What are buyer personas?

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional detailed description of your ideal consumer based on a combination of existing data and market research. In short, a buyer persona describes your target customer, the one that you are sending your marketing message. 

To create a buyer persona, you need to understand who is using your product or service. What’s their name? Where do they work? What are their interests and behavioral traits? And most important: what problem are you solving for them? You need to understand their goals and challenges to assist them in solving these issues. 

How many different buyer personas do you need? 

As different people will be buying your products or services for various reasons, you will probably have to create multiple buyer personas. However, to keep your marketing message as targeted and specific as possible, you should keep your number of buyer personas low.

When creating a buyer persona, a pitfall is to distinguish different target groups solely based on their demographic details. Just because your audience has the same demographic traits, it doesn’t mean that their motivation to buy your product or service is the same. 

So how do you divide your target audience into different segments before creating your buyer personas? 

Have a critical look at your existing data. What do you know about your customer? Instead of using their demographic details, can you segment your buyer personas based on their buying patterns and expectations? 

Now that you have a good understanding of what buyer personas are, let’s answer the question of why they make your marketing efforts so much more efficient:

1. They give you a crystal clear understanding of who your target audience is. 

Having a document that describes in detail who your customer is and what their needs are is efficient when working in a team. The document describing your buyer personas can easily be shared with team members and any freelancers you might collaborate with, and it makes sure that you are all on the same page. 

2. They help you to make decisions faster. 

Are you not sure if you want to publish that piece of content? Take your buyer personas and look at the content through their eyes. Does it add value for them? Then the decision is easy, you publish! The same goes for the opposite. Buyer personas remind you to put the wants and needs of your target audience above your own. 

3. They allow you to create content that your target audience actually connects with. 

Good marketing content that converts uses the language their audience speaks while at the same time solving a problem for them. Buyer personas give you a good and realistic understanding of your customer’s challenges, which allows you to create content that adds value to their life.

4. They unify your marketing, sales, and customer success departments. 

While creating your buyer personas, it’s wise to involve the different departments within your company. This is efficient as it ensures that the marketing, sales, and customer success department are on the same page and are sending a clear, unified message. 

5. They help you prioritize and divide your advertising budget more efficiently.

Now you know which social media channels your audience uses (and doesn’t use) and which subjects trigger a response, you can prioritize where to focus your attention (and your budget). This might save you money, but most importantly, it will allow you to spend your budget more efficiently.

6. They allow you to segment your audience 

Buyer personas help you to segment your target audience and offer personalized experiences and dynamic content on your website. When you know exactly who your audience is, you can offer them a customized experience while visiting your website, using content that they love. By doing this, you can increase engagement with your customer and optimize their browser experience, which in itself might lead to more conversion. 

Conclusion

As you can see, using buyer personas can significantly positively impact your marketing efforts. Whether you’re an established business or you’re just starting, investing time in understanding your customer’s wants and needs will pay off in the long run and help you scale up your business. Sounds like it’s worth the effort, right?

I’m curious, are you using buyer personas for your business yet? Let me know why (or why not) in the comments!