The heart of marketing is knowing your audience. If you don’t know who you’re selling to, you’ll never create effective campaigns. No matter how good your product or service is. One of the best ways to get into the head of your target market is to create buyer personas.
What is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional character based on real data. Companies may create several distinct personas to help drive inbound marketing decisions.
To start building personas you collect information from existing customers. Then compile that data into “types.” Next, you can begin to form a persona that epitomizes each personality type. The resulting persona(s) match people in your target markets.
How Can a Buyer Persona Help Your Marketing Strategy?
Buyer personas are helpful for developing marketing strategies because they simplify overwhelming information. Rather than referring to pages of random demographics, your team can get to know a handful of “people.”
It’s a lot easier to remember a person than remember random data. The types of personas you create will differ depending on your industry and audience. Here are a couple of general persona examples.
B2C Customer: Empty Nester Emma
Emma is an upper middle-aged woman who recently sent the last of her adult children into the world. She’s looking for responsible ways to invest her retirement savings. She plans to use them to create a residual source of income. She wants to enjoy her golden years by traveling. Emma also wants to spoil her grandchildren when they visit. She is physically active and doesn’t mind spending money if she believes it’s a good investment.
B2B Customer: No-Nonsense Nick
Nick is a high-level executive who is all about results. He is not interested in emotional or impulsive purchasing. He is extremely data-driven. Give him hard numbers to prove your value and he’s all in. Talk about dreams or scenarios and he’s done talking to you. He has to get board approval for all purchasing decisions and he has no interest in making a fool of himself.
A good persona has a name, a picture, and gives a detailed story of the individual. Make sure to have a clean and simple format but still contain a mountain of information.
When done right, buyer personas can take your marketing efforts to the next level. Take the time to do the research. Create visually-appealing templates that are easy to read and digest. Get to know each persona intimately. Use the persona examples above as a jump-off point for your own. The results will speak for themselves.
