and acquire new skills?
Their Challenges:
- What challenges did you have before finding us?
- How are we helping you solve problems?
- What characteristics of ours do you like the most?
- Where can we improve?
Step 02: Analyze & segment current data
Now that you have information about your customers, you may want to group each persona according to similar traits and characteristics discovered.
You will be able to understand what challenges customers face and how you can tweak your product to help solve customer challenges.
Also, you will be able to determine how many buyer persona profiles you need to make to touch on all customer pain points whiles delivering relevant content to them.
You can plan & implement marketing strategies for customer retention and naturing relevant to each persona.
Step 03: Build your personas
It’s time to turn all the information you have into a person. Give a name to all your profiles whiles highlighting their pain points. This will help you create stories for each of them.
Also, instead of avatar symbols, use genuine images to give you a sense of who you’re communicating with.
Step 04: Review and share
Now that your buyer profiles are ready, you may want to share them with the sales, content marketing, and paid advertising teams for final review and suggestions.
Why is it important to create buyer personas for your business?
Gain Authority status in your industry
When you create buyer personas for your business, you are able to focus your marketing efforts on attracting prospects who are likely to interact with your brand.
This way you can develop content that will be relevant to a specific audience who are actively searching for solutions online.
The moment they land on your page and find your content useful, they quickly share it with their friends and family on social media giving you a boost on your brand recognition goals.
Creating a buyer persona for your business helps you to meet customer challenges with the right type of content at the right time, making customers delighted with your brand.
Higher Returns
Drawing out customer personas for your business helps you increase your business ROIs whiles decreasing your CPAs.
Yes, targeting people relevant to your business helps you build your audience network according to people who are most likely to interact with your brand.
A bakery company would want to run campaigns targeted to people interested in buying cupcakes or bread; rather than people interested in automobiles.
By doing so, the bakery can lower its Cost Per Acquisition(CPA) by targeting only high converting visitors which increases its annual Returns on Investments(ROI).
Build brand advocates for your business
Like football teams with fans all over the world, businesses can gain loyal fanbases by making buyer personas.
Mercedes has fans all over the world because it’s been able to build products that match the needs of its buyer personas.
When you delight customers by meeting their needs, they become staunch advocates of your brand.
They can be found in social media comments, forums, and groups spreading positive news about your brand.
Conclusions
No matter the industry your business is in, you may want to create different buyer personas that highlight the goals and challenges of your ideal clients.
This will give you an overview of how you can use your products/ services to continue to delight customers. Also, buyer personas give you an idea of the right content to create for the right people at the right time.
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