Inside the Minds of Customers: Why (And How) You Should Create a Buyer Persona

You’re ready to take your business to the next level; you want your customers to return and you want to gain new customers. One of the best ways to keep and attract customers is by using a buyer persona (sometimes called a marketing persona) in your marketing strategy.

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of someone who visits your website or uses your product. It is a description of characteristics, demographics, and background information about your ideal customer.

For example, the type of person who visits a website for a day care is probably a parent with a day job.

Depending on your business, you may have more than one buyer persona.

Why do you need one?

A buyer persona helps you create better marketing campaigns. It will help you create relevant web content, targeted ads, and strong social media posts. Ultimately, it will help you sell more products and be a more successful business. The better you understand your customer, the better you can engage them.

When working on new marketing campaigns, new products, or new services, keeping your buyer persona in mind will let you create a more focused business plan.

How do you create one?

1. Look at your current customer base.

Send out a survey to current customers. Make sure your survey isn’t too long, or customers will close out before they finish it. Five to 10 questions is usually sufficient.

Make sure to get information about:

• Demographics (age, income, gender, marital status, children)
• Job title, company demographics (if B2B)
• Values
• Shopping preferences (information about a recent purchase, consumer habits)
• Pain points (worst shopping experiences) and challenges

Here is a great starting point to help you write questions.

2. Look at prospective buyers

Who do you want to be buying your product or using your service? Consider doing a user test or marketing research for perspective buyers. Find out if there is anything that has stopped them from becoming a buyer.

Some companies choose to offer incentives to people who take their survey. Make it easy for the prospect to give their feedback. Be sure to give the prospect a place to explain their answers. If they answer “yes” or “no,” ask them why they answered that way.

A survey is a great place to start, but you should consider doing a handful of phone or in-person interviews as a follow up.

3. Analyze!

Alright, you’ve got the information. Now’s the time to sift through it all and look for trends. What do you see? Is your customer base older or younger? What struggles do they have?

The most crucial part of creating a strong buyer persona is looking at the pain points. What problems are customers having? For example, if you’re a day care business, you might find that your customers or prospective customers find your service too expensive.

With this information, you can use targeted marketing towards them. Perhaps you can convince them why it’s worth their money. If you offer some sort of payment plans or reduced payment for low income, make sure that’s clear in your marketing campaigns.

Through these surveys and interviews, you will have a better understanding of your customer. Now it’s time to actually pen down the persona.

4. Persona

There are lots of ways to actually write down your persona. You can start from scratch, or you can use a template. I like this one from digital marketer. You can tweak it to fit your personal business needs. Many marketers find that giving the persona a name and even a photo can help paint a picture of who their customer is.

By following these four steps, you’ll be on your way to creating a buyer persona that will strengthen your marketing strategy.