How do you get to know your ideal customer well? What drives them to click and buy your products?
What are buyer personas?
A buyer persona is a fictional characterization of your ideal customer based on information about them and how they use your product or service.
Why create buyer personas?
Buyer personas give you deeper insight into your customers, what drives them, and how they shop, so you can deliver relevant marketing campaigns. Understanding who your audience is, including detailed demographic data (such as age and location) and psychographic data (such as interests and buying motivations), helps you tailor your content, adjust your messaging, and develop products that will be successful.
Benefits of buyer personas
Detailed buyer personas allow you to be more focused and clear in targeting your ads, identifying the marketing channels that matter to you, ensuring that your copy, designs, and content engage your audience, and helping teams make faster, more impactful decisions.
How to build a buyer persona in 8 steps
1. Survey your current customers: Conduct interviews or surveys with your current customers to gather information about their reasons for purchasing, the alternatives that led them to choose you, and the information sources they used and why they made the purchase.
2. Gather more public data about your audience: Review audience data available on your website or social media platforms and review industry or market research, checking what types of people your competitors are targeting.
3. Identify general buyer personas: After conducting customer interviews and industry research, you can begin to identify the primary buyer personas. Look for patterns and similarities among customers, including their interests, buying behaviors, and personality traits.
4. Identify useful details about buyer personas: Pinpoint details that will be useful for business decision-making. You don’t need to know the customer’s favorite color or what they order at Starbucks to sell dog food.
5. Research buyer personas: Conduct secondary research to gain further details about the buyer personas you’ve identified.
6. Integrate the information into a buyer persona profile: Use the information you’ve gathered to create a profile that describes your ideal customer. Give it a name, a picture, and a backstory.
7. Validate buyer personas: Review the list of customers you’ve spoken to and see if the buyer persona you’ve created represents at least some of them and whether they are the types of customers you believe you can serve best.
8. Translate the buyer persona into business decisions: Using the defined buyer persona, you can guide your marketing decisions to align with your ideal customer.
Examples of buyer personas
Buyer personas can take different forms, with the most common being a “one-pager” – a single document containing all necessary information about the customer. Here are three examples of buyer personas with all the key details required in a buyer persona, based on customer interviews and market and industry research.
Example 1: Online yoga accessories store
Name: Evelyn Burns
Age: 39 years
Job: Engineer at a mid-sized tech company
Location: Central Austin
Income: $140,000 annually
Family status: Single, no kids, one dog
Media habits: Podcasts from industry leaders, Facebook (just groups), Instagram
Reasons for purchase: Brand loyalty, availability of a wide range of products
Purchase challenges: Reliability for regular use
Research channels: Recommendations from yoga instructors, Instagram, Google
Alternatives: Continuing to use current yoga accessories, accessories sold in yoga studios or recommended by their online instructors
Purchase moment: Beginning of the new year or before a retreat trip
Example 2: Local juice and smoothie shop
Name: Josh Birnbaum
Age: 28 years
Job: Brand Manager
Location: Mission District in San Francisco
Income: $87,000 annually
Family status: Single, dating
Media habits: Instagram, BeReal, group chats
Reasons for purchase: Sense of belonging to the community and desire to buy local
Purchase challenges: Juices and smoothies unexpectedly high in calories, cost of ordering regularly
Research channels:
Research: Google Maps (checks ratings), recommendations from friends
Alternatives: the other shop on Grant Street, preparing juices and smoothies at home
Purchase moment: before or after work, before or after going to the gym
Example 3: Project management tool
Name: Alison Johnson
Age: 36 years
Job: Senior Project Manager at a web development agency
Location: Hartford, Connecticut (works remotely)
Income: $105,000 per year
Family Status: Married, two young children
Media Habits: The Daily podcast, Substack subscriptions, HBO Max
Buying Role: Decision Maker
Reports to: Vice President of Operations
Also involves: Other project managers (stakeholders and end users), CEO (budget approval), web developers (end users)
Reasons for Buying: Assurance that tools can align with her team’s work
Buying Challenges: Most project management tools are not flexible enough to match her custom company’s work
Search Channels: Google, Trust Pilot
Alternatives: Current tool (Trello), advanced alternatives (Jira)
Purchase Moment: After annual budget approval
Buyer Personas Lead to More Focused Businesses
Buyer personas are likely to change as you learn new information about your customers, and you may even discover entirely new buyer personas as your audience grows. Using updated buyer personas makes audience targeting decisions and how to communicate with them easier for your team. By using buyer personas, you can expect increased engagement on your social media channels and a higher return on investment (ROI) for your online ads. Spending time defining buyer personas can help your business succeed by understanding the customers most likely to buy from you.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/what-is-buyer-persona
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