Buyer or marketing personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer. They help you understand your customer better and ensure you are more readily able to provide the information and offers that they need to turn them into customers. So how do you go about it?
Here are 5 ways to get started with creating buyer personas for your business:
- The first step in developing your persona is to research, research and research. You need to look at you current sales data, CRM or surveys and uncover trends as to what types of people are purchasing which product and what their pain points are. Talk to you sales team and get a strong understanding of how existing customers currently find and reach out to you.
- The second step is research, research and research! The best personas are created by those that have gone through the next step and actually interviewed customers, prospects or referrals with the aim of developing a deeper insight into purchase reasons. You research their roles, demographics, challenges, what communications they use, and their background.
- What are they looking for and WHY? The follow-up to all research questions is - Why? You are aiming to find out the underlying motivations of why and what they are looking for. So start general and aim to dive deep to uncover the real reasons.
- Putting it together: Start with the demographics.
- Compile the statistics on who and where your personas come from.
- Add some of the quotes and statements from the interviews the show your sales team who they are and what the want. Also add a list of objections.
- Craft a message. Use the terminology and words that came out of the interviews to explain how the product should be described and your elevator pitch. These ensure the whole company is using the same language.
- Finish with a story: Outline your persona story and add a picture and a name. Although it may sound a little strange, putting a picture to the person really help all staff understand they type of client they are dealing with.
Now for an example. The following persona profile was developed by an accounting firm. A number of different potential persona were identified, the following was core client in their bookkeeping division.
Personas are the start of a strong inbound marketing process. Take our website assessment to see where you can start your journey.
