A Quick Guide to Buyer Personas: How to Get Started
All good marketing starts with one question: Who is your ideal customer? Many business owners know the answer to this question. They have a general idea of who buys from them and uses their products or services.
But often, business owners don’t go deep enough nor do they have this information documented. They don’t think they need formal buyer personas -- and this is shortsighted.
Let’s look at why it’s essential to document buyer personas and then go through five steps to quickly build personas so you, your team, and marketing partners can create more effective marketing campaigns.
What’s a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a documented description of someone who buys from your brand. A persona describes a fictional customer and is developed using research and insights about existing customers and prospects. Brands typically have more than one buyer persona, and each one represents a unique segment of their customer base.
Related: Want Better Marketing Results? Focus On Your Marketing Strategy
Why Use Buyer Personas?
Many brands shy away from creating buyer personas because they think it will take too much time and energy. Plus, they think they don’t need personas because they already know their customers. But, buyer personas are an essential marketing asset that every business needs.
A key part of your marketing foundation is understanding your core customers. Even short and simple buyer personas can positively impact your marketing effectiveness.
Buyer personas get your entire team on the same page and align sales, marketing, and account teams.
Specific buyer personas allow you to segment your customers to create more direct and targeted marketing messages, offers, campaigns, and ads.
Buyer personas make it easy to bring on marketing partners who can quickly understand your audience and unique selling propositions.
Related: How Creating Personas Can Help Save Marketing Dollars
How to Get Started with Buyer Personas
To benefit from buyer personas, you don’t need to go through a long, drawn-out process. You don’t need multiple-page personas that outline every detail of a buyer’s life. You can simply start with the basics.
1. Evaluate your current customers and prospects.
Start by collecting information about your existing customers and prospects to create the foundation of your buyer personas.
Talk to your sales and account management teams. How would they describe the people who are buying from and interested in your brand?
Pull data from your customer relationship management (CRM) system. What trends or themes do you see regarding your customer base?
Send out surveys and conduct interviews with existing customers. Go directly to the source and ask customers to tell you more about who they are and what they want and need.
2. Hold a workshop to create personas.
Once you’ve gathered insights and data about your customers and prospects, begin to workshop a few different personas. For each persona, outline:
Demographics: Who are they? What do they do?
Motivations and Pain Points: What problems are they trying to solve and what motivates them to solve problems?
Use Cases and Benefits: How do they use your products and services? What features and benefits are most important to them?
Buying Process: How do they go through the steps to buy from you?
Influences: Where are they getting information and consuming content?
Pro Tip: Differentiate between user personas and buyer personas. In some cases, the people who use your products and services are not the same people who buy your products and services. For example, a CFO may purchase the financial software for an organization but not use it on a daily basis. Create different personas for both users and buyers.
3. Get feedback and buy-in from all teams.
After you create a few personas, work with your teams to refine them. Pull together your sales and marketing team, as well as anyone else in the company who may have insights about your customers and offerings. This group may also include members of your product or executive team.
Work through the personas together to make sure you aren’t missing anything. Ensure that character descriptions align with what your team has shared.
At this time, also explain the value of personas to your team. Offer training for how each department can use personas within their roles. For example, sales teams can use personas to find new selling points while product teams may use them to discover new ideas for product features.
4. Start using personas in your marketing efforts.
Once you have personas in place, use them to improve your marketing messaging, initiatives, and campaigns.
Prioritize personas. If you created multiple personas, consider which customer type is most important to your business. Which customer type brings in the most revenue? Prioritize those personas in your marketing efforts.
Segment your marketing efforts. Create specific marketing campaigns with one unique customer segment in mind. Focusing on one persona at a time will allow you to use more direct language, choose the most relevant marketing channels, and utilize segmenting in email marketing.
Tie value propositions to customer needs and wants. As you create marketing messages for specific marketing segments, refer back to your persona's needs and wants. Directly tie features and benefits to your persona’s motivations and pain points to create more compelling copy.
Related: How to Get Started with Social Media Advertising
5. Test, iterate, and update.
Creating buyer personas isn’t a one-time task. Once you define your personas, test your messaging out and see how it resonates. Are you able to acquire more of your ideal customer? Iterate and update based on what works and what does not.
Consider updating your personas annually and any time you change your offerings or positioning. Continued tweaking of your personas can lead to more detailed descriptions and better insights. Plus, this process keeps your entire team on the same page as your business and customers change and evolve.
Related: Marketing Analytics 101: How To Use Data To Improve Marketing Effectiveness
Use Buyer Personas to Improve Your Marketing Effectiveness
The key to marketing is understanding your customers and prospects. Without buyer personas, it will be difficult to get the insights you need to create marketing and sales materials that resonate with your audience.
Go through these steps to start building buyer personas today.
And if you need help going through this process, contact SpotOn today. We have a proven research and strategy process that helps us create data-informed personas that will boost your marketing reach and effectiveness.