Often an area of marketing strategy that gets overlooked, the buyer persona is designed to keep your messaging on track.
How much do you know about your customers? Are you trying to attract new people of similar ilk, or are you launching a new product or service to a new audience?
Hubspot says, ‘having a deep understanding of your buyer persona(s) is critical to driving content creation, product development, sales follow up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.’
So, you really can’t afford to ignore them.
Why are buyer personas so integral to my marketing?
It can be a laborious task, but if you know your product/service well enough you should be able to define your audience and segment them into ‘categories of need.’
Understanding and (this is where the laborious part happens), recording each audience members’ needs and interests makes it easier to tailor your messaging along their journey as your customer.
It might even help you in the development of new services, tweak your existing ones, change packaging or even tighten up your whole brand personality (but that’s another blog…)
Par exemple: You sell curtains. You sell beautifully handmade curtains which you make from rare and luxurious materials that you ship over from various countries. Who’s your ideal customer? What drives them to want to change their curtains? What’s their level of affluence, what kind of home do they live in, what are their interests, are the curtains for them, their luxury hotel, or a gift for their offspring’s first home? There’s an assumption we haven’t yet defined – they’re of an age where they have children, they are not new homeowners themselves… Or are they..?!
I’m not suggesting you need to write a story about Mrs Beaumont-Dupont and what car she drives to which private spa, but recording an age range and affluence level, how often she might return to buy again and WHY she might buy in the first place is pretty much essential.
How do I use buyer personas?
Targeting. If you know why someone bought from you, you can tell others that you solved a problem for someone just like them. You can demonstrate your understanding of their pain points and build trust.
Segmenting. Emails especially need to be segmented so you can send a different message to 2nd time buyers than people who signed up for a newsletter but never bought a service.
Customer service. Are you trying to sell something to someone who’s already bought in? You’re wasting time and damaging your relationship with your audience. BUT, you can send someone who bought your curtains useful advice for hanging them, or tell them more about how they were made, so they can tell their admirers the story behind their new window dressing.
You could also ask them for service/product feedback for self-improvement.
Social media accounts. Are you using the right platforms for your audience? A person on TikTok, probably isn’t using LinkedIn and if they are, they’re in a different mindset.
Social media content. The same person could well be on all the social media, but in different guises. Your curtain customer may use LinkedIn as CEO of her business, but be killing time on Instagram while she waits for the wine to chill (stop looking at me!) You need to be able to talk your audience with the appropriate tone of voice on the right platform.
How to create buyer personas
I haven’t written an in-depth ‘how to’ guide for you. Hubspot have though! It’s called Make my Persona and it’s a really simple click-through way of creating as many as you need.
Before you start though, have some information ready:
Look at your customers – what are their pain points, where did they come from?
Gather any sales data you can - fast moving items, what drives conversions?
Customer feedback - Have you done a survey? You can always ask the burning questions.
You’re essentially looking for patterns that you can tap into and increase your knowledge on. Good luck with your research, it’ll be worth it in the end.
And if you need a little help, I know loads of people, just ask!