In today’s global business market place, the variety and options of consumers are infinite. To grow and retain your customers’ target base, you need to understand what they want and their perceptions towards a product or service. This is where Buyer Personas come in.
A buyer persona is having a full representation of your target audience. These are existing and potential long term profitable customers you profile according to their personality types. You know them inside out, their needs, motivation, or challenges, etc. With all this knowledge, you tailor your customer service or marketing campaign directly to those you want to buy into your products or services. Therefore, you can cut out the guesswork and stop shooting blanks with your fingers crossed.
In essence, with well-defined buyer personas, you have a clearly defined target customer. Now I’m sure you’re probably wondering what steps you need to take to create the perfect buyer personas to help target the right customers for your business. Let’s look at the steps we can take to create a buyer persona for your business.
Identify Your Audience to Help Create Your Buyer Personas
To create buyer personas, you can do so via research, surveys, and interviews of customers both within and outside your contacts database. But first, how do you find these people to speak to? Here are a few sources to get you started:
Your Existing Customer Database
Your existing contact database is the best place to start with your interviews. Since these customers have engaged with your brand, some of them likely fall within target buyer personas. However, do not only reach out to those who give positive reviews.
The idea is to also reach out to those who are unhappy with your product. It will help to show other patterns that can form a better understanding of your buyer personas. You will also get to learn how to fine-tune your product to solve your customers’ challenges.
One thing about every customer is that they love to be heard. So they are likely to jump on your request of interviewing them even without an incentive. The simple fact that you want to hear from them makes them feel valued and more willing to tell you about their world, challenges, and honest reviews about your product or service.
Understanding your customer's wants and needs is crucial when creating your marketing and position. Luckily, most customers are happy to help out when you're creating your buyer personas! Click To TweetLet them be aware that your goal is to get feedback and that your team highly values their feedback.
Your Competitor’s Data
For new businesses that don’t have a customer contact base yet, you can look to your competitors’ customers for answers. Use competitor analysis tools to help you know more about your competitors and their customers.
You can also look through their social media followers or use tools such as Followerwonk for Twitter or Socialbakers Analytics for other social media platforms to gather data about your competitors” customers.
Besides the gender, age, and location of these customers, you also need to consider when they post, their interests and who else they’re following. The information you get can help you to fill in more details of your buyer persona.
Your Potential Customers
Those who are yet to buy your product and have a minimal idea about your brand can be interviewed. They are a great option when creating your buyer persona since you already have their information. Make use of the data you have you’ve collected via forms, surveys, market research, email subscription, or website analytics. It will help you to identify those who might fit into your target buyer personas.
Your Referrals
Speaking to your referrals will also give you a better perspective of those who may fit into your target personas. It is excellent if you’re heading into new markets or don’t have any leads yet.
Referrals can come from your family, sales team, existing customers, social media followers, third-party website reviews, etc.
An excellent example of a third-party review is the essay writing review website Best Writers Online. Other online writing services featured on the website can read reviews about their services from the site’s visitors. The volume of people you get from referrals may not be much, but the quality data you get will significantly help with identifying your buyer personas.
Building Your Buyer Persona Around These Interview Questions
Once you have sourced for places to get people you can interview, another essential aspect is the kind of questions you should ask. These questions help you to fill out the details you will need to build your buyer persona. You can create your personas by creating a word document or excel sheet to fill in the details.
Here are questions you can ask, feel free to remove or add as it fits your target customers.
Personal Details
This helps you to get to know the target buyer on a deeper level. If you are running a business to customer (B2C), you get a better understanding of the customer’s target, values, desires, and needs. Such information positions you to offer them the perfect solution to their needs.
- What gender is the interviewee?
- Their age?
- Where does the interviewee live?
- Is the person Divorced? Widowed? Single?
- Does the interviewee have a child? If yes, how many kids and how old are they?
- The person’s level of education?
- What’s the person’s household income?
- What does the interviewee spend their day doing?
- Things the person likes to do for fun?
- What are their biggest fears or challenges?
Work Details and Motivation
Similarly, as it is with personal details, work details also give you a better understanding of your customer. In this case, the data gathered is more beneficial to those who run a business to business (B2B). It helps you understand what business challenges need solutions.
Furthermore, because committees often make the buying decisions in a B2B, you have an idea who you need to target.
- Where do they work?
- The person’s job title and role?
- What are their challenges at work?
- What are their career prospects?
- What is the person’s definition of success at work?
Communication Preferences
Your marketing goals include reaching out to your audience through the most effective channel of communication. Thus, when you have the insight to target customers’ preferred means of communication, it makes your job easier.
- What social media does the interviewee use?
- What will be their objections if you presented your product or service to them?
- What means of communication gets their attention? Text, video, audio, infographics, or images.
- How do they want to be reached? SMS, email, phone calls, etc.
Using Your Buyer Personas to Improve Your Content Marketing
Now that your buyer persona has helped you identify your target customers, the next step is to use this information to create better content that engages your target audience and increases your conversion rates.
Create Your Content Using Your Persona’s Language
For your content to have an immediate connection with your target customers, ensure that you use the same language used by your interviewees. As a reader, if I see that your content speaks to me by addressing my needs and objections, I am bound to find it more meaningful and give it my attention. And the chances are that I will buy the product.
You can use the language from your persona in everything including your site’s articles, your homepage copy, content upgrade popups, how you structure your case studies, and more.
Segment Your Target Customers and Communication Channels
Besides speaking to your target audience in a language they resonate with, you will need to learn how to segment your target customers. It is necessary to group them because of the diversity in consumer taste. Thus it is vital to create separate buyer personas for your different target customers and how best you can reach them.
For example, a paper writing service review such as Online Writers Rating when reaching out to new prospects could encounter different types of customers:
- Older MSc students who have a part-time job, families, and barely have time to write their desertion or social networks.
- Younger high school students, looking to get the perfect grades so they can get into the best colleges. They are more open to new media and eager to stay ahead of the curve.
From these personas, you can tell that these two groups respond to very different sales approaches. While your pitch for the first group might be emails, calls, or texts offering dissertation writing services to help ease their busy schedule. On the other hand, a social media campaign on cheap essay paper pitch will resonate more with the younger group.
Next Steps
Buyer personas are much more than a foundation to increase conversion and ROI. They help you allocate resources properly when it comes to an understanding of your customers and, more importantly providing them with a product or service that they find useful.
Need more ideas for boosting conversions through content? Be sure to check out our Important Content Creation Tips to Boost Your Website Conversions.
by Ahoy
